72 LANDROVER MONTHLY
five-year-old daughter, Lily, who likes LandRovers as much
as me,” says Michael, who loves all things British – but
particularly LandRovers.
“I ha ve previouslyowned a 109LWB Series IIA and an 88
SWB Series III aswell as a Defender, which I sold when the
priceswent up. I had this idea inmy head that the moneyI
got from the Defenderwould be enough to fund a new
project – something unique.
“I’d alreadyowned Seriesvehicles, so Iwasn’t going to do
that again.But being a big fan of LandRovers I knew itwould
have to be one. I spent aweek spent looking through adverts
but nothing came for sale close to where I live in Scotland.
Then one night I spotted a not-bad-looking Discovery 1 for
sale in England
“It was a 1994 five-door 300Tdi with a manual gearbox.It
was on eBay and I bought it onFebruary14 this year, without
seeing it. Iwasn’t tooworried about its condition, knowing
that itwould be going through a lot ofwork anyway. I paid
£850 for it and had it delivered the followingweek. It had
covere d 165,000 miles.
“In firstweek of driving it Istarted to make a list of things
needing to be done. First on the list were noisy wheel
bearings, which had to be replaced. I slowly moved on,
getting all the oil leaks sorted and gave it a good service,
including adjusting thewater pump and timing belts and
valve clearances.
“One day whilemy girlfriendwas vacuuming the back of
the Discovery, Iremoved all the carpets, just to see how
muchwater had leaked through the sunroof. I got a bit ofa
shock, because therear of the bodywas so rusty that I knew
repairing itwould take too much ofmy time – andeven ifI
did, at the end itwould still be an ordinary Discovery just like
all the others. Iwanted to create something different
“I kept it as astandard Discovery for another month before
I decided that itwould be cool to convert it into a ute. I’ma
big fan ofAustralian overlanding adventures and I collected
pictures of differentvehicles and the set-ups they used. I had
decided thatwas what Iwas going to do withmy Discovery.”
Michal started taking measurements and did some
drawings. A planwas coming together.
“Knowing that the back of the Discowould have to go,I
was looking intoways of closing therear of the body,” he
says.“ThenIsawLongranger4x4’sadvertinLRM.Ichecked
out theirwebsite and bought a fibreglass kit to sort the body.
“The kit came with aroof panel and back panel, plus arear
sliding window. It wasn’t cheap – I paid just under £1000 for
it – but when it arrived the qualitywas amazing. I now had
the mostexpensive part formy buildwaiting in the farm
workshop, so the time had come tostart stripping down the
Discovery, axleby axle, boltby bolt.
“Not beingmy first project,you learnby your past mistakes
and how to make things easier. That’s why sandblasting the
chassis back to bare metalwas first on the list. Once thiswas
done, according to my drawings, the chassis had to be
stretchedby 500 mm to accommodatestorage boxes and–
more importantly – to make the car look goodby not having
a massiveoverhang at the back.
“I made a jig tokeep all body mounting points where they
were while adding 500 mm to the length of chassis. I used
one metre of 70x70 mm 5 mm box section, inserted into the
frame, making sure that 250 mm was sitting inside the
chassis on both ends and 500 mmwas the gap between the
front and back of the frame.
“After taking few measurements to make sureeverything
was 100 per centstraight, itwas allwelded together and
plateswere added to bring the middle part of the frame to
the same level, flush with therest of the chassis. After thatI
added one more crossmember, which the pick-up body
framewas going to be bolted to.”
Finally, tokeep that chassis good for manyyears to come,
Michal sprayed it inside and out with rust-proofing, followed
by threeexterior coats of underseal. Then the axleswere also
sandblasted, painted and bolted in place to create arolling
chassis.“As I was using the farm shed, I had to be able to
push it out of theway when spacewas needed for other
jobs,” says Michal. “Therewere times when I seemed to be
spending more time pushing it around than actuallyworking
on it, whichwas annoying, but Iwas lucky to be able to use
this space for a project like this.
“All thework onmy Discowas done inmy spare time,DIY DISCOVERY 1 UTE