Thread: county vents

Safari roof off a Series III? Aftermarket A/C fitted between the seats blowing forwards?

Hi Glenn

I fitted vents from a defender to my county needed a few bits of the dash the vents and hinges etc and a few days work. Well worth the effort much cooler now good on the highway, keeps the dust out too by pressurizing the interior. I also fitted the defender heater box to make room for a turbo in the future. The hardest part is grinding/drilling out the 100 spotwelds that hold the blanks into the vent holes have to take the whole dash out to access them, be careful not to crack the windscreen (someone else did this during conversion). Some series bits may fit but not sure. I kept all gauges as standard county not sure why you would want to move them, cant see a problem with moving them tho main wiring loom is in centre of dash anyway comes up from fuse box.

Good luck

Luke

Do a search on this forum - there was a fairly recent thread giving deatails on someone doing this.

John

Originally Posted by wowscounty

i would like to try to fit vents to my county from a later model remove dash and fab new one from ally try to put instrument panel to centre simalar to a 2a model has anyone got any better ideas to cool my interior down or has anyone tried to fit vents to theres thanks glenn pt hedland w.a

There wasa thread on the conversion not long ago - someone who did it wrote it down step-by-step and gave a list of required items. Doesn't have to be a later model - a lot of the stuff can come from a Series donor. If you want instruments in the center, what about one of the dash pods which are currently on special - again another thread? That should give plenty of space. Someone stuck one for accessory guages in my Stage 1 - that's just a sheet of vinyl-covered steel with appropriately-sized holes. It might work in a County, I don't know.

Check out 'Projects and Tutorials' in the Forums section.........

I started off with a series three diesel that looked like this



and ended up looking like this



Along the way I converted the dash over to a series 2 lookalike as below



It wasnt that hard to achieve on the series three so it should be achievable on your county. Forget about air con and such though. I basically drilled the centre hole in the bulkhead and moved the speedo cableing etc through there into the instrument cluster that i bought from a wreckers. Carefull with your speedo cable though i busted a few till i got it right. All of the metal work came from bunnings and was achieved with a little bit of ingenuity.

The legality of such a conversion (on either a S3 OR a 110) would be interesting. Is there an ADR about either dash padding or location of instruments?

John

I'm in the process of doing the ac to vent conversion at the moment.

I have removed all ac components. Drilled out the hundred or more spot welds in the firewall.

I picked up a series 3 firewall for next to nothing. Grabbed all the bits I needed off of it. Vents, levers, brackets on outside of firewall, flyscreen and most importantly the vent lever support panel.

I have trial fitted everything and it all works out pretty sweet.

I'm now repairing the few holes I made (accidently) while drilling out the spot welds in the firewall. You try not to drill all the way through but sometimes you cant help it.

The only thing from the series 3 that doesn't fit is the dash tray (bottom of dash section). Otherwise it's all there.

I should have it finished this weekend. I need to update the project tutorial I started in the project section. I will try to do that this weekend also.