Expensive times
The D1’s died and the D3’s cost almost £2k in repairs... but Steve does have his own garage at last
One of my biggest frustrations over the past few years is not having my own workshop to get on with things – relying on other peoples’ yards, driveways and garage space to store or fix my stuff.
When we decided to sell our narrow boat we were living on and go back to living in a house, one of my (only) priorities was to ensure the house had its own driveway; one that would fit two or three Land Rovers and have a garage or room to build one. In the end, we bought a house that had the driveway but would need a garage built. To avoid planning permission, and needing to build within two metres of the boundary, we opted for a log cabin-style timber garage, with a roof pitch no greater than 2.5 metres. Although it’s not suitable to fit an actual Land Rover inside due to the door height, at least I can work on parts of a Land Rover inside it.
Just before Christmas I set about preparing the concrete base and ordering the timber garage to arrive early January. Once the concreted base was complete, it took a further three days to fully erect and tile the roof, but it’s now fairly close to becoming a proper man cave.
Whilst that was going on, there was only a little extra time to continue with the Tdi engine conversion for the Ninety. However, we did get as far as the engine firing up for the first time. There’s probably another full day’s work left to get it finished and ready for its MOT. The plan now is to sell our 300Tdi Discovery and for Louise to use the Ninety as her daily driver. But before that happens, we really must address the paintwork, and she has asked for nicer seats. She’ll be asking for a better heater next…
Meanwhile, we have also been over to farmer David’s, dismantling the rest of Grand Rover – the Discovery bought early last year for the £1000 challenge. It’s when dismantling an older Disco like this that you realise where they can rot. Take the offside rear wheel arch for example. Upon closer inspection, I could see that it had been replaced at some point but looked like there was some body filler involved in making it look ‘factory’. I happened to have a lump hammer in my hand so gave it a quick bash. The entire wheel arch fell to the ground. It was now obvious that this had never been welded in place at all, but in fact simply stuck on with filler – in a car that was Mot’d!
By the time we’re finished, as most parts are salvageable and useful, I’ll be taking just the body and chassis to the local scrap yard. RIP Grand Rover.
On to the Disco 3. We’ve covered about 6000 miles in it already and I can honestly say, we still love it.
Although, as I have previously mentioned, the non-starting on cold mornings still needed to be dealt with. However, it was when driving into a car park, about 50 miles from home, I noticed a slight grinding noise coming from the rear when I depressed the brake pedal. Could it be worn brakes? Upon closer
inspection, I could see that the disc was being scored, the noise worsening on our way home. The annoying thing is that the brake pad wear indicator is located on the offside wheel and the pads were worn on the nearside, thus giving us no warning that the pads were on their last legs.
The next day I ordered a set of replacement Mintex discs and pads, and my mate Pete kindly offered his services to change them. Once he’d removed the pads, there was literally no meat left on them at all, but on the other side they were only half worn. It turned out the caliper was in fact seized so I had to order one of those, too. Pete was not impressed when I turned up after work the following night with the new caliper in hand. Thanks to Pete though, the D3’s brakes are now superb.
As we want the D3 to be ultra reliable, we booked it into our local Land Rover specialist, David Harby Motor Engineers, to replace the glow plugs. When I initially enquired about the starting problem on the D3, David warned that they are notoriously difficult to do and it can turn into a rather expensive job. Quite often, he said, they can seize in the head and would need a specialists in to drill them out. They are also very difficult to get to if this happens. I decided that they desperately needed replacing so took the plunge and booked it in anyway, despite the warning.
Within an hour or so of it being in David’s workshop, he rang to say that unfortunately only two of the six glow plugs would come out. The other four were stuck and would we like him to proceed? We said yes. Later that day I Googled the job in hand and read on various forums other peoples’ experiences of this. It was then that I read how much this rather involved job can cost. Upwards of £2000.
I called Louise to pre-warn her. The D3 remained in their workshop for four days as a specialist was called in to drill out the remaining four glow plugs. This was after David had removed the nearside inlet manifold, a seized injector, oil cooler and the injection pump and belt, just to gain access to the plugs. David kept the old plugs to show me, what was left of them – little horrible tungsten things that themselves only cost about £16 each with VAT! After many hours of intense work, it was finally put back together. The bill? £1757.26.
The D3 had better behave itself over the next few months, because although we still love it and we’ll forgive it, paying bills like that is certainly not sustainable.