Minor Discovery 1 repairs, welding the sills and indicator faults

Repairing our Land Rover again

Whilst I was expecting a few things to go wrong with my Land Rover 300TDI after 5,000 miles in 2 weeks I was surprised at what actually went wrong. I would have maybe a wheel bearing failure, suspension after the bashing Larry took, or even something worse like a hose failure, transmission fault.  But no the sills and Indicators went wrong.  So nothing that serious and certainly nothing which was going to stop the tour in any way.

Our complete list was;

1. The plastic headlamp retaining clips broken
2. The driver side wing mirror glass fell out, which I leaned was just glued in to start off with.  A bad previous repair
3. The driver side indicators started blinking quickly, err

Also on further inspection at home I found I'd managed to destroy the metal plates which hold the rear mud flaps to the wheel arches.  Also two small holes had appeared in the rear of the sills?  These really looked OK before we went, how odd.

So prior to MOT in August I set about fixing the problems, the mirror was glued back in, plastic clips replaced on the headlamp, easy.  This only left me the Sills and Indicators to resolve.

Fixing the Discovery 1 sills

After replacing the whole front end back of Larry after the incident with the Oak tree I was not worried about doing this repair on my drive way at home.

I got the welder, angle grinder, drill and wire brushes out and started cleaning up the while sills after removing the Rock Slider.

The overall condition of the sills was pretty good, I know Larry is a Jap import, but he has been here for some time now so rust is starting to show.  I took the opportunity to get all the rust off.

Anyway, quick cleanup, Por 15 applied and left to dry, then I painted the whole sills both sides with two coats of zink rich primer then two coats of gloss black car spray paint.

Then I set about cutting out the rust and doing the repair.

Drivers side hole and split between the mud guard and sill

The very odd passenger side sill

Ok so the next thing to do was to cut out two pieces of metal to fit the wholes, this was done using the angle grinder and a cardboard template, here's and example of the finished patch plate.

Replacement part

Set into the whole, backed with copper

I then tack welded the pieced in, I did not seam weld them because the metal is to thin and the welder probably would have blown wholes in the sills.

This gave the following results.

Tacked around the plate

Seam welded the wing bottom then tacked in the plate

After fitting the plate, I then flap disk'd down the welds, not to much because there not that visible, re-primed and painted the whole repair inside and out.  This gave me the repair done like this.

Shiny paint

I probably should have flapped the spots down a little more

So that completed the sill repair, the only repair remaining now for the MOT was the indicators.

Indicators flashing to fast on a Discovery 1

This problems has proved to be more difficult than I though.  Normally if you get an indicator flashing to fast its because a bulb has gone which changes the current flowing through the circuit and changes the flasher speed.  You put in a new bulb and bingo, current as expected and your done.

Mine however was not like this, all the bulbs seemed OK.  So I did this diagnostics check.

   Firstly I checked all bulbs were working, they were
   Then I checked that the other side was OK, it was, they share the same relay unit
   Then I checked the earths to the indicators, yes this was all OK

Hmmmm.....

Now I was stumped, so I sent Larry in to fail its MOT and let let the garage look at it.

You would never believe this, the issue was the bulbs, I got all of them changed on the advise of the MOT man and everything started working as normal.  Now even though all the bulbs seemed OK, I guess bouncing them about in Morocco must have changed the resistance and therefore the flash rate.  I know exactly when they started to go quickly this was when we flew into a dry river bed during a sand storm, this must have mucked up a bulb or two.

Anyway that was done and fixed, result, MOT passed after the bulbs were replaced.

I did get some advisories, the destroyed mud flaps and front wheel bearings, I'll fix this later this year.  I will also check the rest of the wheel arches because saw some surface rust which  may need plating.  Then I will cavity wax the sills with Waxoil or Dinitrol.  This should keep them going for a few years.

I'll then put the rock sliders back on, I'm really pleased I had these in Morocco or the underside of the car would have been a mess.