Land Rover Discovery major bodywork repairs.

Repairing bodywork on my Land Rover Discovery 300 TDI

Well I may or may not have said this before, but when you have an old Land Rover they become part of the family, this is the position we found ourselves in with Larry.

However, like all family members they are not always well or doing what you want them to do. With Larry it was not the latter but the former.  It all happened in September 2013, we were travelling home from a meal when my girl friend who I will not name, so lets call her Rachel, she got a little indecisive about a turn slid on gravel and then parked Larry at about 15-25 mph into an Oak tree.

I would like to say at this point a Discovery 1 300TDI is no match for a 400 year old Oak tree.  The Oak tree is OK and is still growing well.

This mishap resulted in the following damage to Larry's nose;

Discovery 1 front end damage

Now the one thing I will say is that we were all fine in the car and apart from my left leg shin which took a whack on the glove compartment, yes everyone was OK.  We also had a 8 year old girl and an American in the back of Larry and when we crashed one of them was screaming badly, a real little girl scream, I'm still not sure if it was the 8 year old or the American,  I'll let you choose.

The following day we got Larry towed back to my drive and we started to think what to do next.

So what next?  Rachel thought I should call the insurance company and get them to assess the damage and get it repaired.  Now knowing that a) they would write him off based on repair costs and b) the car looked a mess but chassis looked OK, I decided to repair him myself hopefully saving the cost of a garage repair and also my no claims bonus.

Firstly I needed to strip Larry back to a point where there was no bent or damaged panels.  Fortunately it seemed the tree trunk aimed its Karate chop between the wheel and the chassis leg and although the bodywork, bull bars, bonnet lights etc were a complete mess the car was straight, amazing considering how far back the bonnet had moved.  When stripped Larry back he went from this.

Larry at home feeling ill :-(

To this.

Stripped back Discovery 1

Now for the replacement parts I decided to get some second hand parts, specifically the slam panel, which is not made any more and nearside headlamp unit and top wing rail.  And also buy come new panels for the inner wing.

Working in software development I really do not to do a lot of welding on a day to day bases, but I had some practise when I was a kid and decided to take on the welding myself.  Welding is not difficult if you think about what you are doing and check out some of the forums for advice.  The only issue I had when practising was when my gas ran out, look at the difference in welds below.

Mig with gas on the left, gas ran out on the right.

I had to clear up the second hands land rover parts I had bought.  Which now looked like this after some angle grinding to remove it from the dona car, more grinding and spot weld drilling (oh that's not fun, I hate drilling spot welds) to get it to this.

Second hand slam panel and light box

I needed to remove and treat any old spot welds and rust on the 2nd hand parts; again this was done with and angle grinder using a flap disk or cutting disk.  I

f your going to do this be careful you can cut through the metal very easily.  I treated the rust with Crust and primed the panel with weld through primer (mistake, it works but clean panels are easier to weld, especially if your not a welder as a profession).

Bottom of the rusty battery holder before.

Battery holder cleaned up

The cleaning technique is simple, angle grinder and disk to remove the rust and old welds, you have to be very careful not to take to much metal off, or you will end up with junk panels.  After grinding the crap off I then rust treated the panel with Crust.



So, after cleaning up all the parts I then had to start and re assemble Larry and weld the key parts on, I must admit the weather was not on my side.  Due to work commitments I did not really start the larger welds till the week before xMas 2013 just as the high winds and storms started.  I did have a portable tent type garage over Larry but this was completely destroyed, fortunately after I fitted the bonnet.

So 1st thing was to cut and fit the replacement 2nd had parts.

Firstly the slam panel was aligned and cut.

Cutting the slam panel.

 Then I had to align the top of the inner wing where the wing screws on, I measured the gaps with string.

Top of inner wing cut to size.

I then took the 2nd hand parts off and welded the new replacement panels to the old panels, this is a right pain in the arse because the new panels were thicker than the old ones and being out doors in the wind welding new against old panels is not fun.  But it gave me a complete front end and inner wing to align to the remaining good parts of the car.

Anyway, job done, I then refitted the complete panel and cut and aligned the inner wing, as follows.

Inner wing new panel cut and part welded in place.

The alignment of the panels is by far the most important part, I really tried to make everything square with the side which was not damaged, I got everything to line up pretty good, the test was going to be when the bonnet went on.


The slam panel was then spot welded and primed with Zinc Rich primer, and then painted with more primer and then painted.  Where I had drilled through both the panels I backed the hole with copper clamped to the back using welding and G clamps, then I plug welded the holes and ground down any high points, this works really well filled any holes and attached the panel.

Slam panel welded

I then seam welded the top inner wing and the inner wing panels together.  When I aligned the panels I tried to keep the gap to less than 1mm, again using the copper backed welding technique.

Top wing seam welded.

Fiddly bit done as well

All the main seam welds worked really well, then I needed to do what turned out to be the harder bit and weld the old battery tray onto the inner wing and also the internals and reinforcement bar.  It actually came out OK.

Spot weld not fab

I completed the wing reinforcement, however I got a bit paranoid about the spot welds onto the old metal, so I put some M6 bolts through to pull the reinforcement tight to the new and old inner wing parts, also I needed somewhere to put the EDC pump and earths for the parts inside the wing.  Then I spot and seam welded the reinforcement bar, this time I could not copper back it, so I had to do small spot welds, you quickly do spot after spot, to build up the gaps between the plates then grind them flat.

To finish the panels, treated any rust, I primed them, used seam sealer on all seams I could, re primed several times and also painted 3 times, undersealed and then spray waxoiled the light boxes and battery shelves as well.  Hopefully this will hold any rust off for a while.  The reinforcing bar had loads of everything sprayed into it as well.

Then the easy bit, I bolted him back together again.

Part complete

 And then after one more session.

I have since fitted the lights, aligned the bonnet properly (it has the same gaps both side so I must have aligned the replacement panels well) and now I'm on the lookout for a colour matched front end.

Anyway, I now feel like I'm a real disco owner after taking on my own body repair.  These cars are really easy to work on so I feel confident enough to tackle any job really.

Oh and I kept the aircon off, I think I may put a 2nd alternator where it used to be.  With the second belt missing the engine is quieter.

List of replace parts;

Entire inner wing upto the ABS unit
Entire front panels to about 4 inches from the drivers side wing (kept the light box drivers side on)
Loads of new nuts and bolts
Bumper
Bull Bar, to be fitted
Bonnet and hinges
Lights and indicators
Some trim and Glove compartment
Wing

I also cleaned the inter cooler whilst it was easy to get to, well lets face it the front of the car was missing.

What I would say is if you are reasonably handy with spanners and have basic welding skills this was an easy repair and would have been a lot easier if I had a garage or good summer weather.  Larry is back on the road, I only need to do the glove compartment and fix a door handle broken by one of the passengers in the back.

Ignoring the tools I bought (I'm restoring an MGB next year so I need them anyway) the repair cost was as follows;

2nd hands parts £150
New parts £79
Paints, I have loads left which will be used on the MGB £80
New aux belt £12
New Bull Bar £70

So thats £391 I think my insurance excess is about £250 so I think I won this one.


Lastly I took him to the local Land Rover specialist and I quote he said "not a bad repair" I love garages ;-) not sure if this is positive of negative?  I think the former.