Vehicle & Technical > Discovery

Ladies And gents- My suggested set up, comments or advice?

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Chris Putt:
Ok right, the aim of my plan is.....

Create a disco which will be capable for greenlanes and playdays, but also useable as my personal and business vehicle therefore unfortunately it has to stay sensible with the mods,  I do up to 15,000 miles a year.

Also being a student I am looking to do all the work on a budget, so aquiring second hand parts where available/useable.

The vehicle so far....

200tdi Disco, all welding needed done, in the process of being waxoyled in stages, new main box since the old one suffered a catastrophic failure (oops!)
Homebuilt snorkel kit awaiting fitment, along with extended breathers
Chopped front bumper
Shortened towbar
Currently shod with steel 8 spokes and general grabber A/t 2s

The plan is to renew the suspension as It is tired with +1" HD springs and undecided about which shocks as yet (anyone know of any good offers?).
Reason being I want a bit of extra clearance to get slightly larger M/T tyres in when money allows next year, also should hopefully not strain UJs too much. Also looking to polybush throughout as the bushes are all becoming a bit tired.

Steering guard and Diff guards (someone must be getting rid of some on the cheap?!)

Planning to fabricate a set of jackable sills (unless again, a set of suitable secondhand ones become available!)

Want the vehicle to be capable but also sensible!

Any thoughts guys or anyone aware of any good offers on the above parts, comments appreciated!


Chris

Ps. Will be trying to get hold of some jate rings as recovery points!!!

Bulli:
paddocks sell em or you can call equippe or several other for jate rings/rear recovery. Not expensive either.

You sound like your set up is ideal for what you really want. I wouldnt go too daft. Just change the springs for new ones and maybe 2 inch rather than one.

lostdreamer:
Well, for what it is worth I come from the opposite school of offroad mods to seemingly everyone else in the world:

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Also known as 'Don't Knock Stock'.

I don't know how much laning or pay&praying you have done, but let me ask you how many vehicles have failed to finish a day out because they got stuck? There may well be a couple.
Now, how many do you know that failed to finish because they broke down? I wager this answer is rather higher than the first one.

So, relyability is king. You can't play if it don't work.

Cars are amazingly complex things. Even old landys. Everything affects something else.

Eg: Heavy duty bumper. Surly that makes no difference. I mean, you don't remove or change anything, you just bolt a lump of steel the front of your car, right? Right. You just bolted 40+kgs of steel right on the front of your car. It's got lots of leverage right out there - and the front suspension is probably only spec'ed to hold the engine up anyway as any cargo normally goes in the back. It's probably the eqivalent of having someone sat on your bonnet constantly. Will the car take it? Almost certainly. Will it make a difference to how long everything lasts because the car is now working harder? Yeah, probably.

And if simply adding a reinforced bumper can make a real difference, how much does everything change when you start actively moving suspension componentry around? I ain't an automechanical engineer. I don't know. And I don't want to find out the hard way either.

A well maintained stock vehicle stands a good chance of embarrassing a lot of the stock iron out there, because when they break a half-shalf, or eat a uj, or bend a track rod, you are still playing.


All of that said, if you do want to use it for pay&pray, I think you have it pretty much bang on the button. As you are going looking for deep water & trouble, and snorkle and some underbody armour will probably save you breaking (as much) stuff when you do get it wrong. I wouldn't advise using your daily driver as a pay&pray thing too often, because sooner or later you will break it, but I ain't about to stop you either.

bilge rat:
hi ya i got me s/guard and diff guard from rebel,  quite good price. got insa turbo mud tyres, from padocks were 48 pound each. good but wouldnt want to do high milage on the road. bit noisy and get the feeling they would wear down quick. might be worth a word with amd 4x4 at merrylees, there good helpfull and not to dear, same as you really on a shoe string, at the minuite trying to sort lousy oil leak on trany box, cheers. alan.....

clbarclay:
JATE rings are fairly cheap or easy to make :D

Either way get some good recovery points first before worrying about too much else.

I would recommend getting mud terrains sooner rather than latter. You can always just fit lift springs/blocks (suspension or body) first with bigger mud terrain tyres and then deal with dampers, brake lines etc. at a later date.

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