Gaffers Discovery Diaries - Hiatus

[Cookiesouwest]

Top LR work as always

[Landy Mann]

Very very nice, does it still have the picnic basket instead of a cubby box?

[Gaffer]

59 minutes ago, Landy Mann said:

Very very nice, does it still have the picnic basket instead of a cubby box?

Centre console bag thoroughly cleaned and reinstated!

[Gaffer]

So 6 months later where do we find ourselves? Not really any progress to report, if anything a number of steps leaps backwards but we will come to that. The constant being work has been busier than ever which I’m forever grateful for, but it can be hellish long hours and juggling that with a young family leaves little time for playing with Land Rovers (especially when they are being ungrateful bastards).

We begin in late Jan/early Feb:

Had another turbo actuator failure on the black disco which has since been narrowed down to piss poor tuning (from one of the largest LR tuning houses in the country no less). Replacement turbo in within 3 hours which if you’ve ever done one you’ll know that’s not bad going!

 

Even found time to wash it, don’t think it scrubs up too bad for 295k miles

Workshop has been full to bursting most of the time

March rolls around and I snap up a Disco 3 with LOTS of very nice parts but a blown engine, but this deal was about to cost me more than I’d ever anticipate…

Photo taken minutes before disaster ^

Storming up windy hill on the M62 towing with the black Discovery, about 2/3rds of the way up something suddenly felt ‘off’. I backed out of it and crept the rest of the way up to the summit, pulled off at the next exit and parked it on the slip road hard shoulder. Wound the window down and was met with the unmistakeable sound of a rattling bottom end. 2nd engine gone in less than a year FML.

Managed to limp the outfit into a customers yard in Huddersfield, and a mate came to rescue the trailer in my commercial disco so I could limp the black one home - it did make it but sounded truly awful by the time we got back! 

At this point the LR love was well and truly dwindling, and my black disco was my every day work ‘van’ so I needed to sort an alternative out. A month prior I nearly bought a Disco5 but after this latest escapade I swore to never buy a LR for work again unless it was still in warranty.

Conveniently enough a mate came down in his new to him NP300 Navara on the Friday and forced me to take it for a drive despite me being a firm hater of pickups. I actually couldn’t get over how much I liked it, so when my Disco blew up on the Saturday there was no guesses as to what I went out and bought on the Monday:

Naturally I can’t leave anything alone so these days it looks more like this

 

Genuinely cant rate this highly enough, returns 33mpg with all my kit in and it hasn’t needed a spanner on it for anything other than mods/basic servicing in 4 months/8k miles. 

After losing my main tow vehicle in the black Disco I needed to sort something out (the Navara can tow 3.5t but I’d rather not tow heavy with my main work vehicle after the Disco experience), I did what I should have done ages ago and put a towbar on the Overfinch. Naturally the first tow test was disposing of the recently deceased down the storage yard as I was sick of the sight of it

As you can imagine a twin turbo v8 made light work of it and I genuinely was baffled at why I didn’t do this sooner.

In related Overfinch news, now it had a tow bar we took it on holiday to North Yorkshire

Went to Ravenscar and made a friend

It’s just had a rust free (imported from Barcelona!) top tailgate painted and fitted, and wants a couple other tidy up jobs doing but we will get around to them in time. Properly good motor this and dare I say it, a forever car?

With all the new found spare time not having to keep up with the constant repairs needed when running an elderly Discovery for daily work, I managed to rebuild the engine on my fridge van. Pictured just back from paint:

Just a few more bits of prep and that can then finally go up for sale.

As a final kick in the pods, my mate who bought the ex @Cookiesouwest Discovery from me messaged me the other night to say it had just shut off driving along at 40mph and then wouldn’t crank. He was hopeful of a snapped timing belt but knowing these engines I expected complete crank failure. Sure enough investigations the next day showed it locked solid, completely fucked. If that one can’t survive with the comprehensive history from new that had, then there’s no hope for any of them. 


 

Time will tell if it gets a new engine but safe to say I’m a little exhausted with Discovery’s at the moment. Including this one I’ve got 3 to do now and not an ounce of motivation to do it with. Hopefully the mojo returns in a couple of months!

[mk2_craig]

Does seem to imply a lot of effort for not a lot of reward. Good to hear the Nissan has impressed though. Are the chassis members a little less snappy on the newer models? 

[Gaffer]

With my black one and my mates silver one it’s purely for the love of the vehicle otherwise they would be bean tins! 

The model I have doesn’t have the same chassis issues as the old one no (fingers crossed) although it seems you can get any pickup to be a bit bendy if you abuse them enough 😅 Toyota are currently recalling a load of Hilux for chassis replacement so none of them are perfect!