I had a full day with the landy and finally installed some of the parts that were laying around in boxes taking up space. As well I finally made the commitment to drill some new holes in the bodwork and hang more useless shit on an otherwise basic Defender. Warning.. There are a few pictures of old junk, blurry pictures and Camel Trophy dress up.
First I installed my half door tire carrier. That was a fiddly little thing and having an overhead hoist helped hold it while I could measure it all up and drill through my old, nasty painted aluminum panels. I could see for extended use this thing will need some adjustments, but overall much better than I thought it would be. It holds a spare on the rear so it does as advertised.
Also in this photo is the new to me and this truck reverse light.. I have to say its kinda nice to finally have one! (it's never had one and I've been meaning do it for 5 years) I also installed the rear work light on a custom bracket and bolted up the dixon bate on the rear cross member. I refurbished it a few months back and I finally decided to put it on instead of letting it take up shelf space.
Next up was some custom wiring harnesses for the roof rack spotlight lights, work lights and fog lights. it took some time and I haven't made a wiring harness in a long while but it was pretty fun to splice it all together and keep it tidy and weather proofed.
I ran the harness down to the to top of the snorkel top, drilled a hole there and put a rubber gromet on it. It came out looking pretty clean and allowed me to not drill holes in bodywork/ roof more than I needed to. the downside is that you have to run the wiring the length of the snorkel and back and then waterpoof it on the exit in the engine bay..
The front fogs I'm less than impressed with light output. Yes it is a fog light and they are functioning perfecty as such. I just want more light, or more output for the fog. I'll run them like this for a bit and test them out in some real fog. Regardless... the standard headlights were improved with the boomslang loom! it went from 1 candle to 5 candles.. but with the rooftop spots.. well... theres no chance of outdriving the spotlights!
Last bit of wiring was to mount the switches, this required a bit of dash removal, cutting, painting and minimizing the birds nest of wires to make something clean and easy going into the cabin switches. I tried to keep the final install as period correct as possible and followed the style of the camel trophy defenders for a rough switch location. .. Those would be the red switches in the pic below, I'll add an embossed label later.
Next up was the mud flaps and mud guards/ chassis protection. I am not sure about mud flaps. I get that they can protect the car from throwing road debris up onto the car, but on a 110 the standard solution only really keeps debris from being thrown at cars behind you as it is completely open in the rear tub. So I wanted a solution to fix all that.
Sometimes like the look of mudflaps, and sometimes don't. So I didn't want something permenantly mounted. I can remove these mud flaps with two pins in about 5 seconds. I also wanted to fit the mud guards to help save my chassis, keep the dirt and grim out of it and stop it from being thrown up in places that are hard to clean without a power washer, toothbrush and a wetsuit.
Another shortcoming of the rear mud flap situation is that they stress the outter wing/ fender and they are not very strong. This solution is beefy.. and I had to reinforce the bottom edge of the wing with a piece of metal to hold the now super duty mud flap holder. Everything is galvanized and covered in paint, and waxed. So hopefully no Aluminum to stainless to galvanized metal corrosion will happen here..
Not pictured is the ABS plastic shields that also come down in front of the rear cross member as well (from the top, where the rubber one was located down to the bottome of the cross member). Hopefully all this effort will keep the cleaning time down and the chassis from rotting away a bit longer.
And as the day turned to night and I was a little tired, I had a laugh with myself and made a cardboard Camel Trophy plaque.. Oh I also sanded, stained and sealed the shovel handle, that was the easiest job of the day.
One of these days I'll get it all painted in one color (it will stay green).