Thread: Meet my 90, and share the adventure.

Even though the mule is off the road with a buggered intercooler hose, the itch to tinker is still there.
Today I decided to remove the disc brake stone shields and get a stiffy. On the shields, that is.

I'm neither here nor there on the disc brake stone shields. But since I ordered a set of nugget's 'stiffies' one night after one too many bourbons with my visa cars within reach, logic dictates that a mod should be done for the sake of a mod.
I've had a few times offroad where a stick, a rock, or something else gets stuck in the disc brake shields. Usually it clears itself, once or twice, I've needed to intervene and pull the offending twig out of there. I put a bit of a thread up >here< to gather the general consensus of whether these stone shields are all they're cracked up to be, and I think the jury is still out.
As with anything, I tend to fall back to the 'I'm not as smart as I think I am' rule, and keep in mind that the LR tooling, manufacture, installation and engineering that went into this humble part, probably shows that they believe it was necessary, and worth investing in for the sake of the vehicle. That being said, they designed them so they might crack over time... so I'm taking that with a grain of salt. In any case, the mod will go on!


Nugget supplies some nifty instructions with the kit. What it omits however, is how to get them off the vehicle.

I'll outline this below.

Gather your tools- for removal, a 10mm spanner and a 27mm socket for the wheel nuts are all that is needed.


Prepare your workspace.

Today I'm working in the car port of the apartment block where I reside. I will have an epic shed one day...
My 300zx is living beside the landy now. Being majestic AF. I need to do some more work on the power steering pump on this, probably a rebuild, as it's a bit whiney. Also need to do a timing belt on it for it's second 100,000km interval. These works will probably happen together, as the PS pump is easiest done with the radiator and all intercooling pipes out of the way (there is a lot of these, as its a V6 twin turbo). That job might make its way into this thread down the track. But I digress.

1) jack up the vehicle
Chock a wheel fo' safety etc, and don your safety squints.

Convenient rock, is convenient.

Crack the wheel nuts (27mm / or 1-1/16 for you imperial types), and jack the vehicle. Use axle stands. Or if you are expecially hardcore, don't.
Remove both rear wheels for easy access.

-intermission-
Bonus points for hella flush stance!


2) Undo bolts retaining stone guard shield
There is 3x 10mm hex bolts holding the disc brake stone gaurd in place. They are at approx 5 o'clock, 8 o'clock and 12 o'clock positions as you look at them from the diff, back towards the LHS stone shield.

The 5 o'clock bolt is behind the shock bracket, and is not accessible with a socket.
I used a 10mm flex head ratchet spanner, which was a walk in the park. You could get away with a socket and a normal spanner if you wished, and had more patience than me.

12o'clock:


5o'clock:

...and 8 o'clock is staring in your face. If you can't work it out, sell your rover, there is no hope for you!

3) Remove the stone shields.
These are easy. I didn't have any luck removing them with the wheels on (the astute amongst you would have noticed the above pics were with the wheels on), so I think it's best to remove the wheels.

There is a bit of fiddle-farting to get these off, but this should show the general gist of it:


Up to this above point, including jacking / chocking and removing the wheels, took about 15 minutes. Bank on another 20 or so to mark out the holes, drill and secure the stiffies, bringing the whole job in under an hour from go to woe.

From this point on, you can follow nugget's supplied instructions, but please, feel free to read on for my own little OC adventure.

4) Inspection of removed parts.
The disc brake stone shields are not identical, marked as a Left and right unit. They are notched to sit around the disc brake calipers, which sit on the upper rear of the axle tube.
The parts are labelled as LH and RH as seen below:




My vehicle has just over 40,000km on it, and about 4.5 years of use (was sold to the PO sept '12). The previous owner was a farmer from Quirindi way, and from what I can gather, did a fair bit of farm driving, dirt roads at speed, and some 4 wheeling. Most of what I've done with the vehicle has been offroad, with the bitumen to get to the tracks.
Looking at the shields, there was not a lot of mud and crud behind them, however I had recently high pressure cleaned the car after a particularly muddy 4x4 trip.
There were some 'minor' stone chips in the paint, but nothing that would bother a 15mm thick piece of cast steel, like a disc brake (Or even a cast aluminium caliper, for that matter).
The outside, stone chips:

Compared to the inside:


Cool LR imprint on the stone shield from the part it was mounted to:


Washing the parts:
Missus is away. Kitchen sink is fair game.








Time to drill.... but first...

It's time for another...

TOOL REVIEW

Sutton tools 'Supa Bit' Impact drill set



Bought these at one of those bunnings warehouse trips where all I wanted was a sausage sanga... somehow, these followed me home.
So I gave these a whirl on this job.

There is only a few sizes, but they work really well with an impact driver. The hex shank works well and makes bit changes a breeze. As the drill bit bites, the impact motion of the driver comes into play and powers thru the material.
They might be a bit gimmicky, but for anyone who has battled (and I mean, battled) with changing out drill bits for stepping up thru the sizes, you will know the pain and toll it takes on getting a quick job done. It's even worse if you have a keyed chuck like my old makita drill which is enough to drive a bloke insane.

It's time to end today's sponsored content, and get back to the actual job at hand:

5mm holes were drilled and counter sunk with this nifty little step drill.
The trick (as per instructions supplied with the stiffies), is to line it up on the convex face of the stone shield, bolt it into place, and mark your holes.
I used a scribe and a centre punch to the centre.


Parts were in decent condition, but not top notch.



You can see the pocking of the finish, and some exposed metal where the shield mounts to the axle assembly. The bare metal was beginning to rust, so I thought it prudent to give it a bit of a birthday with some paint.

Prep:


Paint:


Booze Revooz time!
Since I don't like watching paint dry, I had to occupy myself in other ways.
XXXX gold to the rescue. For a mob that needs to use X's because they cannot spell 'BEER', it's not too bad.
Plus, hard liquor at 11am is not a good look.

My arm was twisted, and I had 2 hrs to kill, so managed approx 2 coats per side.
I've been using Dulux metalshield flat black epoxy enamel for a few painting tasks (winch solenoid bracket in the engine bay, and winch rebuild), and have been impressed with its quality. Nobody has time for crap paint.
This one dries hard, and seems to be pretty hard wearing. Plus it's available in many colours, but most of what I need is black.



Getting a stiffy
Ahhh... this joke will never get old.
This is where the stiffy mates with the stone shield.
Sort of looks like a movie I watched once

Squeezing every last drop of silicone outta that toob. Had just enough for the job!
I was going to use some sikaflex 291 marine sealant I had in the fridge, but it had dried up.
You know youre a car guy when your egg tray in the fridge door is full of loctite, silicone andgasket goo

All buttoned up


All installed.


I did have a bit of an issue lining up one of the bolts on the RHS shield.
The added thickness of the stiffy means the shield needs to bend around the lower shock mount. this leads to a bit more interference and alignment bothers (not a big issue) when lining it up.
To get around this, I found that getting the bolt at 5 o'clock started first, then getting the others started was the best course of action. The 5o'clock bolt is the furthest from the opening of the shield, and is least able to bend and adapt to any alignment variances with the shield.

Interesting design points
The stone shields do not sit around the disc brake, in fact, they sit proud of it


The shield has flares to keep debris away from the brake lines and caliper body.
Overall it's a pretty weak bit of sheet metal, so will be pretzel'd if it meets with a decent rock or log.

I gave the paint about 4 hours dry time, I did suffer a few dings and dongs while installing them, plus I need to work on my silicone application skills... but it should be a solid finish once it fully dries.

If I have any future issues with the shields, I'll probably just remove them and run without. But what I did today should extend their life until they meet a bitter end.

During today's shennanigans (while the stone shield paint was drying), I also did some maintenance on the mule. Giving it a bit of love for its 40,000 km birthday.

On the cards is the usual checks as per the maintenance check sheet, including engine oil, fuel and air filters, check remaining fluids and go over it for anything amiss.

Fuel filter
The stock filter was replaced with a Fuel manager OEM equivalent unit, p/n 36995, a 5um filter element.
This is what was supplied as an equivalent to the LR WJI500040

Stock unit


Aftermarket equivalent


Fuel draining hack- 2L coke bottle


Fuel appears to be relatively clean.

The crap in the bottom is what leaked out from all the mud and stuff near the bottom water drain point.

The stock filter had seen better days.

There was a fair bit of mud and rust that had accumulated in the lip of the filter (this part is up in the filter housing).

I also took the opportunity to check the condition of the secondary, 2um filter. All good here, as expected after about 5000km.






Air filter

This was a bit of a surprise. I will admit, this is new ground for me. All previous services have been done at the dealer, and due to the km's I do (not many), I don't go thru a thorough vehicle inspection before every trip. If I do it's usually oil level and coolant- the important ones!

I'd read of people bagging the design / fit / finish of the filter housing for being difficult to inspect the filter condition. I was expecting there to be spring clips in inaccessible places, but was surprised to see only 2 clips, and a locking tab in the inaccessible part of the lid which sits under the wing top.

So I pulled the filter using the 2 spring clips, and was greeted by this on the dirty side




Missus was still away, so I stole her vacuum


Surprisingly (and I'm still a little confused, shocked about it), was the condition of the 'clean' side of the lid.

"This side to road"
Is this normal when rain etc is sucked thru the snorkel and dissolves all the small particles and flows thru the filter? Or is it possible that the filter was not installed properly for a period of time?


Trick for young players (like me) is getting the lid lined up properly. I double / triple checked that it was all aligned before I kicked on. You can get a good look at how the airbox lid is located by peeking down under the wing top towards the front of the vehicle.

Not seated properly:


Seated properly:


Trick is to get these two hook tabs


Into these two tabs (in the abyss)


Will be doing more over the coming days between work etc.

Intercooler hoses were shipped Thurs night from the UK @ BAS, got the notification today they have cleared customs after travelling thru Leeds UK, Koeln Germany, pensylvania USA, Louisville Kentucky USA, and Honolulu Hawaii. This consignment has travelled more than I have

Usual brilliant, informative post Mitch.
I'll fit my brackets from Nugget this week hopefully, and use your photo essay as a guide.
Thanks mate.
Ken

Yes Mitch. Good work. Could you please advise which Knuckles you skinned so that I can apply bandaids before the event rather than after?

I'm happy to report that no skin was lost in this episode of toxic_avenger's ramblings!
I did however suffer minor finger fatigue from the spray painting, and some soap and water was used for cleanup afterwards.
Proper PPE for this task should include plenty of cold beer, and a shady spot to recline in, when you reach the 'job admiration' stage of the project. Be sure to drink lots of beer, and relax a lot, as this kind of positive reinforcement will ensure that wrenching on your landy remains a positive experience. It will lessen the trauma of that really difficult and annoying job one day in the future.

Haha that PPE should be standard for all land rover projects.

Thanks for the write up! Very enjoyable read.

Hi Mitch,

Like a lot on hear I have been following your journey. Fantastic read and very inspirational. I am considering starting a thread for my new Discovery 5 When it arrives.

Any how I came across this pic that I thought you might like.

Mitch, I find the easiest way to get the air box lid on and off is by removing the plastic thing on the drivers side of the bonnet. (attached pic shows what i mean).