Discovery 2 chassis

[JGB]

Hi everyone. Just bought my first discovery 2 and have discovered that the chassis is rotten around the spring mount and shocker on near side only and has split underneath. I am a competent welder. How ever I would like to know if this can be plated. 

[Pawl12]

There doesn't appear to be any good steel to weld plates onto - lol. 

What state is the steel further forwards? Is it good enough to weld a 1/3 chassis section to & replace all of the rot? 

The Underbody area appears to have been very badly treated. Our 2001 version looks nowhere near that bad! 

[Ally V8]

No, that needs a new chassis - or breaking for spares.

[muddy]

New chassis time, having welded a shot blasted chassis in good condition I can tell you LR added fare more rustofast and spattertastic properties to D2 chassis.

[Bowie69]

That is pretty bad, sorry

[skauldy]

There is a crowd doing rear quarter disco 2 chassis replacement which I'm pretty sure includes the rear spring carriers, I'm following them on facebook will get you the name

[skauldy]

replacement chassis parts UK is the name,  i can't see it in their photos on facebook but they have definitely put up more then that's in their gallery 

[missingsid]

Hi,

Island 4x4 have what they call a "Half Chassis" which goes up to and includes the spring mounts. Since this is only a quater of the chassis I have no idea why it is called a "Half Chassis"?

Anyway there are two types one a lot more expensive then the other maybe one is painted?

[Pawl12]

The "half"  chassis is 1400mm long & is welded on just behind the trailing arm mountings. 

The 2 options I saw before I bought the cheapest version were

1, painted with primer, 

2, galvanised

To weld the galvanised version on, you'd have to grind the galvanising off in the areas to be welded & the person welding would have to put up with the splatter / spitting / toxic fumes  from whatever is left on the inside of the chassis. 

I decided the benefit of the galvanised version wasn't worth the extra cost as I was going to treat all of the new section & old with Dinitrol. 

Key question, looking at your photos is whether there is any good steel where you'd need to weld or further forwards. I've not seen a chassis look that bad before! 

Beware there is only 1 manufacturer of the large replacement section ( even though it's sold via various re-sellers)  & dimensional accuracy is not perfect. 

Here's some comments I made on another forum about the part we received : 

comments about the new chassis section (DDS Metals Part No. LRD213)
New replacement part feels to weigh almost 1/2 weight of removed part of old chassis  
– maybe partly lack of rust & mud & partly due to lack of stiffening sections in new replacement section.
New chassis section is 3mm thick everywhere, but original chassis is 2mm thick + what appears to be 3mm thick stiffeners in many places
Replacement chassis section has weaker front body mounting design & has fixed nuts (#) for body mounting bolt 
(ie doesn’t have floating captive nut to compensate for small position variations). 
The possible intention is that the body mtg can be bent with a heavy hammer to “fine tune” position. Due to the weaker & more open design, there are more sharp edges for the fuel pipes to be protected from - as these run through the "slot" between mtg & chassis leg.
# The fixed nut is the wrong size for the standard body mounting bolts. It looks like 1/2inch UNF rather than the required M12 fine thread. 
Build quality is a bit variable : Due to 10mm out of position body mtg on the RHS (visibly not same on each side !),  we had to cut off the mtg & re-weld in position when lined up with the body mtg bolt.

The X-Member in front of the fuel tank in the new section didn’t have captive nuts in place for the fuel pipes support bracket. 
The holes in the correct position were too large for Rivnuts, so we had to spotweld some flange nuts in place.

The rear RH bumper mtg also had to be cut-off & re-welded as it wasn’t aligned with the LHS & looked as if it had maybe been dropped on the corner before delivery.

Edited September 1, 2017 by Pawl12

[Divster]

On 01/09/2017 at 10:34 PM, Pawl12 said:

 

The X-Member in front of the fuel tank in the new section didn’t have captive nuts in place for the fuel pipes support bracket. 
The holes in the correct position were too large for Rivnuts, so we had to spotweld some flange nuts in place.

The rear RH bumper mtg also had to be cut-off & re-welded as it wasn’t aligned with the LHS & looked as if it had maybe been dropped on the corner before delivery.

Had exactly the same issues with the 1/4 chassis I just did. 

Be warned this is no small/ cheap/ easy job. Ended up replacing loads of other stuff that had gone at the same time (mudguards, brake pipes, bushes). Having said that I'm very pleased with the result and the Disco will live on for a while!