Thread: Stirlsilver's Disco Ute Project

Happy times indeed

Is the noise mostly tyres? Well done.

This thing is awesome........just finished all 66 pages of it!

Happy 2017 everyone!

Originally Posted by rar110

Is the noise mostly tyres? Well done.

Thanks Rar, Yes the noise is pretty much all the tyres. They are Simex Centipedes. I do want to try and fit a set of 35" mud terrain or all terrain tyres, but as far as I can find, they don't get any thinner than 12.5" which is pretty wide.

Originally Posted by Carnut1100

This thing is awesome........just finished all 66 pages of it!

Nice work for getting through all of that! There are a lot of photos in there!

It hasn't been a very productive month. Yesterday I was able to get in to the workshop and play around. I ended up fitting a relay which I modified with some components to hold it on for about 2mins after the key was turned off. This is so the turbo coolant pump continues to run after the engine shuts down to prevent cooking the oil around the bearings. The first version of the circuit failed on me because I had buried the transistor inside of insulation and cooked it. So a lot of time was spent re-building it.



Secondly, i've done the design for the ribs of the scoop which I will cut from aluminium sheet. I printed templates for the ribs on an A0 page and will use that as my guide as I cut.



After that, I took the car out for some more tuning. I really is running very nicely, the engine is smooth to drive and after I finished I checked how much blow by there was coming from the crank breathers, and it was basically zero at idle

I should have a chance for some more tinkering on Australia Day following which I fly out to Oman again the next day and then after that on to Spain. I will be away until the 19th of February.

Hello Everyone,
It has been pretty hectic since my last post. One week in Oman, then two weeks in Spain, one night in Perth and now I am currently Peru before heading back to Australia tomorrow. In between all of that, I was able to sneak in a few hours in the workshop on the car the weekend before last.

On of the items that I completed was the wiring to get a digital signal from the speed transducer on the car into the ECU, the main reason for adding this input into the ECU is so that when driving at speed, it can turn off the fans on the intercoolers as I expect there to be enough air flow diverterted by the scoop. Unfortunately, no photos of this.

Just before I left to Oman/Spain, I communicated with Bilstein regarding the shock absorbers I need with the changed weights and shock mount heights. In the end I settled on a set of eye to eye shocks that normally get fitted to the rear of a lifted Nissan GQ/GU. Bilstein revalved the rear and front shocks to suit the weight distribution of the car (Approximately 1,100kg in the front and 1,000kg in the rear).



Below is the configuration I am using:

• Front Top - Disco 2 extended shock tower
• Front Bottom - Pin to eye adaptor
• Rear Top - Standard Disco 1 mount extended
• Rear Bottom - Pin to eye adaptor

Because I was using some pin to eye adaptors I did loose some length, but even then, I still have more travel than the original shock absorbers.


I had started on the rear first, but quickly ran into a problem. The top of the rear shock aborber came with the wrong sized bushes. So that stopped that.


Moving onto the front, I realised how difficult it is to get the shock absorber in with the intercooler sitting above it. I got it in, but then realised that I needed to put the tower on first before putting in the shock!! I ended up running out of time so i've left it this way until I get back.




Here is the shock tower that is to be used on the front.


Hopefully I'll be able to find a little more time to do some work on the car when I'm back!!

Great work as usual Stirling
Must be very frustrating the time this has taken you so far with work commitments ,
But i guess toys cost lots something has to pay for it

Hello again everyone,
It has been some time since the last update. I've been travelling a fair bit so it makes it hard to get into a rythim.

Anyway, I have been able to sneak in some time and get some stuff done at last.

The front shock towers were literally just squeezed in. Particularly on the Right Hand side where it only cleared the throttle body by about 5mm. I got lucky.













Then it was a case of getting into the rear shock absorbers with the pin-eye adaptor. Far easier than dealing with the front!!


Before putting the wheels back on, I decided to test something which I had heard - that you can't run 15" rims with the Defender 130 calipers. After a quick trial, no problem - no fouling. So at least should I want to use 15" rims instead of 16" I can which is nice.

Anyway, moving on. Some time ago, I noticed while test driving the car that the left hand side blow off valve wasn't triggering. I removed the valve and found that it had a tear internally, which confirmed my suspicion that the ebay vendor was just selling a cheap knock off of the OEM valves. You'll notice the Audi logo on the unit! As a replacement I got some aluminium IPF blow off valves which are a direct replacement.


I couldn't resist the temptation of going and doing some more driving with the car with the new shocks in. I must say it drives nice, and the engine is very very smooth, pulls well and no flat spots in the rev range or anything like that. Very pleased. And this is on 5psi of boost, I can't wait for the time when I can start dialing that up a bit . The photo below is after the drive. it was a little muddy, making a bit of a mess particularly in the front guards.

Now, to finish, I got started on cutting out the ribs that will form the bonnet scoop, but ran out of time to cut all of them (4 of the 8 done).








That's it! Till next time!