Where to start..
I work with Land Rovers every day and have done for quite some time. I don't like the repair and maintenance costs involved in owning and running a TD5 (I've had 4 of them).
To put it in perspective, I can put a wheel bearing in the TDi for about a tenner compared to about £60 for a TD5, a TDi fuel pump is about a tenner compared to about £200, an injector is about £100 or £20 for a rebuild kit and I had to look that up because I've never supplied or fitted a TDi injector, a TD5 one is an MSC000030E and is £193.21 genuine exchange plus VAT and I can fit one in about 30 minutes including a cup of tea.
I've never fitted an engine ECU or BCU to a TDi (althought there is a danger of one of those now).
My 22 year old chassis is much better than a 12 year old TD5 chassis.
Given a 2 post lift, the body swap would have taken an hour or less.
The wiring adaptation, now we know what we're up against, would take a day including an engine bay rewire.
If a TDi blows up the engine, you can drop in a decent runner for under £500. The dead TD5 I used has shredded its timing chain guides and ruined a piston. Tdi engines don't do this.
Yes, there was an element of doing it because it looked possible but more importantly it was due to the awful grade of metal and rustproofing in the D1 shell (which they then used in the D2 chassis). I was simple fed up with welding it up.
The gearboxes are the same, the transfer boxes aside from the diff lock are the same.
Steering.....
D2 swivel joints are just stupid.
Erm...
D2 front props are stupid.
D2 autobox position switches are stupid.
I like the air suspension but probably won't be retro-fitting it unless we need a boost for towing the neddies.
A lot of how a Disco 2 feels and drives is due to the improvements in insulation and body manufacture. Having done 300 miles in the D1.5 now I can vouch for that.
I've seen some horrendous D2 Friday PM Specials but really, normally only see D1s with rust, seldom in the chassis unless they've been launching boats. I've never had to put any metal into a D2 shell, only the chassis and not just the rear end, we've done under the engine and had them pull the front anti-roll bar out of the mountings.
I wouldn't fit polybushes to my own truck next time (did this a while ago and it's a rubbish thing to do)
D1 door handles are getting expensive and scarce used in good order.
D2 seats are better
Climate control. Yay.
D2 doors are better.
D2s are quite weirdly easier to wash........ (I'm serious)
More boot space and better storage bins.
300s are one of the simplist things to work on, even by the roadside. TD5s do silly things and need recovery lorries.
The time it has taken to do this conversion is slightly lower than the total time I've spent getting covered in rust and debris and sparks and fire while patching up the old body. I spent 23 hours fixing it up one year, no thanks.
This hybrid should last an easy 20 years more (fingers crossed) as it's built for ease of maintenance, mechanical simplicity and a small dose of comfort for MrsMonzaPhil.
Plus, we already had this D1 and the D2 shell was free.
We just need to get morr powa out of the 300tdi 
]
) . All the Discovery's had to be autos for my wife to drive. All were the same - dangerous when entering busy roundabouts from standstill but OK if you had some momentum. The only thing I have found that is worse is our HiLux Surf - but that has about 20 bhp less than a Discovery so its understandable. Overtaking is planned using a calender!!
