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Post by valhalla on Nov 23, 2019 23:53:32 GMT 1
It's an emergency, so the "scrap Disco" that I recovered for little money last year, intending to make a back-up for my beloved Defender, has suddenly taken on a whole new importance.
In escence, I need to fix a number of issues that I identified during the initial inspection in September 2018, plus one or two more. This is on top of one of my chassis-swaps for a new, galvanised frame, for that is the reason the vehicle was scrapped in the first place.
If it wasn't for the base vehicle being so cheap (£10), it might not be worth doing this. I have already spent a small fortune on parts for delivery around the end of next week, by which time I should have the body separated and the powertrain out.
Other than one "paying-job" to get out of the way this week, hopefully by Wednesday lunchtime latest, my total life is going to be spent in the workshop getting this vehicle back in a state to be MoT's by Christmas. I reckon on a basis 5-day turn-round on a D2, but this one has a few extra challenges; it has every last option on top of a top-spec vehicle, meaning that there are more seats to work-round, more electrics, air suspension at the back, hydraulics in the middle.
Day_1 in the workshop this afternoon was getting the car inside in the first place - meaning everything else has to be out and clear of the access doors. A pipe has pinholed since the D2 was stood last year, and so far it has proven elusive to order, despite looking on the LR Genuine Parts fiches from tip-to-stern. It just does not appear to be listed or illustrated!! As it is an engine oil pipe on the pressure side of the pump, the engine cannot be run for more than a few seconds before it hisses engine oil over the nearside of the engine bay, so that is a bonus challenge. Fortunately I now have the battery off, and excuses to run the engine are gone.
The worst job on any of these D2 chassis-swaps is removing the side-steps/rock-bars. This one has/had LR Genuine Parts on the sills, meaning everything looks OK, but the fixings are rusted solid, or just not recognisable any more. So 8:00pm tonight I finally switched the cordless cutting-tool off, and the steps are now stowed away for an eBay sale some time. Rule_1 : NO SIDE STEPS
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Post by valhalla on Nov 24, 2019 22:33:25 GMT 1
It's looking a little more jaded that it first appeared last September. To be fair to it, it has just stood in the top tree-field for 14months, so a fair bit of cleaning is required.
This was how it looked last year;
But it now has acquired that typical Landrover fug of "perma-damp" on the interior, and the exterior has the usual "Skye moss" decorations;
I reckon it will clean-up just fine, and the strip commenced this morning. I didn't get far, as the "paying-job" turned-up around the same time, ready for loading on the ramps this evening. That will keep me occupied for a fair bit......
The interior is running wet, but again, I reckon it will dry-out and clean-up over the next few weeks in the workshop. The bits are coming out in one piece inside the car, but the fixings that run though to the chassis in the centre of the car are proving to be a complete so-and-so. This is the worst D2 I have done so far, even though the body is hinting that it might ultimately be the best result at the end. It doesn't help that all the exposed threads on body-mount bolts, etc. are very "dry" with corrosion from being parked on grass for 14months.
The old girl had the last laugh this evening. She can no longer propel herself, so the digger was used to push her forwards onto the 4-poster ramps for a few days. The only problem was, the brakes are seized solid (I had intended to remove them today, but I ran out of time) so the tow-pole I use on the digger arm just folded in half around the hinge-point I built into it. So that is another job I'm going to need to fabricate.......  |
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Post by studabear on Nov 24, 2019 23:52:30 GMT 1
What is the penetrating oil of choice on Skye?
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remmington
Apprentice
Owns Spark Eroder
Posts: 4,966
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Post by remmington on Nov 25, 2019 5:07:43 GMT 1
What is the penetrating oil of choice on Skye? The above made an old man laugh - LOL... |
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Post by valhalla on Nov 26, 2019 0:51:24 GMT 1
What is the penetrating oil of choice on Skye? He wasn't being rude!!!!! 
The short answer to stu's question is : "Whatever comes to hand". It really is a case of "beggars cannot be choosers" as I have to buy this sort of consumable gallons at a time (no surprise there.....)
At the moment, I have several metal gallon containers of fluid called "Liquid Spanner" off the tool van, which I use to fill my WD40 squirty bottle. It seems to do the job fairly well, in that it penetrates but doesn't dry out too fast, so you can pre-soak assemblies a day in advance (if you remember......) then give it all another good soak as you start to work on the fixings.
I still have a soft-spot for WD40. Yes, I know it is not really meant for this sort of work (according to every keyboard-warrior on the 'net) and that it was invented for something completely different. In practice, I find that it does a good job of dissolving rust within a stuck joint, but only if you can encourage it to get in there; it doesn't seem to wick into threads as well as other products. I have witnessed time and again the red-rusty-tide of fluid that comes out of the seized fixings on Landrover chassis, and if you can heat/cool these a bit, then you can just about get some WD40 in there to get the rust loosened, after which it is easy. To that end, the WD40 treatment is one where I have a fixing moving, but I know it is going to bind further down an exposed thread that has rusted. A few turns back and forth with WD40 will get the nut to run and clean the rubbish out of the thread.
I used to have a load of Duck Oil products, but I find it is not so easy to buy it gallons at a time. They seemed to stay lubricating for longer after the work, but these days I now just apply spray grease for lightweight applications, and brush copper grease everywhere else where I need things to stay moving in the future. 30years of Landrover restoration has proven copper greases to be long-lasting and the saviour of jobs decades after you first put the grease onto the threads.
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Post by valhalla on Nov 26, 2019 1:00:55 GMT 1
What is the penetrating oil of choice on Skye? Famous Grouse. In liberal quantities. Especially when you need to order the complete fixing kit for your Disco2 (bolts, bushes, washers, etc.) as the old fixings are clearly not going to come-quietly by normal spannering.
Any prizes for how much a kit costs from a Landrover indi outfit?
No change from £270, is the bottle-emptying answer. Hic.
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remmington
Apprentice
Owns Spark Eroder
Posts: 4,966
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Post by remmington on Nov 26, 2019 1:50:59 GMT 1
What is the penetrating oil of choice on Skye? Famous Grouse. In liberal quantities. Especially when you need to order the complete fixing kit for your Disco2 (bolts, bushes, washers, etc.) as the old fixings are clearly not going to come-quietly by normal spannering. Any prizes for how much a kit costs from a Landrover indi outfit? No change from £270, is the bottle-emptying answer. Hic.
My Father likes a Famous Grouse he is old now and will only have one for a treat now - to me a Grouse is a bit sharp! I prefer a Glenmorangie - the standard 10 year old one. I have had all sorts of Malt Whiskeys in my time - expensive ones bought as gifts - grand vintage ones - foul peaty ones. But the standard Glenmorangie which can be bought from Tescos for £25 a bottle - takes some beating - served neat on its own - as a chaser for a cup of tea. I only buy WD40 in 5ltr cans or PlusGas in aerosols. I have tried everything (well most things) in my time - I did used to buy Duck Oil in 5ltr cans - but you don't see it anymore. WD40 does come out brown and rusty if you can get it in and get it moving - you do need to leave these things to soak. |
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Post by rhyds on Nov 26, 2019 9:00:10 GMT 1
Jura 10yo for me as the "cooking" whisky, got a few nicer ones in the cupboard for special occasions (including a Talisker or two!)
As for penetrating oil, I've always tried to keep plus-gas to hand, otherwise its plain old WD-40 as the flippable straw is really handy for precise aiming.
Also, I didn't notice how effective penetrating oil really was until I started dismantling my old oil stove. I tried turning all the heat-soaked bolts "dry" and they wouldn't shift, a quick squirt of WD and wait five minutes and they turned fine. It was also really handy for getting the collar assembly off the bottom of the flue. A good spray around and the darned thing almost fell off!
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Post by valhalla on Nov 28, 2019 23:00:31 GMT 1
I might have to modify my expectations somewhat.....
I got a half-day on this after 2:00pm this afternoon. so not exactly a cracking-start that I had hoped-for. I had a couple of jobs and visitors to fit-in before I could roll the Disco back over the 2-post ramps, then there was an horrendous task of getting the vehicle exactly square and symetrical over the ramp arms to receive the sill-support beams when the time is ready. This is compounded by two problems; 1) the vehicle does not roll well, because the FOS brakes are seized solid, and 2) I cannot get the wheel off, because the locking wheelnut key is missing
I thought I would use my wheel-skates to move the whole vehicle around, but the weight of the thing (over 2100kg) and the roughness of the floor at the moment (eaten by various spilled fluids) means that these are rendered useless - a wasted hour there. In the end, the digger won every argument necessary to put the Disco just where I wanted it!
There are loads of "issues" creeping in already, and it appears that the degree of restoration on the body alone (which is normally a plug-and-play part of this sort of re-chassis job) is going to require a fair bit of work. One area I missed on my initial inspection last year, or maybe it just deteriorated in the interval, is the front inner wing corrosion hidden under the harnesses and various modules dotted around the outside of the engine-bay.
I stalled on one bit of the stripping this evening, and I'm thinking how I'm going to get around this; the trims below the headlamps have a single screw that secures them back through the inner wheelarch. These trims must be removed to go any further with the front panelwork - you cannot strip the grille out without removing these, or damaging them in some way. The screw each side has a mashed pozi-slot, meaning that nothing will turn them, and access is very, very tight for a Dremel grinding wheel - certainly impossible from the front of the car.
With a few other things around the car, there is a pattern of slightly damaged pozi-screws, and this is where some cars get a bad reputation. In the case of the Disco2, if you use the right tools from Day_1, then nothing is a problem, even with corrosion. But get a vehicle that has been owned or worked-on by an incompetent technician, then everything goes wrong until you reach a suitable depth into the car where said idiot has not reached - and I have not found that limit yet...... |
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Post by valhalla on Nov 29, 2019 23:58:04 GMT 1
Day_3 in the workshop, and it's definitely looking like this is going to be a tough haul to get a working car by the 22nd December!!
I would post some pictures here, but I've had problems logging-in through ProBoards today - some sort of issue around London I think.
Anyway, the body is not quite ready to come off, but hopefully tomorrow will give me the time to separate the running-gear away from beneath it. The front and back of the vehicle is clear of impediments now - but, what a rotbox this is turning-out to be !!!!! I eventually gained access through the wheelarch liners (they have to come out anyway for this job) and I was able to run a Dremel grinding-stone across the two Pozi fixings that halted me yesterday. So the front end is now denuded to the point that I can see some welding is going to be need before the body can go back down.
I have left a few "easy jobs" to start-with tomorrow afternoon, just to get into the swing of things, then I have the unenviable task of releasing the remaining body-mounts, or what is left of them.....  |
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Post by valhalla on Dec 1, 2019 0:22:31 GMT 1
Day_4 in the workshop.
A very late start today - normally Saturday is kicking-off by 2:00pm, but various problems around the place meant that it was 5:00pm before I got started.
The "easy jobs" mentioned yesterday were not all easy.....mostly-so, but not all...... This really is, to misquote Chris Rea, "Oh no, this is the car, yes this is the car, from hell!"
By this evening, I had a floor full of rust, but still the body is not separated yet. I am 6 body-mounts away from sticking my sill battens onto the ramp arms and lifting it away. That could be 1hour, or by current progress, 6hours away....
To put this into some sort of context, bearing in mind that it is too cold in the workshop for the camera without the heater running in there (1.5hours to light it up today  ) I finished-off by releasing the 4 sill body-mount points from the chassis. The fixings were OK on the front two, but the rear two needed the air reciprocating saw to slice neatly around the chassis outrigger legs adjacent to the mounts themselves (so I can access the rusted bolts and bobbins with the air cut-off saw when the body is free of the chassis). I was expecting the body to come down a bit as I sliced through the legs, but what I didn't expect on the offside was the chassis to fall-away a bit as I released it from the body.....
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Post by valhalla on Dec 1, 2019 22:52:16 GMT 1
Day_5 in the workshop, and today we have achieved a milestone, which is by my reckoning, a BAD BOY body lift !!!!
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Post by valhalla on Dec 2, 2019 23:52:54 GMT 1
Day_6 in the workshop. A bad start, due to the phone ringing itself off the desk before I even got the overalls on this morning. Amazing how everything happens all at once when the workshop is totally tied-up. Oh well, calendar starts sometime around 3rd week January at the moment!
I pulled the stops out all day, with lots of extra jobs to do along the way - I need to get the "shopping" finished in good time to get the parts in time before Christmas, so I'm having to do as much examination of everything before I remove it all.
Finally got the powertrain out of the chassis this evening, but it hung-up on one engine mount on the way out, so a bit of drama in the pitch dark outside the workshop with the digger.....
Hopefully the axles can come off by Wednesday night, but I have a bit of remote diagnostic work to do tomorrow, so unlikely to get a good run at this until then, and there's plenty to do before the axles can be detached.
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Post by studabear on Dec 3, 2019 0:02:14 GMT 1
Well its moving along, what does a replacement chassis cost to buy?
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Post by valhalla on Dec 3, 2019 0:27:54 GMT 1
Well, a "cheap" Disco2 chassis (which will cause problems all along, not turn-up when it should, etc. etc.) is around the £2450 mark to the public. The ones I use are top-notch, and they are around £2800 to the public. All with Vodka and Tonic to be added.
The reason I use Richards Chassis for these parts is simple; they fit, first time, because they have been checked on a jig before despatch. It also helps to be able to buy them a few at a time, and saves a bit of money along the way. On a job like this one, I cannot afford the time to have to lift the body on and off the chassis to correct alignments on the holes, as the body lift/drop is a bit "delicate" around some of the components - there's something like 3mm tolerance to clear the radiator pack nearside fixing, for example.
Defender is different, as every panel is a separate and bolt-able entity. Whereas Disco2 is effectively an accurate monocoque that has no options for adjustment itself.
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) I finished-off by releasing the 4 sill body-mount points from the chassis. The fixings were OK on the front two, but the rear two needed the air reciprocating saw to slice neatly around the chassis outrigger legs adjacent to the mounts themselves (so I can access the rusted bolts and bobbins with the air cut-off saw when the body is free of the chassis). I was expecting the body to come down a bit as I sliced through the legs, but what I didn't expect on the offside was the chassis to fall-away a bit as I released it from the body.....
