Having only ever owned and driven Nineties/Defenders (and a Series 1 107") since taking my test, as I get married this year I thought it was time to be sensible and buy a car that fiancé would enjoy driving in more!

I've always loved the look and feel of the L322 Range Rovers, still wanted the high driving position, plenty of load area and need (occasionally) the 3.5t towing capacity, so decided a late model L322 would be ideal. Living in central London during the week, I was a bit put off by all the recent diesel fuss, and as I prefer to look after and keep my cars for a good few years, decided to look into the Supercharged variety, despite the obvious downside of petrol consumption…

I started looking seriously ~8-10 weeks ago, monitoring the usual sites and phoning vendors if I was particularly interested. I was a bit slow on the mark for a nice higher mileage Nara Bronze 5.0 S/C, next time was on a train to Lookers Battersea to look at a Buckingham Blue 4.2 S/C when they phoned to say the first viewer had bought it (turns out to be someone on here!). So didn't seem to be going too well, and at that point I hadn't advertised/sold my Defender either, so wasn't in a massive rush.

I then came across this 2011 5.0 S/C up in Luton, which had recently had it's price reduced. A trip up there one weekend for a test drive and it seemed in overall very good condition, drove perfectly, and everything (*) worked. Still hadn't sold the Defender (although it had now been advertised on AutoTrader for 1.5 weeks), but then Daniel at Prestige gave me a very tempting p/x offer against it, and so I decided to take him up on that on the Monday morning, two days after viewing/driving it. Two hours after I agreed to that deal, a guy emailed in response to my Defender advert, also in central London, a genuine enthusiast and previous Defender owner who was looking for a new car quick as his current Rav4 had just imploded. He came to view/test that Monday evening, loved it and verbally took the car, so I ended up agreeing a new deal on the Range Rover with Daniel. It all fell into place, the Defender was picked up Tuesday night, and then last Thursday we picked up our new Range Rover.

A wonderful feeling to drive in such luxury and comfort, with a purring (and powerful) engine and smooth auto gearbox. But it's an S/C, so clearly it needed petrol before we could drive it 68 miles home. In my excitement I left the petrol screw cap at the petrol station in Luton - I'm not used to having both a flap and a screw cap, so my poor overloaded brain clearly couldn't cope. Other than that, we got home successfully, with it also being fiancé's first solo motorway journey having only taken and passed her driving test the week before. I was pressing buttons much of the way home, failed to work out how to connect my phone via bluetooth, and struggled to enter a sat nav destination. I managed to work both of those out later at home. It was mainly motorways and a fast run in to London, so the dash told me I averaged 24mpg, which I was very happy with!

Many thanks also to everyone on here for all the help, advice and other information that helped me with this purchase.

We then drove down to Poole, Dorset on Friday night, having only purchased the car the night before.

One very happy fiancé as she adjusted her seat endless times, worked the climate control, and read the operating manual for almost 2 hours as she tried everything the car had to offer. It was all going well.

Then she tried the TV. No channels showing at all, no options that seemed to work on the touch screen, and nothing obviously wrong. We left it on for a while, but it didn't seem to pick anything up. Oh well, annoying, but not a major issue, and admittedly one of the few DualView things we hadn't checked when we tested the car. I'm still looking in to that one. But we averaged just over 22 mpg, having come right through central London from east to west, and then down the M3/M27.

Saturday was very rainy so we couldn't spend as much time cleaning the car as we wanted, but did lock ourselves inside for several hours with leather cleaner and protector and gave the endless amount of leather a very good clean, such that the interior now sparkles. Brother, wife and baby also came to visit, loved the vehicle, and are already looking at L322's themselves!

Sunday was much better, so after a little trip with parents to the beach for a walk (Mum loved the heated seats!), more interior cleaning in the sunshine with things we'd missed the day before, and all the non-leather surfaces. I also put in the Britpart moulded boot liner I'd ordered, as I do end up carrying all sorts of things and wanted to protect the carpets. One of the TV antenna amplifiers also seemed to have a dodgy loose power connector which I fixed, but that didn't fix the TV sadly.

Filled up the petrol tank again we set off for London, still no TV, and averaged 22mpg again over the journey home, despite a pretty busy crossing of London to Canary Wharf. Another very enjoyable journey for both of us. I tried using my phone as we came through London, and it didn't want to connect. Panic ensued as we both tried connecting our phones, and nothing would have it, we could no longer see the car's Bluetooth. I was worried that despite my limited work in the rear compartments, I'd already broken something else… But getting back home, I shut the car off, turned the ignition back on, and the phone paired straight away again, so I wonder if the Bluetooth module had just gone to sleep or something having not had a connection request for several hours. Slightly dirty outside now, but all parked up safely back in London after a good first weekend of ownership!

Last edited by paulbrown22 on 13th Feb 2018 11:25am. Edited 1 time in total

Looks lovely  Too many toys, not enough time

2011 4.4 TDV8 AB Black

Whilst giving it a quick wash in the semi-dark last night, I thought I'd check out the brand new spare smart key it came with, before I store that at work for emergencies.

Not a peep out of the vehicle with any of the buttons. I tried swapping batteries between the 2 keys, and the "spare" one really doesn't work.

As far as I can see from the paperwork, looks like it was supplied brand new 1.5 years ago (along with a new key transmitter being fitted to the car at the same time by an independent RR specialist).

I'm hoping it just wasn't properly paired with the car, or has lost knowledge of the car, and is something I can program with my IID tool when it turns up soon...

I will have a word with the dealer, but I guess I can't really complain too much with only 2 fairly minor issues with what is otherwise a very good car.

The car looks delicious and your mpg is reassuring - perhaps you should check that with some manual mpg calculations.

How many owners has the car had? I have owned mine (RRS) from new since November 2010 and everything still works on it and nothing electrical has ever failed in fact. It's a shame that dealer didn't detect/correct those niggles, but as you say, in the scheme of things they are a low priority.

Thanks - a couple of stone chips to tidy up yet, but it's certainly coming up very nicely.

Yes, I'm very old fashioned like that - I have a small notebook in the vehicle with every petrol/diesel stop ever made in all the cars I've ever owned! I am manually tracking the fill ups and mpg as well, and so far showing the same or only just below the computer. Given I'm used to getting 25/26 mpg out of the Defender, I'm happy to be getting vaguely close to that...

I'm the 4th owner - previous owners seemed to keep it for ~2 years and then trade in. It was sold 3 times by Westover Christchurch, and this was it's first sale outside of the official dealer network.

Having been out skiing in Sallbach/Hinterglemm in Austria for a week and racing through a load of work before then, not much has happened to the L322 for a while, beside installing the new TV tuner module which fixed the TV issue. Thankfully it was still safely parked up when we returned home this afternoon!

I spent some free time in Austria reading various detailing/professional detailing posts on here, investigating detailing companies in Poole/London, and watching various YouTube videos on detailing. Whilst still away, and bearing in mind various comments on here, I decided to Amazon up a range of items to improve my home washing/detailing ability as a first step, and see what I could do to the vehicle, as I have always looked after my cars myself. My first use of an Amazon Locker, which was superbly convenient for bulky items that wouldn't fit through the door, and I didn't want to wait until Monday to collect from the office parcel depot.

Now armed with lambswool mitt, clay mitt, Farecla scratch removal compound, Meguiars polish, Collinite 476 wax, Meguiars tyre gel and various pads/cloths for application, I set to work this afternoon to remove all the nastiness left behind by the snow sitting on the cars for a few days. I particularly wanted to see what I could do to the passenger door, which had quite a few light scratches in it not really noticeable unless you really carefully and slowly inspected it.

The Farecla scratch removal compound worked a treat after a decent wash and clay mitt, and 99% of those scratches are now gone. Very impressed with the ease of use of the Meguiars polish and the Collinite wax as well - the passenger door panel now looks brilliant.

A shame I didn't take a before photo for comparison, but will hopefully do some further work on other panels tomorrow and take some photos then, as it was a bit dark when I finished today! Very happy those minor scratches pretty much all came out, and now thinking I don't need a professional detail (for now at least), as that door was by far the worst panel...

Very much looking forward to doing the rest of the car if the weather will permit it this weekend, thoroughly cleaning and protecting the rest of the panels, and sorting the tyres as well.

Lovely looking car there chap.

Have a check of the towing figures, you have an aftermarket tow bar there,probably Ok but worth looking at the info on the plate on the bar especially if you are towing 3.5t... There is nothing that can't be fixed with a hammer😜😜
FFRR 4.4 SDV8 Autobiography Santorini Black.
KIA E-Niro 4+
2021 Discovery 5 D300 MHEV commercial

Thanks - after tomorrow hopefully it will look even better...!

Yes, the tow bar is a TowTrust TL249 - probably wouldn't be my choice if I was fitting something myself, but it is rated at 3.5t. Seeing it wasn't an original LR tow bar, I did crawl all around/underneath it before buying the car, and all the mountings/bracings seem to be very solidly made and securely fixed together.

I haven't yet given it a test, need to fit the new exhaust system to the boat first, but will hopefully do that in the next few weeks.

Shame about the rain this evening Paul, still - had to be done, there's no way you can leave it like that. Mine too - was covered in snow all week plus salt off the roads too. so took it to the jet wash today and washed that gunk off. On my way to the nearest jet wash on the A40 there were huge tailbacks from white city. After 20mins of crawling the culprit was a LWB 405 with it's bonnet up stranded in the outside lane. Poor chap just sat there waiting for recovery.

Looks like rain for next week though so don't go nuts with the cleaning..... (You probably will anyway!)

I'm sure a lot of Range Rovers got a power wash today.

Greg

. Cheers, Greg
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
2011 Vogue SE 4.4 with lots of toys in Stornaway

Greg - yes, I popped out with some rubbish tonight and noticed some rain on the car, clearly we'd had a little shower... Oh well, it did at least prove that the rain beaded very nicely on the completed door panel. I really just wanted to test my scratch removal abilities and prove I could remove those annoying scratches, so having done that, I don't actually mind if it rains on it!

Agreed, forecast doesn't look great next week but if tomorrow is reasonable I suspect I'll still try to spend some time just looking after and protecting it, as I have no idea how it was looked after before me. Good to see yours was treated to a jet wash today - I was contemplating getting the pressure washer out tomorrow, but given it's been parked up all through the snowy period, I might just concentrate on the paintwork, and do the pressure washing next time I'm in Poole where it's a bit easier.

Between your example L405 and that Disco 4 of the Highways Agency, clearly not all LR's have survived the snow as well as most on this forum!

As expected, I spent 3-4 hours outside this morning (really quite warm and sunny to begin with) using my various new compounds and doing my own mini detail of the main panels.

Very happy with the results - I found various other minor scratches to deal with, all of which came out beautifully with the Farecla removal compound. I then polished each panel once or twice with the Meguiars Ultimate Polish and finished off with 2-3 coats of the Collinite 476, which has left it looking very glossy with a lovely smooth feel.

Then of course, as Greg pointed out, the rain came in again, only lightly thankfully, and tested out the beading properties of the coating.

I've since done an hour of driving around London to drop off and pick up fiancé, and given the amount of dirt on the road already made it mucky. At least it should easily wash off now!

I also did my first IID CCF update today, using the provided configuration options to enable the digital speed display in the middle of the speedo, which is something I'd been looking for.

Slightly scared myself when the clock date/time reset itself after that, but I assume that's normal when a new CCF is uploaded and the ECU's rebooted?

I reset them via the DualView screen and that seems to be holding fine now.

yes the clock goes back so thats normal.. ... - .- -.




Y. O. L. O.
.

Super, thanks for confirming Stan - certainly gave me a bit of a shock initially, and I pictured the car not starting at all and being stuck on the driveway for days!