Discovery 1 HD overland suspension

Upgrading my Discovery 1 suspension

When I bought my Discovery, I knew from the start I would be changing the suspension.  The reason why I was thinking this way, was because I knew it was likely that at some point I would be carrying extra load and going off road and over land travelling at the same time.

Also, I felt that as the Discovery 1 was always sold as a hybrid car, 80% on 20% off road bias and therefore there would be some compromise with the suspension.

This little blogg holds my thoughts behind what I ended doing with Larry's suspension.

Which type of suspension to select for you Land Rover

After a lot of reading and looking at other peoples cars, I put the suspension upgrades into two types;

Type 1; 2"+lift for disco owners who are looking to improve the off road capability of their car, and fit much larger tyres than standard.

These set-ups come in standard and heavy duty shocks and springs, with cool stuff like dislocation cones etc for extreme off road action.  However the need to have the caster angle of the steering re-aligned to ensure the stability of the car remains in place is also a requirement with higher lifts. Apparently without caster correction (3 or 6 degree) a 2-4" lift  will make the car go all over the place and not be very stable, and can be dangerous.

Type 2; 1" or no lift and standard or heavy duty shocks and springs.  Big advantage here is there is no need for caster correction.  However, tyre choice is limited.

Also there is an advantage with keeping the height of your Landy as standard as possible.  A lot of people report failing bushes and drive train components after fitting a big lift.  I personally do not now anyone who has had this issue; but there seems to be a lot of people this has happened to on Land Rover forums.


I know I'm over simplifying the suspension choices a bit but that's how I think suspension lifts works.  Type 1 improves off road capability and looks super cool, type 2 improves load carrying capability and is less cool but more functional for overland travel.

Obviously like any car suspension set-up there are hundreds of manufacturers of suspension parts from the top range Old Man Emu to cheaper Britpart kits.  These range from an upgrade of say £100 for just springs to £1,000+ for a really exotic set-up.

What I selected

After a lot of research and also a couple of trips off road I decided that as standard a Discovery 1 is more than capable of tackling anything I would tackle anyway,  I take back the 80/20 bias I said earlier. You would be surprised just how far they can go if you do some free mods, like a bumper cut and learning t drive off road.

But as standard my suspension was a bit low under load and also a bit wobbly (possibly just a bit old like me) in an unladen state.  So I thought would lift it a little and also make it a little stiffer to reduce the wobblebility (is that a word?).

I decided I would fit Bearmach HD Blue Springs with a slight lift of 30mm on the front and 20mm on the back.  This would mean no need for a caster correction kit, also in theory I would be able to carry a heavy load in the back of Larry without the suspension getting low.

I also decided to put some Armstrong Gas HD shocks on Larry as well.  The complete set-up was about £363.00. The fitting process was really simple, I put Larry into a garage to get it done.  I know, but I had just spent all my spare time repairing the front end and I also wanted to get him checked out.  The fitting only cost £45 anyway.  I kept my old shocks as spares for when I go away.

After the suspension was fitted

So how is Larry now with his HD Springs and new shocks?  To be honest I was worried the springs would be so hard Larry would become uncomfortable to be in, but this is not the case.  He was wallowing before I got the suspension replaced, when I picked him up and drove home he felt a lot more stable and also higher, a lot higher, as in I could not put my foot flat on the floor when I got out.  What I found out was the old suspension was in fact tired and was sagging and Larry was now a good 2" higher than when I started.  Part of the lift will also be due to the HD springs not compressing much as the original springs.

I have now done about 800 miles since fitting and I must say I prefer this suspension than standard anyway.  Only time will tell how good it will be in Morocco later this year under load and off road.  I assume I will lose some articulation with the HD setup, but gain load capabilities.

Here's the suspension, sorry its not a good photo.

Bearmach Blue HD rear

And a wheel sitting in the rear arch, notice the big gap between the top of the tyre and the wheel.

Bearmach Blue, is it now time for bigger tyres?

That's it, the easiest upgrade so far.


Update !
3000 miles in a I'm used to the harder suspension now, on a smooth road there not a lot in it from the standard soft springs, on very bumpy roads it is noticeably harder.  The lift definitely has remained and is good.

Further Update !
Having now completed several motorway trips I will say that the HD suspension really adds to the noise in the cabin, this is most noticable when there's no load in the car, I'll see what happens when it is fully loaded for Morocco, 

Final update!
 I might have to change this setup, after 6,000 mile overland the setup is not right, to hard at the front and to low at the back.

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.

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 :-)