Fitting spot lights to a Land Rover

How to fit spot/driving lights

I have written this post because I have seen a lot of postings with people struggling to install spot lamps on their landies.  I think it’s mainly because its electronics and not mechanical.  However, this is easier than you may think.  I have added some diagrams to show you how to do it.

What you will need is to work out how many lights you are going to have and what AMP’s they will take out of the cars electrical system.  This is very important, a lot of land rover owners put somewhere between 2 – 8 lights on the car.

Discovery 1 fitted with 2x55 watt driving lights

Assuming for example you have a set of spots and a light bar or 8 lams and they are using 55 watt bulbs this means you will be drawing just over 36 amp out of your cars electronics system.  This is a heck of a lot and you will need a relay and wired to support this current.  Old Dosco 1's and Defenders only had a 60amp alternator so they do struggle if you have a lot of lights on your car.

I would suggest you do not go mad with the lighting and keep it realistic, I have 2x55 spots on my car and this is enough on the road.  Off road you may need more to cover a wider and of view, or consider CREE LED light bars which use less current.

One last thing is your battery, drawing 36amps with normal lights and also ancillaries would not be good if the lights are on for any extended period of time, therefore a second battery and split charge system may be preferable.

Anyway, you will need for this job;

      Spot lamps
      Wire for the lamps 20 amp
      Crimps including one for piggybacking off the main beam called a tap connector
      Soldering iron, if your going to ensure things don't come loose in the future
      Shrink tubing, to cover your joins and connectors
      Relay rated above your driving lights maximum amp’s


You can get all the above from a motor factors or halfords etc…

The mechanical bit I’ll assume you are OK with, that’s the fitting of the lamps to a bar, or to the car.  On the inside of each lamp there will be a bulb, this will connect to the

Now I have put a wiring diagram below which show an optional switch to allow you to have your light either to come on with the main beam or, be turned on and off from a dash switch.

Example wiring diagram using a relay to control lights

The way the circuit works is when you turn on your high beam, the relay is feed from the high beam circuit to the relay which will then turn the relay on and feed current to your spot lights.

There are a couple of options on the above drawing, firstly a switch co you can control the extra lights you have fitted, if you do not need the switch you can run from pin 85 to earth, or back to the - on your battery.

Another thing you could do is feed the lights from and axillary battery, this is to ensure you do not flatten your main battery on the car. 

On a Discovery 1 300 TDI, you can run a feed wire to pin 86 from an existing wire at the back of the existing lights which feeds the high beam, see below.

High beam feed to relay

The blue device above is called a Tap Connector and you crimp it onto your existing wire and to the new feed to the relay.  This provides the current to the relay.

Your relay will probably look like this.

4 pin 30amp relay for driving lights

You will then need to run the feed wire to the relay and wire the relay in as per the wiring diagram.  when putting connectors together I always crip and solder the connectors and run some shrink tubing over the terminal so tht weather does not get into any joints.  This can end up looking like this.

Connectors with shrink tubing on them

If your going to do what's been done above, label the wires, this way you will not forget where they go.

Anyway, all you need to do is complete the wiring and connect everything up and you should be OK.

Land Rover Discovery 1 faulty Cruise Control (pipe replacement)

Repairing Cruise Control hoses

My cruise control has never worked since I got my Land Rover so I decided to start to check it out and replace the parts of the system which are at fault.
After reading about the problems on several Land Rover forums it seemed the most likely issue was going to be the vacuum pipes which run from the vacuum pump to the back of the brake pedal and also the throttle position balloon (actually called the Cruise Control Actuator).

The most likely cause of the issue was that the pipes would be split causing the vacuum needed to set the throttle position would not work.  Effectively the split hoses would cause air to get into the system and therefore the throttle position would not be held.

Anyway, firstly you will need to locate your vacuum pipes and inspect them; they should look like this;

Discovery 1 cruise control pipes

The pipes are located, on the back of the throttle balloon/actuator.

Cruise Control Actuator, Discovery 1

 
Under the spare battery compartment, this is where the pump is.

Cruise control pipe replacement in Blue

They join on the left of the bulk head and there’s a T (see above) this will have a pipe going to the back of the brake pedal.  To get to this you will need to remove the trim.

Under the dash where the pedal are

 

Remove the trim clips using a trim removal tool

Yes the cruise control hose is in there above the break pedal

Check your existing pipes; if they are split you will need to replace them.

Old split hoses, the yellow one is for the garden

To do this you will need to buy replacements pipe about 4-5 meters, I bought mine for ebay for about £5.

New pipe above, old below.

 
You will also need a sharp knife and a flask of hot water or a kettle nearby.  I’ll explain this in a bit.
You will also need a trim removal tool as well to remote the panel at the passenger foot well.  This is to get access to the break switch.

Now to replace the pipes the procedure is as follows;
      1. Take one of the old pipes off
      2. Cut a new pipe to this length
      3. To fit it heat the end up in hot water and slide the pipe end on

You repeat this will all 3 hoses, the one at the back of the brake pedal will need you to remove the panel fasteners and feed a hose through.

New Cruise Control pipes fitted

All run neatly around the engine bay

That’s it, all done, it’s about 80% likely your cruise control will now work, guess what, mine did not.
So the next this I have to do is check the Cruise Control ECU and associated parts.

Land Rover Discovery 1 body work repairs getting donor parts

Taking panels from a donor 300TDI

After I tidied up Larry I needed to find replacement panels to fit the car.  Quite a few google searches later I realised the Slam Panel was not made any longer and the wing top re-enforcing panel (the wing bolts to this) was rare and expensive (minimum £50 delivered).

So I could not get all new panels and the ones I would get would be around £300+delivered.  So, as I said in my last post I started looking for a donor vehicle.

I put the word out on forums and a couple of scrap yards for what I was after and about three weeks later a donor vehicle came up six miles from where I lived which seemed to meet the bill.  I went to have a look at it, although it was the wrong colour it definitely had what I needed.

Then I went away on business, so with that and the weather another three weeks went by.  Then I got the chance to get the panels off the donor car.

So armed with a spot rivet drill and an angle grinder off I went.  It took three hours to strip the car down and cut the panels off, I did not use the spot weld drill (I'll talk about that later).

Getting the old panels off the Donor car

So the 1st thing to do was to remove the bonnet, bumper, all front panels light etc, I took some of the small items off for my repair like the light adjuster vacuum pump etc.  This was very easy and quick to do, although the body mounts needed a breaker bar.  The wings also have to come off and washer bottle etc.

What I ended up with was this;

Discovery 1 front end strip part complete

Then striped to this after I cut out the panels I needed;

Panels cut  out

They key parts I was after was, the ight box and the wing re-enforcer;

Discovery 1 headlight box

Wing top bar and reinforcing plate

The panels were cut off with an angle grinder I was going to drill it out but that would have taken forever so it was done with a cut through the inner wing, the near side  body and the off side front inner wing.

The donor car was pretty rusty but the parts I needed are  rust free, I think this Land Rover also has a accident at some time and needed some new front parts.  You can see on the picture above the rust below the battery box

Anyway next steps reusing the old panels.

As for the cost £50 for the parts I wanted.

Rapairing Discovery 1 300TDI crash damage, the start

Repairing front near side of a Discovery 1, part 1

This will be a short post and an update of Discovery v's Oak Tree.  Since Larry was driven into a tree I have stripped down all the twisted metal from the front back to a point where I can get repair panels welded onto the front quarter of the car.

This weekend I spent a few hours transforming Larry from this;

Front near side quarter damage

To this;

Stripped down ready for repair, I know it looks worse

The strip down would have been a case of just cutting off the panel if the quarter was not crushed into a lot of the electrics, so I have to be very careful when cutting the panels off to recover all the cables hidden in the mess.

I started unbolting what I could then I cut the panels with a 2.5mm metal cutting disk; however when this got to small I swapped to a 1mm cutting blade which was a lot better and really made life really easy.

The Snorkel was rescued to be re-fitted later, as were other parts, earlier in the week I picked up a grey bonnet and red wing, headlamp, indicator and glove compartment for £100 to replace the broken items.  The miss match panels will be sprayed at some point.

The next job is to get the repair panels for the front inner wing, batter box and headlamp holder and body mount and weld them in.  I'm in two minds at this point, should I do the welding or get someone else to do it?

Amazingly, no mechanical damage was done except for the radiator cowl,  It was pushed back jumping knocking the aux belt off.  I replaced the belt today and also pulled the radiator and inter-cooler back out the the original position.  See below;

 

Internals all re-aligned

The best bit is I do not need a donor car to fix larry!!!!

Land Rover Discovery v's Oak tree

Discovery 1 accident.

Earlier this week when coming home from a meal my girl friend drove my car back to my house.  I had been drinking so changed roles for the night.

Unfortunately, she was in two minds as to which turning to take and decided to go right quite late on towards a corner.  At which point Larry headed exactly between the two options of left and right, sliding on gravel into a rather large Oak tree at about 15-25 mph (its hard to tell exactly what speed we were going as we were all writing letters home, you know the sort "Dear Mamma etc etc"). 


After the crash we decided we were all ok, even the American in the back who was shouting "Yeeeee Haaaaaaa" and my GF daughter who realised she was not actually dead.

The only injury was in fact my left shin which cracked in the dash breaking the glove compartment cover.

This is a picture of the damage.

Angle on view front end damage

View from the font.

So as you can see, the damage looks quite severe.  However, I decided this weekend to strip down the front end to see what the actual damage is.

Chassis rails ok and straight

Internal parts pushed backwards but all intact

Dented wing and bent front bash plate and radiator mounting

Kaboom, me pulling the wing off, you can see the new shape bonnet

Eyeball pointing at the ground

Quite rust free under the wing, note the sealant goo

All stripped ready for a welder quite

The steering guard did its job

Now 2 hours after starting I had striped down most of the front end to reveal that the chassis is OK.  All the fluids, radiator, inter-cooler and mechanics OK.

Just about all of the damage to Larry is the nearside wing and front panel, oh and the serpentine belt which was knocked off the pulley's by the outer radiator cowl.  This cased the poeer steering to stop working, fortunately I stopped Larry immediately and got him brought home by trailer.  Therefore the engine is ok, everything was just shifted back a bit.

Parts required for the fix;

1. Inner wing off side  (needs welding)
2. Bonnet
3. Off side wing
4. Front bash plates
5. Front chassis mounting bolt
6.  Glove compartment cover
7. Bonnet hinge
8. Serpentine belt
9. Several hours of effort

So, what next. Donor vehicle here we come :-)

Land Rover Discovery 1 300TDI MPG

Discovery 1 miles per gallon (MPG)

We recently went on a 12 day holiday to the Blois area of France in a campsite so I thought it would be a good idea to record the MPG I get from Larry.  I have completed all the normal mods which are meant to be associated with better performance and MPG.  These are;

EGR blanked
De-cat exhaust
Good service
Fully synthetic 10/40w oil


The MPG figures returned during the trip I think are quite good, remembering Larry is an Automatic and it was laden down with 4 people in the car.  A few points to note, the tyres are standard and at the correct pressure, I was not pushing the car and Larry only have 52k miles on the clock so he is low mileage

Miles	IMP Gallons	MPG	Notes
326	10.55	30.91	A roads in France mainly in 3rd gear, 4 passengers, 40mpg and lower
335	11.70	28.63	Towing 750kg trailer with 4 passengers, 60mph+
460	15.68	29.34	Motorway 60mph and A roads mainly in 3rd gear, 4 passengers, towing a 750kg trailer

It seems when I got into 4th (which is when the gearbox locks the final drive) the economy is a lot better than in 3rd at between 40mph and 50mph on the back roads of France with the gearbox hunting.  There is a sweet spot at 66mph where everything goes really nice and Larry just chugs along.

Having said that we did do some short trips and a little green laning on the Loire river banks and still got 30+mpg. The average MPG I now get from Larry normal trips is now about 29mpg, this is wrecked off road or on school runs down to 20-25mpg, it used to be about 27mg before the mods.

The de-cat exhaust and fitting a snorkel made the biggest difference to the way the 300TDI breaths and it flew through its MOT on emissions.  All the EGR seemed to do is keep the engine oil a lot cleaner.

Towing the Conway Classic Trio trailer with additional weight did not really make any difference to the cars performance at all.  But it did give us a massive tent when we got to the camp site.

Lastly, I have checked the mile measurements on a GPS device and they are accurate.

Update 23rd March 2014

I have been using semi synthetic engine oil now for a few months and the economy has dropped by about 2mpg over a 1,500 mile period.  Therefore in future I will use fully synthetic oils moving forward.

Eco rant, there is to much hype on Eco cars

Land rovers are Eco cars!

A lot has been said about 4x4’s and how unfriendly they are to the environment and it got me thinking about Land Rovers and other 4x4’s I have owned and what Eco is all about.

Firstly a rant, there is no doubt the new 4x4’s are recyclable and do perhaps 45mpg on a run with the wind behind them and that Toyota Electric cars are the way forward? but I can’t help but thinking this is not what an Eco car is about.

There is no justification for any electric car at the moment, they are too expensive, you have to get the electricity from somewhere and most people who drive them have them as vanity toys and typically own lots of non-Eco toy’s like Apple computers which in themselves cause a lot of issues due to air mileage and effectively slave labour in foreign lands. In fact if we all want electric cars we will need to create a lot of pollution and adopt nuclear power, neither of which is really acceptable.

My 4x4's

I own and have owned a 4x4 now for a number of years, not continually but probably 14 out of my 29 years of driving. In that time I have driven nurses and doctors to work during bad weather, pulled endless BMW’s and Mercedes out of 1cm of snow (Audi are a lot better).

I have enjoyed driving my Nissan Patrol, Land Rover Discovery and Daihatsu Fourtrak off road and done all the bad things Eco people moan about 4x4’s owners like doing, for example 5 people and 3 dogs in one car. I think however in recent years since the snow in the UK of 2010 people have started changing their minds from the blind “they are all evil” to “ok they have a place” as do I.  We all surely remember this;

The UK snow in 2010

Oddly Range Rover drivers seem to have issues with snow and ice?

Range Rover in a ditch but a Discovery sails by.

I live in a rural area where most, probably 80% of the 4x4 are used for work with the other 20% being used as daily drives, with possible bad weather in mind. They are not all large 4x4’s some are just saloon 4x4’s. they are practical everyday transport.  We don't have buses and trains to get on out here, well buses maybe once an hour from Horsham to Brighton for 12 hours a day.

An Eco bit

Older diesel cars will run quite happily on vegetable oil or waste oils, grown from the soil powered by sunlight. I have put both sunflower and rapeseed oil in my car with no issues in the summer (it needs heating in the winter) and I know people who run Land Rovers on WVO (waste vegetable oil) from chip shops and restaurants.  I have even talked to one guy who even filters his used engine oil and puts it into his tank!  Older diesels can recycle and use fuels moder cars cannot.

Land Rover believes over 75% of all defenders ever made are still in service. From an Eco point of view this is a massive point to take on board.  Most of the world’s natural resources are used making a car not running them. A good condition 300TDI will get you 30mpg+ in a Discovery 1, even on chip fat and will last you 20-30 years, I be amazed if a Prius will last this long without several battery changes (the batteries are not eco friendly at all).

The economy of the older cars is not as good as a modern car I give you that :-( but what about an electric car. Let’s look at the Nissan Leaf, this was part of an interesting article I read recently;

“In order to deliver 30 kWh to your house to fully charge the Leaf’s 24 kWh battery bank, for example—incorporating the charge efficiency this time, the source of electricity becomes a highly relevant factor. Two-thirds of our electricity comes from fossil fuel plants, typically converting 35% of the fossil fuel thermal energy into electricity. Only 90% of this makes it through the transmission system, on average. If your electricity comes from a fossil fuel plant, the 30 kWh delivered to your house took about 95 kWh of fossil fuel energy. The 73 miles the Leaf travels on a full charge now puts it at an energy efficiency of 130 kWh/100-mi. The MPG equivalent number is 28 MPG. From a carbon-dioxide standpoint, you’d be better off burning the fossil fuel directly in your car”

Interesting eh!

Also electric cars use a lot of rare metals in the batteries and these really are in short supply. Newer vehicles, yes they are nicer, I have one, and yes they can be recycled netter than older cats, but a car kept on the road for 20-30 years running on VO or WVO has not been recycles and is good for the environment.

Then there is cost, if I had to choose a new car costing me £300 a month or Larry who does 20-33mpg depending on what I’m doing with him I’d take Larry anytime. Mainly because if I had to have one car I’d have a practical large 4x4, however at the moment I’m lucky to have a choice but it is a choice I don't need more than one car.


As for an electric car nope not until they are sub £12k and from an Eco point of view they are definitely not better than a Land Rover.  The electric car answer is the Hydrogen fuel cell car, but we are a long way away from that.

Fitting bull bars to a Discovery 1

How to fit bull bars Discovery 1

During my off road trip in February I manage to clip a wall and remove the plastic end of the bumper, so I decided to get a bull bar set up to protect the front of the car to give it a little more protection during overland or off road trips.  So I bought a second hand bull bar and spot lamp set from ebay for £51.

Ebay is a great place for getting second hand parts for Discovery 1’s providing that is you don’t buy something 100’s of miles away and end up spending a fortune in fuel to get the parts, fortunately my purchase cost me two gallons of diesel.

I’m not sure the exact type the bull bars are but they wrap around the front headlamps with removable grills (so you can change the headlamps) recovery hoops and a brush guard.  I believe when they were made bull bars like these new were probably £200 with another £80 for the headlamps, so buying second hand I have probably saved about £220.  Considering I know I'm going to rough them up a bit I don't need new ones anyway.


They bull bars came with two Hella 8” headlamps fitted which is a bit of a result and included the relay and wiring loom to fit the lights to the cars electrics.  These should provide much better front lighting on full beam, I'll explain how I fitted them later.

Fitting the bull bars with a steering guard and standard bumper

This in theory like any other job is easy, the ball bars connect to the car by removing the bumper valance, or cutting it, and sliding the ball bars under the car and bolting them onto the bumper bolts at the end of the chassis rails. This should be no more than a 30 minute job.

Discovery 1 Chassis Rails, bull bar fitting

Again like most things I seem to do, I had a couple of issues. Firstly I have a heavy duty steering guard on my Land Rover and this needed to have two of the 4 bolts removed (bumper bolts) and the spacers taken out to slide the steering guard down to allow the bull bars to move into place.

The bull bars should (should being the word here) slide between the steering guard and the bumper and you bolt all four bolts tight, the two top one’s going through the bull bar only and the bottom two through the bull bar and steering guard, bingo you’re done.

I will say now this is where buying second hand parts can be a right pain, although cheap. The steering guard was fine, nice and straight, although being second hand.  However, I found out that the bull bar must have had a bump at some point in the past and would not align properly, the two bracket at the bottom of the bull bars you bolt to were pushed inwards a bit and were off centre meaning the steering guard overlapped the bull bars and would not fit.

So after a few minutes of going hmm I decided the thing to do was to tighten up the top bolts holding on the bull bar which should straighten the brackets out and then use a hammer to whack the bottom part of the bull bar straight at which point I could slide the steering guard back up.

Nearly worked perfectly, bull bar straightened enough to let me get the steering guard in, but then I  have to whack it up with a hammer and push it with a jack into place, this was after an hour and with the use of some wd40 to aid it moving, at which point all was good and ended up with the car looking like this.

Ball Bars fitted to my 300tdi

That's it hopefully they will help protect the front of Larry a little next time even if I come across some wild bush ;-) or if I try to knock over a wall and fail.

Also I'm happy with Larry's new look front end more aggressive and functional.

Nearly done with Larry look.

Changing your diff oil, Discovery 1 300TDI

How to change your Differential oil on a Land Rover Discovery 1 300TDI

This is a brief explanation of how I change my diff oil on my Discovery 1 300TDI. This really is simple to do and takes approximately 30 minutes for both diffs, providing you do not have the issues, I did.

It’s really important to change your differential oil at 6,000 mile intervals or sooner if you do any heavy off roading to ensure your Land Rover performs as well as it can.

To do the job you will need;

•  A bowel to drain the diff oil into
• A ratchet 1/2" or 13mm
• Fresh EP80/90 mineral diff oil in one of those poring bottles

Firstly take your Land Rover for a drive for a few minutes to get the diffs warm, and then park on a level surface where you will change the oil.

You then slip a bowel under the diff you are working on and undo the bottom drain plug, this is off centre on the bottom left of the picture below, you can see a diff guards here.

Land Rover Discovery Diff with Diff Guard

The old oil will drain into the bowel, leave to drain for a few minutes until it stops. I use two bowels so I can nip to the other end of the car and do the next diff. When your diffs are empty you will need to put the drain plug back in, and fill with EP80/90 oil until the oil come out of the filler hole, this is the one you can see in the picture below.

Differential filler hole.

Now, what happened when I first did mine was pretty odd, firstly the drain plugs were seized, I had to use the Land Rover Bottle jack and a breaker bar to crack the drain plug bolts loose, it was not as bad with the filler plugs they came out with a good heave on the breaker bar.

My rear differential oil came out washy and green, this is where water had got into the diff. The front diff oil came out looking like black goo.

This should not be the case with either diff, basically at some time in the past the rear had got wet. The good news is, I had no metal coming out of either diff.  So I can only assume the last service I had done the dealer had not changed the diff oil although it was reported as being done on the schedule Grrr.

Look at the colour of the mixed oil below, this is not a reflection of the clouds, that’s the oil from the rear diff.

Water contaminated diff oil, YUK!

Also a tip, but your oil in 5ltr bottles and get a 1 litre bottle to use as a filler. This will save you a lot compared to buying loads of 1ltr bottles.

I use Comma diff oil, because its good quality, cheap and therefore I will not hesitate to replace it. In fact because my rear diff oil was really bad I will be replacing this in 1,000 mile and then at 5,000 mile just to get any remaining crap out.

That’s it simples!

Removing a water cooled EGR on a Discovery 1 300TDI

Discovery 1 EGR removal

My experience of removing an EGR from my Japanese Discovery 1 300TDI with a water cooled EGR system.  I fitted my Safari Snorkel leaving Larry with a blanked off EGR, but it was blanked off at the end of the water cooler pipe.  I had to do this because Larry is a late Japanese Import 300TDI which has a cooled EGR system and not the standard EGR single pipe set up found on earlier models.

You can see io the picture below shows all the pipework on the right side of the engine bay which you will not see on earlier Discovery 1.

EGR Cooler Pipework

When I fitted the snorkel the pipework on the right (the water feed into the EGR) was pressing very heavily against the air box and I had to bend the pipe out of the way making it a pain (to say the least) to get the air filter box closed.  Also to align the air intake I had to remove the heat shield form the air flow sensor. This in itself was not too much of an issues when I fitted the snorkel because we have had the 2nd coldest March on record, however, it was going to warm up at some time and I did not like the idea of loosing the heat sheild which protected the wiring, after all look what it did to the space shuttle.

Anyway, in the hope it will get warmer I bought a standard Discovery 1 300TDI bottom radiator hose and after spending about 5 minutes looking at a) how long my arms would need to be to change the pipe from above and b) not wanting to lie in the driveway under Larry I decided to book him in for a pipe change in my local garage £30 well spent I think.

So, the pipe has been changed and now looks like this, loads of room to the left of the air box.  You can see the EGR cooling pipes are now not used and where I blanked it off at the end of the EGR cooler.

Standard bottom hose fitted and EGR removed

The next part of the process is to remove the EGR itself so I can re-fit the heat shield.  I did this a couple of weeks later.  It was a simple process of removing the top of the air box and air flow sensor and unbolting the EGR and moving the manifold from the EGR to the manifold.

Tip, I soaked the old Allen bolts in WD40 for a few hours, it needed it.

Strip down to remove EGR, see the hole in the exhaust manifold

Then blanking the EGR on the manifold and re-assembling.

EGR blanking plate on and heat sink in place

Now a lot is said about blanking the EGR to improve performance and MPG.  After I fitted the snorkel I did notice the car ran very well, but I'm not sure if this is because it is sucking in air better, or the EGR removal.

I have a de-cat exhaust now as well, so the engine should breath about as good as it can.  I will check the MPG on my next long trip to see what has happened in terms of economy.

Update on Economy, nope not seen any difference, its doing 20mpg off road, 27mpg on mixed runs and 30+ on long ones at 60mph, however the pickup and running it much better.

Fitting a CB Radio for off roading

CB Radio Installation

A CB is quite an important part of any 4x4's kit mainly because it allows you to talk, or laugh at your fellow off roaders when your out playing with your vehicle, something you cannot do using a mobile phone.
Now its been a long time since I've had a CB, I think the last time I used one in the UK before fitting on to Larry was in the early 80's oh yes!  The early 80's!

Anyway, without going too much into my past, my asymmetric wedge, Russian shirts and pixie boots and a passion for Ford Escort MKII's we should move on with the times, quickly would be my preference.

Oddly, back in the 80's you used to pay for a CB license and also was restricted to 40 channels FM at 4 watts output.  To my surprise when I was looking at CB's for Larry, I found out a license was no longer needed and also you can now buy multichannel CB's legally, there's even a rumour that SSB will be legalised soon in 2013 without the need for a Radio Ham license, gosh!

Anyway, after some shopping around I bought a Intek M799 Multiband CB with 80UK channel FM/AM and its also legal across most of Europe and beyond.

Intek M799 stock photo

One thing about the Intek, its really small and could be fitted in a discreet place in your car.

I also bought a gutter mount and 5/8th antenna.  Now, the only thing I will say is don't get a gutter mount for a Discovery 1 is they don't work.  If you try to fit it, the aerial will be at 30 degrees to the gutter and will poke out sideways from your Landy, this is not good.

So after a quick trip to Maplin I bought a large magnetic mount antenna base for £15.  I had also ordered a SWR meter, so all the CB kit was about £100, I could have spent £60 but I wanted a European CB, so ner.

Now some technical stuff about SWR, ground planes and where to mount your aerial.

Mounting a CB radio to talk to someone about a mile away when off road is not really an issue, you can plonk it pretty much anywhere you like on your car.

However, if you are a Defender owner you need to know that although conductive, aluminium does not make a good ground plane, steel on the other hand does, not really a good reason to buy a Discovery over a Defender, but good in my books.  If you are a Defender owner reading this a) you will not be using a mag mount and b) the aerial will probably be at the front or rear of your car, or on a light bar or bumper.

Anyway, to maximise the general coverage of the CB radio on your Discovery you should put it bang in the middle of the roof, that way the signal you will transmit and receive will broadly be even around the car, or omnidirectional.

If you put the aerial at the front or back you will amplify the signal opposite to the aerial mount, making it directional. This is pretty cool if you want to use you car as a directional ground plane and gain extra sensitivity in front of you, but will limit the range of the radio behind your car and to the sides.

I have explained ground planes in the very complex computer generated diagrams below.

Aerial in the middle of the car

Aerial at the back of the car

Image Legend

Green = Car

Blue = Signal

Image Legend if you are colour blind 

Square = Car

Roundy ish Shapes = Signal.

SWR, or Standing Wave Ratio

An SWR meter is a piece of kit that measures the amount of energy reflected back to the CB when you are transmitting, normally caused by a badly tuned aerial or a lack of ground plane.  The idea is to get an SWR measurement as close to 1:1 as possible 1:3 being usable but loosing effectiveness of the radio with the possibility of causing it some damage.  My aerial came pre-tuned, and would you believe it, it was very close to 1:1 so it was good to go out of the box.

If however you get a CB and check the SWR and it generally higher than 1:2 on the meter you need to tune the aerial by making it shorter or longer, this is normally done on car aerials with an allen key and sliding the whip of the aerial into, or out of the base.

Remote Controlled Land Rover

Anyway, enough of the expensive graphics and technical stuff.  I shoved my aerial in the middle of the roof and it worked well, see below.

Now my girlfriend who shall be nameless, but for future reference we can call her Rachel, said Larry looked like a remote controlled car with the aerial on him.  Idiot controlled car I could live with, not remote controlled, that seems to imply there's some spotty kid driving Larry from afar.  Whereas it normally me being the idiot in it.

Rachel did have a point however, I had picked a large one for Larry, which did work, got good range, and fell off when whacked with tree branches.  So I said to Rachel (during our first trip out in the woods) I would get a shorter whip soon, this would stop all the banging at the side of the car when we were out together.  No sniggering, it's not that kinda whip I'm talking about, or that type of banging, I'm talking about the large metal rod sticking erect out of the top of Larry.

Fitting the CB

Anyway, fitting a CB is dead easy.

I did not want to leave the aerial on Larry when not in use, so I put the aerial in the middle of the roof (clump it goes), run the cable several times around the roof bar and then into the rear door and into the back of the radio.

Wire wrapped around roof bar

It's just as well I did run it around the roof bar because at least when the trees knocked it off it dangles down and does not go under the wheels, which happened twice in one trip.

The CB itself is fitted into a CB bracket and the mike on a mike bracket both held on by two screws.  All I needed to do was drill into the plastic inside the car and put the self tapping screws in to hold the brackets.

CB Bracket

Mike Bracket

By taking this approach I can put the aerial back in the car or in doors with the CB itself when not in use, pictures below.

All in all a simple mod for a Discovery 1, and well worth it when out with other Land Rovers, or indeed lesser brands of 4x4.

CB Installed

CD on powered from the cigarette lighter

CB Performance

We have used the CB now a couple of times, it has worked very well and the range on flat ground has been anything upto 8 miles which I'm amazed at.  Obviously when off roading in hilly areas the range is a lot less.

The 7" mag mount has had no issues holding the aerial on down the motorways even with the big whip it has and all in all it works!