Disco 1997 rear side lights

Well if its any any help my 94 M 300tdi ES has the lights in the bumper and side pillars

Jinx

My 95 V8 has them in the bumper only. Richard

Land Rover appear to have changed the arrangement of the rear lights as and when they felt like it. I suspect it had more to do with which bits were in the parts bins at the time but I can't fathom any rhymn or reason to it.

Ross Floyd (the LRM journo) tried to get to the bottom of the legality of the rear lights on his good lady wife's Discovery but couldn't come up with a definitive answer.

My 1991 200Tdi had them only in the rear pillar but both my 1995

300Tdi and 1996 V8 had/have them in both the pillar and bumper. I've seen others of similar vintage (i.e. same reg prefix) with different arrangements.

Regards Steve G

Hi Icky, we have the same issue is Australia with the '95 Disco's. Some "clever" person decided that at night time, if you were stopped on the side of the road and opened your rear door, that the right rear sidelight would be blocked, and was therefore a safety risk. Their solution was to put the "rear" side lights into the bumper.

Quite funny really as originally the Disco had a light in the side of the rear door, and when it was opened at night worked nicely. Obviously removed to save money.

If you look at the rear light system you will actually find that the bulb is still in place, but the metal tracks to the enclosure were cut to stop it working.

If you want to use the rear light as well the bumper light let me know as there is a simple wiring mod (connects existing wire in plug to end of the cut off metal track) and I can put up the details on the newsgroup. Will take a few minutes(at least) to find, but can do it if required.

Cheers

Phillip Simpson

I did the same thing with my 300Tdi - the bits cost about £5 and it took me a couple of hours to fit. Problem solved!

Regards Steve G

the ickys tried to scribble ...

Dunno really .. but my '97 300 Tdi has the lights on both the pillar and the bumper .. ;)

Phillip Simpson tried to scribble ...

Heheheh, I saw this earlier today and wondered ... Seems like a 'good' mod, which I'll be pursuing further, so yup, please, if it's easy enough, post what you've done .. ;)

I was working at Lucas Rists (the harness manuafcturers) at the time this change came about; the story is (something) like this........

All was well in the world, but then some genuius decided that as the spare wheel could obscure the rear lights they would have to be moved (note that this was not applied to vans, it was rumoured to be a rival

4x4 manufacturer who didn't have rear door mounted spares, at the time Discovery was at its peak production 1400 a week) and arranged for suitable legislation to be put in place. The only practical solution, without major design changes, was to put the lights in the bumper (where no one could see them!), so the changes were made. Putting such changes into production isn't an easy thing to do, so in the first instance it was done with link harnesses while full procedure was gone through to modify the main harness and dummies designed to fill the old light fittings etc. The effect was that for a while both sets of rear lights were fitted until everything was ready. When the change was introduced customers started complaining, say it looked daft and people were tooting them to say their lights were out etc, so dealers were authorised to mod the vehicle so that both light sets worked. People are still doing this mod (looks a hell of a lot better in my book).

There you go!

Richard

Hi Paul, no problem. I'll take some photos and put them up on my website, later today.

Cheers

Phillip

Cheers Richard ... that's one of life's mysteries cleared up ;-))

Regards Steve G

Well here is the link to the modification:

It isn't pretty as a web page or as a modification, but as a mod it works, and as a webpage, I hope it works on your side of the screen.

Any queries let me know.

I guess I'll have to put the usual legal disclaimer that this mod was done for my own use, and while you are most welcome to use it, you do so at your own risk.

Cheers

Phillip Simpson

On or around Wed, 19 Nov 2003 22:28:48 +0000, richard.watson enlightened us thusly:

fascinating.

both sets on our '95M 300 TDi.

Got the information to get this sorted now - thanks to all your replies.

Icky.

bloody link dont work

Hi Steve, perhaps you could try again. My ISP was having problems over the weekend, but when I check the link it appears fine.

Cheers

Phillip

Um, see I was thihnking about this - I've got a 94 Disco and I would like to have both the indicators (or winkers as I've seen them called in the catalogue?!) and the rear sidelights as part of the pillar light pod as well as the bumper pods. I've seen "rear winker conversion kits" for about £80 in LRO...surely there's a cheaper way? I thought £80 is a bit much for a few bits of cable and a set of instructions...

Cheers, Aled.

The rear light units on the pre-1998 Discovery were identical to the Maestro van. The unit in your Discovery may even still have all the necessary wiring tracks in place - check it out. If not, nip down to the local scrap yard and see if they have any Maestro bits. The wiring is simple.

Regards Steve G