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another disco rescued


rusty94disco

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after a tough couple of month's welding and fixing things my venerable 94 tdi is back on the road. To be honest it was very close to being retired. I even tested a few TD5's but most were very ropey in my price range all were over 100.000k and with out reasonable services histories. one for sale at nearly 5000 only had 2 dealer stamps. but i'm very glad it's done. :lol:

My photos are here in a rough order of the repairs done.

the one inner sill piece of advice i missed until to late is to forget patching but to cut the bottom out of the sill and put a length of 120mmx60mm box inside then attach the new mounts to it and weld the whole thing together again. the inner wing parts are from YRM and i shudder to think how much more difficult it must be to put in a full built up inner wing. i lost count how many times i temp fitted the main part to get everthing lined up.

A discovery i did make is that my early model 300tdi is put together slightly differently on either side and dimensions from one side aren't the same either; Well done land rover quality control.

finally the old disco passed the test first time and i even got a muttered positive comment from the garage.

heres the list of repairs

Drivers side

light box and mount lower half rebuilt

battery carier and small piece of inner wing below replaced.

front sill mount completly replaced

front of outer sill rebuilt and boxed in

floor checked and some seams welded where the original spot welds had obviously never taken.

outer sill patched

A post base patched

usual rust on rear traps around door welded

rear cross memebr mount replaced.

rear cross member repaired where it's hidden under the bumper plastic panel

Original towbar rebuilt and new strengtheners put in (some thing to check here

new tank strap and brackets made up from spare bits on metal.

rear lights swapped for the ones with indicators in them

rear door spring fixed (It opens))

passenger side

rear cross member mount replaced

c pillar plated where the drain plug is fitted. This is what i think lets the rust into the wheel arch

wheel arch patched near the seat belt mount.

rear sill mount repaired.

outer sills patched

front sill mount repaired

front of sill boxed in

A post patched

foot well and floor patched / replaced

inner wing replaced

light box lower part replaced

both swivels and cv's replaced (no more steering wobbles at last)

all bearing replaced

all ball joints replaced

poly bush's for panhard rod

new driving members (no more clunks when changing gear)

New cat less down pipe with flexy bit; easy to fit and full new exhaust ( original cat was solid with black soot you couldn't even blow thought it!)and as an experiment a new 80mm induction feed pipe instead of the original which really is a mess and must choke the intake.

probably not much more power but feels much smoother and now pulls better and longer from lower revs than before)

boot floor got done 2 years ago.

biggest cost apart from parts

Welding gas and etch primer; which sticks to metal better than any other paint.

zinc primer and black metal paint; lots followed by waxyol in and on everything; including the cats and then on parts of wife, son and house :ph34r:

nothing was amazing difficult but welding straight up is horrible.

good luck if you contemplating saving your disco ;)

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but welding straight up is horrible.

That pain will dull with time, and you will be ready for the next round at the next MOT :rofl:

Look a very good job from images..

I myself am just the middle of hot gluing some sills onto my newly acquired 96 300TDI.... all good fun but not in the rain <_<

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Great post!

My beloved 1994 disco was nicked in June, I've since replaced it with a 95 model with a genuine 83,000 mile stamped up history for £230 :lol:

Trouble is, it's got a welding list like yours - I've made a start - the boot floor is out and I've finished patching the transmission tunell, now I just need to do both sills, passenger and driver floors, patch the rear body member, rear arches and door post bottoms. Oh and the NS inner wing. Happy days eh?

Thanks for the pics, inspiration and guidance just when I need it.!

Stu.

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thanks for the comments and if anyone wants another picture of the finished bits just let me know.

after driving around now for a week i'm convinced the new air pipe and catless downpipe have made a big difference to power and hopefully milage which had dipped to 25-27 on average; i do alot of town and A road ,15 miles at a time runs for work and this weeks fuel seems to be going further.

Strangely i now have a new leak in the passenger footwell area coming from high up as well as the one in the boot from the alpine windows but i have plans for these.

just put new cooper atr's on and there great; grippy on and off road. lets see what their like in the winter since iv'e got loads of winter hiking in the mountains up north planned.

parts mostly from paddocks with the usual hiccups and vague delivery

much better were http://www.lrseries.com/ apart from a britpart top swivel pin which there was no way a bearing will go on to.

on swivels the bottom pin was so tight i broke both my torx bits trying to remove it, so i didn't bother, when i cleaned it up it was fine and i just let it be. you don't need to remove it to rebuild or dismantle the swivel housing.

The body and rear mounts came from mps4x4. i got the extended rear ones and probably didn't need them but it was usuful to have so much metal extra to overlap the rusty original fixing area.

re tank strap; this was a major pain and success because to do it properly you need to drop the tank unless you doing the boot floor then it will be a doddle. Something i wish i had considered when i did mine. I remember thinking it might need done but was in to much hurry to finish it.

this time i made the strap out of a length flat steel minus the bracket on the drivers side then bolted it on once i had shoved the strap over (not that easy) i did buy the bracket on the chassis and my there mounting was ok. i've heard that most have lost the chassis mount as well leaving a big hole there.

I've just found out that my local scrappy has got a 96 xs in so i'm of to have a look see. A leather steering wheel would be nice and those half leather seats with the land rover logo are good; here's hoping.

ps re td5 lights all you have to do is take the lens off your originals ,paint the shiny flat part black reseal the lenses onto the back and refit. :P

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