Hi. Tempted to buy another Discovery. How to make sure was or not a flood victim ? Any key places that will tell the tale for sure ?

 

Carfax is a start

Was in in or around western north Carolina about 1 years ago?

 

pull out the seatbelt retractor and see if it has signs of water/mold

 

My P38 a few years ago

 

Carpets should be pulled up as they'll give a good indication. Pull out the rear seatbelts i.e. simply keep pulling on the belt, and if the water reached that high there should be signs of it in the belt - however, it's not a perfect indicator of flood damage as the rear seatbelt assembly tends to be quite high in these vehicles. Removing fuse and lower dash panels is a good area to look at. A normal, non flooded vehicle will normally have bits of dust, broken down panel backing and general dry crap in there. In a flooded vehicle it tends to have set into dry gunk or have been washed away, so look for signs of what you'd normally expect to see and if they're not there, dig deeper.

 

Some random ideas based on what I’ve seen at salvage yards.

Under the door sill trim panels (black plastic) is a dead giveaway.
Maybe look behind the left/right kick panels on the A-pillars - easy enough to remove. Any debris silt or dirt in there is indicative.
If it’s a 99-02 those front foglights will fill up with dirty water since they have vent tubes.
Look in the ashtray in the rear of the center console.
Check areas laymen / people would forget to clean. Maybe the inside of the rear cargo bins. Things like that.

But -- Pull the carpets and look in the footwells. That’s your best way to tell. Although lots of Discos leaked for years so -- hard to distinguish perhaps from bog standard crappy disco interior water ingress.

People are good at hiding flood damage on high dollar cars. I can’t image someone would go to great great lengths to hide it on a cheaper Disco though. Just a thought ...

 

Inside door panels, under the door trim that holds the carpet down, glove box, and under the seats are good spots to check. Also rear cargo door sub area (peak inside it with a flash light). Also drop kick panel under steering wheel and look for corrosion on the fuse block.

 

Or you can post tons of pictures here and let us analyse it to death and debate whether or not it was or was not in a flood, which quite honestly would be great fun.