Discovery 1, and the problems with rust

It is a known fact that Land rover Discovery 1's suffer from rust, or tin worm as it is better known.  

When I was looking for a Discovery I decided the route to go was for a Japanese import, apparently in Japan they do not use salt on their roads, also the weather is a little better than here, or at least kinder to their cars.

Typically any car coming over form Japan will have less corrosion for its age than one form the UK, I say less because as soon as it is used here the rust starts.  So when I bought Larry, I did some poking about to check for rust, and after several check ups by the local car doctors (or garages as most people call them) Larry got a reasonably clean bill of health.  After the car was checked out I Larrys underside Waxoyl'd.

However, there is one specific area on all Discovery 1's where rust is a real issue is the boot floor, most Land Rovers of Larrys age are either very rusty there or have already had the boot floor replaced.  

So even though from the outside all things looked good, from the inside out I wanted to check Larry's boot (or Trunk if your an American and you feel your car is an Elephant).

Anyway this really is a simple thing to check, all you do is;

• Put the rear seats up
• Empty the boot
• Take up the metal carpet trim at the rear of the door by unscrewing 8 screws
• Lift out the carpet and acoustic protection

Now what you should see is this

You can see some nice rust coloured patches around the boot, on Larry this is not too bad, he only has a little ginger in him (oh er).

If you see this then you have a problem

Now if the rust is as bad as in the image above your going to have to do some major surgery on the car and replace the boot panel.  Fortunately Land Rover Discovery 1's are about as green a car as they come, by this I mean you can pretty much patch them up for ever.  I have put this link to show one hell of a re-build on a Land Rover Discovery; some people love these cars, as I do, and will do anything to keep them on the road.

Larry, is actually in good nick, so all I needed to do was to rub off the surface rust, like this

I then applied some Krust to kill of any remaining rust, and then primed it with Zink primer.  This took about 2 hours.  Leaving the boot looking like this.

Ok its not green but I'll sort this out in the summer when I'll take out the rest of the carpets for a spring clean.  The remaining rust is on the fuel tank cover, I'll deal with that later with a quick re-paint.

I did check under the carpets along the wings and under the seats and all is good there as well.

So top tip, keep on top of the rust.