Disco 2 TOWING ON AIR SPRINGS

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He heee no but i have had the bloody things for 35 years, not a td5. only about 9
I love em realy
Hes missing something obvious
 
your adding nothing useful to this thread, its well above your pay grade, now tell me what the coolant temp sender does
 
We tow at maximum weight quite often with a D2 V8 on coils. The whole setup is always sensitive to tyre pressures, almost regardless of what we are towing, although the drawbar turntable trailer is the most stable of all due to its lack of drawbar loading.

I've got no real bias for coils or air, but coils do seem to be more reliable, and without ACE now as well.

Our son took his air and ACE off as well and is happier.

You shouldn't need a fancy tow hitch to tow properly, but it can help with unusual towing characteristics.

Peter
 
listerdiesel said:
We tow at maximum weight quite often with a D2 V8 on coils. The whole setup is always sensitive to tyre pressures, almost regardless of what we are towing, although the drawbar turntable trailer is the most stable of all due to its lack of drawbar loading.

I've got no real bias for coils or air, but coils do seem to be more reliable, and without ACE now as well.

Our son took his air and ACE off as well and is happier.

You shouldn't need a fancy tow hitch to tow properly, but it can help with unusual towing characteristics.

Peter
Click to expand...
the farmer i know who use the fancy tow hitch ,doesnt with the same trailer on the 90 or other vehicles just the d2 with air
 
as i said before my last on coils and ace, as it was just a 5 seater, towed brilliant, the one i have now, air no ace and a 7 seater does what the op says his is doing! i ain't gonna get rid of air as there is nothing wrong with the sus set up, as to the car without ace, a big difference in cornering altogether!
if i was towing all the time i would prefer coils, the spring is a solid mass, although it is a spring, the air has to be softer just like a tyre, the more pressure you have in em the harder or less they will compact! as for the drawbar trailer all you are really doing is pulling it, a twin axle trailer can be a pain if loaded wrong, which sometimes is the only way what you put on it as the way it fits!
 
Yes very interesting just read the forum via your link.
So could any of these motors have been accident damaged and have some slight twist
 
IMO if it was some bad engineering issue it should have been more common than few cases, the question is if all those who experienced this symptom have respected ALL the instructions from the owner's handbook for towing, cos that's important like any other builder's recommendation, as i said about the ABS system's missbehaviour with bigger wheels there are conditions to be upheld for the vehicle to act as it was conceived and that implies to be as close to standard as possible, even bigger wheels than standard or different pressures can affect any system's behaviour as long as it was ''calibrated'' from factory for the standard equipment as in the book, relevant would be to make a statistic of how many cases of such towing issues happened on standard equipped D2s and how many on those with lifts, bigger tyres, etc other that standard, maybe what's in the following pages was not completely repected(or not even known by some owners) , watching only this particuar case where mr. Johnlad has 34 pressure on rear while 46 is recommended by the vehicle's builder for towing and 38 for normal operating conditions.... and who knows what else in other cases on the web?
important note from the book:
"The suspension is designed to cope with a
heavy trailer load without upsetting the balance
or feel of the vehicle."
Towing D2, pg1.jpg

Towing D2, pg2.jpg
 
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i like the air on mine as it does ride smoother,compared to coils its only extra advantage is that maintains a fixed height its hardly a very intelligent system,so why would you expect it to be perfect for every situation
 
sierrafery said:
IMO if it was some bad engineering issue it should have been more common than few cases, the question is if all those who experienced this symptom have respected ALL the instructions from the owner's handbook for towing, cos that's important like any other builder's recommendation, as i said about the ABS system's missbehaviour with bigger wheels there are conditions to be upheld for the vehicle to act as it was conceived and that implies to be as close to standard as possible, even bigger wheels than standard or different pressures can affect any system's behaviour as long as it was ''calibrated'' from factory for the standard equipment as in the book, relevant would be to make a statistic of how many cases of such towing issues happened on standard equipped D2s and how many on those with lifts, bigger tyres, etc other that standard, maybe what's in the following pages was not completely repected(or not even known by some owners) , watching only this particuar case where mr. Johnlad has 34 pressure on rear while 46 is recommended by the vehicle's builder for towing and 38 for normal operating conditions.... and who knows what else in other cases on the web?
important note from the book:
"The suspension is designed to cope with a
heavy trailer load without upsetting the balance
or feel of the vehicle."


There is none so blind as those that refuse to see!
On James Martins original posts he comments a brand new Discovery 2 has this problem, you would expect a new Disco to be fitted with all the correct standard items from the factory.
Also far from being an isolated few, it became such a concern that tests were carried out at a road research lab(read link posted above), who although couldnt identify a specific fault at that time, that it was well known that there is a problem.
Ive ordered a set of coils now and will fit and report back on my findings, I know its a retrograde step but the car is unuseable as it is.
And Land rover themselves became aware of it and issued a further bullitin regarding towing and tow bars
Click to expand...
 
Are we sure that those ''essential towing checks'' were completely respected on that new vehicle as well? ... my bad bud i didnt find that technical bulletin in that link
 
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I too would like to see the technical bulletin mentioned. I've had my 2001 Td5ES on air springs for 6 years now and have towed our 1400 Kg caravan for approximately 15,000 miles at least. I have never had the slightest instability or worry despite towing at up to 70 mph in France and always up to the legal limit in the UK.

I keep my pressures at 30 front 40 rear and put a couple of pounds extra in the rear when towing - but there are no rear seat passengers.

There was a lot of fuss in the late 1990s saying that D2s were unstable but I never saw any confirmed reports and as far as I'm concerned it's a myth. It's worth remembering that the air springs ONLY control vertical movement and have nothing to do with controlling lateral movement of the axle which is taken care of by radius arms, Panhard rods etc.
 
I can add my bit, for what it's worth. I have a 2001 TD5 ES which is running on standard air springs and ACE. When I first towed our 1405KG caravan, it didn't feel very stable, and did snake about a bit whenever I hit a big bump. On further inspection I noticed that when the Disco levelled itself the nose of the caravan (single axle) was riding very slightly high.

After dropping the tow ball a couple inches the van sat very slightly nose down. The other issue I had was the Disco used to tramline quite badly, when not towing. This turned out to be the wear on the front tyres, as I had them inspected and then replaced with new tyres and the tram lining stopped completely!

This has now made an outstanding difference to the way it tows, it feels completely stable and hasn't snaked since. I'm not sure if the tyres or dropping the nose of the van had the biggest impact as they were both done at around the same time. Maybe this can be of some help.
 
I've made some research on the web as well and from all the various posts i've seen i can estimate a max 5% occurance for that symptom and i'm convinced that it's not caused by the SLS(providing it's working as it should), i'd consider it common for more than 50% of cases like the oil pump bolt for example...the fact that on springs or with SLS disabled behaves different doesnt mean to me that the SLS is the problem just that the issue which is causing the symptom has smaller impact on the rigid setup IMO

i dont feel like an egocentric myself but i dont like to be considered a glue sniffer while i'm trying to help that's why i reacted that way but mr. Johnlad if you want to fix the problem not just mask it with some coil springs my advice is to better fulfill those essential checks from the owners handbook(tyre pressures etc), make sure that the caravan is horizontaly aligned the try again with active and disabled SLS, if it works OK with disabled SLS there's no need for coils cos it can be disabled simply by inserting a switch to earth into a door switch's circuit cos that will disable the compressor though it means that there's some problem with the system which needs investigation cos once levelled it should not take any action for less that 5 second movements as long as there was no additional load added or removed
 
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Alright you saying all that, but most on here are caravan qoutes, if you are going to france yes you can try to set it up for that amount of distance, but as i do when i have to move a heavey load, digger etc or up a steep hill, entrance etc as for low box, ive had Hilux, isuzu all in the past, all towed brilliant, with flats, cattle boxes etc, the disco should perform better than it does, i put mine down to AIR and no ACE, as for the 5 seater, coils with ACE i had it was perfect, this one i have now you have to concentrate more, if trailers are empty no problem!!! but that's how it should not be! shouldn't have to fook about with tape measure and tyre pressures all the time! disco on it's pedigree should eat it!! but it doesn't, yours might, but mine don't! ok with bike rack on and dog in boot! and basically that's what it does the most![/QUOTE]
 
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Quiet a few motors have ACE removed due to problems.
The rear suspension set up is different on an ACE motor to a standard rear air springs only.
So i guess if you dont alter the rear suspension back to standard SLS.
Your car may not handle right.
Iam not saying he has one but he could
See Rave manual for differences
 
Mark Ormond said:
Quiet a few motors have ACE removed due to problems.
The rear suspension set up is different on an ACE motor to a standard rear air springs only.
So i guess if you dont alter the rear suspension back to standard SLS.
Your car may not handle right.
Iam not saying he has one but he could
See Rave manual for differences
Click to expand...
i think you will find Johnlad aint no idiot! you are going around in circles!!!!!!
 
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