Disco 1 Advice for repairs

Hi all.

Think I need to accept the inevitable that my Disco is going to see some welding work pretty soon.
Sills are pretty shot, quite a few holes in the front arches and I haven't even looked at the boot floor yet.

Asked around but nobody really wants to take on the work so I'm thinking I should just bite the bullet and have a go myself.

So looking at advice and suggestions what where to go for supplies and equipment and also what route to take.

First here is some photos I've taken of the metal condition:



I was initially planning on cutting out the rust and welding in pieces of fresh metal but am I better off getting replacement inner wings and just ripping the whole lot out?
Keep seeing a company on eBay offering "easy on" panels. Anyone had experience with these?

Need to get pictures of the sills but looks like the outer have crumbled away from the inner.
Again am I better off just replacing the entire inner and outer skins?
Also how much work is involved in making jackable heavy duty sills? I'm deffo a novice at this.

Finally I'll need to get myself a welder, any recommendations on ones to go for? What wire speed/ampage etc to go for.

Hoping over the winter I can make space in the barn and save the old commercial from becoming yet another breaker.

Chris.

Yrm is your friend, the best panels if you ask me.

You can get the front inner valances in sections so either replace the lot or individual sections, personally I would do the lot.

Looks to me like it's a seam sealing and where fasteners were just like on a RRC, should get lots of advice from the forums.

Once you start to strip it and hunt fer good metal you will be shocked how deep the rust runs so don't buy any parts till you know the worst.

Thanks for that, I will google YRM and start getting an idea of price.
Yes not sure how this project will end up when I start properly digging around the metalwork.

sills are about £160 a side. Labour is about £350

Hi Buddy I would have done it for you but I'm in the sunny Scotland lol a sealey mighty mig 150 will be
decent enough & once your done you could sell it on for decent money DO NOT buy a gasless mig !!!!
Can get hobby weld gas for 100 quid including the deposit for the bottle(60 quid) refills are 30 quid
Boc ect charge 90 quid+ a year for the bottle deposit.

If your doing whole sills use box section, some real good posts on here about it.

Just update on this one.

Looks like YRM will have all the parts I need so just gotta wait till my mate finishes the work on his defender so I can get the workshop.

Been doing some googling and not finding much out about building and fitting box section sills to a disco. Anyone got any photos of the process or a link to a build on it?

Discovery Sill Replacement | LandyZone - Land Rover Forum

Discovery Sill Replacement Write-up - Tools and Fabrication - LR4x4 - The Land Rover Forum

Easy enough to do, best advice I can give is to get some 2mm plate and make yourself some new body mounts too, I have a couple special brackets that I weld to the door posts and to the floors for when I cut right through the bottom of the door posts, it makes life much easier when you can gut it all out cleanly with bulk cuts, all you have to do once it is fitted is plate the floor to the new sill and fit a strip for the door seals to back on to. most people tend to leave the floor over the top and use the old bit of inner sill to locate them but I don't bother, 9 inch grinder and from wheel arch to footwell chop it all out including the bottoms of the door posts, I've seldom found many that are not already rotten, so long as you've fitted the brackets for A & B posts it all goes back together square and just rebuild the bottoms of the posts with 2mm plate & so long as you leave a couple of drains at the very bottoms of the side plates the water can drain away.

Check your battery & light boxes too, chances are they've gone at the bottoms too.

I will also warn you to make sure you pull back the rubber and foam matting, the girl who owned my Disco before me had let her uncle have a go at welding up the inner wings and set for to the foam when he tacked the new bit of washing machine to the bulkhead and set fire to all the wiring under the dash, made a right mess of it!

Thanks very much for that, lot of great information there.

Don’t suppose you have photos of any of the work you have done or of the brackets/braces that you have made?

I am having trouble with photo bucket where all the pictures were, they're telling me I no longer have an account!

I will see if I can find the old memory cards but I've moved house a half dozen times since, the bracket is easy, its sitting on my spares shelf for the "one day I might need this" moment that might never come lol

I've pretty extensive experience of easy on panels, having done the two D1's we have here. I rate them highly - especially their inner wings and body mounts.

For the cills, use 120 x 60 box section with new body mounts (from easy on) - and they will be in pretty quickly - I'd be putting decent drain holes in the box section too, I even made a "jig" to space the holes - from memory each cill is about 1500mm long. I used Easy-On's sill kit for my 4 door - and box was easier on another D1 - If (when???) I do another sill, it'll be box.... if you added more floor support brackets ( about a tenner each), then you'll have a very strong sill you can jack off - within the limits of the body mounts, which are only 7/16ths UNF bolts.....

Some good advice in this thread already, and I've uploaded a picture of how I secured the A/B/C posts on our 4 door - the three door is slightly more awkward IME, and I'd check the front of the rear wheel arches very carefully before you do much else - a lot of panels meet there, and LR's "water trap creation process" works REALLY well in that area .... and, sadly, in quite a few others too

Here's what I did to hold the A/B/C pillars on the four door....

You can also see that the bulkhead was suffering all done now though, and last two MOT's are clean tickets

You will be better to take the side off a 3 door to gain access, BUT, it is very much down to how much you CBA'd !

Don't be tempted to use the br*tpart oversills for the 3 door - all they do is trap the old rotten sh*t inside new ch*nese sh*t. There was an article in one of the LR mags a bit ago showing this being done, and the fools left most of the original very rotten sill in place !

Cheers Dieseldog, thanks for looking.

Lots of excellent information there BFG thank you.
I want to fit my 35’s back on this truck so think I’m gonna sort my extended arches first to give me a better idea of what metal I have left to work with.

Box section with easy on mounts seems to be a good way of doing it. Just hoping the bulkhead doesn’t turn out to be a nightmare to sort at the same time

Shame you're all the way over in Essex, I'd come give you a hand, I remember the struggling away on my own needing three hands lol

Watch out for the steel brake line that goes under the drivers foot well too, it goes through a brace spot welded to the floor that rusts away, bulkheads usually OK, just outsides of the footwells where they meet the A posts, there are 3 panels spot welded in that joint seam & not very well sealed.

Co-Pang-Yang said:

Lots of excellent information there BFG thank you.

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No probs, HTH. Ask away if there is anything more specific - I've done a few of these now

Co-Pang-Yang said:

Just hoping the bulkhead doesn’t turn out to be a nightmare to sort at the same time

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IME The bulkhead suffers where the inner wing meets it - and this can spread upwards to where the servo (etc) mounts - the footwell panel it still available on eblag - about 50 piccies of the queen each side.... I didn't know when I did our two - but it would have been worth it...

Edited to add:- footwell panel -

www.ebay.co.uk/itm/292375251523

dieseldog69 said:

Shame you're all the way over in Essex, I'd come give you a hand, I remember the struggling away on my own needing three hands lol

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+1 on all the above - if you get stuck holding stuff in place - drill holes, bolt it on, then weld it, and then plug weld the holes up....

Disco1BFG said:

+1 on all the above - if you get stuck holding stuff in place - drill holes, bolt it on, then weld it, and then plug weld the holes up....

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I made good use of my small ratchet straps when doing the box sills on the last one as no help and axle stands were already under it lol

Some pictures of the bulkhead on SWMBO's 3 door...

Looking down where the washer bottle goes:-



Looking up inside the wheel arch - this is worse than usual due to some prat slathering it in fibreglass - which just trapped the water !


The patch I made out of 2.5mm zintec - then fully welded in place, ( having dragged the wiring behind out of the way !) - then flooded the back of it with Dynax S-50 cavity wax....


It took a while, but is worth every minuit spent IMHO. The LR "metal" lasted 20 years, with their p*ss poor prep - so, the repairs should alst a lot longer with just basic maintenance, and a bit more cavity wax thrown at them periodically.

dieseldog69 said:

I made good use of my small ratchet straps when doing the box sills on the last one as no help and axle stands were already under it lol

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Absolutely - use whatever works ! - self tappers (yuk!), pop rivets ( double yuk!) bungee cords ( they burn well - ask me how I know ) - bits of wood - anything that'll do the job whilst some strength is put back in.

dieseldog69 said:

Shame you're all the way over in Essex, I'd come give you a hand, I remember the struggling away on my own needing three hands lol

Watch out for the steel brake line that goes under the drivers foot well too, it goes through a brace spot welded to the floor that rusts away, bulkheads usually OK, just outsides of the footwells where they meet the A posts, there are 3 panels spot welded in that joint seam & not very well sealed.

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Cheees for the offer guys, my mate is very good with a welder so hopefully he might be able to lend a hand.

Cheers for the heads up. Really wanna replace all the hoses for braided items so blowing a massive hole in that one may get that done lol.

Disco1BFG said:

No probs, HTH. Ask away if there is anything more specific - I've done a few of these now



IME The bulkhead suffers where the inner wing meets it - and this can spread upwards to where the servo (etc) mounts - the footwell panel it still available on eblag - about 50 piccies of the queen each side.... I didn't know when I did our two - but it would have been worth it...

Edited to add:- footwell panel -

www.ebay.co.uk/itm/292375251523

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Yes my near side I believe is the worst for that, big hole at the top of the foot well.

That’s good to know if mine is bad.

Disco1BFG said:

Some pictures of the bulkhead on SWMBO's 3 door...

Looking down where the washer bottle goes:-

View attachment 138302

Looking up inside the wheel arch - this is worse than usual due to some prat slathering it in fibreglass - which just trapped the water !
View attachment 138303

The patch I made out of 2.5mm zintec - then fully welded in place, ( having dragged the wiring behind out of the way !) - then flooded the back of it with Dynax S-50 cavity wax....
View attachment 138304

It took a while, but is worth every minuit spent IMHO. The LR "metal" lasted 20 years, with their p*ss poor prep - so, the repairs should alst a lot longer with just basic maintenance, and a bit more cavity wax thrown at them periodically.

Click to expand...

That repair looks really good.

How do you decide how far back to cut the metal? At the edge of the rusty bit cut 10mm outside it or something like that?

Co-Pang-Yang said:

That repair looks really good.

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Thanks! Should last a bit

Co-Pang-Yang said:

How do you decide how far back to cut the metal? At the edge of the rusty bit cut 10mm outside it or something like that?

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You can usually see where the paint is still good, which usually means that the tin underneath is good - I.E. full thickness, not partially eaten by the tin worms....., so, clean back to good paint, and then a bit more. the best way to do a repair is to butt weld old, but clean and full thickness metal to new clean metal. This can be awkward on the bulkhead given the proximity of the loom behind it, and the loom can be a bit of an ar$e simply because it is so stiff - bungee cords are your friend here .....