In the time between writing the last blog entry and actually removing the engine I spent the time worrying about where I would put the engine, and a method of getting it there. The Barn was full of car interior and other gubbins, there’s no way I would leave it outside, so I needed a plan that allowed me to get the engine indoors somewhere. I had originally booked Rob to come round with the JCB on the Friday, for a half-day or so, to remove the engine and put the body on the trailer. I agreed with him to instead bring the JCB after hours to stick the body on the trailer. That way I could then fill the body with the interior and take it to the dump. So late on Friday night, Rob and I loaded the body onto the trailer.

This shot (for some reason) reminds me of the opening scene in Jurassic Park where a crate, containing a Velociraptor, is being loaded into a cage.

The preceding images are on the morning after. To strap the car down, I cut holes in the wheel wells and through the front bulkhead, then fed ratchet straps through the doors and back out of the wheel wells. If the body wasn’t scrap before it certainly was after that, as it started to bend any which way the wind was blowing.

Getting the car body to the dump was a bit of a logistical challenge. The scrap dealer was only open until 12 on Saturday. Mum also wanted the Range Rover to take the horses out for a ride at half 9. I got in the car with Mum and  went to the  riding stables, where I un-hitched the car and drove it back home. It was now 10:20. It was a race against time to get hitched up to the car trailer, drive to the scrap dealer, get weighed, unloaded and re-weighed, then sign some paperwork, drive home, park and un-hitch the trailer and finally drive the Range Rover back to the riding stables before 12. Needless to say, I didn’t manage to get back on time (sorry Mum). I was only about 20 minutes late, but there we go.

The take home message of that little story is: The body is scrapped, there’s now space for the engine.

Notice how space in-efficient the interior is when you just chuck it in the car. There really isn’t much space to sit.

When we arrived at the scrapyard, the guy driving the forklift simply smashed in the windows and hoisted the body away.

So on to engine removal. It took longer than anticipated to remove the engine. I had removed all the bolts I highlighted in the last post, except the four holding the engine and gearbox(s) to the chassis. Partly because I didn’t want the engine to fall out, but mostly because I didn’t have any 18mm spanners (of which you require two, as a ratchet won’t fit around the engine mounts) and couldn’t have removed them even if I wanted to. Also, a rubber fuel pipe had welded itself to the fuel rail, I didn’t really want to damage it so tried many things to remove it. All were a waste of time, due to failing light and having exhausted all other avenues (and my patience) I cut it off.  After that, it all went rather swimmingly. The engine had a lifting eye on it, so Rob and I put a chain through it, then wrapped a lifting strap round the gearbox.

The engine just lifted away.

Rob masterfully lifted the engine over the fence and slid the boom through the gate.

Where I was waiting with my home-made pallet, to which I ratchet strapped it. Rob, my Dad and I then pushed the engine into the barn. Lovely job.

In the week following the engine removal, I disconnected the rear dampers and removed: the front suspension turrets (and disconnected the front dampers), the steering box, steering linkage, the Panhard rod, the exhaust downpipe (with cats) and the front anti-roll bar. After removing all of those parts, the chassis looked like this.

Quite bare. The last bits on the chassis are: the axles and suspension, the centre and rear silencer, the rear bumper and tow bar and the negative battery terminal. The red dots in the above photo denote the remaining bolts that hold the front axle to the chassis (around 26mm). The blue dots are the A-frame bolts (29mm). The green dots are the rear trailing arm bolts (around 26mm) or you can remove the rear trailing arm by unscrewing the three bolts (around 17mm) that hold the bush and hence the arm to the chassis.

I started by removing the A-frame bolts, the left-hand bolt came out without any trouble. The right-hand bolt on the other hand was bothersome. The bush had rusted to the bolt, which in turn made it practically impossible to unscrew the bolt. I used my breaker bar to delaminate the bush (I almost broke my breaker bar in the process). It at least made it possible to wind off the nut and open out the mounting bracket. I cut the bracket to allow access to the bolt and then with a combination of angle grinder and hack-saw cut the bolt. The A-frame then dropped free.

With the A-frame undone I jacked up the chassis, by jacking under the diff, and let it rest on some blocks.

I then un-screwed the bolts on the rear trailing arm and bush and lowered the axle back down.

The axle when lowered on to its wheels simply rotated round and rested on its trailing arms. I suspect that both bushes connecting the trailing arm to the axle will need some rough treatment to remove as both feel as though they have rusted to the bolts. Anyway, I then played a game of musical blocks to remove the axles from under the chassis. I first lifted and held the chassis whilst Mum rolled the rear axle forwards past the rear out-riggers. This was a pig, the chassis was quite heavy to hold at chest height, and from what I can gather from the blue air around Mum, rolling the axle was not a piece of cake either.

The nature of an differential is for the wheels to turn opposite directions when a single wheel is driven externally, i.e. the axle just wanted to spin in its own length on the spot. Anyway, long story short, we succeeded in moving the axle to the centre of the chassis.

I then jacked up the front of the chassis, same as before, un-screwed the radius arm bolts. The front bushes are of a different design, they are split in the centre (longitudinally), the half that holds the nut must be removed before the radius arm can be removed. I then compressed the dampers, lowered the axle back to the floor and wheeled out the front axle from under the chassis. By this time, my younger brother had arrived home from college, so I roped him in as well. I lifted the front of the chassis and Will and my Mum parked the rear axle under the front out-riggers. We then quickly shuffled the blocks that were holding the front of the chassis up out of the way. I picked up the chassis again, they wheeled the axle as far forward as possible, and made a fresh pile of blocks under the chassis, I then lowered the chassis on to the blocks. Between us we the wheeled the rear axle out from under the front of the chassis.

I then picked up the chassis for the last time whilst they shuffled a fresh, lower pile of blocks under the front and then the rear of the chassis. Job done, here’s a pair of photos:

Since this was taken, I have removed the rear bumper and tow-bar, and the negative battery terminal (I cannot remove the fuel filter, the connections are too badly corroded). The chassis is now ready for scrapping and with it goes the V5 for the Disco’, which implies that: a) the Disco’ and its registration number are scrap, and b) The dis-assembly is complete. Yay! No more un-doing of corroded bolts!

Except, I still need to strip the axles, sand blast them, paint them rebuild them, re-bush them and put them back on the new frame. I still have a bit of work to do, but the best bit is about to begin.

Thus far total build (destruction) time is: approx. 78 hours. In real time, I started on 15/10/2013 and basically finished on 26/11/2013. 6 weeks!? I have only managed 78 hours worth of work in 6 weeks!? I really need to pull my finger out!

Total build cost so far is roughly £3700. £2900 of which was spent on the frame, donor car and parts for the donor car. The rest has been spent on tools and a temporary garage. In the next few weeks, I am expecting to pay another £3000 or so when I pick up the frame, some new bushes and more tools!

I would again like to say thank you to Chamberlin Bros, and Rob for doing some sterling work with the JCB. That’s two I owe you.

I would also like to say thank you to my family, in particular, Mum, Dad and Will for the various ways in which you have helped. So, Thank you.

Anyway, that’s it for now, until next time.

This is a bit of a mish-mash of an update as I have been doing a bunch of smaller jobs, partly due to the weather and partly due to having reached a bottle neck in the dis-assembly. Basically, I need to take the engine out so that I can remove everything from the chassis. I really have spent most of my time preparing the body for scrapping.

Essentially I have stripped the last of the useful things from the body. For instance, the smaller top hole had the wiper motor/ mechanism mounted in it, the larger bottom hole is where the servo unit, brake and clutch master cylinders used to be (along with the pedal box).

Since I had the pedal box off, I thought it a good idea to take a trip to Tomcat to drop off the pedal box, which they do on an exchange basis i.e. they are putting a pedal box on the frame. Whilst there I picked up my spare axles. Killed two birds with one stone with that trip. Anyway, it took a fork lift and three people to lift the axles into the car. I left wondering how I would get them out and put them away when I got home. We settled on Dad supporting them (this was the least compromising/ injury promoting position) as I crawled through the car walking them out. We put them down as soon as they were off the tail gate. Next job, put them away.

The rear axle was quite easy to move, it was the axle that most resembled a weight lifting bar.

The front axle was not easy to move, it had no hand holds, and a funky weight distribution that meant which ever way I picked it up it rolled out of my hands. So discretion the better part of valour (not to mention it started raining as well), I put it on a trolley and wheeled it in.

I also got round to removing the LPG tanks. I spent a bit of time experimenting with how to get them out. They were held on by straps, which were then bolted through the body. I couldn’t remove them whilst the body was on the chassis as there was nowhere to put my potato diggers (read hands). I also couldn’t remove them kindly whilst the body was sat on blocks as the sills of the car were less than 6 inches from the floor. So an unkind method of removing them it was. I was unsure whether the straps had captive nuts on them so I initially tried using an impact gun to remove the bolts. It did nothing other than machine my socket down, so I needed an even more cruel method of removal. I settled on the angle grinder, I first tried cutting the floor out around the mounting brackets. It was laborious, very loud and my baby angle grinder started to overheat doing it. The steel in the base of a disco is surprisingly thick, it was one of the motivators for choosing to cut it that way, I was curious as to how thick the body shell was (about 4 or 5mm in places).

Anyway. I then ground the heads off the bolts. It took me the same time to cut the patch out of the body as it did to lop off all 12 bolt heads. After taking the heads off, a swift whack with a hammer on the stubs and the LPG tanks fell free.

Passenger side.

Driver’s side (photos courtesy of the engine bay).

After a bit of snipping and twiddling I was able to slide the tanks out from under the body.

(Ignore the hacksaw in the above photo, it probably wasn’t the best tool for removing LPG/ other fuel systems or brake systems from cars.)

Other things of note that I have removed are the fuel tank, from which I liberated 16 litres of petrol. Maybe 3-4 miles worth of fuel for the Disco’.

The rear anti-roll bar. Every bolt I touched sheared, which was annoying. I needed to vent some pent up stress, so I cut the roll bar with an angle grinder (it did nothing to help me get it out, but made me feel better). As you may have guessed this roll bar is now scrap. The Tomcat will not have anti-roll bars anyway.

The front and rear prop. shafts. (Shown is the space where the rear shaft used to be. It connects the hand brake drum on the transfer box, which is under the plastic bag, and the rear diff.)

So that is the end of the small jobs I have been doing, here is a picture of what I am keeping so far:

In the photo we have:

1) Brake master cylinder and servo unit.

2) Brake distribution block.

3) Clutch master cylinder.

4) Power steering reservoir.

5) Steering column and mounting frame.

6) Coolant reservoir.

7) Wiper mechanism and wipers.

8) Airbox.

I have added some more to this since taking the photo, things like lights, wing mirrors, horn etc. The lights won’t fit on the new body work when I eventually get it, I have mainly saved them to see how the individual lights are wired in.

And here is what I am throwing away:

Pretty much all of it with the exception of the drive-shafts on top of the fuel tank, the alloy wheel and of course what is on the shelves.

So on to removing the engine. To prepare it for removal, there are a number of things to remove, starting with the exhaust(s).

The exhaust pipe must be separated where the exhaust manifold terminates (down between the engine block and chassis leg). Roughly in the centre of the following pictures.

The lambda sensors must be unclipped from the engine, one for each side (the yellow plugs to the left and right of the following picture).

Then the four mounting bolts must be removed: two from under the engine…

Two from under/ around the transfer box.

Then the earth strap which connects the engine and chassis must be removed.

Lastly, (which I have only just remembered whilst writing this) the poor bent gearbox cooling pipes. Oops again, I hope I don’t forget those at the weekend. After disconnecting them from the chassis, the engine should just lift out, where it will be placed on a pallet and moved indoors hopefully. The plan is to remove the engine/gearbox assembly as one piece, it is not light (c. 300kg), which rules out the possibility of moving it by hand.

Edit: Don’t forget the fuel pipes , which are clipped to the chassis, and connect to the fuel rails on top of the engine. Simply disconnect them from the fuel rails, and move them aside.

Here are a final few shots of the body before I load the interior back into it, put it onto a trailer and take it to the dump.

So that’s where we stand until the after the weekend when it will be all change again (weather permitting).

A milestone today! The body came off. But first a bit of pre-amble before we get to the pictures you want to see.

I spent a while looking through my Land Rover service manual trying to find out how to take the body from my discovery. As it turns out, this is not a service type fix, so didn’t appear in the book at all (nor does it in the Haynes manual). So I went to the next best thing, the internet. I visited any and every Land Rover forum looking for a rough guide. I learned absolutely nothing by doing this, it seems as though this is not well covered or I happened to find every thread that had someone asking how to do it, and others providing no answers. I decided to do what I should have done in the first place. Just go and look at the car, and build up a list of things travelling from the chassis to the body.

Here is my list of things to remove.

IN THE CABIN

The handbrake: Un-clip the cable from the lever, then un-bolt the lever from the chassis. Then un-screw the adjustor from the base of the lever. Finally tape all the required parts to the cable or lever and push the cable through the transmission tunnel.

The gear lever gaiter: If you wanted to keep it, you would drill out the rivets. I cut through it with a knife, and taped over the large holes to prevent large scale dirt or water ingress.

The throttle cable: Un-clip the cable from the pedal, and drag it through into the engine bay. I taped the pin and clip onto the cable.

UNDER THE BONNET

The radiator: Simply drain the radiator, remove the rubber hoses, remove and bung the engine oil hoses (I wadded up a ball of PTFE tape larger than the bore of the pipe, covered that with a rubber glove then duct taped everything), unbolt the two mounting brackets (the one on the right hand side (as you look at the front of the car) also holds the power steering reservoir, I chose to drain and remove it at the same time). The radiator should just lift out.

The transmission cooler: This one is a case of do as I say, not as I do (see further down). Remove the plastic grille from the front of the car, then remove the cooler from its mounts and tape to the chassis, or drain the transmission and remove the cooler from the car.

The ignition coil: At the same time as removing the power-steering reservoir (and radiator), unscrew the mounting bracket for the ignition coil. Either remove the coil, or tape it out of the way.

The earth strap: Just underneath the ignition coil is a braided metal cable connecting the body to the chassis, making both the earths in the electrical circuitry. Remove the nut holding the strap in place and tape out of the way.

The air filter: Unclip the air filter box. Remove from the car, then tape over the end of the pipe (on the engine obviously).

The clutch line: Follow the clutch line from the master cylinder, it will lead down to the bottom of the bulk head on the right hand side (as you look at the car). Separate the line and remove it from the body. Alternatively, you could remove the slave cylinder, which is right at the other end of the line, but I chose not to as it was extra faff.

The steering column: Remove the bolt from the universal joint closest to the steering box. Either slide the splined section apart now, or leave it to its devices when lifting the body off (expect a clang or a snagging point in my case).

UNDER THE CAR

The fuel tank filler/breather/over-flow: Loosen the the jubilee clip from the pipe(s) that travel between the filler and the tank. Pull the pipe off, then tape over the end to prevent dirt ingress into the tank.

The brake lines: Whilst under the car, disconnect the brake lines at the flexible pipes. At the front there is one for each side (right next to the springs), at the back there is only a single flexible pipe (above the rear axle). Again if they’re in good condition and you’d like to keep them unscrew them at the joints. I used a hacksaw blade to cut through them (I plan to get braided flexible joints).

The chassis bolts: One thing I did read on the internet was that people had a lot of trouble with these as they can be very rusty (and mine were no exception). To remove mine I sprayed them with 3 in 1 lubricant spray (WD40 knock-off) and left them over night. They came out quite easily, the hardest part was finding a way to get a spanner on top of the bolts. For this reason, I recommend asking a friend to help and using a 1/2 inch (or larger) drive ratchet with deep sockets. Most of them are 15mm nuts on 15mm bolts, but four are captive bolts with 18mm nuts (maybe 17 or 19mm I forget).

Anyway, here is an artists impression of the chassis and the mounting locations (remember this is rough):

ADDITIONAL

The LPG system: There was a T-connection on the left hand inner wing, two ends led to the tanks, and the other end went to an evaporator by the looks of it (it had coolant pipes leading into it). I removed that from its mounting bracket, then disconnected each tank and removed the T-piece from the body.

With all that seen to it was just the simple matter of deciding the best method of removing the body.  I chose the straps through the doors method. The ones in the photos are used for lifting cows. Cows weigh more than the body of the Disco’, more than up to the task, so the only thing left to do was to stop wasting time and get on with it.

So drum roll please, here is the photo sequence:

We couldn’t figure out why the body wasn’t coming off. We checked over the car, last thing we came to at the front were the straining pipes of the transmission cooler (oops) and the steering column wouldn’t release. A quick bit of grinding and…

a bit more loosening (bolt removal)…

The body popped free!

And there it sits on blocks, how “trailer-park trash” of me. Job well done.

I would like to take the opportunity to say a massive Thank You to the Chamberlin Bros Farm for the loan of their JCB and son/nephew, Rob, to lift the body off. Thanks guys, I definitely could not have done this without your help. Also a special thanks to Rob for actually doing the lifting. Thanks Rob, I owe you one.

I should say that I am more than 50% of the way through this disassembly, just the; engine, gearbox, suspension and axles to go. Then it’s just recondition what I will re-use and finally start building.

Whilst removing the various bits of interior, vast reams of wiring become visible. It would be nearly impossible to decipher what the wiring is for if I just disconnected the cables whilst removing the whole interior and then the wiring. You would have the devils own job of sorting out the resultant giant mess of spaghetti. The only sensible thing to do is label it as you remove the electrical gubbins. I settled on the tried and tested method of writing on masking tape. I also wrapped coloured insulation tape around the wires so I know which wires I want to keep and which to cut out. Red means cut out.

White means keep.

At least I will know which wires to remove, or more accurately which wires I will not need should the labels get ripped off during removal. However, It is nice to know what you are cutting out, so I will try my hardest to not rip any masking tape tags off.

So, a quick reminder of what the interior looks like:

As you can see, plenty of wires everywhere. All labelled and ready to be removed (hopefully). The first port of call is, if you haven’t done so already (which you should’ve done) is to remove the battery. Then cut every tie-wrap and every pop-in connector that you can find holding wires to the car. Then methodically work the wires from the extremities of the car into the centre of the car.

I started at the rear of the car. I unplugged the rear indicators and fog lights from under the rear bumper, and pushed the plugs through the boot floor into the cabin. Whilst underneath the bumper I also disconnected the trailer electrics and the fuel filler earth and pushed them through into the car. I then moved into the car, where I disconnected the rear light clusters, the rear door, the radio antenna, speakers and all the earth cables that were bolted to the body. With all the cables free I bundled them into the centre of the car:

From under the bonnet: fuel pump emergency cut off, headlights, side lights, indicators, side repeaters, cruise control vacuum pump (if fitted), gearbox connector, fuse box, battery cables, window washers, crash sensors (if fitted), I’m sure I have forgotten a few things. Anyway, just feed them back through into the car and the engine bay starts to look tidy.

Left hand side of the engine bay.

Right hand side of the engine bay.

Or not! Hidden underneath the washer bottle there was quite a large hole through to the wheel well. The more I go over this car, the more it seems like the chap selling it did a good cleaning job on it (I don’t really have enough experience with Land Rovers to know whether the odd hole here is normal, I mean I know they get rusty, but are bodywork holes common?).

With everything from the outside fed through into the car, all that is left to do is disconnect the plugs and injector ECU inside the car and feed the plugs through the firewall into the engine bay. I bagged up the plugs in an attempt to water proof them. I don’t really want to remove the engine harness yet as I can’t get full access to it until the body is off the car.

The last section of the loom to come out is from around the steering column and pedals. To remove this you need to remove the ignition barrel, but unfortunately the ignition barrel is screwed onto the steering column with bolts that snap off once screwed in (to stop someone stealing the car easily). So to remove them, I used a hacksaw blade to score a groove into the top of the bolts and used a large flat blade screw driver to screw them out.

With that done, and after some pulling (and a small amount of swearing) I managed to wrestle the loom out from around the steering  column and mounting cage. With that the whole loom was ready to be removed from the car:

Whilst in the process of moving the loom from the car, I weighed it. The weight of the loom minus the LPG ECUs, door wiring and the engine harness was 16.3Kg. Hopefully after cutting out the chaff it will weigh half as much, and have no wasted wire. Here is a photo of the loom laid out on the floor ready for chopping up.

Luckily (or unluckily), my car doesn’t have air-con or airbags. So I don’t have the associated sensors, but the wires are still put in the car. The reason being is it’s cheaper for Land Rover to design and fit a common loom to every car regardless of optional extras, since there are so many man hours required to produce a single loom, it is not financially viable to make individual looms and keep the car affordable. Therefore there are a lot of extra bits and pieces on the loom that are either not connected, or just stop suddenly in plugs, so these will all be removed.

However, there are exceptions to this. In particular the air conditioning loop, which starts at the ignition switch and travels to a 60amp fuse in the fuse box under the bonnet. It then travels off to some empty relay sockets. I plan to keep the ignition switch and fuse connections, I will be able to use these to wire in an air compressor to run the compressed air diff locks that I will eventually be installing. I shall cut useless sections of the circuit out.

I am going to chop up the loom at my leisure now that it is inside. So I will have to keep you updated as I progress with it.

Anyway, that’s it for this time. Next Job, remove the body from the Chassis