Salvage to Savage

[tstolt13]

Hello y'all,
I'm new to expedition travel, New to Land Rover, but no stranger to adventure. I've recently purchased a 04 Disco from a salvage auction with the hopes of creating an expedition vehicle/daily driver. The visible damage is not extensive, see my profile pic, which is straight off the lot, but I have not been able to obtain licence plates for it yet ie: it's not being driven on a regular basis yet. My short list of repairs is as follows:
New head light - eBay
New bumper - Atlantic British
New pads and rotors - Callahan, Amazon. Don't hate, they are a real company.
Body work by Tim - pliers and a mallet in the garage
Ultra gauge for codes and temp.

Near future work to be done:
Flush and replace all engine fluids
Valve cover gasket replacement
Drive the truck around to find out what else needs attention.

I'm looking for advise (not including suggesting selling or reminding me I'm an idiot for taking on this challenge), or support for my cause, because that's in short supply from the wife right now.
Thanks for looking
Tim

 

[ColoDisco]

Welcome Tim! As a LR tech and having worked on ALOT of these I would recommend checking some of the common problem areas.

Starting at the engine I see you already noticed the valve cover gaskets, check the head gaskets, timing cover and water pump. Head gaskets are very common, timing cover is a little less common and there's a weep hole on the water pump facing the passenger side that will let you know if it's starting to fail. If your doing the valve cover gaskets I would recommend replacing the lower injector seals with viton seals. It is important as the cheaper seals leak in as little as a year and cause havoc with your fuel trim and O2 sensors. Generally the rear main seals leak but you can hold off on those until the leak gets heavy, fix all the other leaks first then clean off the back of the engine and bell housing and monitor how fast it gets wet again. Front crank seal and cam position sensor seals leak, not a difficult repair but takes some creativity to fix, pm me if yours is leaking, I can walk you through it.

Suspension/steering
Check your drag link ends and toe link ends. Grab ahold firm and lift up and down to check for free play. Front and rear axle seals are common enough you should see if you have moisture on them. Fronts are easy but the rear you have to inspect inside the rear rotors.

Driveline
Front driveshafts are always a issue. Again grab ahold firm and check for free play. Also check if the bearing caps are spinning. You should notice the lock rings are moving from their normal location or the bearings are shiny inside the joints, both are tell tale signs of joint wear.

Interior
Window regulators, the clunk, squeak, rattle and all are signs of failure. Door locks are common failures. Wiper switch, gets gunked up over the years and causes intermittent wiper function. Switch can be removed and disassembled and cleaned.

There's probably more and I'm sure others will chime in. Good luck!

 

[tstolt13]

Thank you for all the advice colodisco! My window regulators will need replacement soon apparently. I'll check over as much of the other items as possible as time allows this weekend.

 

[tstolt13]

I've found a new situation... My center diff lock is stuck. I've been spraying PB blaster on it for a couple of days with no luck. It appears a pin of sorts is preventing the lever from moving up or left. I'm starting to think I'm missing something when trying to engage. The truck is in neutral, brake depressed, then I try to engage/move the diff lock lever. The knob doesn't seem to need to be pushed down (as in shifting into reverse in a 6 speed manual) or need any other trick. I'll keep blasting it but am I not doing something correctly?