Land Rover Discovery 1 (Part 2)

Something I wanted to do on the Land Rover after I got it was to protect it and try to prolong its life. I am doing all this on a budget though so brand new window seals to replace the old cracked ones were out of the question. So I got some Sikaflex 227 and some masking tape and filled in the cracks in the rubber seals. So far it has held up remarkably well. 

I also used the Sikaflex to seal around the front windscreen and in all the gutter channels.

Since the vehicle was leaking so much and the carpets were holding water, the drivers seat had developed a lot of rust, particularly around one fastening bolt. The weakened metal coupled with the constant forces of someone in the seat caused the metal around the bolt to completely fail. So I decided to fix that area of the seat frame.

I started by cutting out a section of metal around the failed bit.

Then I cut and tack welded in a new piece of steel.

Then fully welded it.

And from the other side.

Then I smoothed out all the welds with the grinder.

After a coat of paint it fit nicely back in place.

The Disco performed well doing its first firewood run.

For some silly reason - probably because I'm an idiot, I decided to swap the indicator and wiper stalks around to put the indicator stalk on the right of the steering column which is what I'm used to in my Subaru. This is the internals of the indicator switch mechanism.

Here are some of the moving parts for it. I would of course have to make a mirror of this component with all the contacts so that it works the other way around to control the lights.

I somehow managed to pull the non-user serviceable roll pin out of the stalks. 

Here is what the insides of the wiper stalk looks like.

This is the contacts part of the indicator/light stalk with the high/low beam mechanism attached.

The intermittent wiper speed control wheel on the wiper stalk has a small circuit board inside to send a signal to the control unit, I had to make a mirror of that circuit board to to give the same wiper function in the same direction as when it's the other way around. 

This is a 3D printed version of the back of the wiper switch which is mirrored from the original.

This is a custom 3D printed connector for the wiring from the indicator/lighting switch.

I modified the contacts on the original indicator/lighting switch, and although the switch unit itself was able to fit on the right hand side of the steering column, the connector would have fouled on the key barrel, so I soldered wires to the contacts and made a "divorced" connector for the indicator/light switch for the original connector to plug in to.

Another little modification I wanted to make was to the instrument cluster. I wanted to split the indicators so that there was a separate arrow for indicating left and right. I also wanted separate the low and high beam indicator lights on the dash board. 

I found some translucent green plastic to use as filters for the indicators.

The seem to match fairly well to the original green filters in the instrument cluster.

I painstakingly used some masking tape, black paint pen and a craft knife to make the individual indicator "indicator" lights.