With the MOD/Series door it’s easy to cut a piece of hardboard to the same shape as the old card then cover it with vinyl. Auto trim suppliers like Segal Motor Trim in Manchester will even sell you the stiff black card that’s used for this, as well as a selection of different vinyls. I guess you can’t do this for a 90/110 door though.
Did you try Exmoor Trim/Trakkers? We had their seats, which are well made.
The mounting profile is not on a single plane so it’s not possible to just cut some board to fit.
I re-did my seats with Exmoor stuff. Great company. Their door trims are only for series doors and they are very basic flat vinyl things (for a far more sensible £20 each). Unfortunately they dont do any trim for post-Series wagons.
Thanks now I just splooged my pants when I saw your 80″ That is a fine looking S1
Seeing as we are doing landy porn, here’s my 90 300TDi SW, that was running 235/70 Greenway machos, superb bits of kit and ideal for where we lived – they had the Yokohama pattern that was brilliant for clearing mud as well as dry tarmac. Sadly this has now been sold 😥 Funnily enough this pic was taken just south of Inners when I was running safety/recovery for a motorsport event.
And here’s another that I spent a lot of time in as a co-driver running 8 spokes and BFG MTs. Never had any issues with BFGs superb tyres
Co-drove this hill rally beastie too 235/70 Colway MTs on Disco rims (that is THE prototype simbuggini)
and this 3M spaceframe defender
Ooooo just discovered this photo as well (pardon the pun) ex factory fleet 3.9 V8 ES on LPG with stainless tubular manifolds and system sounded gorgeous. That ran the Pirelli Scorpion ST which are a SUPERB snow tyre (better than ATs or MTs) if it got deep then I had a set of chains I used to throw on.
I’ve just dug out my Grandfie’s memoirs. He ended up owning a Volvo dealership but began working for a garage called Males in Somerset.
My career took off one day when the man in charge of the garage called me into his office and suggested I apply for a position wherein I would be demonstrating and selling a new vehicle, just announced and being marketed by the Rover Company called a ‘Land Rover’. Much of the initial success of it being launched on the British market was in no small measure due to the efforts of Males of Yeovil. The earliest photographs and catalogues of the vehicle bear Somerset registration marks, most of which I sold.
It’s fascinating. It goes on to say how he helped design a testing course for the Land Rovers in Solihull, “the most exciting part being a flooded copse, out of which the vehicles climbed a 45 degree slope without perceptible difficulty.”
Not much to update, more a plea for help. Ive been losing weeks on these sodding doors. A real fiddle rebuilding each one with new channels and seals, but having to work the GRP a fair bit because they’re not manufactured particularly accurately. ANd hanging them has been a right pain in the arse. But I think I might have found out why…
The bulkhead has come back generally very good but since the A pillars all needed repairing there’s part of me thinking that the hinge mounting points aren’t quite where I need them to be.
There’s not a lot of adjustability in the door hinge at the best of times, but I need to get my doors at least another 5mm up off the sill. See pics – red markers are hinge hole centres.
What’s my best plan of attack? Im pretty certain I cant modify things at the door end – the spigots in the door frames leave no room for manoeuvre.
The J-nuts are limited by their fold line – i.e. even if I elongate the bolt hole, I also need to rework the square j-nut port as well to be able to centre the j-nut on the desired marker. It’s not easy space to work on either as it’s pretty hard metal. I have the exact same problem on the O/S too.
Any ideas guys?
In the meantime, the seats are in, the roof lining refitted and the last of the auxilliary lighting connected as well as the rear view camera.
Ah. Scratch all that. I’ve just read a few comments on some other forums about adjusting the pitch of the bulkhead. That seems plausible since I have had the bulkhead off and put it back on. Time to get some straps out, unbolt the front of the wings and heft the bulkhead and B pillars a nadge forward.
And we’re done!
Passed it’s MOT on Thursday. Great to drive if a little noisy. The kids love it. It leaks like a sieve but I dont care, I even cleaned it out by hosing it down! A few minor cosmetic things to tweak over the coming weeks and a mate is vinyl-wrapping my door cards for me for a lot less than the price of replacements. He also knocked up the little decal hommage to this thread for the rear quarter panel )
It’s been a lot of fun. I’m really rather chuffed with myself and even my dad was full of praise (tough audience – he used to rebuild Healeys and Rileys in his day). There will be plenty more to do over the coming years but for now, Id better get on with a few other projects around the house before the wife gets really grumpy. And then I think it’s time to get a motorbike….
But a big thanks to Tiger6791 & geoffj for their help and donations and all the other words of support. It’s been very welcome.
I would liked to have seen the MOT testers face when he saw it.
oddly enough, he’s a dry-witted black country chap who drinks in my local. Picked for the task due to his widely-known reluctance to fail anything with four wheels and an exhaust 🙂 He’s been teasing me about biting off more than I can chew these last 9 months but he actually cracked a little smile when he saw it.
Looks nice! Would look better with a black painted MOD front bumper though!
On your bulkhead problems, the reason why Defender never got fitted with airbags is because the BH is only attached to the rest of the car at the bottoms of the legs and by the wings so when you deploy an airbag, the entire BH jumps forward by a couple of inches. You need a rigid monocoque bodyshell for airbags; I don’t know how Land Rover have been allowed to continue selling Defender for all these years TBH.
To someone that has spent all week thinking of buying a landy (I think they are old-fashioned, smelly, slow, noisy, unreliable, uneconomical rustbuckets with too little headroom and features that I will never use in the wilds of Cambridgeshire and therefore I want one really badly) this thread and its resurrection has been the equivalent of sparking up in front of a recent non-smoker.
I want to rehang a couple of the doors though with a mate’s help as Im still not quite happy with them.
Once they’re on I have my door cards back from my mate all freshly vinyl wrapped and theyve come out a treat.
Those smaller tyres Ive worked out are running 17% under-geared. From the last two tanks I’ve had 21 and 23mpg out of it. Which is pretty poor given I drive like Mrs Daisy is feeling unwell. Ah well, it’s only around 100-150 miles a week. But the smaller tyres do mean better handling especially for short journeys around the hills here.
Some bits and pieces have arrived so I can wire the eberspacher up to a 10 minute relay with a remote control unit so I can start it up from the kitchen giving it a few minutes to warm it up before an early morning start 😉
Im just waiting for insurance Co to confirm an agreed valuation sufficient to pay to replace it like-for-like. IF it got knicked Id be very pissed off if I was just offered £5k for it.
I’ve just read this through from my last bit of reading, around page 3, and I’ve been absolutely engrossed in it!
Stoner, I’m full of admiration for the amount of work you’ve put in to it, that’s a fabulous piece of work, congratulations and well done.
I’d dearly love a 90 built to your standard, it would be ideal for the potholed hell that is the road network in Wiltshire and Somerset.
This thread really ought to have a Sticky for posterity. 😀