With the help of Dan Cronin this weekend, the Land Rover Defender 110 Kim and I own has come a good deal closer to road worthiness. You may be asking what this has to do with our adventures in general and I dare mention it has EVERYTHING to do with it. OK, maybe you already knew that. But for those of the unknow, the Defender will be a central part in our adventuring in 2008. Except for the trek in Nepal planned for October (3 going, 2 maybes so far), most all of our adventures will be land based, mainly meaning taking the Defender on many, many camping trips.
The possible plans in the works include: 
- Road trip to Mexico
- Road trip to Alaska
- 4-6 weeks of madcap roadtripping around the USA
- Camping on the coast and mountains
- Snowshoeing, mountain climbing, hiking and general exploration in Washington
The Defender is equipped with an Eezi-Awn rooftop tent which we have found to be a blast to camp with. It allows for us to camp in some places we wouldn’t normally find comfortable (parking lots, RV spots at a campground, etc…) and keeps us high and dry in the rains…..ok, we haven’t actually camped in the rain, but will before the year is out. Sabrina absolutely loves camping in the tent especially for the views it affords…..and the chance to play on the roof.
OK, back to this weekend and the work. We managed to:
- Put in a new battery (thanks to Britt at Roemer Offroad)
- Removed back seats (look at all that room!!!)
- Figured out leak in transfer case
- Mounted Hi-Lift securely in the rear footwell
- Mounted secondary fuel tank and hooked it up as the primary until we put in new fuel line for the main fuel tank
- Fixed secondary fuel tank level gauge
- Removed “Service Engine Soon” light and sensor (yeah!!!)
- Moved gauges around, putting in the Exhaust Gas Temperature, and new Amp-meter
- Adjusted throttle cable to give us Full Open Throttle (wahoo!)
Right now the dash is still all in pieces but the truck runs! And runs well. With some ATF added to the transmission, it is running smooth and purs as only a 4 cylinder diesel can. We found the auxiliary tank to contain about 13 gallons when full (and found out how easy it is to overfill) which at 18MPG on or offroad, gives us about 230 miles on that small tank. When the main tank is working (and we have proper switching valves from Frybrid ) we’ll have 630 miles of range on a full fillup.
Some of the over 25 items left on the list to get the truck up to snuff include
- Install power distribution
- get radio working
- get tachometer working
- mount winch and remote controller
- find a fan shroud
- move EGT sender unit
- plug hole where ECU used to go
- replace various lighbulbs
- mount AC compressor and charge AC system
- figure out why heater/ac unit isn’t working
- wire offroad lights
That’s about it for now! Onward!
