Prepping a camel trophy defender 110 for around the world...

[The Rover Shop]

now that the rack is installed I can mount my snorkel...found that my over-engineered light bar was going to cause a bit of a problem so I needed to reconfigure the mounting of the snorkel..after much deliberation and trimming here and there I am quite pleased with the result...it's marvellous what a difference in expeditionary bling a snorkel makes...it screams...I'm ready for anything, bring it on...LOL..


before anyone asks about why through the hood like that....the camel trophy trucks had it there on right hand drive vehicles due to the position of the air intake box for the heater, the left hand drive ones went through the fender because the heater duct box was on the other side...as much as I would have preferred to have it through the fender I am trying to stick with the originality of the vehicle and als it would have meant getting rid of the heater duct..we will be travelling through the winter as well so i wanted to retain as much forced heater ventilation as possible, hence the raised fresh air cabin duct, in order to install the raised cabin fresh air intake in the fender it required cutting the pointy end off the pick head, I have all of the original parts to put it back to original after this trip..

 

[The Rover Shop]

OH.....LOOK, spare space...hmmmm, lets see what we can do with it...

take some old cargo netting..or climbing net...install some snap buttons to allow the strap to loop around the pole, that way it can be easily removed or slid forward..if you put the net at the bottom of the pole and loop over the top you have more room but if you do it the other way it keeps it higher up... this is perfect storage for light stuff like blankets, jackets pillows etc etc, also the netting can be easily removed and used for a multitude of other uses...drying grid for laundry, bungeeing down a loose load...a fish net for very big fish, hunting wild game....:Wow1:...etc etc..

 

[The Rover Shop]

Installed my specially ordered camel trophy spec bush cables, really the only thing special about the camel trophy spec is the addition of this tensioning lever, not quite sure why they had it as it is not necessary to move the cables to lift the bonnet or anything, the original camel trophy ones had a spring installed at the tensioning lever to stop the tensioning lever getting caught on smething and accdentally being flipped open, the bushcable kit did not come with this spring but I found the correct stainless spring at my local hardware store...now to release the tensioning lever you pull down on the spring to allow you to open the tensioning lever..

 

[The Rover Shop]

The Land Rover motto...

 

[dwh]

I would not count on that solar panel doing anything, with 1/3 hidden. They are made with a bunch of little .5v cells in series strings, and if you block *any* of them the output of the whole string drops drastically.

Blocking 1/3 will probably drop the output voltage below that of the battery and the battery won't charge at all.

 

[The Rover Shop]

I will be trying the solar panel in the next day or two and let you know how it works...I also have two of the 5 ft long power film 21 watt rollable solar panels that can be positioned anywhere...between these 2 and the big one I should be able to have plenty of power for anything...all of the lighting I will be using in the vehicle is low consumption led's.. the only bigger power drain is my refrigerator freezer... and to try and keep that power drain down as much as possible I had my very talented fiancee pop down to the local craft store and buy some of that thermal insulation material they use for thermal curtains and sew up a fridge cover..



of course making sure to keep the vents open...once the thermal liner was made she covered all of it in a further layer of sunbrella (we had a big roll of the brown from a left over boat project I did...or didn't do, more to the point..LOL..) and then made a seperate lid cover to allow the lid to come open...this should do to keep the thermal losses down a bit..and voila...here is the finished item...she soooo smart..

 

[StphNieuw]

Awesome build, all I can say is WOW! What a truck! One quick noob question, what are the cables on the bumper to roof rack for?

 

[The Rover Shop]

got to open the tent up today and make sure all is good...and it is..I love it when a plan comes together...

 

[ipgregory]

Lookin' good Shayne.

 

[The Rover Shop]

Yeah,,, so much for my great plan of getting down to the shop and "assembling" our d-90... Lol

 

[ipgregory]

Not in any hurry. Do it when you get to it. You gotta get the Camel done. Nice to see it out of the shop at long last.

Ian

 

[The Rover Shop]

Doing it tomorrow... Getting close to take off day...

 

[ipgregory]

No worries. When you get to it is good enough.

 

[Howski]

this truck has turned out absolutely sick!

 

[The Rover Shop]

Awesome build, all I can say is WOW! What a truck! One quick noob question, what are the cables on the bumper to roof rack for?

The cables are called limb risers or bush cables... When going through thick forest they serve to push the tree branches away from the vehicle and stop them from hitting/breaking your windscreen.. They also make a great clothesline to dry your laundry on... Lol...