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While upgrading the battery to an Odyssey 2150, I noticed a lot of crumbling conduit and a few melted wires, mostly along the positive wiring harness. Since I needed longer power cables to reach the terminals I planned to use on the Odyssey I opted to rip out and replace the damaged wiring and conduit, then route them down a safer, cleaner path.
I finally got the lift finished and the Disco back on the road this weekend (actually, it was the partially finished roof rack install that was holding things up). The OME 2-inch “Heavy Duty” lift kit consists of four Nitrocharger Sport shocks, two #779 front springs, and two #762 rear springs. I opted to go with the HD kit in anticipation of the added weight from a front winch/bumper and a large rear cargo drawer system that will be added in the near future. The best price (including quite reasonable shipping) I’ve found is from Lucky8, who also has an easy to follow installation video.
Paired with the kit are a set of ProComp Xtreme All-Terrain tires in LT265/75R16 on a set of steel 16-inch Land Rover wheels. The end result is a modest gain in ride height of about 4.5 inches, which looks just about right on the vehicle. As expected, the OME 10mm spacer was required to level things out. It is a $13 part, and installation is as simple as tossing it in above the spring isolator when you put on the right rear spring. Unless you manage to score a set of all “A” or all “B” springs, I recommend ordering one with your kit so you don’t have to do that part of the job twice.
Details on the install can be found in the Flickr set »
While installing the lift I opted to completely remove the rear sway bar (which was oversized as I had the SLS air suspension). I also have quick disconnects already installed on the front sway bar. On the street there is little noticeable difference with the rear bar gone. Off road, it is a big help having the rear axle ready-and-able to do some flex-work for a change. Minimal rubbing occurred at the leading corners of the plastic trim panel below the doors, and the trailing corners of the bumper trim. Use of a DREMEL makes short work of removing the excess trim, with little noticeable cosmetic change. There is no rubbing in the rear at this tire size.
The stock bump-stops actually prevent upward articulation to a point that would allow the tire to rub/damage anything metal. Downward articulation is not noticeably affected on the opposite wheel by this, however I have clearly outgrown the LEI Test Track and need to seek out larger obstacles for a realistic test. More flex could certainly be gained with a taller lift, however additional cost would be required to properly build it and maintain acceptable driveline angles. At 2 inches, the additional stress on driveline components is negligible, allowing the vehicle substantially improved capability using a far simpler (and less expensive) spring-and-shock only lift.
Many thanks to Larry at Dirty Parts for his advice, and talking me out of the BF Goodrich TA K/Os I had picked out. I am very happy with the grip provided by the more aggressive tread pattern of the ProComp Xtreme AT, and quite surprised at it’s quieter highway noise compared to the BFG. In fact, they really aren’t much louder than the little 255/55R18 Nitto TerraGrapplers I used to have installed.
I’ve been in the market for a roof rack for some time now, both as a mounting point for antennas/lights, and to carry bulky (but light) gear like sleeping bags and tarps. Since my needs are very small and I really like the view out of my sunroof, I really wanted a half-length rack. I also wanted it to sit nice and low, close to the roof’s surface. There are only a few off-the-shelf options available for a roof rack on a Discovery, and almost all of them are full racks. In fact, the only half-rack option I was able to find is by a company that has an awful reputation on the various Land Rover forums. Ultimately, I opted to go with a unit from Defender Rack and figure out some other way to handle mounting. Defender makes a model that is 4 feet wide (perfect on a Discovery) and can be had as short as 3 feet… I went with a 5-foot one-piece welded model. The build-quality is top-notch, but it could have used another trip through the powder coater as it is already showing (slight) signs of rust from this year’s rain.
Gutter mount seems to be the industry standard for just about every Discovery rack out there. Admittedly, the gutters on a Discovery are relatively stout and abnormally wide, but it seems like every picture I see of a Discovery with a gutter-mounted rack has a bent gutter. Despite this, I made the mistake of ordering a set of Thule super-high feet after researching the problem on several forums. Honestly, I cannot understand how anyone could possibly be happy with them as it has to be one of the poorest gutter-foot designs ever created. It is also downright irresponsible of the company to continue making an unsupported gutter-foot this tall, it is simply impossible to make it stable. Fortunately, Amazon agreed with me – thus forever ending my gutter-mount fiasco.
That left me with one option: custom mounts.
More details can be viewed in the Flickr set »
This actually proved easier than anticipated. The front mounting points of the 5-foot rack line up just perfect with the 4 holes already provided for the OEM Land Rover load bar when the back of the rack is lined up with the back of the roof. Of course, the existing holes are front-to-back while the rack’s holes are side-to-side, so a cross-bar had to be made first (see: Antenna/Light bar OTC). From there it was a simple matter to attach the front end of the rack.
The middle and back mounting points required a little more thought. Fortunately, there is a support beam running front-to-back on each side of the roof right between the rear sunroof and the “Alpine” windows. Once again, Metals Depot provided me with an inexpensive source for T6061 aluminum, and I soon had a reinforcing sandwich of 1/4 x 1-inch flat bar on the underside and 1/8 x 3-inches on top. The extra width on the topside, along with an extra bar on the bottom of the rack, help to distribute the weight more evenly. The final connection to the rack is made with four mounts I picked up from Advanced Antivibration Components, essentially miniature motor mounts.
To ensure a water-tight seal I also picked up a UV-stabilized silicone mat from Advanced Antivibration Components and cut it to fit the 3-inch-wide aluminum bar. The bolts are then force-fed through this and secured nice and tight. Gasket maker would be another option here, but it is messy and difficult to remove later. The final product is covered in Rustoleum’s bed liner, which has a finished texture very close to that of the factory roof bars. After a thorough road test at highway speeds on rough pavement, washboarded dirt roads, and gravel I’m proud to say there is zero noise from the rack. There is also zero movement in the roof’s surface when I climb up on the rack to use it as an observation platform – the plan for weight distribution worked perfectly.
I wasn’t originally going to post this, but the end intermediate result turned out so well as to deem it worthwhile. In setting up the forward mount for the roof rack I had planned to pick up, I found out just how easy (and inexpensive) it is on a Discovery to add mounting space for antennas, lights, or whatever else you may want to add up on the roof. To make the bar, you’ll need:
Home Depot carries the bolts and washers, Metals Depot has great prices on the aluminum.
There are two threaded holes near the rear of each factory roof bar on a Discovery, these are intended for the OEM cross-bar accessory for which Land Rover charges ~$300. These holes are weight-bearing and designed to handle things like canoes, roof racks, and other cargo. They also make for quick-and-easy attachment points for home-built accessories. With the 4mm allen wrench, remove the two protective caps currently occupying these holes. Then grab your aluminum bar and start measuring. I suggest adding a curve to the aluminum bar as this will add strength and rigidity, and provide additional clearance for your antenna/light mounts.
View the build details in the Flickr set
The pictures are pretty self-explanatory. Measure twice and drill the holes in your aluminum bar, including the holes you’ll need for your accessories. Once that is done, test fit the bar with your lowest-hanging accessory and bolt it down so you can make sure nothing touches. At 48-inches, the aluminum flat bar will be within a couple inches of where it should be so you’ll only need to trim a little off the end. Measure and mark for the amount you wish to trim, then take the bar down and trim it. Double-check the fit, then use your file to round the corners and the leading edge of the bar (for aerodynamics). Sand it down all over with the fine-grit sandpaper, then rinse the bar well with mineral spirits and allow it to dry. Follow the instructions that came with your bedliner, and give it an extra day of dry time before attaching the bar. When the bar is completely dry and hardened, attach it and your accessories to the roof. Once everything is in place you can use a little extra bedliner to cover up the shiny bolts.
There is only one clean way to run wires down off the roof, and that is to drill a hole. Despite the horror stories regarding such things, if done right there is no reason for this to cause any leaks or rattles. Where you place the hole is really a personal preference thing, but the location of the new antenna/light bar does happen to be right above a spot in the headliner that has ample room for wiring and an access panel to get at the roof. This panel can be found by sitting in the rear seats and looking up… it serves double-duty as a dome light. Pop the lens off of the light, then carefully pry the light housing out of the surrounding plastic. With the assembly out you are looking up at the bottom of the roof metal, right where the new roof bar is located. A little careful planning and some fish tape and you can finish up wiring your new accessories without even dropping the headliner.
The LifeHammer – a tool every vehicle manufacturer should be including as standard equipment in every vehicle made (especially those taken well off the beaten path) – can be had for about $15 from Amazon
The LifeHammer as purchased does not come with any mounting hardware, a puzzle they leave you to figure out. After several bad experiences with all manner of adhesives on other equipment, I strongly suggest you disregard the manufacturers claim that any sort of adhesive tape will do. For going into plastic interior panels, I’ve found wood screws self-tap easily and hold well. A 5/8-ths inch #6 screw works well in most cases, and is short enough it won’t damage anything the auto maker might have hidden under the panel.
For those of us with a Discovery, the factory-installed overhead shelf/console has a large void in the center rear. This area is too far back to be a useful location for a display or gauge cluster, has no available OEM accessories to fill it, and is an awkward place for auxiliary switches. It is an empty, sturdy mounting space that serves no other purpose and is easily accessible by both driver and passenger. Once the LifeHammer is installed, all of the original access panels, switches, and lighting remain unaffected.
Once installed, this location is easily accessible while strapped into either the driver or front passenger seats. The bracket itself is tight enough the hammer isn’t going anywhere (the roof is actually a suggested location by the manufacturer), and the entire assembly sits high enough it does not block access to the sunroof controls.
Down the road, the LifeHammer bracket will help shield the glare of some custom-fabricated map lights I will be installing (for some reason, the Discovery does not come with any from the factory).
Columbia Rovers Aluminum Fuel Tank Skid offers 1/4-inch of fuel tank protection at only 18 pounds of added bulk. I’ll admit, I’m still a skeptic of aluminum when it comes to protecting a two-ton truck from rock damage, but recent conversations with other off-roading experts have convinced me to give it a try. I’ve opted to do this test with a fuel tank skid, since there is not one available from the factory, and it is not a place I would consider in the least bit vulerable (in 5 years of wheeling a Discovery, I have never hit the fuel tank).
This ultra-light skid is currently available for first and second generation Land Rover Discoverys, and the Range Rover Classic, from Columbia Rovers for $275 plain or $300 powder coated in black. Installation is extremely easy (on a Discovery 2) and can be done by one person with two jack stands, a floor jack, and a couple 2x4s in about 30 minutes. You’ll need a 13mm socket for the two rear bolts and a 15mm for the front two.
25 gallons of fuel is heavy. The first thing you will want to do is go for a drive. If you have a full tank, a long drive. Carry a fuel can full of extra fuel and drive until well after the low fuel light comes on and you think you have about a gallon left, then head home and let the truck cool off (you’ll be under the truck working next to the exhaust). You’ll need to be careful to make sure that the fuel tank doesn’t drop more than an inch or so while you’re swapping the factory strap for the new skid plate, which is why you want it to be as empty (light) as possible. The easiest way to do this is to put yourself under the fuel tank and hold it up with your knees while you slide the strap out, slide the skid in, and get the bolts back into the rear end (leave them loose). After that it is an easy task to hold up the front end of the fuel tank and skid while you put the front nuts back in place and tighten them down. Then, go back to the back and finish tightening the rear bolts.
The skid seems well built and the finish is perfect. Overall I’d give it 5-stars, but I haven’t had it out on the trail yet. For strength, all I can say is that it certainly does well supporting the weight of the vehicle from the center of the skid when used as a jacking point to raise the rear of the vehicle. I have a trip to the Mojave National Preserve scheduled for later this month, so with any luck I’ll have the opportunity to bash it on a few rocks and see how it holds up.
More pictures and installation notes can be found in the Flickr set »
A little trick I picked up in my Jeeping days: 30 minutes and a Dremel gain about 4 inches of clearance to the front tires. Even better, the lines of a 2003-2004 model look like it was designed for this. When you’re finished, it’s a good time to install swaybar quick disconnects up front as you will have just freed up a ton of room to work. Yes, the factory fog lights can be retained after doing this, I have them out for other reasons.
I’ve also moved my washer fluid reservoir in anticipation of a new aftermarket bumper. It doesn’t hang down below the remaining bumper area though, so if you want to keep it there it can just be painted black (in stock form it is white). A walk-thru on trimming the bumper is posted here.
So, what does a 4.6L Disco sound like without exhaust?
For about five dollars in parts, the CD changer’s cable on a Discovery can be converted into an aux input, allowing you to connect any audio device to the stereo. A little more cash and you could have both, but I opted to sell the CD changer instead and use the funds to buy a new phone that can carry my entire music library. I still have the factory in-dash CD available for the occasional “guest” disc I might want to play. The in-dash was originally designed for the nav system’s data CD, but I find I much prefer the Google Maps / Phone GPS combination for the few times I actually use such things.
The parts you need for your install may vary depending on what you want to accomplish. As I had a fairly generic setup in mind and did not want to retain the factory changer my shopping list consisted of: black heat shrink tubing, audio-grade silver solder, gold-plated RCA jacks, and the smallest black plastic project box I could find (which was still too big). I could not find a project box I liked anywhere, so the local Radio Shack got my business on that one. The rest of the materials were ordered from … along with a 12V cigarette lighter soldering iron that is quite possibly the best soldering iron I have ever used (I will be ordering more of them).
When you are pulling the wiring out from under the seat bracket, watch out for the unprotected wiring that heads to the seat heater. You will want to carefully pull the CD changer wire bundle up from under these wires, and then tuck them back down safely in the carpet. Also, if you are not confident about slicing into the shrink tubing surrounding the audio wires now would be a good time to shut off the permanent power feed that runs down them. This can be done by pulling fuse #17 from the fuse panel under the steering wheel, which is a blue 15A fuse. Note that you will loose the settings in your stereo and have to enter the security code again. If you do not have the code call your Land Rover dealership and get it, you will want it on hand anyhow in case your battery ever dies or you ever blow a (stereo related) fuse.
I used the description provided here to decipher what each wire is used for: Audio Wires. In a nutshell, the wiring configuration goes like this:
All other wires can be sealed off and ignored, however the purple wire was an “always on” primary 12V power feed to the CD changer. Considering the amount of power a six-disc CD changer requires, this wire could easily be re-used to power small devices (such as charging your MP3 player). Note that on the 2004 Discovery, a change was made to the wiring such that grounding out the green wire will NOT leave the audio channel open. At first I feared this might doom me to buying the $120 BlitzSafe box (which is made specifically to address the 2004 change), but as it turns out those of us with the factory hi-line Nav system have a much simpler (and free) solution available to us…
When you are done either duplicating what I’ve detailed in the pictures below (or setting up your own system to your satisfaction) its time to “reprogram” your stereo for auxiliary input mode. This is a painfully time consuming process of pressing a whopping 4 buttons (5 on some vehicles). With the stereo on and in any mode, press and hold the Tone button for a little over two seconds until the super-secret hidden cool-stuff menu comes up. On that menu, locate and press the soft-key labeled “Aux” until the screen displays “AUX Mode on” in great big letters. Now you can hit the Tone button again or just wait for the menu to time out. When you are back out of the menu again go in to CD mode (if you are not there already). In place of where the CD Changer soft-key once was, you will now have a soft-key labeled “Aux” – press it.
Now it is time to test out your new setup. Make sure the volume on your stereo is turned down low to be safe, hit play on your device, and see what happens. Note that on most devices you will need to turn the device volume all the way up to reach what is known as “line level” before you will get a good amount of sound and a familiar response from the stereo’s volume controls.
I’ve detailed each of these steps on the corresponding picture descriptions: view them here »
My 2004 Discovery has been dumping all the air from the right-side airbag when I park it going on 4 months now. At first it was just annoying, but it would always fill it back up again when I put the truck in gear so I just lived with it and planned to do a lift and coil conversion in March. Today, the computer or the sensor on that side (not sure which has failed yet) had other plans, and refused to refill the bag all day leaving me with nothing but a bump stop for suspension in the right rear corner. I was backing it from where I park it to the garage, hoping I could clean the sensor contacts or trick it into leveling, when it suddenly decided to start working again and fill the airbag. So, quickly shut the truck off and instead went for disabling the system while it was level.
I do not recommend the following procedure if you think a leak in the air lines may be causing the problem. If that is the case, disabling the system will only leave you with an empty airbag(s) and no way to re-inflate it. I also don’t recommend doing this as a permanent solution. If you just need a quick fix to get you by until you can have the vehicle checked out (or eliminated the system), this should do you fine. As always, you do this at your own risk and I am not responsible if you total your truck, kill yourself, or set fire to the entire state of Idaho.
For this temporary fix, you will need two things:
With your truck parked on level ground and cooperative, wait until it is done leveling then put it in park, shut it off, and quickly get out of the truck and shut the door. The reason I say quickly is that opening/closing the door at the wrong time can make the computer think it is time to deflate the bag (which would mean starting over). After taking the proper safety precautions to ensure your truck doesn’t run you over while you are working on it, look under your truck towards the back of the drivers door. Bolted to the outside of the frame rail will be a shoe-box sized container with two flat-head “screws” holding the lid shut. Using your screw driver, loosen these keeping in mind they are not really screws and will stay attached to the lid. When that’s done, lift up on the near side of the lid and pull it towards you. The lid will come all the way off to reveal the compressor, air lines and wiring.
The wiring going into the blue and white plugs (located approximately 2-3 inches from the forward end of the box) send signals to inflate or deflate either side of the vehicle. Being careful not to puncture or disconnect the air lines (which are under high pressure), use your flat-head screw driver to pop the metal locking clips off of these plugs (they slide to the rear). You may need a short screw driver to do this, it is a little tight under there. Once the clips are removed you’ll be free to unplug these two connectors. Once that is done just tuck them in somewhere safe (or use a small zip tie) and put the lid back on the box. It might take a couple tries to get the lid to line up again.
Now when you start the truck you should get a fault in the SLS system, thus causing the amber SLS warning light to come on. This is good, it means you have sucessfully disconnected the wires and the air system’s computer is not receiving any data. In this state the computer will not run the compressor or let air out of the system – it can’t, as you have disconnected the wires that send that signal. Keep an eye on it as you might need to plug the wires back in again long enough to re-inflate the airbags if you do lose any air.
Again, this is a temporary fix only. By nature I’m sure some air seeps out of the system on it’s own, and without the compressor being told to inflate the airbags it will eventually sag. Still, it is better than having to tow your truck to the shop and might buy you a little time before having to repair or replace the system.
