Heater Box

October 29th, 2013 by john No comments »

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:

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And a picture of the box on my floor:

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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:

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

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The bare chassis and start of the frame.

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

Next time, Electrics.

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

Work commences

October 22nd, 2013 by john No comments »

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.

 

V8 sounds good!

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.

 

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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:

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To this:

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And finally, to this:

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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).

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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!

Discovery 3.9

October 21st, 2013 by john No comments »

With the Deposit for a frame paid, I now needed a donor vehicle from which to harvest parts. As discussed in the previous entry, the ideal donor car for the job was a 3.9 litre (or 4.0 litre) manual Land Rover Discovery. So I set about looking for the prefect car, one which was mechanically sound, cheap but had tatty body work or even an MOT failure which required structural welding. I wanted to spend less than £1000 all in.

I looked through all the usual channels; Auto-Trader, Pistonheads, Land Rover magazines etc etc. The number of cars I found in the spec. that I wanted at the price I wanted totalled 5. Sadly before I got to look at some a few disappeared, which cut me down to just 2. There was a £795 3.9l in Newcastle which looked a little beaten up, had no MOT or tax, and a £1400 4.0l in Peterborough.

Seeing as Newcastle was a 3+ hour trip, Dad and I went to Peterborough instead. When we arrived, we were greeted by a small but crowded lock up, with our Discovery right at the back behind 2 rows of cars. It had obviously been neglected as the tyres were all flat and the battery had burst which was spewing pale blue crystals from one of the terminals. As a result the engine wouldn’t even turn over, so we quickly walked away.

It looked as though we were going to have to go to Newcastle, except there was nothing to go for as car had disappeared from Auto-trader and we couldn’t raise the dealer (it later re-appeared on Gumtree sporting a fresh MOT and pumped up price tag, even though it was missing a front head-light cluster and indicator). All my options had gone. I had the choice of wait until a new car came up or go and look at some diesels (yeuch!).

In my hour of need, the Black Country again came up with the goods. Not more than 10 miles away from where I bought the chassis, a gleaming red 3.9l Discovery popped up, for the princely sum of £1290. Dad and I hitched up the trailer and went, promptly, with cash in hand. We took the trailer for two reasons, a) we didn’t want to make the trip again, and b) if it looks like you mean business, you can drive a harder bargain.

 

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We arrived on the chap’s doorstep; he then explained that the car was not at his “showroom” (I think he thought we were joking when we said we’d come and look at it), it was at a Land Rover specialist (Read: drug dealers auto-repair workshop). We then followed him on a convoluted trip into what turned out to be the centre of Birmingham… with the trailer. Not the most amount of fun I’ve ever had, but we made it. When we arrived, we found the car in this state (see above picture).

There was a mechanic (who smelt like a ferret crossed with a pole-cat) trying to fit a new distributor. He was using the wrong cylinder bank to set the timing, and as a result the car did not run. But it turned over, had the right colour coolant, oil etc. The rest of the car was tidy enough, just the odd oil leak here and there, but everything (CV joints, drive shafts and the like) was deemed as it should be. Cutting a long story short, I bought it for just over £1000. I figured if nothing else it’s £1000 worth of spare parts.

So here is what I bought:

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It is a 1998 Land Rover Discovery V8i series 1. It has 103,000 miles on the clock, which is actually surprisingly low for the age. It is fitted with an LPG system, which I am told is worth more than the car (meh, scrapyard or use one of the tanks to hold compressed air for when I get some pneumatic diff locks).

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It has a cloth interior, which doesn’t hide its age well. No Air-con, nor any airbags, which makes things easier when it comes down to the electrics. It has a 5 speed gearbox and a 2 speed transfer box complete with locking differential.

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I have been told quite a few times that it is too nice to strip for parts (again, meh).

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It came with 16 inch wheels, all with completely ruined tyres on them, I was planning to get some 18 inch wheels from a Range Rover anyway. These will make ideal tyres for storage for the time being, then I can put some massive 37inch off-road tyres on these wheels when it’s complete. So win-win.

There you have it. For now I have a non running 3.9l V8 Discovery, but now the fun can begin!

Decisions

October 21st, 2013 by john No comments »

Having decided that I’m going to build a Tomcat, initially I need to know three things to get the process under way:

1 – What is the intended usage? (Mainly road – some off-road, mostly off-road – some road, or purely off-road.)

2 – Which Land Rover will I use as the donor car? (There are many to choose from.)

3 – Budget.

Knowing the first partially informs the second choice, which in turn provides the information for a lot of the rest of the build.

For instance, if I wanted a car purely for off-road trials*, I would use the shortest wheelbase Tomcat chassis as it is the most manoeuvrable. I would also want an automatic gearbox as it provides (almost) constant drive, which up long steep hills is more useful than having to change gear, and a very torquey engine. Therefore the ideal donor car would probably be (if it existed?) an automatic 300Tdi Defender (as it has the shortest chassis from the factory, which means it requires the least amount of modification).

*Trials involve lots of very tight turns with very steep hills which have torturous approach and exit angles on a variety of surfaces.

 

So with all the above said and done, the choices I made were:

1 – I was meant to be finding a replacement for my poor arthritic BMW, so it will be mainly used on the road with some off-road usage (and possibly a track day or two for the laughs) thrown in. This means contrary to popular belief, I will need to have an Individual Vehicle Assessment (IVA, or SVA not really sure which) and an associated Q number plate before I can use it on the road. This also gives me some freedom as I am not required to use parts from the same donor car, nor am I required to use the same suspension mounting points as the standard car.

2 – I wanted the off-road ability of the P38 Range Rover, minus the air suspension, lack of power, weight, terrible brakes and automatic gearbox, so I decided a manual 3.9l/4.0l V8i Discovery as my donor vehicle would be perfect. The Discovery is essentially identical to the Range Rover underneath, except it has coil springs instead of air-bags and 4-piston brake calipers on the front and 2-piston calipers on the rear as opposed to 2-piston calipers all round a la the Range Rover. The lack of power/ weight will be sorted by using fibre glass body panels and a smaller overall body size.

3 – Low! With this in mind I chose to have a 100inch Tomcat as it requires the least amount of fabrication work and modification to produce, as the Range Rover/Discovery both have 100inch wheelbases from the factory, so is therefore the cheapest.

 

Anyway, after trawling the internet, I found a likely looking chassis at a company called Leavesley International in Alrewas (near Lichfield). I went down to have a look and bought the chassis there and then. A week later Dad and I went down with the Range Rover and trailer to pick it up. Here are a couple of pictures of it being loaded on to the trailer.

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Whilst we were there I spotted the largest piston-conrod assembly I have ever seen. It was definitely worthy of a picture, bear in mind, I am around 6ft 1 tall (we later concluded it was from a tug boat).

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We dropped the chassis in with Paul at Tomcat as the workshop was on the way home, he delivered his judgement on the chassis: thumbs up, which was good news. We had a chat about what would go on the chassis, in the end I chose to have a pick-up style body with under load-bed suspension at the rear and turreted front suspension. I decided to go for some budget space-filler dampers with a view to upgrading them at some point to Fox’s remote reservoir dampers (because this will be an evolutionary process). We then agreed a price, I paid him a deposit and went home excited at the prospect of what’s to come.

Tomcat 100

October 20th, 2013 by john No comments »

For the past few months I have been looking for a new car to replace my ageing BMW 320i. I have been through every combination of comparator in order to select a car. I even went as far as to write a spread-sheet to calculate the most suitable car for me, the results of which suggested I should buy a Renault Clio 182 or a Ford Fiesta ST. After trying both I found them to be thoroughly uninspiring. Back to Square one.

Upon further consideration I had a moment of clarity: It is now no longer possible to have fun on the road with a car, not without putting someone’s life or my licence at risk. There is simply too much traffic around, even in the back waters where I live. It then became obvious, why not have fun off-road, where there is no traffic. This and the fact that winter was looming sparked the idea of a 4×4 (and it can’t be a bad thing to have another tow car around the place can it?).

I initially looked at some crew-cabs such as the Nissan Navara, but after research found them (and all non-permanent 4 wheel drives) to be frail. So a permanent 4 wheel drive it had to be and to find such a vehicle I looked no further than my parents Range Rover. It has everything you need to go off-road and in some comfort as my Dad and I found out last winter when we drove it through some 3-4ft deep snow drifts.

At this stage, whilst milling around on the internet looking at various forums and sites selling upgrades for Land Rover/ Range Rovers, I came across the Tomcat Motorsport website. Tomcat Motorsport produce a kit for turning a Land Rover, or Range Rover into a Tomcat. In brief, the process involves stripping the donor car back to the bare chassis and then welding a new space frame to the Land Rover ladder chassis and rebuilding the car from there with new body panels.

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As it happens Tomcat Motorsport are based only-a-very-short-trip-across-the-countryside away. So I made the trip to the workshop and talked to Paul (the Tomcat Motorsport owner) about the Tomcat and what’s involved etc. His sales pitch was very thorough… he sat me in the car pictured above, and I was sold immediately. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.

So, I left the workshop with a new mission: to build a Tomcat 100.  I have some spare cash. Check. I have the know-how (ish). Check. And most importantly I have the time and space. Check and check. Time to execute a (not) thoroughly planned and researched idea. I mean, how hard can it be?