This is my first build thread of any vehicle i have ever owned so bear with me.

A Couple weeks ago i bought a 1994 Land rover discovery 1 on Craigslist for $800. I've never owned a Land Rover before but I've always wanted one. Being a mechanic and electronics specialist i'm not too worried about all the land rover electronic nightmares i keep hearing about. I've installed standalone ECU's in many different cars and built wiring harnesses from scratch so if it comes to that I'm confident i can keep this thing going.
I hate always having to scroll through the first chunk of build threads just to see a picture of the vehicle so I'm just gonna start off with a picture of her in all her glory. This is the day i brought her home.
It didn't come with the tires though. i took those off my Ford and put them on the Disco so i could bring it home. But everything else i got for $800! Before i show a bunch more pictures of all the goodies that came on this Disco i better mention what i plan on building this rig for. * feel free to scroll down if you just want to see pictures*
BUILD OBJECTIVES:

1. To out wheel my friends in their ​​​​​triple locked fj80 Land Cruisers no matter where we go.
2. To finally do Moab and the Rubicon with my Dad. And whatever else we find.
3. To get my girlfriend to go camping and do overlandy stuff with me.

That's pretty much it. I want a rig to wheel in that has comfy leather seats, AC, working heater, room for 5, and that i can toss the keys to my girlfriend and know she can drive it no problem (She currently does not really enjoy driving my 4 speed 1981 f-150). So now that i've got that part of the build thread out of the way it's time to show you guys what I'm working with. There's a lot to show so forgive me if i jump around.

The Engine Bay

After Spending 5 minutes trying to find the hood release I noticed the hood pins. After releasing those and finally getting the hood open i was greeted with this:

Now i know a lot of you will quickly notice the Terrafirma Dual Shock mounts but i'll talk more about those when i get to the suspension section.
First off the THE ENGINE DOES NOT RUN The previous owner couldn't figure out the engine electronics so he got a carburetor manifold and put that on so he could drive it. He then proceeded to drive the thing until the rods decided to see what was outside of the motor.



So if anyone has an engine close to South Eastern Washington let me know!!
The other thing to notice is that this Discovery has a small battery setup as well.
this takes us to the INTERIOR:
It has all the seats but this picture helps to show the front dash better









So obviously there's a lot going on in the interior. From what i can tell the small battery is setup to run the Alfa-Elite rally computer. I haven't replaced the small battery yet so i can't verify that the rally computer works yet. The Cobra cb and Silverstreak amp are fully operational though. And with the key in the on position i have dash lights, a door chime, the blower motor controls work, all the windows roll up and down except the passenger rear, the sunroof opens and closes, and all the exterior lights work. Since the interior is rhino lined i pulled all the seats out and hosed everything down. While i had the seats out i went ahead and painted as much of the cage as i could get to.




Well i think that's enough of that. It's got harness's, red hella map lights, quick disconnect steering wheel, blah blah blah. Time to get to the cool stuff


*Apparently i have reached the picture limit*
continue to the next post to see more!

 

This is an interesting rig... that internal roll cage is very rare to find in the states, you could probably get most of your money back from selling it.

If you decide to keep it, throw a diesel in that bad boy!!

What's installed in place of the passenger airbag?

 

I definitely plan on keeping this beast. I would love to out the new Cummins LR2.8 in it or maybe the new 2.8 Duramax .

​​​​​​ On the passenger dash is an Alfa-Elite rally computer (http://www.rally.cc/#EliteStart). It's predominantly used to measure time vs distance in a rally race. So if you are ahead of the time for a stage you can slow down so you don't get penalized. I haven't gotten it to power up yet since I'm pretty sure it runs off the second smaller battery, which is completely dead.

 

Nice post. Can't wait to see how it turns out..

 

SUSPENSION:
There's a whole lot of it. I'll post up pictures and point out the aftermarket parts that i know of but this discovery is setup for dune running and with different springs and shocks it's capable of 12-14 inches of travel.
On to the pictures. Here's more of the front setup:


The front has the Terrafirma Dual shock setup running dual Rancho rs9000's at each corner. The springs are stock rover springs RR4-3 with a 2 inch coil spacer.
Also on the front are a set of RTE offset radius arms

As for the rear it has single Rancho rs9000 at each corner along with RR1-3 springs and a coil spacer. You can also see the blue ARB line coming out of the rear diff

But the best part of the rear is the Curry jointed rear links which are also made by RTE




These things are beefy!!! You can also see where they channeled the body mount in order to clear the trailing arms under full compression.
When i was talking to the guy i bought it from i learned that this Disco has changed hands a 3-4 times in the last couple years. When i originally saw the craigslist ad it still had an ARB bull bar on it and Safari Gard rock sliders. Unfortunately the guy i bought the Disco from had already pulled them off and had sold them by the time i told him i would buy the whole truck. This also leads me to believe that in the last couple years the original suspension that was put on with the RTE trailing arms was taken off and sold because of its value and thats why the Rancho rs9000s, stock springs, and coil spacers are on their now. those rancho's maybe have 9-10" of travel but that wouldn't require channeling the body mount like that. I've already been talking with Simon at RTE about getting my Disco back to its full potential with 3" lift springs and Long travel Rock Krawler shocks. But unfortunately that's a pretty spendy setup. So in the mean time I'm just going to remove 1 rs9000 from each of the fronts so i just have one shock at each wheel and see how i like it. I'm already pretty certain that it's going to ride really harsh so i'll probably put on a set of Terrafirma +2" long travel shocks until i save up enough to get new springs and some real long travel shocks. But at the end of the day this is a designated offroading/camping vehicle so some sacrifices can be made. It's currently raining outside so i'm not able to do much work on the Disco at the moment, but i've gotten the CB radio + silver streak 150 watt amp working. I'm heading out to Portland this weekend to pick up a used 3.9 rover v8 so by this weekend i should have it running under it's own power. Unless both of the ECU's i have are bad.

Also if anyone wants a carburetor intake manifold for a rover v8 let me know! I'm looking to sell mine as i am going back to fuel injection.

 

 

That is a Alfa-Elite rally computer (ALFA Rally Computers - Small Systems Specialists) It's used in certain forms of rally racing. one of the best explanations i've found is from The Development of a Rally Computer, he says "In TSD rallying you need to have a very accurate method of measuring distance (ODOMETER), and you also need similar accurate method of measuring time (CLOCK). Then, given a specific speed (CAS), you can convert distance into time. Having done that, you can compare that calculated time to the actual time and determine whether and how much you are ahead or behind the proper time." In other words if you are doing a timed rally race and each section has a time window, you are trying to do that section as close to the time allotted as possible. And this computer helps you do that. But it can also be used in stage rally's in order to manipulate your starting position, if you don't want to be the first on the next stage you can purposely slow down a little at the end. But the only way to accurately do that is with a rally computer of this type. Anyways it's a cool bit of technology and hopefully i can get it to work.

 

 

All i got in private message was a quote of the message i had sent you. try again because i am very interested in this parts rig that you have.

 

Now this is a build thread! Good luck to you. I'm eager to see how this turns out. Also eager to see this rig in action.