Alex Threlfall's Blog

It has been a long time coming, but finally my new bumper has arrived and been fitted!

Fabricated by Paul Short at Torque Performance 4×4 (http://www.tp4x4.co.uk), this bumper is a custom revision of their stunning looking Rock Bumper, but with a unique and very useful twist.

Like many off-road vehicle owners we all worry about some of the toys we have bolted to our trucks, as if it bolts on, it can also be un-bolted! And like many other Discovery owners I’m not happy about cutting large chunks out of the grille of my vehicle to allow a winch to sit back there, and I am only too aware of how much approach/departure angle you give up when extending your bumper forward to accommodate a winch.

I was also looking into putting a front push tow-bar point on the vehicle, the cost of which would potentially be around £150, which seemed a bit on the high side, and would have to be custom made in order for me to be able to use it with the 2″ Class III Receiver I have on the rear. The perfect solution therefore, would be a bumper that allowed the best of both worlds, the approach/departure angle at it’s maximum, with a 2″ Class III Receiver built into it.

It took me a while to find a Heavy Duty Bumper for the Discovery 2 that I liked the look of, most were very angular and often left your washer bottle exposed hanging under the bumper. Eventually on a thread on the LRO Forums, someone posted a picture of the Torque Performance 4×4 Rock Bumper, and I was instantly sold. I got on the phone to Paul Short at TP4x4, and laid out what I had in mind over the phone and asked if it was possible to have this bumper made up for me. He agreed to do so, and charged me for a Winch Bumper version instead of a Rock Bumper version (as they do both for those of you who are happy to bolt 300+ quids worth of winch to your truck *and* cut your grille a bit!). The following picture is what I’ve ended up with, and cost £340+£40 for delivery, and included a pair of 55w spots built into the bumper, giving it a facelift bumper look also.

TP 4x4 NAS HD Bumper

continue reading…

Had a bit of a whoopsy at the weekend when I snapped a stud on the Spare Wheel Carrier, so went down to the breakers yard this afternoon with Richard and picked up a new (second-hand) one for £20, and a handful of new Alloy Nuts and some Centre Caps for the Alloys (as some toe rag has nicked all the ones I had). Swapping the carriers over took a few mins once I took the door card off, interestingly one of the six bolts is slightly longer than the others. Why LR decided to use nuts on the inside of the door I do wonder! A couple of rivet nuts in the door would be a much better option!

Yep, they were nice and easy, took just over an hour to change both sides, main hassle was the bloody alloy nuts not accepting sockets, and then when I swapped a particularly manky one for one on the spare wheel carrier, I ballsed that up and snapped the stud off the carrier! As the other stud was already fubar when I bought the vehicle, looks like I need a new carrier. It now is held on with one nut… and a ratchet strap to stop it rattling!

Changing the shocks btw, is very easy.

1. Support body on a stand.
2. Jack Axle.
3. Take the wheel off.
4. With an 18mm socket & breaker bar undo the two bolts holding the old shock in top & bottom.
5. Push shock upwards and swing towards you, and then down when clear of the hub.
6. Prepare new shock, then swing back in the same way.
7. Secure at the top, compress and swing down to the bottom mount and secure it as it expands.
8. Re-fit wheel, drop axle, drop body.

Well the Landie passed it’s MOT earlier in the week finally, so thought I’d sort the advisories out yesterday. Easier than I expected (and def. easier than my 300-series) the shock bushes needed changing as did the pads. As I had new shocks to go on, I just replaced the whole unit as it has to be dismantled anyway!

Didn’t take any photos, but here’s the step by step guide to doing the shocks.

1. Night before drench everything in WD40.
2. Jack Body, Support on Stand
3. Loosen wheel Nuts
4. Jack Axle/Wheel and remove nuts & Wheel
5. Undo two 13mm bolts at base of shock inside spring.
6. Undo two 13mm nuts facing you at base of turret (top of spring)
7. Drivers Side Only – Remove Rad overflow pipe, tape to bonnet prop, unclip and unhook the expansion tank and swing out of way. Undo plastic wiring clip from turret.
8. Remove two more 13mm nuts on far side of turret. I find 2x long extension bars do the trick here with an impact gun.
9. Wiggle turret & shock free and out of vehicle.
10. Undo 18mm bolt from turret with impact gun, remove shock. Throw away.
11. Refit is reverse of this.

It’s really straight forward, and while I was at it I did the front pads too as they needed changing. These are held by two 12mm bolts on the calliper guide pins, swing the calliper out of the way and change the pads, gently push the two pistons back into the calliper (having loosened the brake reservoir cap) and slot back into place. Some people only remove 1 guide pin bolt and swing the calliper up or down.

Took about 3 hours and was just getting dark as I finished! Might pop out and do the rear shocks this afternoon too as they look fairly easy…

…the Discovery failed it’s MOT today, luckily not on much and on nothing too serious and indeed, a pretty frivolous reason if you ask me. The Parking brake, basically a big drum brake on the rear prop shaft, is supposedly only providing 10% stopping power. Now I don’t use the parking brake anyway, I’d never use it to stop the vehicle in an emergency as the disco has far too much power and it would probably just snap the transfer box off or the prop shaft!

Having had a further look, it seems the transfer box rear output oil seal has gone, and contaminated the brake with oil. So looks like stripping it all down and replacing the shoes is in order, and have ordered a new bearing for the output shaft if it’s easy to change as that may be a source of my vibrations. Well, one can hope anyway.

As well as that it got advisories on the front shock bushes, so will push up fitting the new shocks and bushes to the front, and front pads are low also, so will replace those! Done a lot of miles this year, so probably worthwhile.

A common issue on the TD5 engine (be it Defender or Discovery) is that the Exhaust Manifold warps slightly and this snaps the studs holding the manifold to the engine block. Typically it is the front and rear port studs that snap, although I was fortunate to only lose the front port studs.

A number of fixes are available for this problem, the effectiveness of which is the subject of debate. In order they are:

1)    Cutting the webs between the manifold ports out (This is actually the method used by my local dealership!) – £Free for a bit of effort.

2)    J E Engineering do a stud and spacer kit which replaces the existing studs with bigger ones. Cost of this was £35 + £5 P&P +VAT = £47

3)    TD5Alive have a Ceramic Insulated manifold available. This has a ceramic coating which insulates it very well – we ran the engine for a few minutes and could still touch the surface of the manifold easily. This is £325 + £10 P&P +VAT on their website, but DOC members should remember a 10% discount is normally available from Gary for club members. There is the ability to return your manifold to him for a rebate also.

Personally, I don’t rate the idea of cutting the webs as Land Rover designed the part this way (although some dealers are doing this themselves!) and it can still re-occur. My fix for this was to combine the TD5Alive manifold with the J E Engineering stud kit. This decision was taken due to some discussions I had read that suggested that the strength of the Land Rover supplied studs was not the best available, although you should remember that some modifications like this could have ramifications further down the line if the Land Rover engineers deliberately put the studs in as the weak point in the design to relieve potential stresses.

This guide is written in the hope that people can benefit from the research I’ve done!

continue reading…

…up on Salisbury Plain, and taken some awesome looking photos!

Some good ones were taken from the boot of Lloyd’s Discovery 3 – awesome vehicles those offroad, wish I could afford one!

My favourite images are here, with the full 870 images here if you want to sift through them!

No photos of my truck here though, as I was riding with Mark primarily to get some nice photos, plus I still have the worrying vibration from the transmission and am a bit apprehensive of taking it off-road in case it breaks!