By Todd on Tuesday, April 03, 2001 - 04:00 am: Edit

I am trying to remove my jumpseats and the hex bolts in the brackets are in extremely tight. Are they designed to be removed ? Any hints?

Also my interior panel (behind jumpseat) on the driver side is different from the other ones I have seen. The panel itself is not recessed w/ the storage slot but passenger side is recessed. In other words the jumpseat actually sticks out on drivers side while the passenger side is recessed.Are these interchangeable ? My truck is a '95; was this changed in '96 or after ? I am trying to swap panels w/ a '98 Disco; will it work ?

Thanks.

Todd Kendrick
Taos, NM

By Ben Gott on Tuesday, April 03, 2001 - 04:34 am: Edit

The difference in panels fom side to side is your rear AC.. On my 94 Disco I have rear AC and the driver-side jump seat sticks out while the passenger side is recessed..

For changing panels out, you should be fine if youare doing an exact swap. The 98 your getting the parts from will have to have rear AC also..

And as for Jumps being the same on both sides i think the answer is yes.. They are pretty symitrical *spelling*..

Hope it helps, Ben

By hisk on Tuesday, April 03, 2001 - 04:40 am: Edit

Is pulling the jump seat the only way to get at rear tail bulbs for replacement???It seems like it. Anyone know?

By Bill Leek on Tuesday, April 03, 2001 - 04:48 am: Edit

Hisk,

I had to remove the jump seats to replace the brake light bulbs. Could not reach them without removal of seats. To do so requires arms which are longer and stronger and have more than one u-joint.

By Antony K on Wednesday, April 25, 2001 - 07:10 am: Edit

It always seems that whenever I have a fault with my Disco, someone else is having the same problem.

I don't know if it's good or not....

I've got a UK 1997 v8i ES. Fully loaded. I recently had a brake light failure on the right hand side rear. I realised when trying to find the panel that I would probably have to remove the jump seat(recessed one). I tried to remove it using both a hexagon bit and an electric screwdriver and an ordinary hexagon wrench. Both failed and I ended up stripping the hole... In the end I had to work around the seat. Definitely a pain in the backside. I managed to get my hand in to remove the bulb holder which happened to be the very top one. The only problem was getting it back in because it was catching on the seal and would not seat correctly. To progress, I then had to remove the wiring connector, unscrew the two cluster retaining nuts and push out the whole light cluster so I could work on it off the vehicle. It also gave me an opportunity to clean out the panels around the cluster cos they were full of grime. With the cluster out of the vehicle, you can see a large rubber seal that extends about 2 inches into the "hole" in the rear panel. Upon peeling it pack I found one of the sunroof drain pipes. (I'd been looking for them for quite a while trying to fix my leaky roofs.)

Once I'd replaced the bulb, which as it happens is a dual filament bulb normally used for both side light and brake light. (When testing my lights afterwards I discovered that the side light portion is not used and the actual side light is on the bumper. Strange.

Refitting the cluster was not too bad apart from the top plastic wing nut and metal bracket. When trying to re-thread it into the cluster (working in the vehicle behind the jump seat) the wing nut catches on an unusual threaded bolt that is too close to it. What a swine. When it came to refitting the bottom wing nut and metal bracket, I dropped the wing nut into the bottom of the panel and had to start all over again removing the cluster to get my hand inside from the outside of the panel.

After about two hours and by this time it was dark, I'd finished and had all lights working perfectly.

I noticed an unused wiring connector tucked into this panel and guess it has something to do with fitting a towbar electrics? Is this correct?

As I was now in the mood for work on the Disco, I thought I'd see how easy it would be to change a bulb on the left hand side of the vehicle. I;I'm now starting to wonder why I bought it.

I have a rear air conditioning unit as well as jump seats and it looks impossible to get a hand in to the rear of the cluster. Do I have to remove the jump seat and the aircon unit to gain access?

I suspect this is why the Disco II now has light clusters fitted much higher up the back panels.

I wonder if there is any way to replace the back panels of a DI with the back panels of a DII, extend the wiring and make life an awful lot easier when replacing bulbs. Does anyone know if they would fit, somehow I doubt it....

Antony.

By Antony K on Wednesday, April 25, 2001 - 07:15 am: Edit

Copying my post to a new heading called "Replacing rear bulbs on a Disco I"

By GTX on Wednesday, April 25, 2001 - 06:35 pm: Edit

Hi Anthony
I've got the same setup [300 ES]
The jumpseats just need an allen key and a grip like mr Swartzeneggar, the rear clusters on my disco dont have side lights either [bumper mounted],but i have seen some discos with both bumper and cluster side lights working, anyone throw some light on that one?
By the way when removing the jump seat allen key, it helps to lift the seat slightly
GARY

By Gabe R on Wednesday, April 25, 2001 - 07:51 pm: Edit

I've removed mine to get to some seatbelts and had no problems at all. I got a set of torx bits and used a socket wrench. Needed to use a crescent on one bolt since the socket wrench would not fit. If you're using an allen wrench... you're using the wrong tool, but you can get away with it. Also, use a "cheater" bar like a small metal pipe to loosen them to avoid needing to resort to the "Death Grip!"

By Antony K on Friday, April 27, 2001 - 05:43 am: Edit

it was dark when I started to take the seat out first time around and I obviously used a hexagon tool instead if a torx. Damn. I wondered why it was stripping. Just thought it was tight.

Thanks for your advice folks.

Antony.

By Axel Haakonsen (Axel) on Saturday, April 28, 2001 - 12:53 am: Edit

Anthony K wrote:

"It always seems that whenever I have a fault with my Disco, someone else is having the same problem.

I don't know if it's good or not...."

This is commonly known as "Nigel's Disease"
It was named after a Series Land Rover called Nigel. Back in the early days of email lists, whenever Nigel came down with a problem, within 48 hours of Nigel's owner posting about it, several other Rovers around the world would exhibit the excact same symptoms. Nigel's disease is like a virus, it was only a matter of time before it would infect this bbs.....

By Gabe R on Saturday, April 28, 2001 - 10:36 am: Edit

No problem Antony... I hope this helps your removal become easier. Oh, it will be a tight squeeze for one of them so watch out for that last bolt (on bottom closest to rear seats.
Good luck,
GABE