Discover the rust. A tale of Discovery ownership and its many flaws. Found more rust :(

[sutty2006]

Plenty of LR threads on here now. So im making my own. This is our Discovery 1 300tdi 3 door. I say "our" because it belongs to me and my brother. It was bought in 2013 to replace a hideously rusty 5 door Discovery that was, just shit.

It looked a lovely thing. It had a full MOT on it when we bought it. I think we payed 1600 for it, as it is minus the winch. I bought that horrible thing shortly after. The above picture is 2 weeks after buying it. 2 WEEKS. We spent the day at Silverdale pay and play site. By the end of the day the rear body mounts had collapsed so badly we couldnt open the rear door. We took it to a friend to be welded up.

 

What we found was a joke. The whole rear cross member was shot including the mounts.

 

It was all cut out. Nothing much left of it.

 

And some of it was even glued in. How very greatful we were! Not.

But not to worry. My mate Steve got his prized welder out and began filling the gaps with box section Zintec steel.

 

 

Its does the job, and is still strong to this day.

 

It didnt end there. Roll on 12 months and its first MOT in our possesion ment that both side body mounts and sills had also turned to dust....... This brought on more welding, and more box section. Both sides were fully rebuilt. (in progress pic)

 

 The rest of it is still rusty. Both front inner wings were replaced by previous owner, and dont need doing yet. Its not a completely shabby thing, but I do fupping hate its guts.

It was used at the start of 2020 for some green laning. Then covid hit. It sat until January this year (2021) in dry storage, where I had to completely rebuild the rear seat belt mounts as they had vanished in storage. (tin rats?).  It had its MOT in January and did nothing until last weekend when I took it for a training day at Coney green in Stourbridge. I had to weld 2 patches to the Chassis. Replace front brake pads and other fettling LR jobs.

Here it is at Coney in 2019...... stuck.

 

 

 

[sutty2006]

It also got stuck here 

 

and again here

 

 

it was a horrific day of going no where

[Tickman]

You love it then 😂

[sutty2006]

Its not without its flaws. Previous years of hard off road abuse takes its toll on ones sanity.....

 

Its been used to tow cars.....

 

 

Used for charity events and displays. This was a year that a local 4x4 club had kids from Chernobyl over, you know, the radioactive ones. And we'd take them round a course......

 

Used to take other offroaders to their doom pay and play sites.

 

 

[sutty2006]

It had a well known habit of getting stuck.

 

 

Which was natural, even with aggressive off road tyres.

 

 

Which always ment brother Dave getting the winch out.

[grogee]

Good on you for admitting to getting stuck, I guess it's part of the fun. I'm no mud plugger but there seems to be a fairly strong contingent of mudbeasts here (Warwickshire). Lots of Discos with lots of bits removed and big wheels, not unlike yours. 

I would say I don't see the appeal but that would be hypocritical given that I have several mountain bikes. 

[sutty2006]

Stuck again.......

 

 

And this time cocking its leg.

 

 

I got fed up of getting stuck in landrover cross lock ruts and bought an air locking rear diff in an axle. I fitted that and it dropped all of its oil out on my driveway. Turns out whoever sand blasted it didnt bother welding the holes up before powder coating it...... So i got offered a 200 tdi rear axle (prefered as no anti roll bar) .... filled the diff back up and took it to coventry and swapped it all over on my mates driveway. No pictures of that im affraid.

[sutty2006]

7 minutes ago, grogee said:

Good on you for admitting to getting stuck, I guess it's part of the fun. I'm no mud plugger but there seems to be a fairly strong contingent of mudbeasts here (Warwickshire). Lots of Discos with lots of bits removed and big wheels, not unlike yours. 

I would say I don't see the appeal but that would be hypocritical given that I have several mountain bikes. 

yes, see a lot of people fitting massive light bars, side exit exhausts, rock sliders, branch cables and OLLI stickers but none of that gets you unstuck from the mud! I like to get stuck, no point not having a go. The only thing I WONT do is wade it. It can, but i wont. Thats how the last discovery got fired. It filled up with muddy water and rotted from the inside out after that. You can see the wade line up the trans tunnel and on the back seats. Luckily brother dave was driving. Luckily we had sunroofs.

[sutty2006]

Anyway. Back to 2019s episode of "he's got it stuck, again". This was beeched on a log in the centre of the track. Rear diff was just in front of it, and I had 3 LRs trying to winch me out backwards.

Turned out forwards was better, but I had to dig for Britain to get it out forwards!

 

 

[sutty2006]

I took it on myself to sort the rear tow point out. It was originally a tow ball bolted to the bottom two chassis pins. Now it’s a fully swivelly point attached to all four bolt holes. 

 

i removed the tow bar a couple of years back. The rear approach angle is much better now and doesn’t act like a ground anchor. I have two Jate rings to fit where the tow bar should mount. The left is on. The right is waiting for me to get the remains of the rusty bolt out……which is harder than it looks! 

[sutty2006]

 

One modification that makes a huge difference was removing both front and rear anti roll bars. The 200 series wasnt fitted with them, so these got taken off. Much better articulation while keeping the body reasonably level.

 

 

[Mrcento]

I still miss mine. Went in the same area. Worst of all, the rear cross member that had collapsed on my one had been replaced less than 5 years before. Problem with living in a flat, units being so expensive and nowhere willing to take on such work makes these totally unfeasible for me.

[sutty2006]

Yes unless you can repair them yourself, maintenance costs would run into the thousands. I had a tricky piece of welding done to the bulkhead under the break servo last month, cost us £222. But it’s section I couldn’t do myself, and it was my main man Steve doing the job. 
 

the chassis repairs I can do myself as it’s easy to get to. Like this shocker mount area. 
 

cut the old out

 

make a patch from 2mm thick steel

 

then weld it in

 

can hardly tell! Apart from previous years patches 😂

 

other hole was around the old fuel tank strap bracket which no longer existed. (Has tank guard holding that up, which conveniently failed when the cross member holding the tank up fell off and I had to ratchet strap it up in place for a few months till Steve could weld it back in. Ahhhh sweet rusty memories. 
 

 

also see in the picture the cross member hole for Jate ring with part of bolt still in place. Still seized in. Still not coming out. 

[bezzabsa]

Do miss my LR stuff....but welding isn't in my skill set, plus living in a high rise means I can't really work on it here..

Also they tend to go walkies around here a lot...

TD5 front grill??? and roof swap to a non sunroof one??? or just CBA to paint roof???

[sutty2006]

It’s got early TD5 headlights which are identical to 300 series. The grill is standard, just cut out to accommodate the winch. 
 

List of jobs to get round to. Diff pinion bearing (rear). Rebuild swivels, gearbox oil leak (nah), steering box oil leak (3rd steering box as I bent the worm gear in the last one), change radiator and intercooler as it over heats over 60 mph. Battery nackered. Need to fit an air tank in the rear to run my air horns. 
 

roof is black for good reason. Previous owner painted this, and the rest of his fleet of Ford Fiesta vans. They started out darker, but the blue got thinned out on its last coating on this discovery. I like it. It’s almost Opels “monza blue”. If I could get a solid roof I’d swap it over. Brother sutty spotted a Range Rover classic the other day cheap and local, we didn’t buy it. 😢

[Popsicle]

Urgh, this has given me unwanted flashbacks, went through similar 20 odd years ago with a K reg 200 tdi, brilliant truck for plodding around in, but fuck me backwards it was a needy bitch. Bloody thing got stuck everywhere on the lanes, yet my mate in his little yellow SJ410 just plodded through it all! Good luck with it and well done for persevering with it. Hopefully my nervous twitch from reading this will be gone in a few days........

[Mrcento]

I would 'happily' have paid the thousands to get it welded properly.

It was something i knew was going to be very hard to replace and i was totally happy with it. It was mechanically superb. With values going up, spending 2-3k on a good job would have been totally reasonable.

Nowhere would do it. They wouldn't even look at it.

I contacted everywhere from backstreet places, to specialised welders, to crash repair centres.

They all said no chance. It was going to be more than a patch given the rear cross member was gone so that was that.

Even told some places i'd stick money up front if they took it on.

The declined, firmly.

[sutty2006]

13 minutes ago, Popsicle said:

Urgh, this has given me unwanted flashbacks, went through similar 20 odd years ago with a K reg 200 tdi, brilliant truck for plodding around in, but fuck me backwards it was a needy bitch. Bloody thing got stuck everywhere on the lanes, yet my mate in his little yellow SJ410 just plodded through it all! Good luck with it and well done for persevering with it. Hopefully my nervous twitch from reading this will be gone in a few days........

I have that same twitch. It’s become part of my life, which will never go away. There’s no medication for it either. 

8 minutes ago, Mrcento said:

I would 'happily' have paid the thousands to get it welded properly.

It was something i knew was going to be very hard to replace and i was totally happy with it. It was mechanically superb. With values going up, spending 2-3k on a good job would have been totally reasonable.

Nowhere would do it. They wouldn't even look at it.

I contacted everywhere from backstreet places, to specialised welders, to crash repair centres.

They all said no chance. It was going to be more than a patch given the rear cross member was gone so that was that.

Even told some places i'd stick money up front if they took it on.

The declined, firmly.

That is a shame. My mate charged me about 750 for the rear crossmember, then a bag of sand for the sills 12 months later. More than what we’d payed for it but it kept it alive. The real shame is the rest of the body is shite. I’ve even had to weld a patch on the roof! 

[Mrcento]

That rear corner where the gutter meets the edge of the rear door frame by any chance?, TADTS 😂

[Blake's Den]

1 hour ago, sutty2006 said:

I’ve even had to weld a patch on the roof! 

The roof?! 

[Minimad5]

I do kick myself for selling the clean, low mileage and low owner 3 door Discovery 1, that me and the missus owned. Recently seen it lifted, beat up to shit BUT still on the road (just).

Brilliant thread and stories of getting stuck 😅👍

[sutty2006]

Yeah finding decent clean unabused examples of these is near impossible! 

[sutty2006]

So we are out today at a pay and play site. Pictures are lacking, it’s hard to photo while trying to off road. 
 

we found a stuck dihatsu. And offered to winch him out. We got him so far then started to leave. He got stuck again so we went back, only for a pleb in a grand Cherokee to sail past and get stuck in the same hole. We ended up winching the jeep forwards to get the dishatsu out backwards…. Then the winch broke. Think the clutch has failed in it. That should keep me busy over winter. 

[sutty2006]

Got stuck again. But with no working winch, we had to wait about 10 mins for someone to pass by and assist. It was well stuck forwards and backwards. 
 

 

[Matty]

Tbh sutty, you're not doing a good job of selling the virtues of "the best 4x4xfar" 🤣

[sutty2006]

18 minutes ago, Matty said:

Tbh sutty, you're not doing a good job of selling the virtues of "the best 4x4xfar" 🤣

I’d never try selling this thing. It’s not called “the hateful pig” for nothing! 

[sutty2006]

Some more pictures from today’s muddy episode. 
 

 

[meggersdog]

Good stuff. I will probably be at Tixover next Sunday in mine. Seeing pictures of yours reminded me my snorkel is still in the upstairs office at work waiting to be fitted. Only had it three years. I don't rush things.

[barmatt]

I was a serial Land Rover licker for too long, my wall of shame is...

1 x siii 2.25 petrol

2 x 200tdi Disco's

3 x 300tdi Disco's

4 x RRC V8's

It's an addiction that's still inside me but with regular meetings and some strong pills I've kept it at bay for a few years.

Considering the way prices have gone in recent times that list should probably go in the "scrapped a cosworth" thread. 

 

*goes to browse ebay immediately*

[sutty2006]

1 hour ago, meggersdog said:

Good stuff. I will probably be at Tixover next Sunday in mine. Seeing pictures of yours reminded me my snorkel is still in the upstairs office at work waiting to be fitted. Only had it three years. I don't rush things.

Do you mean tick hill at Weston coyney? I doubt I’ll be able to go, but if you go in future months let me know! 
 

brother sutty sent me some pics 

articulation without roll bars

 

stuck going nowhere