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 :-)