Tubular Disco Early ones rot – but can still make top off-road toys

TUBEWAY BARMY

Early Land Rover Discoverys are famous for many things. Among them is an insane degree of body rust – which is why many of those that survived beyond middle age have ended up on the sharp end of an angle grinder. This 300Tdi buggy is one of the more creative results we’ve seen – but despite everything, deep down it’s still a Disco

Words and pictures: Dan Fenn

We know how it goes with Mk1 Discoverys. They’re great old vehicles with the tried and trusted offroad tech from a Range Rover, and they’re also been described as a 100” Defender – only one that won’t deafen, freeze, bake or disable you.

We know all this from experience. We also know that on top of all this good old technology is a body that rusts away to nothing – which is the main reason why there are so few of them left.

If you have the time, the skill and the equipment, a rotten old Disco can be brought back to the way it once was. But there’s also the option of turning it into something it never was.

A few companies have gone down the route of offering kit car bodies as a way of helping owners turn grotty old sheds into funky new buggies. But mainly, Land Rover owners being the kind of people they are, when you see a Disco based special it’s a home-brew.

Some look more like Discos than others. Some indeed look more like Defenders than others, while some mainly look like your worst nightmare. This one doesn’t really look like any of those things, but it defi nitely looks hard.

We photographed it seven and a half years ago, so we don’t know if it still looks as hard these days. And all we can remember of the owner was that he was called Hugo. But we did take some notes, so at least we were paying attention a bit, however for one reason or another the vehicle never made it into the magazine at the time. Er, well there’s no point rushing these things.

Below left, centre: Believe it or not, the bonnet is the original Discovery unit. Hugo removed the frame from underneath it, leaving just a sheet that could be shaped around the new tubular front end. This is a good illustration of how much length the vehicle has lost out of its front overhang, too Below right: The rock sliders, which are tied in to the chassis, were orginally just a footing for the roll cage. Later on, Hugo added the angled front edge and tubular tree sliders you see here, making the most of their potential as nerf bars

Below left: The rear chassis was cut down to give the vehicle the best possible departure angle. This is better than 90 degrees, so job done. As well as tying the chassis legs together, the new crossmember is an anchoring point for the back of the cage structure and supports a body designed to keep itself as far out of trouble as possible Below centre, right: The radiator is mounted in the rear to keep it away from mud. This leaves a big hole in front of the engine, because Hugo also removed the intercooler; the rad you see front lefty under the bonnet is an oil cooler

Anyway, here we are looking back on a shatteringly cold and wet February afternoon at Butcher’s Wood in Sussex. We were there at the invitation of CORSE, a club which had started up the previous year and was there setting up a trial event for the following morning, and we shot a variety of motors including an old-school Samurai and what was probably the best Jeep Wrangler YJ we’ve ever seen.

Hugo’s buggy came at the end of the day, when the light was starting to fade (so about three in the afternoon, given the plight of the weather), and if we remember rightly the photoshoot came to an end when he blasted into a mud run, didn’t make it out the other end and couldn’t find anyone left on site with a heavy enough vehicle to get him out. The Nissan Qashqai we had arrived in probably wouldn’t have made things any better…

Anyway, the vehicle started life as a 300Tdi Discovery with an R380 manual box and, when Hugo bought it, a snorkel made from what looked like a combination of rubber tube and boiler flue. At this point, it was entirely standard but for this one addition, which must have looked a little out of place.

Not to worry, it wasn’t going to stay that way. Hugo didn’t mention whether the Disco’s body was rotten when he bought it, but he did tell us that he replaced it with a tubular one which he made up himself using that good old Land Rover favourite, scaffold.

This finishes up at a new rear crossmember which anchors the back of the cage structure, in the process reducing the departure angle to better than 90 degrees. The rear body, such as it is, was shaped to be as out of the way as possible in extreme off-road situations.

The front of the chassis has been cut off too. Hugo first welded in a winch mount crossmember then finished it off a while later with a recovery bar, tidying it up a bit and providing an easyaccess towing point for those get-me-out-of-thismud-run moments.

Along the sides, Hugo made up his own boxsection rock sliders. These started out as just a footing for the cage, with tubular outriggers tying them to the chassis, but as the vehicle developed he added angled leading edges and tubular tree sliders to give them more of a nerf bar effect.

Underneath, the axles are standard up front and a Salisbury unit from a 110 at the back. These hold the vehicle up on Bearmach springs and Pro-Comp shocks in Terrafirma towers; brakes are standard, though when we took our pictures they were also new. There’s a set of heavy-duty steering bars on the front axle, while at the back a pair of Terrafirma dislocation cones helps get the best from the standard A-frame and trailing links.

Under the bonnet, the 300Tdi is more or less standard though Hugo removed the intercooler – feeling that this helps make it more responsive at off-road speeds. It breathes in through the aforementioned snorkel and out through a sideexit exhaust.

The radiator meanwhile has been moved to the back to protect it from mud. Under the bonnet (which is the original Discovery one with the frame removed from underneath so it’s just a sheet, bent over the tubular front body), the rad you see at the bottom left as you look from the front of the vehicle is an oil cooler. The R380 box has been retained and the whole plot turns a set of 35x10.50R16 tyres in a pattern roughly based on that of the classic Simex Extreme Trekker.

This is the stuff of hardcore off-road fun – which, having finished it, is exactly what Hugo started used it for at CORSE events and beyond. Where people just about managed to recognise it as a Discovery – though without its original doors and windscreen, that job would have been a great deal more awkward.

As the original Discovery gets rarer and rarer, keeping them alive is always a noble cause. Land Rover traditionalists might not always approve of the way off-roaders do it, but what was that we were saying about the Disco being like a 100” Defender? If that’s right, then with its new body this one is among the most definitive examples you’ll ever find.

Standard front and Salisbury rear axles hold the vehicle up on a set of Bearmach springs and Pro-Comp shocks in Terrafi rma towers. Terrafi rma makes the dislocation kit used at the back, too. The snorkel, which is rather less of a branded item, was the only modifi cation on the vehicle when Hugo bought it The 200Tdi engine has achieved legendary status and Jonathan chose it without any hesitation, fi rmly believing that it’s much stronger than the earlier 2.5 Turbo-Diesel and also the 300Tdi that replaced it. This particular example started life beneath the bonnet of a Discovery, which saved a lot of pain when buying it but added plenty when it came to installing it