Kev Baldwin

Another vote for Nokian tyres. Bridgestone 'Blizzak' is anther true snow tyre popular in Canada. I've used snow tyres in Scandanavia and Canada on snow and ice and their performance is truly unbelievable. Only trouble you'll have is getting hold of them in the UK right now. A mate enlisted my help last week to find snow tyres for his Disco after a fruitless search of the usual high street tyre shops. I tried a few places and they all said the same thing. Suddenly the whole of the UK wants snow tyres and is busy buying up every manufacturers stock in the country right now. The suppliers I spoke to were quoting Dec for resupply but the advice was to buy now to secure an order because quantities would be limited. Nokian Snow tyre

Check out: http://www.volker-lapp.de/trailer.html

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The aperture in the fascia trim panel in the pic is a standard DIN size.

I think you'll struggle. A customer asked me to source one for their 90 just the other week. Local dealer quoted me 8-10 week lead time...or 12 weeks if I wanted a tailgate with a window! That's the same lead time for a few bent pieces of metal that LR are currently quoting on a new car! The 130 pick-up is a low volume seller so not the kind of thing that a dealer is likely to have kicking around.

http://www.netcarshow.com/land_rover/2011-defender_x-tech/ Cue the inevitable "how much are the wheels?" thread

Original 4 spoke steering wheel on a 91 plate = 36 spline.

Please note that the rating of the 12v sockets used in the MUD Tunnel Tray is 16amp. You can find the amp rating moulded into the back of the sockets.

First seat mod I ever did to increase legroom before creating the MUD rails was to grind off the pressing in the seat frame that acts as the stop for the rearward travel. Slide the seat all the way forward and you'll see the pressing in the rails. Grind off the pressing and fill with a blob of weld. Once cleaned up the seat will now slide beyond the point where its used to come to a stop. Don't forget to add a spot of weld to the end of the seat frame to prevent the seat base from sliding all the way off! Even with this mod you'll then run into the problem of the seat frame hitting the raised lip/seam behind the seat on the seatbox. Only solution here is to notch the seam or, I know it's not what you want to hear but raise the back of the seat. Hence the reason the MUD Rail was born! After seven years of sales and literally thousands of sets of Rails sold, I can genuinely only ever recall a couple of instances of customers saying they thought the extra height made seeing out of the screen difficult. I' 6' 5" and have no problem with the raised seating position.

DIN and a half don't exist. The panel you want in order to fit a standard DIN head unit is the one above

The only decent Recaro install I've ever seen on a Defender was where the builder had reduced the height of the seat box. This of course involved a lot of work and meant altering the battery box etc etc. It wasn't a job done over the course of a weekend!

Be careful. Mate of mine was telling me about the Td5 centrifugal oil filters that don't spin and a Kangarooing Puma he had in his workshop that was traced to a fuel filter that was sooooo good at filtering it didn't actually let diesel pass through it! He's given up on filters that come in a blue box....

I wouldn't bother. LR SV isn't the skunk-works everyone thinks it is. It's the department that charges £400 to fit a worklight. A lot of the 'Special' work is contracted out to third parties. I had to contact them a few years ago about a 'special vehicle' I was researching and the response was. "There will be nobody here now who remembers anything about that vehicle. Sorry. Goodbye." For stuff ref the Tomb Raider contact the Team Tomb Raider club via their forum.

You mean 'Yoghurt Pot' lamps as my mate calls them! Not for me at any price.

To get a higher quality/intensity light output, the LED manufacturing process costs more money, hence the reason you'll notice items like Scene lights (from any manufacturer), Work lamps, spot lamps and rear fog/reverse lamps always cost a chunk more money than their regular LED lamp counterparts. Compare the cost of a Perei NAS/Wolf tail lamp with a Perei Fog Lamp! A cheap strip of £2.99 LEDs from Maplins doesn't have to meet XYZ light displacement criteria laid down by EU/US/Kazakhstan Dept of Meddling Interference that a vehicle lamp does. A good quality LED lamp, irrespective of whether it's as good as a Halogen bulb, costs more money than a regular LED lamp. End of. If there is serious interest in a group buy I can get hold of the Labcraft Scene Lights from a couple of my suppliers. FWIW, We've just supplied a bunch of kit to our local Mountain Rescue teams new LR 110. All of the electrical work was carried out by West Yorks Police vehicle workshop and the 110 has come back from the Police workshop covered in Labcraft scenelites! Kev

FWIW. You might want to give Buryas Bridge garage in Penzance a call to talk 'big V8 into Defender' I did a feature a few years ago for LRW on a 90 Buryas Bridge built for a Norwegian oil baron fitted with a 5.3 John Eales unit, auto box and D2 axles. When it comes to actually fitting into the car and getting it up and running they have the 'been there and done that' first hand knowledge that I imagine will come in useful! I seem to recall they a few problems getting the engine to run right in standard JE tune and ended up at Mark Adams rolling road. On the upside the finished product was without doubt the fastest LR I have ever sat in! Chap you need to speak is Lindsay Hanson. He's a really nice, no BS kind of guy who I'm sure will be happy to help in any way he can. http://www.buryasbridge-garage.co.uk/ Kev

Truck Lite (formerly known as Rubbolite) do what are probably the best NAS style LED lamps. There's a decent write up here detailing the features/advantages. I can get them through a supplier of mine. In fact I did even think about stocking them but most UK buyers buy on price not quality so was afraid they'd sit gathering dust. Last time i looked they were more expensive than the Perei LED units but not stupidly more expensive. Note that LED Reverse and Fog lamps are always more expensive than the regular lamps because the need for a greater intensity and quality light output costs more in the manufacturing process. Same reason LED worklamps are still big money. Cheap LED lamps are cheap because they're using cheap LED's.

D&D Fabrications did the work to mate a Rover V8 to TH400 and Atlas II T-Case on this truck

There is/was a company in the US doing adaptors for the V8 and TH gearboxes. They catered to the Morgan and MG crowds in the US but would do LR stuff as well. I wrote a feature for one of the mags on a guy in the US who had used this same outfit to kit out his rockcrawler D90 that had a TH box and Atlas T case. I will dig my notes out.

Forgotten about those! It's less than a 90 so a 90 length will do!

I'm looking for the front to back dimension for 110 van and 110 SW (seats in place) Got a source for rubber matting and was going to offer cut-to length loadbed sizes. Nothing fancy. No magic insulating or sound deadening qualities. Just the same inexpensive fluted rubber matting LR fits to late model Defender loadbeds. Kev

I can supply contact details of investigating officer at Northants Police if you wish. Kev

Got to admit I was surprised to be contacted. At least they're trying! Although it does beg the question why wasn't this vehicle stopped despite been seemingly ANPR'd on one of the busiest M'ways in the country....

It isn't mine but you or someone else may know the vehicle Email received today. "Hello The attached Land Rover is on false plates and was last seen at 19.15 on 12.8.10 travelling north on the M6 past Corley. The vehicle is believed to be stolen and has travelled from the M69 to the M6. That vehicle was in convoy with a silver Rover N383YOV."

Doubt you'll find them cheaper than Safari Equip since they're the manufacturer of ZU rims.