Boydie

On my trip into the Australian Desert country I borrowed a unit that had a 12000lb winch in a cradle that slipped into the square tow bar tube. It was able to clear the spare tyre but didnt pass scrutiny of a highway patrol Constable Plod as it protruded beyond the rear bumber, even so it only took a minute of so to fit and when I needed to use it I ran it off a spare 12 volt battery. The cradles are available on EBay should you consider this to be an alternative. It would be a breeze in a Defender with rear fitted batteries, on a Disco very heavy duty cables would be required unless you fitted an Odessy style battery under the vehicle and close to the rear.

May I give a few hints, having crossed several flooded rivers recently in the channel country north of Birdsville recently, most of which were up to the headlights. 1.) Carry a tarp and tie it over the bonnet and wrap it up into the front of the wheel arches. 2.) Seal every hole under the car, screw in the wading plugs. 3.) Use fabric duct tape around the doors up to the windows- yes you will need to climb in the open window!. 4.) Drive only fast enough to form a "bow wave" and once you have one -- dont stop !!! the wave pushes water away from the front of the vehicle

to remove it you need an 8mm ring spanner and 9" long fingers Actually I managed to remove mine with a set of thumb sockets, these are a 2mm - 10mm socket set designed to be used just with fingers rather than a wrench. It was a person I'm not that keen on of a job as loktite had been applied to the screws! Once out I carried out some rectification including water-proofing with a can of electronic sealing varnish!

My guess is the ariel is kaput. The sender unit of alarm ECU is located in the passenger side footwell and has an ariel that for all money looks like a loose wire that goes up inside the cover of the passenger A column and isnt connected to anything at its upper end. If it is go to your freindly wrecker and see if he will sell you one off a Disco in his yard.

I removed my centre muffler and replaced it with a straight section of exhaust pipe made up for me by the local exhaust guy with a slight off-set and swaged at both ends. The engine seems to spin easier due to the reduced exhaust restriction but its at least 4 kilos lighter.

It will be in the rubber hose section that connects the tank to the filler. In the plastic tank there is a 90 degree bend inserted in the connection spud that will prevent it from going further into the tank, you may even find it in the first bend from the filler where it turns ar right angles towards the tank. Incidentally its this bend that causes the fuel to spill back when you get close to maximum, you can remove it or do as I did and replace the stupid tank

If you start at number 6 as per the sequence above and adjust valve 3 then the next valve to come up for adjustment is valve 5 then 2 etc. You can start at any valve you want to using the "9" rule but you end up having to turn the engine over more than is ofherwise nessersary. Its far simpler to start at valve 3 fully down, adjust valve 6 gap etc.

Yes the rule of 9 applies however there is a correct sequence to carry this out. Valve fully open Valve to be adjusted 6 3 4 5 7 2 1 8 3 6 5 4 2 7 8 1 A dial guage is a good idea to ensure that the "valve fully open" push rod is actually at the top of its stroke. another good idea is to replace the 8 small valve caps at teh same time as they take a hell of a hammering and have been known to disintegrate Tappet gap is 0.2mm

I'd say that the rockers siezed, when I overhauled my engine and fitted a new cylinder head I noticed that the new 3 hole multi-plate head gasket completely closed off the oil feed line (at the front of the engine block) to the rocker shaft. I had to open it up with a jewlers rat-tail file taking care not to file the oil hole beyond the raised pressed area of the gasket. If your gasket was as bad as mine then I'd say you have suffered from lack of oil to the rockers. If this is the case you will need to replace all the rockers as well as a new rocker shaft - you shpould have a claim against the gasket supplier but good luck with that one

On EBay you can buy a rear winch cradle that mounts into the square where your tow ball slides into, when not in use you simply stow it into the rear lugage space. I hired a 12000 lb unit for my recent trip into the Australian desert. Using a spare 12volt battery it worked great as all the electrics and control box were part of the kit as a box mounted on top of the winch but as a long term casual install it would need some serious wiring from the secondry battery under the bonnet to the rear of the vehicle along with a large connector. To use it the spare wheel needed to be removed, other than that it was great.

Jack up the rear so both rear wheels are clear of the ground then lock the rear drive shaft with a suitable pipe wrench on the shaft and fixed to the chassis, if the play at the rear wheels is excessive it's the diff that needs to bo worked on, if it's not look at the two universals on the rear drive shaft. There is also a fair amount of play that originates fron the centre differential and for the life of me I dont seem to be able to find anything in the works manual as to how much back-lash is normal and or how to adjust it. The front and rear diffs are relativly easy with adjustmant nuts on the output bearings.

I rebuilt my own turbo with a kit purchased on Ebay, it wasnt that hard but the trick is, if you go this way, MARK all the componants, shaft, nuts, turbines etc with a fine etching tool BEFORE you dissassemble or you will need to have the entire unit re-ballanced. My unit spins beautifully.

around town I get 8 litres per 100 Kilometers (35 MPG) on a recent trip through the red centre to Birdsville, 7500 kilometers on rough stoney roads and deep sand dunes it fell to 11 litres /100 K. (22mpg) MY 300TDi (23L) Normal weight is 2650 Kilos, on the trip it grew to 3150 Kilos and running on Cooper AAT tyres. My motor has none of your UK emission controls however and the middle muffler has been removed to improve performance and economy. Gererally on the trip we never exceeded 2000 RPM or 90 kilometers an hour, even in 53 degrees C (127F) it never overheated, used any ccolant or engine oil.

I think Steve is right, the TD5 and the 300TDi are completely different engines and the bell housing will also alter.

Better still replace the rubber joint with a needle bearing universal joint, several up-grade kits are available. Why LR ever used the rubber joint I will never understand, I thought only Layland Mini's used them.

An easier way to increase lube is to add 2 stroke oil into your tank of diesel, I do and it works wonders

You actually have people dippling your tanks ???? good grief if the goverment excise men ever did that to me they would lock me away, thank goodness that Australia hasnt yet stooped to such low levels. I run my Disco 300TDi on a combination of heating oil (industrial diesel) bio diesel, - commercially available vegtable oil + ethanol mix at the bowser but a tad over 1/2 the price of mineral diesel, and home brewed recycled veg oil which I filter, de-water, extract the unsoluble fats and add ethonol to achieve a Cetain rating of around 85+ with a particle size of less than 2 microns. In all my fuel costs never go above 75 cents per litre as against $1.48 at the bowser.

I'm just back from a 7850 Kilometer Oddesy into the red centre of Australia. I fitted and brand new set of Cooper AAT "Discoverer" Tyres before I left and the wear on them is tiotally unacceptable, I expected to get around 50,000 Kilometers out of them but the front two are worn down to just above the low limit marks, the rears while better are between 50-60% worn. All 4 have been returned to Coopers for their comments. The fronts were run at 32PSI, the Rears at 36. In sand the fronts were dropped to 18 and the rears 24. Ambient tempertatures ran from three days at over 53 Degrees Centigrade to an average of 38.

If the balls are pitted then water and dirt can get into the CV joint inside the ball, so think about replacing the balls, new ones (very expensive) or good SH ones from a wrecker that arent pitted will be the go. In any case the edges of the pitting will only eventually damage the lip of the new seal so the best course of action will be to replace them. To set the preload go to your nearest fishing tackle shop and buy an inexpensive spring scale that will weigh 0 - 2 Kilo's - the preload setting is measured by the amount of force the spring scale uses to move the ball joint with the steering arms disconnected and before the seal is installed. The one shot grease replaced oil in or around 1998.

I closed the gaps around the radiator frame with commercially available door seal rubbers, re-cored the radiator with a 4 row copper core from a mack truck, had the by-pass hole reduced in diameter but enough to allow air bubbles to escape into the top half of the radiator to prevent air-locking, drilled 23 off 22mm diameter holes in the plastic radiator grille to increase air flow and I retained the centrifugal fan. Driving to Lake Eyre in South Australia 2 weeks ago in 56 degree Centigrade (133 Degree F) temperatures on shocking sand roads the coolant temp never went above 110 (3/4 on the guage). I had the guage checked for accuracy before we left and at 85 Degrees C degrees its just below 1/2 way, 90 Degrees C its exactly on half and 110 its at the top of the white line.

No, mine is a L23 300TDi, Julie and I got it down to a fine art, slip the ZF into "N", turn off the ignition roll for a few meters, re-start the engine and slip back into "D" without slowing down.

Thanks to you all for that, however it's a pain in the rectum though, given that on some of the tracks we drove on "spine breaking impacts" were an occurance every kilometer or so and for over 200 kilometers -- I'll investigate and see if I can either by-pass or disarm it.

Hi, Just returned from our 20 plus days 6750 Kilometer oddesy into the Australian Simpson and Stoney deserts and on some really badly rutted roads we experienced an oddity. The hazard lights would come on, the signal is clearly originating from the security unit under the passenger side glovebox as you could hear it clicking away. The easy solution I discovered was to pop the auto into Neutral, turn off the engine, coast and re-start and the flashing staooped -- until the next bone jarring crunch and it would repeat again with the hazard lights flashing. Interesting by-line, if it wasnt cancelled in the way I mentioned, as in turning off the engine and restarting the remote would not work. Any ideas?

No such problem here in Oz. I removed mine and with fibre-glass filled in the remaining hole and easily fitted a handle off a non-airbag unit, Julie now has a panic grab. I removed the steering wheel unit as well and saved around 8 kilos in total weight and around 20 meters of cable. The controller is in the centre console unit below the storage bin. The special spanner is a simple security socket obtainable from any auto or electronics store.

engine type ? fuel ?