Happy New Year everybody, I hope you all had as enjoyable and non-productive a time as I did over the Christmas period.

It has been a while since the last post. I have been doing plenty of smaller jobs, which were repetitive and involved lots of cleaning. So I have only really just got enough content together to fill a blog post without it being ridiculously boring, so here is just a moderately boring post.

Thus far I have cleaned: axle casings (3x); final drive housings (2x); stub axles (4x, more to go); spring platforms (4x, more to go). None of those involved anything more interesting than painting on some de-greaser and blitzing off the thick gunk with a wire wheel, it was pretty messy so I don’t have any pictures either. Moving on.

Here we have a hub assembly, contents are a very pitted brake disc, 2x wheel bearings, a hub, an oil seal and some 14mm double-hex bolts.

Here is the rear of the hub, it’s a very simple thing. You can see the rear of the brake disc is more pitted than the front, if possible. The Land Rover service manual states that 13mm is the minimum thickness the disc can be. I suspect that if I machined the pits from the disc it would be less than that, not to mention I would have to either find or build a lathe to do it. Doing so would cost more than the £35 to replace the disc, so frankly there is no point, so it’s going in the bin.

I couldn’t pull the oil seal out as the seal and the hub had corroded together, so I just moved on to knocking the wheel bearings out. If you haven’t got a bearing puller (which I haven’t) a hammer and chisel will suffice. Place the chisel squarely on the outer race and hit it with a hammer. Because the bearing is interference fit the tolerances between the bearing outer race and the hub are very tight, in fact there is almost no tolerance for distortion in either the race or the hub. The hub has a shallow taper to allow self-centring of the bearing as it is driven in (it also reduces the effort required to drive it in), damage to this could cause the bearing race to be seated incorrectly when re-fitting. This would inevitably lead to premature failure of the bearings. To minimise the risk of damage to hub, I knocked the bearing out using the uniform pattern of North, South, East, West.

I then flipped the hub over and did the same for the other bearing race.

Voila, as you can see the oil seal (on the left) also came out.

I don’t think I would like to remove the bearings after having removed the brake disc. The brake disc just gave the hub a nice wide base so no accidents occurred. So when it comes to putting the hubs back together, I will put a disc on first then…. Having just written that, in hindsight, it would have been better to just leave the old discs on until I had put new bearings in. Oh well.

Anyway, to take the disc off it was just a simple case of removing the 14mm double-hex bolts.

This is the method I used:

A wrecking bar through the wheel studs, I put my foot on the wrecking bar whilst using the breaker bar to undo the bolts.

Finally, it’s just a case of knocking the disc from the hub (hit the disc only). Again, the disc is on a taper, so hit the disc where the smallest gap between the two is.

Done, one disc and one hub.

Repeat 7 more times!!

After having blunted my chisel by removing 16 wheel bearings, I cleaned one up to to have a look at the state of play.

As you can see from the picture below, clearly the metal in the outer race is very hard as there are no indentations on the surface from where I put the chisel.

There are many types of bearing, the Discovery wheel bearings as well as most other wheel bearings are examples of tapered roller bearings. Where cylindrical roller bearings can only take radial loads or thrust bearings can only take axial loads, a tapered roller bearing can accept both. The angle of the taper gives a rough indication of the relative magnitudes of the radial and axial loads. For instance a tapered bearing that more closely resembles a cylindrical roller bearing (such as this bearing), means radial loads are larger than the axial loads. The radial loads in the case of wheel bearings are the weight of the car, road surface inputs, acceleration/deceleration, weight transfer when cornering or a combination of the above. The axial loads arise from centripetal acceleration the car experiences when cornering, which in turn is proportional to the square of the tangential velocity.

We can corroborate the above by looking at the Discovery and it’s bearing arrangement. The Discovery has two bearings per wheel**, which is an indicator that the weight of the car is high, or the bearing loads are high due to a large wheel off-set.  Anyway, the Discovery is a heavy car (c. 2.2 tonnes) and isn’t sporty, so can’t go round corners particularly fast. Radial loads can therefore be expected to be quite high, while axial loads will be low, relatively speaking. Putting some rough numbers to these, the car experiences 1g vertically whilst sat still, and would probably struggle to achieve more than 0.5-0.6g laterally whilst going round a corner. However, whilst going round the corner weight is transferred to the outside wheels increasing vertical loads on those wheels and bearings. Also, since the bearings are inboard of where the wheel mounts on the hub, a moment will be generated about the outer bearing effectively loading up the inner bearing more. So it may be fair to estimate that the radial load rating on these bearings is roughly twice the axial load rating.

**Bearings are not necessarily always of bespoke design, most of the time it is cheaper to look up bearings in a catalogue to find the appropriately sized bearing for the application (after having completed the requisite calculations). It would be possible to find a single bearing that is capable of withstanding the design loads, but it would probably be quite large in size. Which means large hubs, large brake discs, increased un-sprung mass, increased moment of inertia of rotational parts, which then requires the engine to produce more torque to accelerate the car at the desired rate etc etc.

The picture below shows the mounting face of the inner race. There is scoring on the face, which indicates that it has been spinning on the stub axle (the correct term for this is smearing I believe). This is not ideal, and is probably caused by the interference fit between the stub axle and the bearing being a bit loose. This in turn possibly implicates the stub axle as potentially being faulty, so I’ll need to measure the stub axle to make sure it is within tolerance.

The picture below shows the outer race, there is definite banding on the race. In the centre of the bearing track, there is a very polished strip, which is flanked on either side by brownish bands. There are also some faint markings created by the rollers.

You can sort of see everything in the above picture, I took another photo and played with the brightness and contrast. It shows up some of the defects more clearly.

The shiny band in the centre is caused by metal on metal contact, which is caused by lack of lubrication. The brownish hue has probably been caused by the heat of friction caused by metal on metal contact, again due to lack of lubrication. The small marks on the left are pits due to dirt that has come between the rollers and the race. As the roller has run over the dirt, it has largely increased the contact stress on the race (due to the small contact area of the piece of dirt) causing an indent. The faint lines highlighted on the right have been caused by the rollers themselves. It is an example of Brinelling (the process of indenting a hardened surface). The indents are possibly a result of impact damage to the bearing, or as a result of the car not moving for a while. Either way, the bearing is starting to show signs of impending failure. I haven’t checked the other 15, but I may do now after having looked at this one. I may find something even more interesting. Just as a final point, I took this bearing from one of the spare axles I had, so it has been sat un-used for a few years.

I think that’ll do for bearings for now.

Another job I have done is to strip down the swivel pin housings and give them a bit of a clean up. The picture below shows the passenger side swivel pin housing and stub axle.

As you can see it is quite grimy. There is also a fair bit of rust on it.

There is some congealed grease inside it, but most of the grease has ended up on the outside.

I haven’t yet checked the swivel bearing housing thoroughly yet to know if that caused the seal to perish. So for now, I am going to blame it on rust in the seal seat.

Anyway, to disassemble the pin housing, start by taking the bearing off the top pin. Then remove the top pin and shims. Keep the shims, as it is useful to have a good selection for when you re-build the swivels.

Then remove the backing plate by undoing the 19mm nut which is on the lock stop bolt and the 8mm bolt at the base of the housing.

I am undecided whether or not I will put the backing plate back on. In all honesty, I probably won’t bother.

The next job is to remove the bottom pin, which is held in by two T40 Torx head bolts (don’t forget the various filler/drain plugs of which there maybe 3 or 1 depending on the age of your axles). Here is everything laid out.

After a fairly thorough degrease, we can get an idea of the level of rust on the housing. As you can see, there is a fair amount, although it looks worse than it is. The picture below shows the area around the filler plug.

This photo shows the area around the bottom pin. The best tools for the job (or the tools that I used for getting the worst off) were a drill with a wire wheel attachment and a hammer/chisel. The hammer is good for fracturing the rust away, whilst the wire wheel is good for buffing off after using the hammer.

Here is a picture after about 10 minutes work. Again the first is around the filler plug.

The second is around the bottom pin hole. Not too bad.

It isn’t finished yet, but when I am happy that I have got all the flaky stuff off, I will soak it in a rust remover for a while to remove the rest. Then it will be ready for painting. I will go for something chip resistant for definite, although I am not sure on the colour yet. I will also probably wait to paint it until I have got my tent up, so I can set up a drying area inside it.

I also conducted a little experiment with some vinegar to see how well it removed rust. I dropped the shims into some vinegar and left them to stand. The picture below is after 24hours… The vinegar did not really do a whole lot in that time frame.

Below is a picture after 36 hours and some sand papering. The vinegar clearly loosened the rust as it took no effort to remove most of it.

Finally, I took a trip to Tomcat to see some progress. Here are a few of the photos I took. The skeleton is partially welded on.

It is still awaiting it’s rear cross-member, but it is looking likely that it will be coming home very soon.

Anyway, I think I should wrap up now. Next time will be a continuation of cleaning things up and preparing for the re-build. I might even have got my frame by then as well. It is getting exciting!

Moving on from the previous post about the front axle, we arrive here, at the rear axle as promised.

Again, as with the front axle, I had to remove all the braking and suspension components. This obviously includes the spring platforms, dampers, brake calipers and the A-frame. All the bolts were rusty as with the front axle. However, this time I was prepared. I used a combination of 1600 Celsius blow torch, and –40 Celsius freezer spray. It really made (almost) everything easy to undo, I did have to use a few other techniques to remove some things. But for the most part the fire/ freeze method worked.

So onto the axle.

You can see clearly how the rear brakes are connected, a simple T piece. This means that the Disco’ doesn’t brake opposite corners as with most other cars. It has individual circuits for the front wheels and a single circuit for the rears. This means should the worst come to the worst and the rear line breaks somewhere ahead of the T piece, you lose all rear braking. However the handbrake could be used instead. Although, saying that, there is only one master cylinder. That means all fluid has one original pressure source, which means the car only really has a single circuit.

Below are a couple of pictures after I removed the dampers, spring platforms and brake calipers. I removed the dampers using a nut splitter, as you can see one of them is a bit bent.

The only thing left to remove was the A-frame, which is obscured by the axle as it was upside down when the picture was taken.

The A-frame is connected to the axle by a ball joint, which is secured by a 30mm king nut and split pin, oh joy! All the fun of a rusted split pin in a very confined space, super! I took the easy route and just cut it off and used a nail punch to remove the legs. Now for the nut, because it was in such a confined space, the only thing I could fit on it was a 30mm spanner. This meant I couldn’t get enough torque on the nut to undo it.

So, I drilled the edge of the nut and used a chisel to split the nut, after which it came out by hand.

As an aside here is the seized bush, it is ruined. The inner metal ring of the bush had rusted to the bolt rendering the bolt immobile. This meant I would not have been able to remove the A-frame from the chassis without cutting the bolt. I won’t be able to remove the bush without a hydraulic press, unless I drill a large hole through the bolt.

Below is a picture of the axle after I removed all the external parts.

So now is the part of the walkthrough that is  important.

Pre-preparation: Drain the axle of its oil. As before note the colour of the oil. There is a chance that if you do any off-roading, in deep water particularly, the oil will be water contaminated. It will be white and a bit frothy, or if the oil has been contaminated for a long time will be mixed with rust, and be rust coloured and frothy. This is the reason you should check the colour of your diff oil after every deep water session. As it happens, the colour of my oil was a deep black, indicating it was time for a change anyway. There were no silver particles either so, I’m fairly happy.

Step 1: undo the 17mm axle bolts (5x).

Step 2: pull the axle shaft out from the axle.

Step 3: bend the locking tab away from the 52mm locking nut and remove both.

Step 3: remove the 52mm hub adjusting nut and spacer.

This reveals one of the two wheel bearings behind the hub. As you can see the grease has seen a lot of mileage, it is contaminated and there also isn’t much left in there either. At the very least it requires a re-grease.

Step 4: pull the hub from the stub axle. In the picture below you can see where the bearing sat on the stub axle.

Step 5: put an oil receptacle under the stub axle. Undo the 17mm stub axle bolts (6x).

Step 6: remove the stub axle.

Repeat for the other side.

Step 7: undo the 15mm final drive housing nuts (10x), and remove the final drive unit in the same way as the front axle.

Finally, wrap up the open ends of the axle and put it away ready for sand blasting. This rear axle is in a worse state than the front axle, mostly because the front axle is sat under the engine, and this being a rover engine has a few leaky bits. But in all honesty, it isn’t really that bad.

Not like the spare axle casing which is toast. There are more than a few holes in it.

At this point, I thought it would be interesting to show you my brake calipers. On the front, they are 4 piston calipers, and on the rear they are 2 piston calipers. They are surprisingly high spec for your average road car, which tend to have sliding calipers. You would tend to find similar calipers on fairly sporty cars, such as a Porsche Boxster. They were manufactured by AP Lockheed a.k.a. AP Racing. They have 4 quite large pistons, which means a large, fairly uniform contact area on the pads. Which in turn means the pad is pressed more evenly onto the disc (than a single piston caliper, which will tend to bend the pad slightly), which mean a greater area of the pad is used against the disc and results in a larger stopping force for the same pedal input (with everything else being assumed to be equal). Having multiple opposed piston calipers allows for larger brake pads as well, which means heat is dissipated more quickly (as a larger surface area can absorb/ dissipate more heat than a smaller one). This results in a braking system that is more resistant to brake fade over a series of heavy braking situations than a sliding caliper (in general). Which is a plus on the Disco’, as the discs are not ventilated.

These brakes are good, but not the best. They are bolted together rather than being mono-block. So when I brake (simplifying the problem down by ignoring all material deformation, mechanical or thermodynamic, heat transfer and friction, and assuming a completely incompressible hydraulic fluid), the pistons press the pads onto the disc, which exerts an equal and opposite force on the pistons. This equal and opposite force will try and force the caliper apart, which is prevented from happening by the caliper bolts. Caliper bolts will not be as good as taking the load as a much larger cross-section of uniform material, as in a mono-block caliper. In the real world, the bolts are a source of loss of efficiency of the calipers.

However good/ not good calipers are theoretically, it doesn’t change the fact that my calipers don’t actually work. At least not as they should, some of the pistons are seized. They could do with a rebuild, which is what I am going to do. Probably new pistons (dependent on condition), new seals and new bolts (maybe), as well as a de-rust and fresh coat of heat resistant paint. Ideally, I would like them as new, we’ll see how long my patience holds up whilst doing this, I have 8 to do. As long as I end up with a working set I won’t be too unhappy.

Anyway, that is it for another edition. I have lots to be getting on with, like removing thousands of bushes, sand-blasting lots of things and rebuilding these calipers (and eventually axles). Cheerio.

So, it has been a while since my last update, it is practically Christmas. I have been busy stripping and cataloguing all four of my axles. I have decided to make this a little bit of a walkthrough, that way it is very obvious, when I get back round to rebuilding them, where everything goes. As a result, I will write about the front and rear axles separately as there are a lot of pictures. I apologise if it’s a bit tedious, but stick with me.

The first port of call is to strip the axle of its suspension and braking components. It basically took me a whole day to get everything off. For a start, the last person to put the wheels on had done up the wheel nuts so tight, I couldn’t remove them with an impact gun. I only just managed to remove them with a 60cm breaker bar whilst jumping on it. Now I weigh about 100kg, so that puts the tightening torque at roughly 590Nm or in other words more torque than a 2005 BMW M6 produces (520Nm). That sort of set the tone for the rest of the day really. Frustrating didn’t really cover it. The damper nuts were badly corroded, and I broke my 8mm spanner trying to stop them spinning. In the end I used an old fabric oil filter remover and a 1600degree flame (not ideal on something that can burst/ explode if too much pressure builds up) to remove the securing nuts (I couldn’t get a nut splitter onto them). The steering damper was much the same. The track rod ends were corroded, and getting corroded split pins out from between the crenellations is no fun, so I just cut them off, then used a long breaker bar to twist the nuts off. When it came to brake calipers, clearly the same person who tightened the wheel nuts tightened the calipers up. It took two people to undo the calipers, one to hold the axle still with a wrecking bar, whilst the other jumped up and down on a breaker bar.

Anyway, that’s the whining over and done with. I did eventually get everything off and put into the barn, where I will rebuild/repaint/throw away (delete as appropriate). So here we go with the main point of the post.

Pre-preparation, drain the axle of its oil. Whilst it is draining take note of the colour of the oil, mine was thick blue/black and had some lumps in it. Importantly there were no silver shavings/particles coming out. Indicating before I have even dismantled anything that the internal oil seals are dead and the diff oil has mixed with the swivel grease, but the gears should be in good nick. The actual colour is somewhere between golden syrup and black treacle.

Step 1: remove the rubber dust cap on the end of the axle shaft.

This reveals a cir-clip and several shims (VERY important not to lose those) which control/ set the end float on the axle shaft.

Step 2: remove the cir-clip using either: cir-clip pliers (easy) or needle nose pliers (hard) and some sort of lever. Remove the shims (3x)

Step 3: undo the 17mm drive flange bolts (5x).

As you can see, the drive flange is splined to the axle shaft, and is bolted to the hub. This obviously is then connects to the wheel. I.e.: axle turns drive flange, drive flange turns hub, hub turns wheel, wheel moves car.

Step 4: bend the locking tab away from the locking nut. Undo the 52mm locking nut and remove.

Step 5: undo the hub adjusting nut. This nut adjust the pre-load on the wheel bearings. Too tight the wheel bearings heat up, lose lubrication, wear quickly and fail. Too loose the hub can move around (Goldilocks springs to mind) the wheel bearings will take non-uniform loads, and may fail.

Step 6: remove the hub and brake disc assembly from the stub axle.

Step 7: place an oil receptacle under the swivel housing. Undo the the 17mm stub axle bolts (6x).

This reveals the axle shaft.

Step 8: straighten the swivel housing. Remove the shaft. Also remove the paper gasket from the mating face.

Lather, rinse, repeat for the other side.

Step 9: undo and remove the 15mm final drive housing nuts (10x).

Step 10: using a hammer and a block of wood, hit the housing in various directions to split the casings.

Step 11: use a soft, flat bladed tool to work the housing down the studs. Remove housing using care, it is the heaviest part of the axle weighing in at somewhere between 30 and 40kg (estimated).

This reveals the differential, crown wheel it’s driving pinion. I have to admit, it is quite a beautiful piece of work.

Step 12: turn the swivel pin housing onto the lock stop, undo the 8mm bolts holding the oil seal retaining plate and washer.

Step 13: remove the oil seal.

Step 14: on top of the swivel pin housing, remove the top swivel pin by removing the 17mm securing bolts (2x). Take care not to lose any shims (3x).

Step 15: remove the swivel housing. Lift the swivel housing up and then rotate the top of the housing towards the ground.

Again lather, rinse repeat for the other side.

At this point, we can check the state of our swivels thoroughly. As you can see from the below picture mine are toast. The picture immediately below is the drivers side bearing housing. Stones have chipped away the chrome finish, this has allowed rust to form on the un-protected steel underneath, which then undercuts the chrome coating which then cracks off. Vicious circle.

The passenger side is worse (below). This has a knock on effect of shredding the edges of the oil seal.

The results of which can be seen below. This is the passenger side swivel pin housing. You can see the colour, immediately indicative of rust mixed with what little grease there was left in the housing. The top bearing (left in the picture) has either corroded and destroyed itself, or seized and been destroyed when I started moving it.

Here is what I scavenged from the swivel pin housing. A bearing cage, but not a complete complement of rollers. We are about four short, goodness only knows where they have gone.

In any case, it doesn’t matter, I cannot re-use that and nor would I want to.

Returning to the problem at hand, I had to remove the swivel bearing housing. The problem with these is that they are a double hex 14mm bolt, or at least were, mine were corroded and some were rounded (they were around 13.5mm there isn’t even an imperial size that fits). Additionally, there isn’t enough room to use a socket and ratchet. So, I used my most favourite of implements, an angle grinder. You can see the results below.

I trimmed the heads off, and then set about regrinding the studs to roughly hexagonal. My plan was to use a rounded nut removal socket. But I got over zealous with the angle grinder and started to gouge the mating faces.

Not great work. I may be able to save the axle casing if I shave a millimetre or two from the case and then make a shim using a paper gasket between each mating face. Other wise this will probably be a permanently leaking axle. Basically I am saying don’t do this if you can avoid it.

It is at this point I should also say that this is my spare axle. This axle came from the frame I took to Tomcat Motorsport, a 1993 300TDI. It has had an extra 5 years (or so) of grief compared to my V8 Disco’, so everything was that much more corroded and more difficult to remove.

So I guess I have been caught out. The above walkthrough is from my spare axle (barring the first picture and paragraph). I guess I should add some small print that says enhanced in post production or something of that ilk. The dis-assembly of my V8 Disco’ axles went off without a hitch (well apart from the first paragraph). I removed the swivel bearing housing using a 14mm spanner and a 5lb lump hammer. Both swivel bearing housings are Teflon coated, so no rust on them. However the passenger side swivel was leaking quite badly. It also looks as though someone tightened up the hub nuts too much and the wheel bearings over heated, the grease was like earwax. This was  perhaps to hide the fact that they wheel bearings were knackered, either way it it was the cause or effect of knackered wheel bearings. Anyway, the axle casing is now waiting for sand blasting and re-painting. I am going to be putting fresh bearings and seals throughout so I effectively have a brand new axle.

The next update will contain a walkthrough of the rear axle. This will be very much shorter, as there is a lot less to it. Until next time.

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

After taking a couple of days off due to bad weather (I am stripping the discovery outside), I was straight back to it. I intended to remove the radiator at the same time as the heater box since they are part of the same system, but it seems the radiator also cools the engine and the transmission oil, evidenced by the oils feed lines on either side of the radiator. It is really quite an interesting system, I’ll take some photos of it when I remove it. I noticed that the vanes on the rear of the radiator are badly corroded or missing, so unfortunately I will have to throw the radiator away.

Anyway, it was a relatively simple job to remove the heater box as the Disco’ doesn’t have air-conditioning (or the associated piping/systems). After draining the radiator and the header tank of coolant (I left as much coolant in the engine as I could as it  prevents corrosion), I disconnected the heater pipes that travel through the firewall, removed 5 bolts and some drain tubes from the heater box and it pulled free with a bit of a tug. Here is a picture, without the heater box:

And a picture of the box on my floor:

If anyone wants a heater box and blower unit from a non-air conditioned 1998 Discovery, get in touch.

I also took time to go and see how Tomcat were getting on with my frame. It turns out that they are quite busy so thus far have only stripped the parts from the chassis and they have cut 10 inches or so from the rear (as well as some extraneous bracketry). They have also been busy fabricating the pipework for my frame, I thought there would be more progress than this, but I’m glad that there isn’t as it gives me more time to get things ready before the frame comes back. I took the opportunity whilst I was there to discuss with Paul which springs and dampers would be best. I settled on Pro-comp ES9000 dampers front and rear (because they are cheap, I can upgrade to Fox dampers at a later date) and some dual-rate springs that Tomcat themselves use. The spring rates are roughly centred around 175lbf/inch (or 79.4kg/inch), which is pretty low for a car that will eventually weigh 1300-1400kg.

As a quick comparison, a typical eco-boost Formula Ford might have 700lbf/inch (317.5kg/inch) springs on the rear of the car, with 500lbf/inch (227.5kg/inch) springs on the front (total car weight is around 475kg). What this tells you is the suspension will have a very high frequency, i.e. it will react very quickly to any given input (road bump). and the suspension travel will be very small. In real world terms the ride will be very firm and jarring.

Given the same bump, the Tomcat will have to use more suspension travel to equilibrate the input than the formula ford will. But this extra travel allows the unsprung mass (everything that is not suspended by the spring; wheels, brake disc, brake caliper etc.) to accelerate at a slower rate and hence reduces the force that is transmitted into the car. Therefore, the Tomcat will have a softer ride than a Formula Ford. Obviously this is a very simplified explanation, vehicle dynamics is the second most complicated thing to mathematically model (aerodynamics being the most complicated thing), and no-one reading this will probably want to see that.

Anyway, side track over, here are some pictures I took whilst at Tomcat:

A pile of spare parts, which includes; brake calipers, axles, diffs, radius arms and half shafts.

The bare chassis and start of the frame.

The sawn off (torched off) rear section of the chassis.

Next time, Electrics.

(Also I will produce a longer update with more pictures.)

Obviously, before any harvesting of parts can take place, the first job is to get the car running. Dad and I trailered the car down to the local garage, who are pretty handy with Land Rovers (living where we do, every other person has a Land Rover of some sort). I asked them to give the car a once over and give me an honest opinion of what needed doing to the car as a whole, as impartial eyes are better than rose tinted. Happily they were quite positive and came back with nothing more than the odd gasket here or there.

However, back to the problem at hand, it turns out that the distributor is toast. The rotor arm inside it has too much play and the advancing mechanism also is not up to much either. So I got a new one which is now fitted, Dad and I went down to the garage with the trailer (thanks again Dad) and came back with the car and the start of my scrap metal pile. Here is a short video of it running.

This is the first time that it has been run properly up to temperature for quite a while, there is a lot of water in the exhaust. Also, notice how the whole car rocks gently when I rev it. I cannot wait to have this thing finished already, just for the noise alone, although it is going to be quite a lot louder when it is done. I was intending to take the exhaust off and do this video, but the exhaust is rusted together and I couldn’t be bothered to fight with it just for 20 seconds of video.

You may notice the date on the video is from the 14th. Yes, I am quite a long way behind, I was hoping to have the suspension and axles ready for when my frame came back, so I could immediately bolt it back on, but as time goes on it is looking less and less likely. I haven’t spoken to Paul for a while, so I really should take some time to go to Tomcat just to check in and if nothing else get some picture of the frame in situ.

Time does indeed fly when you are busy, as I have been over the past few days, busy taking the interior of the discovery out. I have had the support of a veritable fountain of knowledge (and bossiness) on her days off from Montessori. But the car has slowly moved on, from this:

To this:

And finally, to this:

Inside there is suddenly an enormous amount of space… and lots of sharp objects that stab and slice at you as you move around. Most of the interior came out quite easily, all relatively logical, there are plenty of Philips head screws holding everything together. Where it became illogical was the dashboard, it feels like an after thought. Or maybe it was that the dashboard was not set out according to my logic, as the mounting points were not where I would’ve put them (or rather they weren’t where I went looking for them).

Another thing I noticed was that there is an awful lot more interior trim in this Discovery than in my 328i, mostly for two reasons I think, 1) the car is bigger and 2) on the 328i more of the parts were larger moulded pieces that covered larger relative areas than in the Disco. Also a quick tip for you all, wear a dust mask and gloves when removing the interior of the car, as I found behind my instrument cluster a large quantity of cigarette ash and grease (or spit, or something sticky), and beneath every cloth trim piece is a lot of general fust (fungal dust where things get wet) that probably isn’t good for your respiratory system.

Which brings me on to another point, as I removed the interior, I started to find a load of less than perfect metal (eg: the gear sticks) and the odd crack in the body shell. It just goes to show you that you don’t really know what you are driving until you strip it back to bare bones. However, I am not fussed with the state of the body work as I do not need it, so it doesn’t really matter. Anyway, enough preaching. The last piece of the interior in the car is the heater box and blower unit assembly (the large black boxes on the left of the picture).

I shall remove that once I have drained the coolant. Then it’s on to; the electrics, the steering system, the wipers and mechanism, the cooling system, the pedal box,  removing the body from the chassis, the braking system, the drivetrain, the engine, the suspension, refurbishing everything, re-fitting everything in reverse order.

Boy I’ve got some work to do!