I finally found the time to sort a bunch of minor issues with the Range Rovers doors, namely a faulty electric window switch on a rear door, rattling lock mechanisms, a rattling and loose (stripped threads) upper tail gate handle, rattling tail gate trims and squeaking (maladjusted) tailgate catches.
The doors were straight forward (sorry, no photos). The interior trims were removed by removing the locking tab surround trim, the release handle back trim and the grab handle interior. With all those removed, the main panel can be pried away from the door. As it comes away, the bottom will be limited by the wiring to the switch. Disconnect the plug at the bottom and you can completely remove the trim panel. Switch replacement is self explanatory with the panel removed.  Before refitting, I took the opportunity to heavily grease all the lock operating arms and links, but eventually found the source of the rattles – at about the mid point of the door lower half, there is a vertical link between the central locking actuator and the latch handle mechanism. This linkage is very loose in its joints and rattles against the inner steel panel of the door. LR put self-adhesive anti-rattle neoprene pads inside, but in both cases, these were in the wrong place and had no effect. I suspect they slowly migrated over the years with thermal expansion and contraction, the movement of the linkages and plain old gravity – this can happen with typical self adhesive glues. New pads were made up with the off cuts of my Noise Killer sound deadening from the 109 build and seems to have cured the problem well.
The tail gate had a few sources of irritating noises. The latches’ slots were rubbing on the striker pins on the aperture frame D pillars, causing a high pitched squeak whenever the tail gate moved from bumps in the road or the slight body flexing from fast cornering. The solution was plain enough – adjust the strikers so they run through the middle of the latch slots rather than scraping the edges of the slots.
The trim strips that cover the operating rods between the tail gate handle and the latches rattled because the screws holding the trims in place kept undoing. I could have just cleaned them and used thread lock, but I decided to fit rivnuts to the frame and use small bolts to secure the trims. This includes the inner-most fixings that also support the rod mechanism and central locking actuator. That means that the screws won’t continue to fret and damage the self-tapped threads in the frame, enlarging the hole and needing replacement with progressively larger screws.
The third source was the tail gate handle itself.  The threads in the tapped hole at one end of the handle had stripped, leaving no way of securing the handle properly. The handles are pretty expensive, so I simply re-tapped the hole with an M6 thread, fitted 45mm long studs with thread lock to protect the threads from corrosion or fretting, and used nylock nuts on the inside of the frame where the original securing bolts’ heads would have been. I think its a much stronger and reslilient solution that doesn’t change the appearance at all (the nuts are concealed by the plastic C/L actuator cover).
One problem cropped up, though – while refitting the handle, I broke the C/L system’s plastic operating arm that connects the bent rod to the lock barrel. It’s made of a very cheap and brittle plastic and has needed repair in the past, but this time the hole at the bottom broke and the small piece was lost inside the tail gate frame. This part was part of a service kit (MXC 1391) which comprised the plastic arm, the operating rod, the spring and washer, but is long obsolete and unavailable. I spoke to a few suppliers, including the RRC specialist Rimmer Bros and the local RRC specialist breaker and no-one can get me an arm, new or old. In fact, the breaker reckoned that the tail gate’s C/L so rarely works that it’s not worth replacing. Well, apart fromthe previous time the arm snapped and the old handle’s lock barrel legs (that locate into the arm hole’s slots, see photos) corroded away, requiring a new handle assembly, I have had no problems with it.
So, since replacement arms are unavailable, I have had to make my own. The top end which connects to the operating rod is too complex for most people to fabricate, so I reused the broken arm’s top end. The rest of the arm was made from an off-cut of the 3mm marine alloy sheet used for the 109’s tub floor, which happens to match the thickness of the plastic exactly, cut to match the lower section of the broken arm. The hole was drilled to match, followed by making the slots with a small, square file. The arm was test fitted to the handle’s lock barrel and to the upper arm section for final shaping before being bonded with JB Weld, an American metal-epoxy which is incredibly strong but will now take several hours to cure. I’m confident the repair will work well – the lower section of the arm is stronger than the original and JB Weld has been more than strong enough for this repair in the past (hence the grey edges on the main break). Once cured, the lock can be reassembled and the C/L should work as designed.
Quick edit: I refit all the C/L parts this evening and it works perfectly. I can’t help thinking the breaker was being unduly pessimistic and easily beaten by advising me to give up on it before even trying. No wonder Land Rovers get a bad reputation for reliability if that’s how the supposed experts behave.
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