wanted to share a few of my latest observations on the maintenance of my rig...

Many of you can hit the back button at this point, but if it were me, I would want to know the following if no one had told me... (by the way, these are my opinions and not that of the HLRC, Land Rover North America, blah blah blah, and I am not a professional mechanic... fortunately we have a few in this club who can provide more guidance than I can...).

Here we go...

Oil. You cannot change it enough. My little book says to change it every 7500 miles. That's a bunch of crap. Change your oil at least twice that much... every 3750 miles (at a minimum).

"I use synthetic, can I go longer?" I use synthetic too, and I change mine every 3750.

Trey, one of our professional mechanics, goes 4500 - 5000 miles on an oil change; he uses Mobile 1 synthetic. Trey also has 222,846 miles on "Herman" as of today...

Sergio, another one of our professional mechanics and current VP, recommends changing the oil at 6000 for synthetic and 3500 for non-synthethic... "as long as you use a descent filter."

Differential Oil. This is definitely not changed enough in my opinion. I know it's supposed to be changed at 7500 miles and then not again until 60,000.

I remember the first time I changed mine. O man, what a mess. It was so nasty and stunk. The magnet on the drain plug had all sorts of metal shaving on it. The oil in the rear diff was also all milky from some of the water crossings I've done. Trey changes his diff fluid any time he makes a deep water crossing.

I know a few of us in the club change it every other oil change, but at a minimum, change it every 15,000 miles. It's super easy.

Transfer Case Fluid. Same thing. Change it. It's the same fluid as that in the diffs on DIIs, so change it when you change the diff fluid. Again, super easy. All you need is a pump from Auto Zone (the pump is like $5.00).

Other Fluids. If you have OCD like I do, chances are you'll want to completely drain your power steering fluid and brake fluid periodically and replace it with new fresh fluid. Just make sure you have the correct power steering fluid (for a DII, it is not the stuff on the shelf at AZ).

Sergio recommends changing the power steering fluid every 25,000 miles and the brake fluid annually. Sergio also recommends flushing your coolant system every 2 years.

Spark Plugs. This is actually the reason I started to write this. "Sherman", my rig, has 42,000 miles. The little book says to change the plugs at 60,000.

I pulled mine out today only to find they were a complete mess and should have been replaced 12,000 miles ago. Two of them were burned down to nothing. And all of them were in pretty sad shape.

That little rough idle I had at stop lights is now completely gone as well.

What a difference! I bet my gas mileage may even improve.

Fuel Additive. Every 7500 miles, the following is part of the scheduled service:

"Add 16 oz Land Rover Fuel Conditioner (LRN5010)"

Do you do that (have that done)?

Again, with my severe OCD, I add it every oil change.

Summary. Seems to me what I have found is that you need to do the service twice as often as "recommended".

All of the above are simple jobs and require few tools. Hell, I can even help you at a Monster Garage so you can do it yourself in the future. We also have Land Rover Houston and The Rover Shoppe who can do it for you if you don't feel like jacking with it.

Regardless of where you do it or who you get to do it, just do it.

You can login to My Land Rover on the Land Rover site and display the maintenance schedule for your car online.

Here's the link: http://www.landroverusa.com/us/en/Owning/My_Land_Rover/default.htm

Once you are logged in, you can view your maintenance schedule and you can even add your own records online to keep up with your service. You'll need to create a password and all that, but it is pretty self explanatory.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to ask!

-- Bill Mallin

Technical advice from Trey Burns and Sergio Sosa