Mark's Land Rover Discovery V8i

1993 Land Rover Discovery V8i Automatic

With great sadness, I have had to sell my disco and have bought a Ford Focus to share with my Girlfriend. The Disco was the perfect car for us when we left the UK and spent an entire ski season in Chamonix, France. It performed flawlessly, we never had to mess around with snow chains, and was confident not matter what the conditions. Back in the UK and finding that IT jobs where suddenly rarer than hen's teeth meant that eventually something had to give. So, we are now a one car family!! Here are a few pic's of my old disco....

Faults

Non-starter - It suddenly refused to start one day with no dash lights coming on when turning the ignition key. I checked the voltage at the ignition switch which showed a low voltage of around 6V's. It took quite a while to find the problem ( with help from the alt.fan.landrover newsgroup and the Forum's at MotorCars Ltd ) it turned out to be a heavily corroded fusible link - which promptly fell to bits in my hands when I touched it!

Wandering Idle and stalling - I'm currently trying to track this one down. Virtually every time I drive the disco, it will occasionally start to idle badly when I come to a stop. Typically the revs drop to almost stalling point and then jump up 1000 revs. It does this for a minute or so and then finally stalls. The manuals list a number of things to check ( such as inlet air leaks, partial blocked injectors, blocked breathers, poor electrical connections, and the entire ignition system! ), but looking around on the web I've found a number of cases where other things have been the route cause. So, I made up the following test matrix trhat should cover everything.

Item	Details
Inlet air leaks	Emission Control System - blocked or leaking Hoses - Hoses between Air Flow Meter and Plenum Chamber, air by-pass hose
Fuel Supply	Fuel Filter - Blocked or badly degraded Fuel Pump - Below pressure Fuel Return Pipe - Blocked Idle Air Control Valve ( Stepper Motor ) - Dirty/faulty
Electrical	Ground Connections - Corroded, damage Connections - damaged wires Battery - low voltage, faulty connection Vehicle Speed Sensor - faulty Temperature Sensor - faulty Air Flow Meter - faulty
Blocked injectors	Poor atomisation of fuel
Ignition System	General service items - Distributer cap, rotor arm, HT leads
Engine Management	Check digital readout box

I cleaned out the Crankcase Emission Control system which was not blocked but had a heavy build-up of crud in it. This hasn't solved the problem but it appears to be running slightly smoother ( maybe thats just my imagination ).

Exhaust rattle - The offside catalytic convertor sprung a loud rattle. Its was coming up to 96K miles anyway, so it was going to have to be replaced at some point. I rang my local Land Rover dealer and was quoted £1494.60 !!! ROFL! The folks in alt.fan.landrover pointed me towards some cheaper alternatives. I managed to find a full stainless steel exhaust system with cat's for £762.00 from Rimmer Bros. Taking the old exhaust off turned out to be a bit of a nightmare as each section was basically welded together with rust and corrosion. Use of a hacksaw and bruteforce got it off in the end. The old exhaust turned out to be full of crud which I can only assume came from the catalytic convertor. Unfortunately, the new stainless steel exhaust didn't want to go on! :( The nearside downpipe just wasn't pointing in the right direction, being off by a good few inches. I contacted Rimmer Bros. who were very helpful ( although not great at returning calls ). I sent the nearside downpipe nack to them for inspection, but they confirmed that it seemed OK and fit on their jig fine. I sent the whole exhaust back and they refunded my money. Phoning around the various tyre and exhaust fitting centre's returned various costs, but all were in the £800 region due to sourcing the cats from Land Rover. Then I came across Quick Fit in Woking, they quoted me around £350!! Fully fitted no less!!

Radio code - Why is it you only realise you don't have a code for your car stereo until after you've removed the battery! One of those things your suppose to remember to ask about when buying the car, but always forget. Along with any alarm code and locking wheel nut tool. Anyway, you can get the radio code from your local LR dealer by telling them your chassis ( VIN ) number. If like me you manage to punch in the wrong number....you'll need to disconnect the battery for an hour or two until it resets to the SECURITY state, then leave the ignition on for another hour or two and it should reset into its 'CODE IN' state.

Rust - Next on the list of Things To Do is to sort out the few bits of rust on the car. There's a few patches in the engine compartment, on the rear tow bar, the rear bumper and a few on the roof behind the rear sunroof. I looked around for some wire brushes and managed to find some cheap ones at www.rcworld.co.uk, ended up with seven wire brushes for the price of just one you'd buy in a shop!

Links

Range Rover Fixing and Other Useful Tips
Land Rover, Range Rover Tech Tips
Land Rover Forum
Discovery Electrical Error Codes
V8i petrol engine management system
Motorcars LTD Import Car Forums
Land Rover - World Organization

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