A tale of three discoveries (4x4 and V8 content)
Discussion
Cheers buddy.
Spent some time yesterday sorting out the spare wheel situation.
Started with the standard 18" alloy and tyre. Obviously no use if I ever get a flat on the other four!
It's a common modification to flip the spare mount upside down, this lifts the attachment higher and gives room for bigger tyres.
Took the carrier off and center hole has to be redrilled so it will fit back on the other way up.
Unfortunately the flip alone didn't give enough room for a 33" tyre.
So the carrier came off again for a bit more modification. I ended up raising it another 25mm which was enough for the spare to clear the bumper with the tailgate closed.
So I now have a 33" spare to match the rest. I've left one of the old Pro-comps on there for now but once they have sold I'll buy a 5th Cooper and modular wheel to fit
Spent some time yesterday sorting out the spare wheel situation.
Started with the standard 18" alloy and tyre. Obviously no use if I ever get a flat on the other four!
It's a common modification to flip the spare mount upside down, this lifts the attachment higher and gives room for bigger tyres.
Took the carrier off and center hole has to be redrilled so it will fit back on the other way up.
Unfortunately the flip alone didn't give enough room for a 33" tyre.
So the carrier came off again for a bit more modification. I ended up raising it another 25mm which was enough for the spare to clear the bumper with the tailgate closed.
So I now have a 33" spare to match the rest. I've left one of the old Pro-comps on there for now but once they have sold I'll buy a 5th Cooper and modular wheel to fit
Thanks guys.
There are several spots where chips and scratches have revealed red paint underneath the green, but I have the original bill of sale which shows green and there are no changes noted on a HPI check.
There are also differences all over it compared to any other D2s I've seen. The brown leather from earlier in the thread, many looms don't match the colour codes in the workshop manual, fastners are different and brackets are different shapes.
Personally I reckon it was a pre-production test vehicle that was repainted and sold as new with the first batch in 1998.
Cfnteabag said:
I'm sure the S***VOA discoveries were used for the press and marketing when the Disco 2 was released
That's interesting. We're pretty sure it has some sort of history TBH.There are several spots where chips and scratches have revealed red paint underneath the green, but I have the original bill of sale which shows green and there are no changes noted on a HPI check.
There are also differences all over it compared to any other D2s I've seen. The brown leather from earlier in the thread, many looms don't match the colour codes in the workshop manual, fastners are different and brackets are different shapes.
Personally I reckon it was a pre-production test vehicle that was repainted and sold as new with the first batch in 1998.
Edited by JordanTurbo on Tuesday 6th October 15:31
Finished work early today so grabbed some time on the Disco.
One of the height sensors on the rear air suspension went recently which led to the N/S/R corner lowering to the bump stop every time the ignition was turned on. As a temp measure I manually filled it and removed the fuse while I waited to get a new one but have since decided to remover the system completely.
I like the SLS and it's not a complicated system to keep going at all, but with the D2 being the family daily I don't want the risk of it leaving the wife stuck if I'm away with work.
Here is the spring conversion kit, still 2" lift.
And here is the standard rear air bag.
Removed along with the previous 2" spacer, and spring seat bolted in place
Spring fitted. Nice and easy on the back, don't even need to take the wheels off.
You may have noticed there were 4 springs in the box. That's because the front Terrafirma springs were looking sorry for them selves after 2 years and I decided to replace them too.
The shocks on the other hand still look like new with a wipe down, very pleased on that front.
Old and new springs, TF one had sagged a little too.
And all fitted up with new bolts.
Happy days
Next Job was to sort the footsteps for the wife, she's only short bless her. They had to be removed because the extra offset of the Modular steel wheels meant the tyres rubbed.
To fix it I removed the front mud flap
And trimmed down the step by just over an inch
With the mud flap refitted the steps could go back on.
Plenty of room now
That was it. Good days work TBH.
Thanks for reading :thumb:
One of the height sensors on the rear air suspension went recently which led to the N/S/R corner lowering to the bump stop every time the ignition was turned on. As a temp measure I manually filled it and removed the fuse while I waited to get a new one but have since decided to remover the system completely.
I like the SLS and it's not a complicated system to keep going at all, but with the D2 being the family daily I don't want the risk of it leaving the wife stuck if I'm away with work.
Here is the spring conversion kit, still 2" lift.
And here is the standard rear air bag.
Removed along with the previous 2" spacer, and spring seat bolted in place
Spring fitted. Nice and easy on the back, don't even need to take the wheels off.
You may have noticed there were 4 springs in the box. That's because the front Terrafirma springs were looking sorry for them selves after 2 years and I decided to replace them too.
The shocks on the other hand still look like new with a wipe down, very pleased on that front.
Old and new springs, TF one had sagged a little too.
And all fitted up with new bolts.
Happy days
Next Job was to sort the footsteps for the wife, she's only short bless her. They had to be removed because the extra offset of the Modular steel wheels meant the tyres rubbed.
To fix it I removed the front mud flap
And trimmed down the step by just over an inch
With the mud flap refitted the steps could go back on.
Plenty of room now
That was it. Good days work TBH.
Thanks for reading :thumb:
Wow. Over 6 months since I last updated this. 
There has been a few changes since then, and a few more coming. So I best get this up to date.
So first up was to get a matching modular and tyre for the rear.
Then the Starter decided to pack up. to be fair, it was pretty much the only part on the engine that I didn't refurb or replace during the rebuild, so a new one was sourced.
Old vs new
With her working 100% again, the next little mod came in the form of an LED rear work light.
Which is controlled by a rocker switch just inside the boot door on the pillar trim.
And is also wired up to automatically come on with reverse for some more light.
That's not it. More updates to come once I've sorted out the pictures on my Photobucket account
There has been a few changes since then, and a few more coming. So I best get this up to date.
So first up was to get a matching modular and tyre for the rear.
Then the Starter decided to pack up. to be fair, it was pretty much the only part on the engine that I didn't refurb or replace during the rebuild, so a new one was sourced.
Old vs new
With her working 100% again, the next little mod came in the form of an LED rear work light.
Which is controlled by a rocker switch just inside the boot door on the pillar trim.
And is also wired up to automatically come on with reverse for some more light.
That's not it. More updates to come once I've sorted out the pictures on my Photobucket account
Edited by JordanTurbo on Saturday 4th June 11:46
aspirated said:
Looking forward to the updates
Thanks. Here's the next batch of pictures to catch up with. Shortly after fitting the new tyres, I found that they now rubbed on the arches off road.
They are the same size as the old 33" tyres, which had been fine as they were fitted to standard alloys and would tuck up inside the arches when the suspension articulated, but the extra offset of the steel wheels means they sit out further. Looked lots better, and meant I got my standard turning circle back, but rubbed as below.
More lift required!
I decided to go for a 2" body lift in the end to go with the 2" spring lift already fitted. This was because apart from the arch rubbing I already had decent ground clearance, so didn't feel I needed more. It also keeps majority of the heavy stuff (Engine, Gearbox, Transfer box, Chassis, Fuel tank etc...) in their original position, so the centre of gravity is better than an equivalent full 4" spring lift. lastly it avoided me getting into more issues associated with going much past 2" of lift, like prop shaft angles, axel caster angles etc....
First thing I noticed when shopping was how expencive body lift kits seemed to be. £100 for 14 spacers and some high tensile bolts.
Refused to pay that so decided to make my own. Measured up and ordered some HT bolts in the correct length, and ordered some UHMW PE (Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyurethane) Rod to make the spacers. Exactly the same as the ready made kits, but cost me less than £50 all in. :tup:
Fitting was very easy, and the weather was worse than the job itself TBH (was January at this point) but a makeshift cover fixed that. Just undo all 14 body mounts and the steering shaft, jack up one side at a time to fit the spacers, with some wood to spread the load along the sill.
Body mount spacers fitted.
Once they were fitted, it was just a case of tightening everything back up, adding some new holes 2" lower in the front slam panel for the upper rad mounts, and that was it. :mrgreen:
The next issue to sort was the front and rear bumpers. Because they attach to the chassis, they had stayed in the same place and there was now a 2" gap at both ends.
This was easily sorted using by making some new brackets from some spare 4mm steel strap I had in the garage. Here is the rear one, but I didn't get a picture of the front unfortunately.
Both gaps fixed.
You may have noticed that in most of the above pictures, the side steps were missing. That's because like the bumpers, they mount to the chassis so didn't move up with the lift and meant that the moulded mud flap at the front no longer matched the body. I toyed with moving them up 2" like the bumpers, but decided I like them in the lower position for the family, in particular the kids (3yo and 5yo) climbing in.
I thought for a while about how to make them look better where they were. I tried a few things, but in the end I found the best fit was to remove the mud flap totally, cut them down further at the front end, then fit them on opposite sides left to right, so they are technically now backwards.
I'm quite happy with how they look now - they start just before the front door with a curved end, and the run all the way to the back.
You can see here what I meant about them being better in the low position. The gap between floor and step, then step to the floor inside, is much more even than if I'd raised them and much easier for the kids to get in and out.
I'll finish off this update with a couple of pictures of how it then looked at the time. Againced my Daily BMW e36 328i....
....and a standard Discovery 2 friend I found on my travels.
Thanks for reading, still plenty more to come once I get the next batch of photos together so keep checking back.
Hi guys,
Only a small update this time. Got a bigger one coming but I'm trying to keep this in some sort of chronological order as I catch up.
Next job was to remove the big land anchor tow bar and rear step.
To fit my Genuine NAS 2" box receiver hitch.
Which meant I could have my big angry recovery hook back!
Working back there highlighted how crusty the chassis was getting.
Unfortunately, I seem to have lost the progress pictures, but here is what It looked like after being stripped back, repainted and wax oiled. I also took the opportunity to fit a larger 90L LPG tank in place of the previous 80L one, due to the extra space provided by the body lift. Much better.
While I was there I sorted out a new mount for my tow electrics next to the receiver hitch and decided to also relocate the ugly looking LPG filler from the rear wing (Why to installers always insist on putting them there?!
). I think it looks nice and subtle where it is now, and when the cover is fitted it just looks like another tow plug.
Obviously, that left a filler shaped hole in the wing which needed to be filled. In a wing that is made of aluminium, so couldn't weld a blank into it with the kit I have. Luckily being an aircraft engineer by trade has it's advantages, and I was able to spend my lunch break in the metal work bay, knocking up a quick flush fit aluminium patch panel to glue and rivet in. This will be filled over and painted green to match the rest of the panel.
And I'll finish off this little update with a couple more pictures of another friend I found.
As always, thanks for reading. Comments welcome .
Only a small update this time. Got a bigger one coming but I'm trying to keep this in some sort of chronological order as I catch up.
Next job was to remove the big land anchor tow bar and rear step.
To fit my Genuine NAS 2" box receiver hitch.
Which meant I could have my big angry recovery hook back!
Working back there highlighted how crusty the chassis was getting.
Unfortunately, I seem to have lost the progress pictures, but here is what It looked like after being stripped back, repainted and wax oiled. I also took the opportunity to fit a larger 90L LPG tank in place of the previous 80L one, due to the extra space provided by the body lift. Much better.
While I was there I sorted out a new mount for my tow electrics next to the receiver hitch and decided to also relocate the ugly looking LPG filler from the rear wing (Why to installers always insist on putting them there?!
). I think it looks nice and subtle where it is now, and when the cover is fitted it just looks like another tow plug. Obviously, that left a filler shaped hole in the wing which needed to be filled. In a wing that is made of aluminium, so couldn't weld a blank into it with the kit I have. Luckily being an aircraft engineer by trade has it's advantages, and I was able to spend my lunch break in the metal work bay, knocking up a quick flush fit aluminium patch panel to glue and rivet in. This will be filled over and painted green to match the rest of the panel.
And I'll finish off this little update with a couple more pictures of another friend I found.
As always, thanks for reading. Comments welcome .
Jimmy Recard said:
I like it a lot, but I think it's a pity you changed the plates. The old font on the original S-reg plates was a bit different and nicer for it.
Thanks.I actually did like the old plate TBH, more so because most of the "S....VOA" plated Discos were used as press cars at release. Not this one though - we believe it was a pre-production tester that was repainted, registered and sold as new to meet demand.
It got changed though, as this is technically the family runaround that the wife uses (The BMW being my daily) and she wanted her private plate on it.
Edited by JordanTurbo on Monday 6th June 22:56
Next update here. It's a big one so you may want a brew
Earlier on the thread you'll have seen that I face lifted my old TD5. That's one modification I've always had planned for the V8, but I wanted to go a bit further and do something a bit different at the same time.
My BMW has Xenon lights and I wanted the same sort of light output from the Discovery, but the face lift headlights use reflector housings which IMO can never give an acceptable light beam pattern with a HID xenon conversion. For that you need projector lenses to focus the beam properly, so along with a set of new headlights and HID kit, I bought a Bi-xenon projector conversion kit to fit as well.
These would fit into the standard H4 light housing, and then take a H1 xenon bulb.
Wasted no time in splitting the headlight to test fit the projector units.
And test the light output
looking good, with a reasonable beam pattern which was much better than the Halogen housings would have given. But there was still a couple of small areas glare above the cut off line that may have dazzled other drivers so I wasn't 100% happy yet.
The glare was from stray light that had escaped from gaps in the back of the projector housings and then bounced off of the mirror reflector behind. To fit it I decided to make some blocking shrouds out of some spare perspex sheet I had.
Which were covered with some chrome effect Vinyl to fit in with the rest of the headlight.
Fitted behind the housings
And both lights back together, with the shrouds having the added benefit of making the projectors look a bit more factory fit.
And once again, the beam pattern was checked. MUCH better, with a perfect cut off and zero glare.
Happy with the beam pattern, the lights were almost ready to fit. But first I had to remedy another problem that all Discovery faceift headlights have, and that's their attractiveness to certain unsavoury types.
The first change to help stop these lights being nicked was to etch/engrave the Licence plate number onto the lense of the lights.
This was done on the inside of the lense, so the outer surface is still smooth.
Next was to sort the main reason they get nicked so easily, which because Land Rover decided to use rubbish plastic fixings to attach them to the vehicle, that simply snap clean off with a swift pull.
I decided the best fix was to forget about the plastic mounts all together, and make new metal ones.
All 3 new mounts bolt through the plastic headlight casing, to metal reinforcement plates bonded to the inside.
I very much doubt anyone would be able to pull them out now. And on the off chance they manage it, they would definatly not be in a sellable condition, which would make them think twice about going for the second one.
Finally after all that work, I was able to fit them.
And with the lower trim pieces painted, it was time for a celebratary wash and photos.
I'm VERY happy with how they came out, Thanks for reading as always
Earlier on the thread you'll have seen that I face lifted my old TD5. That's one modification I've always had planned for the V8, but I wanted to go a bit further and do something a bit different at the same time.
My BMW has Xenon lights and I wanted the same sort of light output from the Discovery, but the face lift headlights use reflector housings which IMO can never give an acceptable light beam pattern with a HID xenon conversion. For that you need projector lenses to focus the beam properly, so along with a set of new headlights and HID kit, I bought a Bi-xenon projector conversion kit to fit as well.
These would fit into the standard H4 light housing, and then take a H1 xenon bulb.
Wasted no time in splitting the headlight to test fit the projector units.
And test the light output
looking good, with a reasonable beam pattern which was much better than the Halogen housings would have given. But there was still a couple of small areas glare above the cut off line that may have dazzled other drivers so I wasn't 100% happy yet.
The glare was from stray light that had escaped from gaps in the back of the projector housings and then bounced off of the mirror reflector behind. To fit it I decided to make some blocking shrouds out of some spare perspex sheet I had.
Which were covered with some chrome effect Vinyl to fit in with the rest of the headlight.
Fitted behind the housings
And both lights back together, with the shrouds having the added benefit of making the projectors look a bit more factory fit.
And once again, the beam pattern was checked. MUCH better, with a perfect cut off and zero glare.
Happy with the beam pattern, the lights were almost ready to fit. But first I had to remedy another problem that all Discovery faceift headlights have, and that's their attractiveness to certain unsavoury types.
The first change to help stop these lights being nicked was to etch/engrave the Licence plate number onto the lense of the lights.
This was done on the inside of the lense, so the outer surface is still smooth.
Next was to sort the main reason they get nicked so easily, which because Land Rover decided to use rubbish plastic fixings to attach them to the vehicle, that simply snap clean off with a swift pull.
I decided the best fix was to forget about the plastic mounts all together, and make new metal ones.
All 3 new mounts bolt through the plastic headlight casing, to metal reinforcement plates bonded to the inside.
I very much doubt anyone would be able to pull them out now. And on the off chance they manage it, they would definatly not be in a sellable condition, which would make them think twice about going for the second one.
Finally after all that work, I was able to fit them.
And with the lower trim pieces painted, it was time for a celebratary wash and photos.
I'm VERY happy with how they came out, Thanks for reading as always
Here are the pictures of the light output and beam pattern now that the Bi-xenon lights are fitted.
Dipped beam pattern.
Dipped beam from outside.
Main beam from outside.
Dipped beam from the driver's seat.
Main beam from the driver's seat.
And for anyone worried what effect these will have on other road users. They are very bright with a clear white light, as expected.
But that is only below the cutoff line. Above that, the light output is much lower, and no brighter than normal headlights.
And these pictures again show that the cut off is nice and crisp, and means the bright half of the light beam stays nicely below the window line of other cars, with the area above almost black, so won't dazzle anyone
All in all, VERY good results in my opinion. Really happy with them.
Driving around at night is massively improved, and I think they look great too.
Dipped beam pattern.
Dipped beam from outside.
Main beam from outside.
Dipped beam from the driver's seat.
Main beam from the driver's seat.
And for anyone worried what effect these will have on other road users. They are very bright with a clear white light, as expected.
But that is only below the cutoff line. Above that, the light output is much lower, and no brighter than normal headlights.
And these pictures again show that the cut off is nice and crisp, and means the bright half of the light beam stays nicely below the window line of other cars, with the area above almost black, so won't dazzle anyone
All in all, VERY good results in my opinion. Really happy with them.
Driving around at night is massively improved, and I think they look great too.
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