Ben's D90

My Defender 90 has been around the block. I bought it when it was three years old, and it looked like it had driven off the showroom floor. It had almost no mileage on it, it had been garaged, and it lived in LA, where it seems never to rain.

It quickly turned into a trail rig though, since that was my purpose in buying it.

I think I did pretty well at enhancing it - and I guess I'm not alone since the guys at Land Rover World magazine decided to put it on the cover in November of 2001.

Here's what I did, in roughly this order:

Front Bumper & Winch

I installed a SafariGard bumper up front. It was custom built to hold a Warn 8274, which is not a "normal" winch for this bumper. In retrospect, I should have just gone with one of the normal winches for the following reasons: (1) The 8274 is deeper, and required me to hack a lot of the front grille and surround to get it to fit, (2) the 8274 is taller, and reduces airflow more than other winches, (3) the bumper was clearly not designed with this winch in mind, and while the retrofit is good, it's still a retrofit and there are some aspects of the mount that I'm not fond of.

Why did I go with the 8274? Well, it's got a larger drum, an external brake, and much better line speed than the other winches that were on the market at the time. I do like this winch, but again, I wouldn't buy it if I were doing it all over.

Some other points of interest here:

I moved the solenoid pack from the default mount on the winch motor up under the hood, extending the wires to make it reach. This puts them in a place where they're a bit better protected from the weather. I also extended plug for the winch controller, and mounted it between the driver's side marker lights.

And while we're talking about marker lights, the factory turn signals were located in the bumper, and the new bumper didn't have turn signal lights. I rewired the bottom marker lights as turn signals. Doing that required me to track down different bulbs for the marker lights to get the wattages similar to those of the factory turn signals so the blink rate would be right.

Rear Bumperettes and Skid Plate

Pretty basic stuff - I removed the factory step/bumper/hitch/clearance reducing fiasco thing and installed the SafariGard rear bumper ends and skid plate to provide some more protection for the back end of the truck. The skid plate has proven bullet-proof. The bumper ends (which also armor the rear sheet metal) are a little less stout and under the weight of a couple of good whacks have caused some denting in the rear frame cross member, and in the rear quarter panels. Nothing major, but I've seen some designs I think are better suited to the task.

I also added SafariGard's Class III receiver so I could still tow a trailer if I needed to.

Recovery Points

I added recovery points in the front and rear. Up front, I bought a pair of swivel hoist rings and mounted them in the bumper. Hoist rings make fantastic recovery points. They're not cheap, but if you get them from someplace like McMaster-Carr you'll get a much better deal than if you buy them from an off-road shop.

In the rear, I added a pintle hitch. You can throw a large shackle or recovery ring in much faster than you can attach to a "normal" recovery point, and in a pinch you can just put the end of a strap right over it. What's more, it works well for towing an off-road trailer. I strongly recommend the pintle hitch as a recovery point.

Diff Lockers

Land Rovers are "all wheel drive" vehicles. This means they have three differentials - one in each of the axles, and a third in the transfer case. The transfer case differential is a "locking" differential, but all Rovers come stock with open differentials in the axles.

This means that if you lose traction to one front wheel, and one rear wheel, you're going nowhere. That may sound like an improbably situation - losing traction to both a front and a rear wheel at the same time - but it's not. Just drive one front wheel up onto a big rock, and you'll find that that wheel, and the opposite wheel in back carry all the truck's weight. The other two just hang in the air.

Without going into all the details, differential lockers allow you to overcome this problem. I chose the ARB Air Locker and I've been very happy with them. They use compressed air to engage a lock in the diff. There are really only two issues with this. One is that, as designed, the compressed air is controlled by electric solenoid valves which adds more complexity than I'm comfortable with. This is easily solved - I installed Model 70 Lever Air Valves from MetalWork Industries. (I also replaced the little 12V compressor supplied by ARB with something better. More on that below.)

The other potential issue with ARBs is that there's an O-Ring in the guts of the thing that keeps the seal between the air from the outside, and the spinning diff inside. These have a tendency to rupture, after which the locker may work less well and/or the diff may get pressurized and start blowing gear oil through the breather. I have not had this problem at all, and the lockers have been in my truck for about 8 years. As I understand it, it all comes down to installation - guess mine were installed properly.

Diff Guards

One uncharacteristicly poorly-thought-through aspect of the Land Rover is that the pumpkins are very thin-walled - easily dented or punctured by a rock. This is curious given that the thing most likely to run into a rock is, in fact, the pumpkin. So a price-of-admission accessory for anyone who plans to venture very far off the road in a Rover is a diff guard. Actually, two diff guards is a better idea. You MUST have one in the front. The rear isn't strictly necessary, but it's a really good idea.

Rock Sliders

The D90's sills are especially vulnerable to rock damage. They're thin aluminium, and they hang down too low. It is de rigeur to remove the stock sills, and replace them with something that armors the under side of the doors against rock damage. I didn't like any of the commercially available rock sliders. All of them used a flimsy rear mount that relied on a part of the chassis that's there just to support some bodywork. I wanted something stronger, so I welded up some of my own design. They're a little over built, but I like things that way.

After a few years on the truck, I had the opportunity to rework these a bit to make them even stronger, and incorporate a "frame slider" that protected the underside of the chassis. I can now say unequivocally that these are the strongest, slickest sliders I've seen on a D90. Yeah, that's probably a little arrogant seeing as how I built them and all, but I'm trying to be pretty objective about this.

Air Compressor

Air lockers don't take a lot of air to function, but there are other reasons to have a high-volume high-pressure air source on the trail. Any serious wheeling requires you to drop the air pressure in your tires to 5-10 PSI. When you get to the end of the trail, you need to air those tires back up. 35" tires take a lot of air, and the little 12V compressor that comes with ARB's locker kit would take the better part of an afternoon to reinflate a set of four tires. I ripped it out and replaced it with an engine driven compressor. This is just an air conditioning compressor that's got a filter on the inlet and has the outlet connected to a 5 gallon air tank. (There's also a pressure switch to control the clutch on the pulley.) This works phenomenally well. I can inflate my tires in minutes, run air tools, and otherwise have fun with compressed air. Some guys carry scuba tanks. I like the compressor approach a little better...

Welder

Metal doesn't fix itself, and if you need a welder to get home, you need a welder to get home. I bought a Mobi-Arc model and have been very happy with it. Doesn't get used very often - and thus far only on other people's trucks - but again, when you need it, you need it.

Lighting

The D90s headlights are wholly inadequate for serious night wheeling. I threw 4 PIAA Pro80XTs on the roll cage, and some Hella fog lights on the bumper. Worked well.

Communications

I have a CB - some Cobra somethingorother. It's fine, but it's a CB, and CB's suck. You just have to have a CB because it's the lowest common denominator. The crowd I wheel with has all taken the (simple) test to get Ham radio operators licenses and installed 2-meter rigs in our trucks. They're clearer, they travel longer distances, and there's less congestion on the bands. It's the way to go. I bought a Kenwood TM-V7A. I wouldn't recommend this radio, but it's worked ok.

Suspension

The stock suspension is pretty good, but I wanted a bit of a lift, and a little more travel. I started with the (no longer available) Desert Rover kit that allows the use of a longer travel shock (Rancho 9000s) and gives more drop travel in the rear through the use of a spring reseating cone. You can also use longer springs, which I did. I installed some of the OME medium duties. This has worked very nicely.

I also upgraded the front tie rod to a high strength unit. This helps a little with rock damage, but it's still buggered. Need to fix that so I don't wear out my tires...

The only remaining issue was that the rear trailing arms were both weak, and too exposed. I had a custom set fabricated that uses johnny joints instead of the original rubber bushings, and much stronger tubing for the arms themselves. It also tucks the mounts up out of the way, replacing the "ears" that hang down off the chassis with the factory install with a cleaner version. I'm really happy with this arrangement.

Wheels & Tires

I've gradually moved up in size. The stock tire on a D90 is a 31" Mud Terrain. I initally went to 255/85R16 M/Ts, then to 33" Swampers that fit on the same 16" wheel. Finally I bit the bullet and had some cheapo steel wheels made in 15", and mounted up 35" Goodyear MTRs. I really like the MTR, and the 35" size, but they're a bit big for the truck (they rub in places).