I've recently bought a '96 300 tdi Disco which I'm slowly discovering has been subject to various previous owner bodges.

One of which appears to be a rather hurried removal of the tow pack, I am looking to refit one at some point soon but when looking at the lower mounting points on the chassis legs these are no longer through holes, the near side one still has the rear towing eye bolted into it but no nut on the back? The open end of the hole has some evidence of weld around the end of the pin/bolt?? The bolt holding the eye will turn under force but does not undo. The offside seems to have had a pin welded in from either side??

Can anyone think why this may have been done? Or am I missing something??

Thanks

You sure its weld and not just rusted. Mine the heads snapped off so i had to heat up and smack it thru

Yep, that would be the one, just spent an hour smacking the .. out of them, saturating it in wd40 etc etc. no movement at all so far, all I have managed to do is get the standard tow eye off, with half of the bolt, so only half to get out of that side at least!

Will see if I can press them through with a g clamp later I think

Finally managed to get these corroded pins out today, a combination of many things were used to finally drive them out, I think swaring was the most effective!

Next question is can I use stainless bolts to refit my tow pack or are they not to the same strength as a bog standard high tensile bolt? Trying to avoid the same corrosion happening in future.

They need to be 8.8 spec or higher, so if they are available in stainless you should be ok.