steve_a

well if someone from down here can offer the loan of a trailer for a weekish then I can do it. might need to check the trailer socket on disco as well, not been used since I bought it. Only trailer I have access to is a bit small and not sure if it would like a substantial journey...... Engine and gearbox combo must be getting on for about 6 ft in length maybe so gonna have to be a reasonable size trailer? So assuming a trailer turns up (rent one?) then I can bring up on a monday, you do next leg to your place and then meet me with the trailer later in the week for return to down sarf.

I come from Portsmouth to Worcester pretty much every week, so I might be able to help depending on timescales etc. I usually come up on a monday morning in my disco, but I have zero storage ability in Worcester, I might at a squeeze be able to leave the engine on site during the week, but not sure, so it would need to be a well organised thing. Also bit concerned about the ability of my disco's floor to hold the weight of an engine... so it would probably be best in a trailer so makes more complicated.

hey Nige, there is a conversion piece on the master of the clutch, same piece on both defender and series, really threw me when i did mine last year, it might look like all one piece but check. Just hunch that you have a new cylinder and the thread is wrong for the pipe.......

I used a series 3 SWB truck cab every day for a 7 mile/40 minute drive to work for about a year. It was never a problem to be honest. The same journey in the defender 90 truck is again no problem. The trip to Abingdon from Portsmouth in the series was OK, loud and seemed a bit long, but probably not too different than in the 90 for time. Though I wonder if I did push my little series a bit too hard, she would be running at around 3100 revs all the way. The trip in the 90 is quieter, but not by much with grizzly claws on. I did a trip to Northhampton from Portsmouth in the series and that was kind of fun, again noisy and probably added about 10-15 mins to journey in comparison to car. Longest journey in defender was from Portsmouth to Malvern (130miles) and I do think that in the series this would have been pushing it a bit, without taking a break at least and would definitely have dragged on. I like both, mods for a series if you plan on using it for any longer journeys would be an overdrive, or at least some bigger tyres (265/75R16 fit). Fitting bigger tyres helped for using it as a run about as it extended first gear to useable range, with the 205s on first was no use.

runaway voltage - the voltage regulation goes to pot and you get >14v out (like 16v upwards) If you had the brushes out and checked them then not sure - land rover law dictates that you could have got it apart checked it, put it back together and it got stuck or something a few moments later. From my limited alt knowledge, if you are getting 14v then the alt has been excited, the excitor current makes the charge lamp glow, so no lamp means no current which means no 14v.... if the bulb is blown the no excitor current, so no 14v So i guess it starts to look like brush only contacting while alt turning (possible, most things are on a landy!) or problem with the diode pack. Hopefully Si Brown will bimble along, his knowledge is far better than mine on these things.

not the rate of hits dolly, but the ability to know where the hit is coming from, unless they are gonna use a monopulse tracker for rfid tags or something similar. Don't think the directivity will be up to the task, RFID tags usually have a range of a 10s of cms in most cases, but there will be too many issues with sidelobes etc from the stimulating beam to be sure which tag is where. Maybe there is something clever involved, but from my experience with tracking radars can't see this being a goer

if no light on when turned to II then you don't have circuit for the excitor voltage. The brush may be stuck in on that one or poor contact on the running surface. it sounds like the brush is only making contact while spinning to me, which means it working but not quite as you would prefer it. Always a chance that the diode pack has gone, but i think you'd expect runaway voltage when revving which you probably checked.

Thanks for correcting that Matt, I had forgot about the position of the steering box on the series. Out of interest, is it the mating to the series gearbox that causes the exhaust fouling the bulkhead to be different? Would fitting an LT77 remove the problem? I thought defender and series bulkheads were pretty much the same?

discovery is up to 203,000 ish as of this week, 194k on it in august last year. Had to replace starter motor, battery and rear suspension. Clutch release bearing. Defender is about 97k had about 89k on it 2 years ago. radiator wheel bearings (few of) few belts alternator bushes a frame jt track rod ends swivel balls (railko bushes etc) a few UJs clutch slave (and did master too) new clutch (well in a few weeks it will be in there) and associated bits new input shaft seal (and maybe bearing again in the next few weeks) patch to chassis new rear x member (again in the next few weeks) new CV joints I think the defender is just getting reliable, but not surprising when you look at the work it's had!

can't see this being much use, once everyone has a chip then they would be getting too many hits and wouldn't have a clue about which vehicle had fake plates, as you couldn't guarantee that you weren't picking up tags off camera. bad piece of research, and reading the report it doesn't surprise me.

On the Discovery 1's the windscreen is held in by a rubber seal (MWC8304) and some filler strips (MXC8199, I think). The rubber seal is an expensive item (a quick check shows it around £70) so it is worth being careful with. Remove the windscreen wipers first, a simple 13mm nut and tease them off. They aren't splined on mine, which was surprising, so some location marks might be worth it. The windscreen has filler strips in this seal which lock the glass in place, so the first thing is to tease these out. I was warned by OilIt that the strip can be brittle so to edge it out with a screw driver all the way and don't get too confident and start pulling else it will snap. Mine was starting to get a bit inflexible near the top. The filler is in 4 parts, the bottom corner seen here shows how they are mitred I saved the fillers to go back into the same locations, don't know if you need to, but top and bottom might be different lengths. Once you have removed all 4 fillers it is basically a case of pushing the windscreen from inside and it will pop out Safety notes: consider gloves and eye protection if inside. In my case the rubber seal was left in the frame and we gently recovered it after the screen was moved to one side. It is worth having a second person for this job because of the fragile nature of the rubber seal and also to control the screen when you remove it. you can see the rubber left behind here and the window coming out. The edges on mine weren't sharp, hence lack of gloves on my glamourous assistants hands, the replacement wasn't either. Fit the rubber seal on the replacement screen then move the screen to the car. Lay the bottom of the screen in place and try to centre it. If you don't get the centreing completly right we managed to shove the screen over after getting one side seated. At this stage put some rope/string into the rubber seal. Cheap washing line would be good, you don't want it too thick nor too thin. Bed it deep down into the seal and feed two ends inside the car. I started from the two bottom corners and aimed to finish at the centre of the top. It's probably worth giving in here and removing the trim from the A posts. There are some loom clips which will most likley catch on the string and cause you grief. My clips for the trim were very brittle and I just gave up and pulled them off (I'm not always known for my patience!). The part number is MUC316 as far as I can tell and about 30p each. There are three each side. Start pulling the string on one side and the seal should kind of flip inside, You can help it by pushing on the outside and levering with a screwdriver. For information the windscreen is surprisingly strong so don't be toooo worried. Here you can see I have the two sides in and am starting on the top bit. My neighbour borrowed me some lanoline soap which I am sure helped, but any lubricant would be good. The top starts to go in and you can see here where the seal is inside half way along After a bit of sweating you should get the whole seal inside and the worst part is over! Note my rubber hammer on top. I was using the hammer and a crowbar to get the last of the seal inside, the screen is tough! My rope was a bit big though and it might have been easier to end at a corner too, but I didn't get a lot of choice after the rope snapped and started slipping. Next you have to put the filler back in. There is probably a special tool for this, but I just got on with it. Again some lubrication is good Just feed it in and use the screw driver to pop it fully in. Those top and bottom seals seem very long! Also note that the filler will probably stretch as you fit it, no idea how to avoid this, I pushed it back a bit as much as possible and trimmed off the extra afterwards. Finally you can bask in the glory of having fitted your own windscreen Done about 500 miles since this in the snow etc and don't seem to have had any problems. I only did this because I don't have windscreen cover on this car. If you get 'professionals' to fit, watch for them inflating the price by just cutting the seal out and charging for it. Steve

Did the job today and was going to come back and put some comments in, but just re-read Mark's post and it is absolutely spot on, wish I had paid more attention and removed heat shield right at the start.... Was going to add pictures, but they won't help much and it was too wet today to have the camera hanging about. One note: Britpart starter was a bit longer and the bracket needed a bit of bending which holds the heat shield, and the main live connection is a bit more tricky to get on because it is a bit longer. The order as Mark described is important, you CANNOT get that rear most bolt in without removing the live connections first. Also there are 3 different mounting types used (who knows why!!!?). Bottom is a stud Outer top is a bolt with nut inner is a bolt into threaded hole. you need an open ended 17mm spanner on the end of the bolt with nut to keep it tight or it WILL work loose (my defender starter motor fell off one day last year because of this!) It is an easier job if you have 2 people, a mate happended to pop around which was good news for me. Many thanks for instructions Mark, one for the tech archive if you ask me.

We used a 2.25 diesel starter with a 2.5 diesel if that is any help Nigel? As it happens I am about to remove a 200tdi starter (which is the same as the 2.5 one) so if you wanted to look at one I could possibly help.

since you have to do work on engine mounts and shifting things like battery holders around it wouldn't make much sense to then give up and not fit the turbo IMHO. Steve Parker does an exhaust pipe for discos which allows fitment into defenders and presumably series which saves reinventing the wheel, it's about £100 or so, makes the job a bit easier. I think you would find that disco rad and itntercooler would fit across the front of the series (maybe, I think the defender width between wings is the same) but you would probably need to shift the grill forward, though in your neck of the woods you could bin the viscous unit getting back quite a few cm's of space which might save the forward moving. You might find a disco with 1 months mot and bound to fail on body work for about £500 here in the UK which would allow you to collect and drive back? It's not a five minute job to do this, we considered something similar for our series 3, but couldn't be bothered with the work involved as we don't plan on keeping it. Tonk on here will fill you in on all the details of fitting Tdis to series - it's all doable but you need time and energy.

Many thanks!!!!! Done a defender one which was a git, downpipe is in the way, but the disco did look more accesible. Off to MM4x4 to get new starter, I was gonna get them to do it (not the weather really is it?) but at around £230 all in that was an extra £130 that I didn't want to pay and thought it seemed a bit much 2 hours for the job? Hopefully my starter will live for another 48 hours... Will post piccies of job when done. Love this place - good answers and quick too

Need to replace my starter on the disco and can't seem to find any posts describing the process. I know it is quite fiddly to get to on the defender, but looking at it the disco looks a lot easier in comparision. So is it just a case of getting in there and doing it or do I need to remove the exhaust front section for access or even worse manifolds etc. Cheers Steve

Good few inches here in Malvern - made for nice drive in (well apart from mega slow people on the roads that were pretty much clear) and cheered me up a bit.

you had your 90 tarted up at b4x4 before it went across. Did you re-chassis it at the time, my chassis looks a bit manky towards the rear, I was planning to do a full swap out there when I have more space and better weather, but will they accept it if wax oiled etc or does it need to be uber clean, which I'd be amazed if i could get mine to be! Tyres: not a massive issue, but would i better just buying a set of new tyres to be shipped out on rather than taking part worns, the link I had to importing vehicles seemed to suggest that worn tyres would be suspect of holding nasty foreign material. A more general question would be, would a set of something like BFG muds be best or go for a brand new set of Grizzlies to replace the ones i have. what would be best for Oz? If anyone in the Adelaide area is after a software engineer with 10 years experience in every language you care to think of, then give me a shout

We have finally decided that we are going to make the move to Oz, and because of the close connection of where I work here in the UK and the Oz government equivalent I am thinking that Adelaide is going to be top of the list, though to be honest, having looked around it seems that we like Adelaide best anyway. So I noticed there is at least 1 member from that region, so thought I'd get some info on what happens, what 4x4 activities there are etc. I'm thinking about shipping my 90 across when we go but having had a discovery since August 06 I'm wondering if I will be able to make best use of the 90 (a truck cab to boot!) out there if the off road events are some distance, getting used to comfort and space. We are planning to get out in September for 3-4 weeks to see what the different areas are like and also to hopefully meet with some possible job leads from a friend, it would be great perhaps to hitch a ride with anyone when dates firm up so we could see what the leisure side of our new lifestyle is really like. many thanks Steve (will I become Steveo if I move?)

gets funnier everytime I think about it, wife was in the car pushing the glass to make sure it didn't pop through as I got the last bit of seal in. All she saw was my fly past the drivers window and the wet sound of me hitting the floor. Apparently I don't bounce. On top of that, because I landed in the road, it would be when a car was coming, no idea how close to getting run over it was. I am thankful that the missus didn't open the door into me as I got up to top it off. Made even better when I got to work this morning and one of the other guys was playing badmington, stretched to hit and has put his back out. He's walking like he's the hunch back of notre dame and is in agony, I offered to push him off the disco put he told me to go away.

Job done yesterday. Took some photo's so will post a thread showing how I did it. Jerry (OilIt) gave some hints when I got the spare off him and his comments helped. I should have splashed out on some better string to pull the seal in, the stuff i had was too big I think. Would I do it again? Probably if a new screen was cheap enough - I did for this one because the disco is TPFT with no windscreen cover, and autoglass would probably have said it needed a new rubber, or broke the old, as the rubber is about £70 which would near double the price. Taking my time it took about 3 hours, but it did put up a fight and I also fell off the roof of the disco during that time (my very own HFH moment, it was ok the ground broke my fall nicely). I think I have pulled a homer though, my neck and back are feeling quite good ( I landed flat on my back when I fell) so perhaps I carried out a spinal shock realignment (TM © by me). I shall be opening a clinic where I put a crash helmet on you, take you to the roof of the disco and push you off. Discounts for forum members

In litigation happy world I'd say get a cage. What i would suggest is perhaps getting a roofrack or storage boxes built in to the top area on the 110. It will stop looking like a cage and start looking like a storage feature IMHO. I guess it may also be useful.. but someone walks up and sees a roofrack, they don't see a roll cage.

List of jobs for MOT is now down to new springs and shocks on rear and a new windcsreen OilIt on here had a windscreen up so I have decided to try and fit my own. I have loads of theory and bugger all practice. 1) remove old screen (as gently as possible) 2) recover rubber around edge 3) fit rubber on new screen 4) [ the tricky bit ] - put screen against outside and then use some string to draw seal inside? 5) break screen and phone autoglass I know it will all make a lot more sense when I take the old one out, but any hints or pictures are gratefully received. Steve

mine were and are 12 pters, I put 4 new ones in, needed at least 2 but the panic feeling when I had problems was enoguht to convince me they are good things to replace. Pricey though, I paid about £4 a bolt IIRC. I might have some in the back of the 90 as spare, I think I got extra because of the pain that it was.

James, first thing - get the bolts on order from somewhere, I had a rounded off one and it took about 2 weeks to get spares. You can try the idea of hammering on a slightly smaller socket I managed to get mine out that way. It it has been locktighted (as it probably has been) then I think heat would help to undo it a lot, though I think brake fluid is a bit flammable so you need to be careful. Failing that the link to the machine mart doofers is a good buy, you will find loads of other uses for them on the landy If you need a hand give me a PM, I work in Malvern during the week and twiddle my thumbs of an evening with F all to do. I would probably be able to get down, I don't carry many tools in the disco, but can bring mig up etc if you wanted as I go between here and home each week.