Thread: Disco II

hey

started looking at some DII's td5 as Megs hates the fender and is not keen on extended trips

my budget would be low 20's max so i guess i'm limited to the ealier DII's 99-2002 models

- i did a search and read up on CDL's and think i have an understanding. the way i read it is that none of the above models have a working cdl but the earlier ones have the actuator fitted. is it easy to see/tell if the actuator has been fitted from under the car

- i know about the oil pump bolt, i can ask the buyer but i'm guessing most won't know about it, would have it checked as soon a i buy

- i read the most recent post reil in the injector harness/engine harness is this as simple as pulling the connectors off if so where are they and where is the ECU located, do i need to pull the tappet cover off

- will my arb lockers in my fender fit the DII, i think i read somewhere the front will but not the rear

- what else do i need to look for

i think i would have to come across an extemly good deal to give up my fender

thanks

Weeds stated - (i did a search and read up on CDL's and think i have an understanding. the way i read it is that none of the above models have a working cdl but the earlier ones have the actuator fitted. is it easy to see/tell if the actuator has been fitted from under the car).
Thought you might be interested in this info I found on a british site -

When the SII Disco first came out Landrover did away with the controls to activate the CDL on the transfer box, however the spigot to attach the mechanism to was all still there and the lever and controls can be retrofitted.

After about 2002 they started to sell DII's which although they had the same diff fitted, and still did not have the mechanism fitted to activate it, crucially they had a redesigned diff housing without the spigot to attach the mechanism to. These late mark 1 Disco II's cannot be retrofitted with the manual difflock levers etc without modifying the diff housing.

Then LR launched the Disco II mark II with the remodelled lights and fog lights etc. On this second version of the Disco II LR went back to the earlier version of the diff housing and due to popular demand started to offer the manual difflock as an optional extra.

The final chapter came when the Disco II was going into it's last production runs and because LR still had loads of diff locks kits not taken up as options they started to put them on all the last runs of DII's as special editions or as standard.

My DII is an early mark 1 with the spigot and early diff housing so I stripped the lever and cables off a later series II and fitted them to mine. When you do that it works perfectly, the dash light comes on, you just have to bypass the cable that tells the ECU that the diff is manually engaged otherwise when you switch the engine on with the diff engaged the ECU disables traction control and ABS. You can simply rewire the cable so if you want to disable ABS/TC you hold a button in on start up, otherwise it starts with all systems functioning properly.

Fortunately my 01 just needs the cables and lever.
When I was looking for a D2,( same reason SWMBO doesn't like long trips in the County) I checked every car sale website for almost 5 weeks and TD5's in the low $20k's were almost non existant. Most TD5's had large k's and were asking almost $30k. In the end I settled for an immaculate 01-D2 V8 with only 54K for less than $25k.
We're going down to one car, so I figured the savings on insurance, rego, running costs and depreciation will balance out the extra fuel costs.