We’re leaving for our Big Bend trip in like... five days and the Disco is still in pieces. Oh dear...
Luckily, despite my alarmist headline, it is pretty close to ready. The driveshaft is back in, the interior is mostly reassembled, and technically I could drive it without the passenger door card.
So what has been done?
1) Parking Brake
Well... not as much as I’d hope. I finally fixed the parking brake and that seems to be working now.
1b) Flex coupling
As I had to remove the rear propshaft to get at the parking brake, I went ahead and replaced the rear flexible coupling. It was pretty rough....
But hadn’t actually started to fail, just spider a bit. Easy and cheap job.
2) Diff Locks (again)
I also tore down the interior so I could fix my home-made diff-lock linkage. As it turns out if you button everything up but forget to actually tighten stuff down and then just “send it,” eventually that shit will wiggle loose and stop working.
That done, the Landy’s transfer case is once again full featured. There is an additional, optional, mod that I’m looking at doing. Basically it tricks the transmission ECU into thinking the CDL is always disengaged and that is... good.
Long story, but yeah I might do it if I have time.
3) Passenger window frame (again)
Ever since I went through the gyrations of replacing the passenger side door lock, I didn’t get the window frame properly aligned and therefore had some wind noise. Before driving 2200 miles, I figured I should fix that.
Unfortunately this meant once again disturbing the frankly excellent factory vapor barrier. Sadly, the second disturbance proved too much, which the coming off with the duct tape I added during my first incursion.
The adjustment was pretty straightforward: loosen bolts, raise frame, tighten bolts.
Unfortunately, with it being December, I wasn’t trusting the new duct tape to stick well for re-assembly, so I needed to break out the garage heater to get everything sufficiently toasty before application.
That done, the interior went back together with minimal fuss and we got to move on to...
4) Fixing the 12V accessories
So I did a pretty newb boo boo on our last offroading trip: I tired to run two tire infiltrators off the same 12V splitter. That was... pretty dumb. I want to say that I looked up the amperage of the pumps and decided it would be OK... but that doesn’t seem likely. Anyway, I blew the fuse in my 12V splitter and have yet to source a replacement.
I went to Harbor Freight, but sadly they were out of their 12V fuse assortment. Ahh well, a trip to my local auto supply store sorted that out without too much fuss.
5) ABS Sensor
To fix or not to fix, that was the question. The ABS/ TC system in a Disco is the... well maybe not the heart, but certainly a component is making the Disco good offroad. My driver’s side front wheel speed sensor has been acting up for the better part of a year. While the sensor itself is likely just gooped up with mud, it is a completely pain to get to as it requires removing the brakes.
That said, it has been behaving itself for several months, so it is possible it cleared itself?
I think I am going to go the sleeping dogs route here and just... leave it. Now that I have a working center lock I don’t have to rely on the TC to keep me moving anyway.
6) STICKERS
No trip would be complete without STICKERS. This trip qualifies for our small round logo because it is longer than a long weekend, has all three of us present, but we didn’t buy cars specifically for this trip.
I still can’t get the interior of the 0 and the 8 to stay put in this design. I don’t really use the vinyl cutter enough to be very good at it. From what I’ve ready it appears to be a catch 22 between cutting too deep, which causes the little bits to fall out, or not cutting deep enough and I can’t weed properly.
Will it make it?
Well yeah....
I could drive it off the jack stands right now (not recommended) and send it as is. The remaining work is cosmetic.
Unless something new comes up...
... oh dear now I’ve jinxed it.