The Little Discovery That Could (financially ruin me)

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Tango91 said:
New Disco, who dis?

Tom from the future here, turn back now, it's not too late to stop reading

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So yesterday I made the biggest error of my life to date and and picked up this 99 TD5 GS for £1900. I'm pretty happy so far. Just over 200k miles, Structurally it seems really good. Minimal-ish rust. Mechanically... we'll see. A few months ticket left on it, which by my reckoning means i might actually make it to the next MOT before it explodes. My vehicles usually don't.

I told the SO that some people spend thousands on useless things like drugs or tickets for reformed 00's boy band gigs, so why shouldn't I invest in this future classic? But she still seems pretty mad for some reason. :rolleyes:

I picked this up off a nice couple on a farm near Salisbury, and now the task before me is to un-farmify it, by which i mean I'm going to slowly replace the wood screws and zip-ties with proper fasteners, the duct tape with electrical shrink-wrap, and the baling twine with proper wood screws and duct tape.

Please note the entire front clip and lights held in with cable ties. Only one of the headlights has decided to work today, which is nice.

First step has to be the crank pulley/dampener which sounds like a bag of spanners in a washing machine:



Followed by replacing the indicator fluid which is dangerously low and looks like it hasn't been replaced in years:

View attachment 273222

I'll be mostly probably posting interesting things I find along the way.

Peace.
Click to expand...

It's been a while since lights needed fluid 😂
 
Made myself a pair of roof bars after work yesterday, got to get the kayak from a to b in the near future.

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The bars are stainless thin wall gas pipe, and I made the uprights from some kind of 20mm engineering plastic (may be delrin?)

Either way it holds a thread nicely and should be durable

IMG_7741.jpeg


The tube was laying about at work, the plastic was liberated from a skip at a chipboard factory, and the clamps in a former life were something to do with fixing air conditioning units to the roof of a pharmaceutical factory, so total cost maybe 50p worth of stainless bolts and 6 hours of my time :cool: happy with that

Might think about extending the clamps in the future so they’re a bit wider and go deeper up under the rain gutter
 
Sad news. Could it just be stored for now? Pick up again later? It's hard though. The times i've had to pause mine due to lack of time, money or both. You have done a bloody lovely job of it though.
 
You will actually miss the wee headache once she's gone.
Also next year you'll be wanting her back, but it's not a bad idea to cover her up for a few months, somewhere out of sight, to let your enthusiasm catch up, and the missus get sick of you being around all the time.
Hope you can stash her for a while, until your battery/bank can recharge 🤞
 
In a shocking twist of fate, It transpires that my other half's dad is badly in need of a car right now, his work is paying for diesel, and he loves crap Land Rovers, having previously owned a pre-defender very early 109 V8.

In other words, It's staying in the family, and most probably will be a huge headache for me for a while yet.

Speaking of headaches, as it's now my problem again, time to remove the temporary sunroof covers as the sun has eaten the tape and they are leaking again.

241482C9-7F26-4CF5-858A-1B3E8CFA4F04.jpg


Ever wish you hadn't started? Also it turns out the back one was held in with absolutely nothing.

Quite a lot of paint came off where the tape was stuck to the roof as well, so out with the brake cleaner followed swiftly by hammerite and then tiger seal.

Maybe I should have set it on fire...
 
Dunno what Land Rover were up to, but my old series 1 V8 2 door Discovery had a nice chassis even when i sold it for spares/rebuild, but not a good body. After many 1000's of miles the only component I had to replace was a water pump. Good vehicle! The stories I've heard are that the reverse is true for series 2 Discovery's, poor chassis & good bodies. Anybody....
 
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