Changing out a transfer case on a 1995 Disco D1

[texaninmass]

I recently bought a second 1995 D1 after my daughter burned up (Radiator hose broke and kept driving it anyway ) the engine on my 1995 D1.

I found this 1995 D1 on Craigslist for $600.00. The truck was owned by the original owner. He was a doctor that had no mechanical experience but, had taken the LR in for all maintenance including scheduled maintenance at the dealership where he had originally purchased it. (It was very exciting seeing the maintenance log with all those ink stamped squares for ever scheduled maintenance at the appropriate mileage) The truck was in amazingly "Like new" state.
He had just bought a new LR3. The one I bought from him just locked up on him one morning. He explained that he thought the transmission was locking up after you would drive it 100 feet or so. He did not even bother to trade it in, just went down and bought a new one. The 95' had 120,000 miles on it and he felt it was time to buy another one.

I had AAA pick it up and tow it home and found once home that the most likely culprit was the transfer case. This worked well for me as I now had a donor car sitting the back yard.
The reason that I am posting this is that although I have several different information sources about replacing the transfer case, most of it seemed to be very incomplete and requested much more work than was really needed to trade it out. The manuals wanted one to remove the exhaust system (specifically the Y portion that attachés to the manifolds)which is not needed.

I also found manuals that said you needed to remove the transmission in order to remove the transfer case which is not needed as well.

The other thing I wanted to do was upload some pictures of the transfer case detached from the transmission. All of the pictures I found both on the net and in the manuals where very inadequate to give me an idea of how it was bolted up to the transmission and being able to understand which bolts needed to be removed to separate it from the transmission was the biggest challenge.

The last thing I wanted to add was I was able to do something very novel to get the transfer case back up in place. I have the dual sunroofs on this LR. I also have a 8000 pound winch that I installed on the new LR that I used to remove the Transfer case.
Using 2 very large eye bolts, lag type, with 3 inch threads, I was able to wrap the transfer case like a birthday gift with rope and then run my Winch cable into the eye bolts that had been installed in the ceiling and use the them to winch up the transfer case into place onto four pieces of all-thread that I installed to reattached the transfer case to the transmission. It worked really well and I think if you did not have the winch, you could have still used a com-a-long in it's place.
The manuals wants you to build a plate that attachés to a transmission jack and it just seemed like to much work for a process that otherwise only takes about an hour. (The reattachment portion)

The other thing I should point out is that you will have to remove the center console in order to use this method. Even if you cannot use this method....no sunroof or just don't want to use this approach, I would still remove the center console. There just to many electronic connections on the top of the transfer case that are delicate and the differential locks mechanism that needs to be disconnected which is also on the top. You can also get to the top three bolts that connect the transfer case to the tranny out from the top.

One thing the manuals stated was that you had to remove the fan cover before removal which is also not necessary if you are not removing the tranny with the Transfer case.

If you look at the pic labeled "transfer case removed 1" and if you look to the right shinny side you will see the bolt holes along the edges. These 6 holes are the bolt holes that holld the transfer case to the tranny. you can see how weasy it is to get to the top ones with the console removed. See other pics are for point of reference

I hope this helps anyone that may need to do this.

Anthony