Classic LSE Not So Rolling Resto and Discovery 300Tdi Daily

Hi all, been on here a while now for advice fiddling with a P38 DSE that belongs to my mother. Constant trouble but when it’s working it’s great.

Needed to get away from depreciating BMW on 29% APR finance and that I can extract about £4500 from and realised that for that money I could make a better investment (as long as I ignore fuel and maintenance costs ).

Enter my new LSE. Purchased at bottom of market price (for an MOTD drivable project) with some corrosion and the odd issue here and there, and everywhere else too! Driven game on temp insurance and now have about a month probably to get it to drivable condition before I sell the BMW.



For anyone who saw the add on auto trader, I went and looked, put a screwdriver through it in a lot of places. Pointed out a number of ways it should ave failed the MOT (missing ABS bulb for a start) and paid significantly less than the asking price. I don’t think I’ve seen a usable one near that money in years, not that I’ve been monitoring prices that carefully.

More to come.

Rich

Looks nice, sensible choice I think

hows it going? are you happy with the old girl? great styling and sounds like a good move rather than paying for car loan (if i understand you right). a living dog is better than a dead lion! i drive this gold RRC around and it just so smooth and comfy. who cares about fuel price unless u r unfortunate to have to commute big distances. when i get into friends modern cars the ride is just so rough and it makes you realise how dumb we can be to accept such such rides when we had it so good in the old RRCs! one trip in my Rangie and they are silenced in their criticisms when it comes to comfort.

Couple of updates, one from about a month ago which was waiting for photos. Second to come in a bit.

First steps along the way taken over the last couple of weeks.

The alarm unit has come out and gone to Ian at RemoteKey who has disarmed it and programmed it up with new fobs. Should get that back tomorrow and be able to fit it and test it.

Seat ECU has been out and I’ve made a lot of repairs to the tracks and replaced all the normal parts that get damaged as come in the kit from ClassicLSE. If I haven’t fixed it then I’m not sure what to try next :/ I think that it’s not working as it looks for the car to be in park or neutral apparently, but the alarm is out so the PNP switch has no earth at the moment.

Cleaned the contacts and lubricated both front seat switches and replaced the handles for the back rests with new ones from Rimmer Bros.

I’m part way through stripping all of the interior carpets out and vaxing them to find all the rust in the floors and get rid of the damp smell. I think I might do some of the welding while they’re out maybe, but that could escalate so maybe I’ll just put them all in for now and drive it for a while first before doing that next summer as planned when the weathers better for painting, the BMW is gone and my garage is sorted properly.

Finally I’ve taken the EAS box off the bottom of the car and stripped everything down ready to reseal the valve block and pump and reassemble. Lines all seem ok from what I’ve seen so far and I now have a good used set of stings and half a set of height sensors.

Last weekend went to see Mom and we went and did one of the LRO Adventure Club’s Navigation Challanges in the DSE. Started off with a rou around the Land Rover Experience at Rockingham Castle to check we knew what we were doing and finished at Tixover Quarry for a play in the dirt. Neither me nor Mom had any idea just how capable the P38 was even on road tyres, amazing! One chap in a 90 commented that he couldn’t keep up on the road sections of the nav event - didn’t feel like we were going that fast in the Range Rover. I just love how they make things fuss free!

Second update to where I am today:

Got myself a copy of rovergauge and a wire - managed to diagnose my running issue as a dead throttle position sensor. Obtained a new one from CW4x4 at as reasonable price as a working 14CUX TPS can be had for it seems. Runs a lot better now but I think I need to have another look at the idle valve.

Whilst adding height sensors for the EAS back in I noticed that the front offside wheel didn’t have any drive - turns out the CV joint cage had made a bid for freedom, taking out the swivel ball on the way. Rebuilt that swivel completely with a new ball and have all the parts waiting for me to get around to doing the other one. Hopefully the refurbished ball will hold oil as I think I’d prefer to run oil to grease, but only time will tell I suppose.

While it was all apart I had left the wheel that was off under the car, and then got very confused when I came to refit it as it was no longer there! Apparently my street is not as trustworthy as I thought! Went and collected four new Cyclones with useable tyres from a nice chap off eBay on Sunday, who didn’t have to talk me hard into buying a mint alloy upper tailgate from him with all the central locking parts that were missing from mine.

Last bit of progress is the rust I suppose - cutting out the first section from the drivers footwell has got me talking myself into biting the bullet and doing he front inner arches now rather than later as it’s going to be a tricky repair otherwise to do properly.

Not sure right now. Ive been looking at YRM panel kit for the inner arches but by the time I’ve added up all the paint and finishing it’s going to set me back about £450 that I hadn’t planned to put into the car yet, and I’d like to use the car a bit before I think I’m likely to have the time to get that work done.

I’ll get out between the showers this afternoon and take some snaps to break up the text. Bound to think of other tinkering I’ve done too.

Rich

Shock horror, an actual update and with photos! I’ve been fiddling with this and that now and then but not really making any particular progress on anything.

Air suspension is now all refitted but I can’t seem to get a connection with the diagnostics to it and it’s in a fault mode so not working yet.

New top tailgate fitted - managed to get a near perfect alloy one cheaper than fetching the central locking parts that I was missing and it fixed my heated screen at the same time.

Been doing a fair bit of work on the absolute priority job - fixing a stereo! When I got the car it had a Halfords special JVC unit in it, Amps bypassed and only connected to the door speakers etc etc. Not ideal for a supposedly top of the range motor!

My lovely fiancée kindly bought me a nice period Blaupunkt head unit for Christmas and my mother got me the matching CD changer. Obviously this meant I had to crack on and get it all working.

I’ve made up wiring to get that all powered up and working through the original amp in the boot but needed new speakers. I was looking for something that matched the head unit or would look original but to be honest, Blaupunkt speakers seem to be rare and not that well reviewed, and the OEM kit in ‘93 was clarion which I can’t find much good about either, so I picked up this set of Audison Prima three way components which are supposed to be pretty good and we’re going for a steal. There starts the mods, as my car doesn’t have a tweeter location, and the woofers are 6.5” rather than 5.25”. First I had to make a little sub-loom with the new three way crossovers.
These two mount on the inner door panel and the midrange one goes on the door card mounted to the circuit board of the OEM crossover like so

The mid range is easy as it just slots in where the original was.

The tweeter I have mounted into the trim inside the wing mirror. I chain drilled a hole out and then trimmed to size. Should have used a file as I’ve left marks on the front side of the panel but hopefully they’ll go away when I clean it.

Next I needed to make space for the woofers behind the grills so I’ve carefully trimmed the door card away to fit the larger speaker. The card trims nicely as it has a structure similar to expanding foam and cuts well with a knife. I’m not mounting the woofers to the door cards but to the inner door panel instead to allow them to use the space in the door and a stiffer mount. I’ve reatatched the original speaker grills which keep it looking original and although they’ll be a bit smaller than the cone, shouldn’t have too much of an effect at low frequencies I don’t think. Obviously I need to take the ends off those screws before I fit the speakers!

That’s as far as I’ve got so far. Woofers next and new door membranes to stop the last of the water getting into the foot wells. Have some bits on order from eBay to make that all possible. I think I might need to do some repairs to the inner door panels first as both of mine have been hacked about in the past and have rust and cracks that I need to fix.

More soon hopefully!

Rich

It’s great to see a RR classic getting some love! Ya don’t see many about these days.
Rich

Keep up the good work - slow n steady wins the race with old RRs! Sorry t read you lost your wheel to thieves. luckily in Australia RRs are not that popular so things dont get knocked off too often.

Oh Dear. I've not updated this for soo long I'd forgotten I even started the thread :/

Still, I've been making steady progress over the past year and while it's not so much a 'rolling resto', I'm steadily getting closer to it being MOT worthy again. Been catching up on @dieseldog69's 3dr Disco restoration and a few others, and thought I'd post up some progress on my own weldathon. I'll start from as close to the last post as possible, and bring up to date. I'll do the welding first in this post, and then go through some mechanical work in another.

I decided to start at the driver's footwell and work my way clockwise around the car, finishing with the front inner arches. When I started the plan was to whip around quickly before the MOT ran out making it good enough. That didn't happen and it's now escalated to full front inner arches from YRM and a complete new boot floor including removing and hopefully refitting the existing rear crossmember. But back to the start in the driver's footwell...



Three patches in total in here and I'm sure it will actually need a little more when I get to fitting the new inner arches, but I left that for when I had better access. No more pictures it would seem though so I can't show you the process.

Next were a couple of small holes in the rear footwell where the stiffer attaches underneath. Unfortunately the only photo I have of these shows bugger all of any interest. Next I moved on to the rear arch, the hatched sections show the bits I decided needed to go...







Fast forward several months and all of that, and a few more bits I found on the way are now replaced with fresh steel and I finally have them all in one colour. It dragged on a bit due to many many distractions, and I was losing motivation but getting it all in primer has given me a big boost so I'm back out there as regular as possible and moving along again now.





I got through far too many of these up to this point, before finally making the decision to get a rent free cylinder. Best decision ever as my welding is far better with the proper regulator and it's saving me a lot of time in chasing pinholes as well as a lot of money.










Before I start a debate here, I always choose to butt weld my repair sections and grind the welds back completely flush. It allows me to know for sure that I have completely fused the panels and allows me to practice producing a secure joint and a flush finish. For the same reason, I don't tend to weld a patch in using a continuous seam, but instead do lots of tacks spread around the joint, going back and forth until all the gaps are filled in, which I find is the best way to control heat and minimise warping. I'm sure it isn't as strong as adding a doubler plate over the top and leaving the welds intact, but it is how I've decided I prefer to do my repairs and I'm satisfied that it's plenty strong enough.

Next on my list is the back corner of the floor here, which is a tricky little repair with a lot of different panels coming together. At least on a range rover most of the panels are simple enough to make though.



I've also decided since completing the arch repair that I will replace the full boot floor. I know that I shouldn't really have considered leaving it, but most of the patches on it were sound. It wasn't until I cut the section in the photo above out and found five layers of steel in some places that I decided the patches all have to go. I had inner front arches (still in the garage) for christmas last year, so it looks like I'll be getting a boot floor kit from YRM this year!

Be back in a bit with some of the other bits that I've done.

Rich

Welcome back

I like to keep one of those little bottles handy with the regulator, not because they looks pretty but because I inevitably forget to get a fresh bottle and run out mid weld with a tiny amount to finish on a Sunday afternoon lol

Last time I had the little bottle on I had to put a hot water bottle round the regulator to stop it freezing lol





Great to see you're still cracking away at her.

Keep going.....

Well the other bits that I've done. I've already mentioned that I had to rebuild one of the front swivels due to a CV Cage escaping through the swivel seal. This was the bits of the offending CV that I found...



Other distractions included fixing a stop solenoid on my other half's 306 which turned into a top end rebuild, replacing the gearbox and cooler on my mother's P38 DSE, a load of other niggles with the DSE (can't remember them all, it is a P38 after all) and a poorly doggo.



In June I rebuilt the steering arms, of which I have only one photo which shows my resorting to fire when the ball joints wouldn't part company with the rods. I also finally managed to advertise my 1 series for sale in June, although it wasn't until September when someone finally bought it.





Somewhere in this period I also rebuilt the wiper linkage, which had an incredible amount of wear in it for a car with only 150000 miles on the clock, even considering it spent its life in wales so that's probably 300000 miles worth of wiper usage. I filled the wear in the spindles with weld and then filed them back to size to take all the slack out of the system. What I didn't do was notice that the linkages are handed, so obviously I reassembled it with the two the wrong way around meaning that the passengers wiper doesn't sweep far enough, and the drivers sweeps off the edge of the screen!

When I stripped the near side swivel housing I found that the ball was a lot better than the offside one, but still not really good enough to keep.



More distractions through the remainder of the summer included more rallying (5 miles on a puncture doesn't do your wheel any good) and some woodwork to stop Kirsty moaning about the noise while she was working in the dining room (now she can work upstairs, further away from the garage).





Last but not least, last week I pulled the lower tailgate to give better access to the latest section of welding I want to start, but couldn't resist having a poke to see what condition it was in...



Hiding in there were three different types of filler and a dent 2 inches deep. Skins aren't available for the top half so I've got to weld that up as well.

So now that I've had fun going through my photos and bringing this sort of up to speed, what's left to do? Loads of welding obviously, including the boot floor, both inner arches up front, the second rear inner arch, the passengers footwell is a lot worse than the drivers, there are a couple of suspect bits on the passengers inner cill and the rear chassis crossmember has a couple of holes around the near side body mount. I suppose I'll probably find more to do not he welding front as I go as well! Mechanically, I need to reinstate the evaporative loss system in the fuel tan breather as it's completely missing, replace the original fuel lines as I'm not happy with rubber all the way from the tank to the engine, tidy up the rear axle (secure the brake lines better, replace the brake back plates and change the oil), remove the wiper linkage and put it together correctly, find the issue with the EAS, find the issue with the ABS/TC, reupholster the headlining and finish the stereo installation. Should be done by Summer, I'm not going to say what year though!

I'm going to try to keep this more up to date, but I can't promise anything.

Rich

Good on you for keeping going on it - deffo worth doing IMHO

Looking forward to more updates as and when

Hi all, got a bit more done this week as I was on a course for four days I decided to take Friday off rather than go in on the last working day and the day after the Christmas Social.

Some might have seen my thread trying to work out how the back corner of the boot floor originally went together. I couldn’t work out why LandRover would have left a gap between the boot floor and the top of the crossmember that’s open on the front edge. Once I worked out how it was meant to look I decided not to make it the same as that seems to be a dirt trap to me. Knocked a few patches up to join everything together leaving myself much easier painting and sealing than the original design. I had to put the captive nuts for the sub-woofer inside the car for this end as originally they sat between the floor and the crossmember which isn’t possible any more.









I still haven’t welded it all back to the crossmember as I haven’t decided if I might take the crossmember out to give better access to the chassis side body mount that I need to repair on the nearside.

Still have another three or four patches to do on the bottom of the goal post this side and then the only repair to this boot side should be fitting a new z-section which I’m not totally sure how to work out the alignment of yet.

Hopefully I’ll get some more time to make some more progress over the Christmas break. Planning to have this side buttoned up apart from attaching it to the crossmember and get the boot floor out next.

Rich

Brilliant. I forgot about this thread too! Fair play on the welding also. Yeah it makes a huge difference having a big cylinder. Mine lasts me a few months now and that’s a fair bit of use too often over gassing due to fighting in the outside.
These projects are nothing short of intimidating but as bits start coming together they look so clean and you get a good sense of achievement.

Hi All,

I've made a little progress over the past week. Back to work on Monday and out tomorrow, so thought I'd bring this up to date now after today's efforts.

Friday evening saw me with this little pile of bits...



Suppose that means that I'm definitely committed to putting a new boot floor in! The light doesn't make it that clear, but this floor was definitely a bit worse for wear after previous repairs. Edges look like they've been cut away with a gas torch (everything was also gas welded together) and although all of the gaps had been patched, the remains of the crossmember had just been bent out of the way and left. I'm sure it was an adequate job when it was done, but it's not how I like to do things so it's all in the scrap pile now.



That left the car looking like this...





Well I'm glad that the chassis is at least better than @resto_d1's seems to be but I don't think that's saying much! I was a little scared of what I might find to be honest when I started looking. This morning I started off with a bucket of hot water with degreaser in and a brush and worked my way over the chassis i can now access. There's actually even some factory paint left in places! Gave it all a good check over with a pointy hammer and found that the bottoms of both of the dips either side of the fuel tank have gone on the insides and there's a little hole on the offside end of the tubular crossmember which the A frame mounts to. Other than those three and the one I already knew about on the near side rear body mount outrigger I didn't find anything new.







Went around and ground off the last remains of the edges of the old floor section and most of the patches which had held it in, along with the second crossmember and then gave everything a treatment of RustBuster FE123.







Going to order two YRM Z sections and two under floor crossmembers and a floor repair kit from eBay (can't remember the seller). I'll have to fabricate the rest of the Z section, the returns that the wheel arches spot weld to and the chassis repairs but I have the bits to do those. Both my crossmembers are the same and I think I'm right in saying they will both be the shallower type that YRM do?

Rich

Brilliant mate that’s fast work and yes chassis looks pretty good from pics. I don’t know if that’s a compliment or an insult haha.
In regards to tubular ends - cut that whole triangle where you have the hole off. Get a pointy thing and jab hard as chassis within your little polygon shape. You may find that bit of rail is gone where the water sits in there.
Love the fact that your seeing to the chassis whilst the boot floor is out. Nice thorough job

Did you get your big gas bottle? Your weld on floor looks a bit like mine did when I was too cold. May be worth adjusting power or wire feed. You want it so hot that if your not paying attention it will burn right through. You can. Check this via underside on a bit of scrap. Not telling you how to suck eggs just seen it from a patch I redid on my floor

resto_d1 said:

Did you get your big gas bottle? Your weld on floor looks a bit like mine did when I was too cold. May be worth adjusting power or wire feed. You want it so hot that if your not paying attention it will burn right through. You can. Check this via underside on a bit of scrap. Not telling you how to suck eggs just seen it from a patch I redid on my floor

Click to expand...

You’re probably right about that seam being a little cold to be honest - I think I’m so used to welding to bits that aren’t quite as clean as they should be I probably work with the power one setting too cold a lot of the time when the metal is actually clean and completely free from any putting as with that one. The penetration is pretty good on the back side through and if it’s not right after a first pass grinding back with the grinding disc and the belt sander I tend to go back and fill in any spots that aren’t up to standard. Appreciate the comments as it’s so easy to overlook what you’re doing not quite right once you get to, “good enough,” go fear of making changes that make things worse!

I’ll try a bit hotter on the next seam and let you know how it goes...

Richard

Nice one! Just looked really fat that's all. I'm no pro though, just know that I did a few cold welds on mine and had to cut out. I cant get to the underside of my boot welds!! Error in planning. I'll try n coat in wax somehow. Keep it going!! Its tough this time of year!

Hi All,

Got a bit more done over the past few weeks since my last update...

Firstly I did some more dismantling and cutting. Took the near side quarter panel off to reveal this:



Looks worse than it really is to be honest. I actually think it's better than the first side was. I also chopped out the rear body crossmember and the mirror of the section that I have recently repaired on the off side. I'm now convinced this was a dirt trap and am therefore happy that I repaired it differently to the original design.



Then I welded in all the bits that I had prepared for the off side tailgate pillar. The process of removing the crossmember revealed that I still had a few more sections I needed to make, but as these were prepped and painted, I thought I'd let them in while I was outside.





Strangely I don't seem to have taken a photo of it after I let the last few in, but I'm sure I'll get one at some point before the crossmember goes back in. Last thing I did that weekend was to let in my first repair to the chassis, which I can now get to as the crossmember is out.



Ok so it's not factory neat but it definitely isn't going anywhere and has penetrated completely, perhaps a little too much actually. I guessed that I would need all of the power my little welder had to get through this 14ga sheet and my initial practicing before letting this section in seemed to agree, but I've since done some more practicing and I think setting 3 of 4 is actually easier to control and still penetrates well.

That was the end of the weekend's work, but I then got a bit more done in the week day evenings. I made up a load more parts to let into the two tailgate pillars.



I also made up some patches for the crossmember after chopping this off of the near side end.





And let them in one by one.





My welding is definitely getting better and better. It's now almost acceptable! Last thing I did last night was to knock up some end caps for the two ends of the crossmember and let them in as well. I also drilled three holes in the bottom edge of the crossmember to let water out and permit access with a wax injection tube which seem to be something which was missing from my crossmember before.





The whole crossmember confuses me to be honset. It had definitely been worked on before, as the nearside end that I just replaced had been plated on both sides. Apart from the section I replaced yesterday the whole thing is completely rust free, but is assembled with stitch welds along the edges rather than spot welds and had no end cap on the solid end, only one in that rusty mess. I wonder if the whole thing had been replaced at some point, but not that last bit that was plated over instead. Still, all solid and ready to be prepped for paint and refitted now.

That's me up to date now then. I'm out of gas and missed Hobbyweld closing time today so no more progress until sometime next week now, but there will be a lot more progress over the next few weeks hopefully. I have plans to get a mate down from Cumbria in a few weekend's time to make new fuel lines and rebuild the rear axle. All the parts from Paddock's to do all the seals and the wheel bearings, along with new shocks and brake back plates are on the way, and so is another load of paint from RustBuster. I still need to order the Copper Nickel pipe to do the fuel lines and suitable connectors, and get all the welding and prep work done on the chassis from the round crossmember backwards.

Richard