Land Rover Discovery II Door Latch

Post date: Jul 3, 2011 4:46:34 AM

I am the proud owner of a 2001 Land Rover discovery. It's a great off-road toy, but one thing that has always annoyed me since I got it (second hand) is that the rear drivers side door always took a lot of force to open... and it was slowly getting worse. I decided to fix it. To fix it I needed a tool kit with torx screw bits, a flexible screwdriver attachment, allen key and small hands.

This is how to go about it:

First, remove the door trim. There are 3 screws (one on door latch release trim and two on the handles) and a bunch of clips.

the clips by slowly prying the door panel away. Try to pull equally from both sides of the clips so the door panel comes straight away from the door. If you don't you will probably break the clips or where the panel mounts to the clips.

Remove the door latch release trim. The door latch release will fit through the hole as you rotate it through.

Lock the door.

Unclip the power window and speaker wires, and remove the trim panel, careful not to bend the door lock rod.

Unclip the connector for the power locks. You should now be able to see the door latch assembly. Watch what happens when you pull the cable and the external door latch.

The action should look something like this (picture upside down, black torx scre removed), the solid lines should move as a single piece.

In my case, when you pulled the external door latch, it pulled the rod, but there was a lot of play before the latch that moved with the cable release moved.

This play was caused by an alen bolt that is used to adjust the pull distance of the rod for the external door release.

To get at the allen bolt, you could either remove the entire window assembly, allowing you to remove the latch assembly or you can work with the latch assembly in the door. I chose the latter option.

I removed the lock rod and external release rod (don't drop it in the door). Then undid the screws for external door lever/handle. To remove the handle, slide it towards the front of the truck(it may need a nudge), then gently pull it out from the back of the truck as if you were opening the door.

I then released the 3 screws that hold in the latch, carefully oriented it inside the door as so that I could remove the black torx screw with a flexible attachment screwdriver extension.

Once the black torx screw was removed, I exposed the loose allen bolt,

adjust the mechanism as appropriate, tightened, test fit, and re-assembled.

It appears that this might be a little bit of a design aggravated issue, as forces from opening and closing the door could back off an insufficiently tightened adjustment bolt. Although the issue appears to be fixed for me, I think maybe I could have put some lock tight on the bolt or used a lock washer. From factory it probably should have had a lock washer. Installing one while the assembly is in the door will likely result in pieces falling into oblivion. Anyway, hopefully I will never do this again.