Disco 2, Watts linkage

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Balbas said:
Sadly a quick poke round this afternoon tells me I don't need to embark on a Watts link rebushing frenzy.

Instead I have snapped a shock mount off the chassis. A quick poke around with a hammer reveals that a half chassis is in order.

Still, at least I won't have to do the Watts linkage just yet...
Click to expand...
Fun and games that's you off road for a while.
 
Ian Mackay said:
Probably find the rest of the chassis is not much better, especially at the front, behind the front bumper.
Click to expand...
The bit behind the front bumper of a D2 is the bumper protection plate which rusts through, it connects to both chassis rails, it can be removed without problem.
The front of the actually chassis isn't very prone to rust
 
This bit
bum.jpg
 
Iancorky said:
The bit behind the front bumper of a D2 is the bumper protection plate which rusts through, it connects to both chassis rails, it can be removed without problem.
The front of the actually chassis isn't very prone to rust
Click to expand...
Haha, my whole rubber "D" mount ripped off, the rest was paper thin made a whole new front.
 

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Ian Mackay said:
Haha, my whole rubber "D" mount ripped off, the rest was paper thin made a whole new front.
Click to expand...
Yes my front bar item 1 was totally gone, never bothered renewing, still got a bit of stainless pipe I was going to weld to the brackets, brackets still lying on workshop floor.
 
Two years ago I started welding back to middle, this year I done middle to front, that's the whole chassis plated either in zintec or stainless, I learned a lot and would never do it again, body off is the way to go, spent 6 weeks lying on my back after work doing first part, since learned that chassis could have been removed in a weekend with a 2 post.
 
Can't get a refund from island 4x4, looks like they have taken a few weeks off, fair enough, just forgot to tell their customers, but still banked their money immediately :-(
 
I've just sat and read your thread, sadly you've gone from bushes to a half chassis very rapidly, don't envy you, pain in the hole!!!

I saw a while back that there was someone doing galvo D2 chassis, hard to justify in reality unless you can see a 10+yr life span for the rest of the vehicle?
 
dieseldog69 said:
I've just sat and read your thread, sadly you've gone from bushes to a half chassis very rapidly, don't envy you, pain in the hole!!!

I saw a while back that there was someone doing galvo D2 chassis, hard to justify in reality unless you can see a 10+yr life span for the rest of the vehicle?
Click to expand...

Sorry, couldn't help myself and went off hunting for a D2 galvo chassis, :eek: £3,500 ~ £4,500???

I even magnified it to make sure I wasn't seeing things, you can get a Puma 130 Defender chassis for £2100 delivered and that is a feeerkin big lump of metal!!!

Can't see the justification for the 60% price leap, it's not as though they've not been making them for a few years now & the R&D into manufacturing jigs can be tax written off in order to make them more attractive surely?
 
dieseldog69 said:
Sorry, couldn't help myself and went off hunting for a D2 galvo chassis, :eek: £3,500 ~ £4,500???

I even magnified it to make sure I wasn't seeing things, you can get a Puma 130 Defender chassis for £2100 delivered and that is a feeerkin big lump of metal!!!

Can't see the justification for the 60% price leap, it's not as though they've not been making them for a few years now & the R&D into manufacturing jigs can be tax written off in order to make them more attractive surely?
Click to expand...
 
Recon a galvanized chassis can be got for £1200, I did see this price a while back, seem to remember they were thinner right enough, I think I just kept fixing ours, cause we had owned it for so long and it had done us well, sentiment over practicality I'm afraid, tell you what though it's paying for itself in this snow :)
 
Ian Mackay said:
Our D2, love or hate, it's hard to decide at times.
Click to expand...
She's a beaut.

I just wish Land Rover had considered the commercial applications markets when re-inventing the Discovery, I love the comfort the cabin of a D2 offers and think it could have been a real winner if they had thought about pick up cabs, crew cabs & chassis stretching & creating modular units, it could have been the perfect replacement for the already aged Defender range which could have been retired at 30yrs old and the utility version of the Discovery lived on and the D3 could have been launched as the SUV successor whilst maintaining production of the D2 utility.

I understand entirely with the sentiment over practicality, I rescued my D1 when I lived in Belgium, that random act of forming an attachment to an inanimate object occured after spending every spare hour working on it in the back of the barn, I must be £12k deep on this now, not a hope in hell's chance of ever seeing a penny back, but having a vehicle that will outlive just about every other vehicle in my neighborhood is priceless.
 
Apologies for the massively thread derail from Watts linkages...
Ian Mackay said:
Probably find the rest of the chassis is not much better, especially at the front, behind the front bumper.
Click to expand...
Well I hope not, but we'll find out. I've taken it to a man with a good reputation locally. He's going to get it on the ramp and set about it with the hammer before cutting anything, so if it's bad forward of the 1/2 chassis section then I'll take a view (and probably scrap it). Assuming he finds nothing too scary forwards of where the new section goes on, he'll do it for a fixed price.

I would do the welding myself but a) I need the vehicle at the moment, so time is of the essence, b) it's too farkin' cold to be lying on the floor outside cutting and welding and c) my father in law has my MiG and is evasive every time I ask about getting it back. I know he's been using it, so I guess he wants to hang on to it for a bit longer...

Ian Mackay said:
Two years ago I started welding back to middle, this year I done middle to front, that's the whole chassis plated either in zintec or stainless, I learned a lot and would never do it again, body off is the way to go, spent 6 weeks lying on my back after work doing first part, since learned that chassis could have been removed in a weekend with a 2 post.
Click to expand...
Yeah. There's a second hand chassis on T'bay for about 500 notes. Needs a bit of work, but it did occur to me to buy that, repair where required and then take it off to be acid bath pickled and hot dipped galvanised. Undoubtedly not as good as a brand new chassis, but probably do-able for £1,000. Of course then I'd just need to change it over...
dieseldog69 said:
I've just sat and read your thread, sadly you've gone from bushes to a half chassis very rapidly, don't envy you, pain in the hole!!!

I saw a while back that there was someone doing galvo D2 chassis, hard to justify in reality unless you can see a 10+yr life span for the rest of the vehicle?
Click to expand...
Quite. I like the old girl, but anything could happen in the next 10 years. I watch with interest every budget - if diesel goes up to £2/litre or they do something stupid with VED, then painful as it is I think we might be parting company.

dieseldog69 said:
Sorry, couldn't help myself and went off hunting for a D2 galvo chassis, :eek: £3,500 ~ £4,500???

I even magnified it to make sure I wasn't seeing things, you can get a Puma 130 Defender chassis for £2100 delivered and that is a feeerkin big lump of metal!!!

Can't see the justification for the 60% price leap, it's not as though they've not been making them for a few years now & the R&D into manufacturing jigs can be tax written off in order to make them more attractive surely?
Click to expand...
Seems odd. Perhaps it's the relatively low numbers being sold? I know a re-chassis on a Series or a Defender often makes good financial sense, but a Disco 2 can be had for not very much money at all. From a financial perspective the cost makes it a write off for even the nicest, most pampered, lowest mileage D2
Ian Mackay said:
Our D2, love or hate, it's hard to decide at times.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I do love the old girl. And my wife, despite announcing when we were first going out that "no one needs a car with an engine bigger than 1 litre" now loves the old thing too!

Fingers crossed the front bit of the chassis is good and the bloke I've taken it to does a decent job on the rest!
 
Balbas said:
Quite. I like the old girl, but anything could happen in the next 10 years. I watch with interest every budget - if diesel goes up to £2/litre or they do something stupid with VED, then painful as it is I think we might be parting company.

And my wife, despite announcing when we were first going out that "no one needs a car with an engine bigger than 1 litre" now loves the old thing too!
Click to expand...

Last year I moved back to the UK from the Netherlands, if you want to think on silly numbers for VED, I used to pay €2400 in the year for my 1992 Discovery 1 200Tdi, I was very happy with the £230/yr I pay here in the UK.

Diesel won't go up so much as they start charging extra for driving in to the cities with them, unless they started a surcharge on top of the VED for diesels it would be too drastic a measure to whack pump prices as commercial vehicle operators would a) go ballistic, b) go bankrupt or c) push up the price of goods delivery to the point of it being cheaper to drive to town and buy a load of stuff all at the same time.
 
Balbas said:
Apologies for the massively thread derail from Watts linkages...Well I hope not, but we'll find out. I've taken it to a man with a good reputation locally. He's going to get it on the ramp and set about it with the hammer before cutting anything, so if it's bad forward of the 1/2 chassis section then I'll take a view (and probably scrap it). Assuming he finds nothing too scary forwards of where the new section goes on, he'll do it for a fixed price.

I would do the welding myself but a) I need the vehicle at the moment, so time is of the essence, b) it's too farkin' cold to be lying on the floor outside cutting and welding and c) my father in law has my MiG and is evasive every time I ask about getting it back. I know he's been using it, so I guess he wants to hang on to it for a bit longer...


Yeah. There's a second hand chassis on T'bay for about 500 notes. Needs a bit of work, but it did occur to me to buy that, repair where required and then take it off to be acid bath pickled and hot dipped galvanised. Undoubtedly not as good as a brand new chassis, but probably do-able for £1,000. Of course then I'd just need to change it over...
Quite. I like the old girl, but anything could happen in the next 10 years. I watch with interest every budget - if diesel goes up to £2/litre or they do something stupid with VED, then painful as it is I think we might be parting company.


Seems odd. Perhaps it's the relatively low numbers being sold? I know a re-chassis on a Series or a Defender often makes good financial sense, but a Disco 2 can be had for not very much money at all. From a financial perspective the cost makes it a write off for even the nicest, most pampered, lowest mileage D2
Yeah, I do love the old girl. And my wife, despite announcing when we were first going out that "no one needs a car with an engine bigger than 1 litre" now loves the old thing too!

Fingers crossed the front bit of the chassis is good and the bloke I've taken it to does a decent job on the rest!
Click to expand...
Balbas, how did the chassis check go ?
 
Ian Mackay said:
Balbas, how did the chassis check go ?
Click to expand...
New half chassis fitted (along with a few other bits that had fallen off along the way). Not particularly cheap and not what I wanted the week after Christmas, but the rest of the chassis was in good nick, so it was worth saving.

And looking on the bright side the Watts linkage doesn't need doing after all!
 
Balbas said:
Apologies for the massively thread derail from Watts linkages...Well I hope not, but we'll find out. I've taken it to a man with a good reputation locally. He's going to get it on the ramp and set about it with the hammer before cutting anything, so if it's bad forward of the 1/2 chassis section then I'll take a view (and probably scrap it). Assuming he finds nothing too scary forwards of where the new section goes on, he'll do it for a fixed price.

I would do the welding myself but a) I need the vehicle at the moment, so time is of the essence, b) it's too farkin' cold to be lying on the floor outside cutting and welding and c) my father in law has my MiG and is evasive every time I ask about getting it back. I know he's been using it, so I guess he wants to hang on to it for a bit longer...


Yeah. There's a second hand chassis on T'bay for about 500 notes. Needs a bit of work, but it did occur to me to buy that, repair where required and then take it off to be acid bath pickled and hot dipped galvanised. Undoubtedly not as good as a brand new chassis, but probably do-able for £1,000. Of course then I'd just need to change it over...
Quite. I like the old girl, but anything could happen in the next 10 years. I watch with interest every budget - if diesel goes up to £2/litre or they do something stupid with VED, then painful as it is I think we might be parting company.


Seems odd. Perhaps it's the relatively low numbers being sold? I know a re-chassis on a Series or a Defender often makes good financial sense, but a Disco 2 can be had for not very much money at all. From a financial perspective the cost makes it a write off for even the nicest, most pampered, lowest mileage D2
Yeah, I do love the old girl. And my wife, despite announcing when we were first going out that "no one needs a car with an engine bigger than 1 litre" now loves the old thing too!

Fingers crossed the front bit of the chassis is good and the bloke I've taken it to does a decent job on the rest!
Click to expand...
Balbas said:
New half chassis fitted (along with a few other bits that had fallen off along the way). Not particularly cheap and not what I wanted the week after Christmas, but the rest of the chassis was in good nick, so it was worth saving.

And looking on the bright side the Watts linkage doesn't need doing after all!
Click to expand...
That's good try and paint the rest of it when you get a chance to stave off further rot :)
 
Balbas said:
Seems odd. Perhaps it's the relatively low numbers being sold? I know a re-chassis on a Series or a Defender often makes good financial sense, but a Disco 2 can be had for not very much money at all. From a financial perspective the cost makes it a write off for even the nicest, most pampered, lowest mileage D2
Yeah, I do love the old girl. And my wife, despite announcing when we were first going out that "no one needs a car with an engine bigger than 1 litre" now loves the old thing too!

Fingers crossed the front bit of the chassis is good and the bloke I've taken it to does a decent job on the rest!
Click to expand...

At the moment, but give it a couple of years and then there will be few nice ones for sale
 
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