LAND ROVER OWNER INTERNATIONAL
Head technician Archie has spent the last 10 months restoring this G4 Edition Discovery 2. Land Rover produced just eight Borrego Yellow G4 Edition Discovery 2s, so this was a rare find and a great opportunity for Archie to showcase his years of experience working with Land Rovers. The restoration and rebuild project was featured in Land Rover Owner International magazine.
“Archie and Jason set out to achieve a showroom-fresh finish with the project and they’ve certainly achieved that.”
“Setting up an independent Land Rover Business from scratch and equipping it’s brand-new workshop would keep most people fully occupied, but not Archie Buchannan…I asked a few friends in the Land Rover scene if they of any interesting vehicles that might make a good project; and one of them told me that he knew of a Discovery 2 on a farm in Winchester.
Land Rover produced just eight Borrego Yellow G4 Edition Discovery 2, so you can understand Archie’s excitement at finding one of them.”
“If we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it right.”
“Everything on the suspension is brand-new right down to the brake caliper cradles and sliders. Top and bottom ball joints are brand-new, both diffs have been overhauled and brand-new compressor lines used because we were building the chassis from the ground up. The axle castings are original, but the innards have all been checked in detail and fully overhauled.
The Disco 2 had covered only 141,000 miles in its life, which for a Td5 is about middle age. Even so, Archie completely stripped down the engine and five-speed R380 gearbox before rebuilding both; he was taking nothing for granted.”
“Archie and Jason built a brand-new galvanised rolling chassis and fitted a mountain of new parts before putting the body back on. We then ran the rebuilt engine up to temperature to check everything was spot on. The entire braking system as overhauled with new lines and flexi hoses.
Archie then decided to put the Disco 2 through a full geometry check to make sure that everything was to factory spec because the whole front suspension had been rebuilt with new steering bars, drag link and ball joints and everything had been re-bushed.”
