Cill Guards

When I first bought my Discovery, it was an easy decision to fit some form of cill protection as the consequences of any damage in terms of cost were significantly worse than on the Series Land Rovers that I'd previously owned. At the time, there were three makes of cill guards that were readily available: Southdown, Mantec and Terrain Master, although more have since come on to the market, more of which later.

The Southdown ones were quickly discounted for two reasons. Firstly, they were the most expensive and secondly, I didn’t know anybody that had this type fitted and I hadn’t been able to have a look at them to form an opinion of their quality. In fact, in all the time since I’ve still only seen one set fitted to a vehicle.

The choice between Mantec and Terrain Master had a more technical basis. The Mantec guards were fixed by being bolted to the body cills whereas the Terrain Master ones fixed to both the body and the chassis outriggers. This seemed to me a much more substantial method of fixing, particularly if they are to be used for jacking, so the Terrain Master guards  were duly purchased and fitted.

Fitting the cill guards wasn’t particularly complicated. They came with an excellent set of instructions (see link on left), all the necessary fixings and even a little tool for installing threaded inserts in the body cills.

In the time that I’ve had the guards fitted they’ve taken a reasonable amount of abuse and I’ve been very pleased with their performance. However, after nearly four years I removed them to carry out some preventative rust-proofing to the body cills and discovered that the guards themselves  were looking somewhat worse for wear. It seems that where they'd taken various impacts the powder coating had been damaged, allowing water to get to the bare steel beneath and rust to form, which in turn removed more of the powder coating. They looked very sorry for themselves and really needed to be completely stripped of all of the remaining coating, rubbed down and painted before being re-fitted. At this point I decided to take the easy way out and buy some new ones instead, which also allowed me to take advantage of the improved designs that are now available. The old guards were sold on to somebody with presumably more time and patience than me!

I've now fitted a set of Discoparts cill guards, which incorporate an additional 'tree bar' to fend off side impacts. The guards are extremely well constructed, comprising a 5mm thick steel channel that completely encloses the existing body cill onto which is welded a 75 x 50mm box section and finally, the 50 x 50mm tree bars are welded to the outside of that. There are no specific hi-lift jacking points but the construction of the guards and the amount of lateral projection mean that the toe of a hi-lift can be used anywhere along their length without the need for a 90/110 adapter. The guards are given anti-corrosion protection in the form of a zinc phosphate coating before being powder coated in satin black, which hopefully means they won't suffer the same fate as my previous Terrain Master guards. A nice touch is the provision of anti-slip grit tape to the upper surfaces of the guards as they are wide enough to serve as a handy step.

In many ways, these guards are similar to the Mantec guards that I dismissed first time around, in that they fix only to the vehicle body. However, their construction is so substantial that I'm confident that the protection they offer will be more than adequate.

The only real downside to these guards is in their installation, which requires at least one special tool (that I had to go out and buy half way though the job) and a degree of perseverance. All the necessary nuts and bolts were supplied but unlike the Terrain Master guards, there were no instructions and whilst the installation isn't what you'd call rocket science, this might at least have reduced the frustration level. 

Still, they're fitted and I can vouch for their performance as I've already had both 'tree bars' in contact with, err, rocks as it happens. This has resulted in the powder coating being scraped off (as can be seen above) but the zinc phosphate coating has held up well with no signs of surface rust.