130 Station Wagon with side fold pop top build

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Originally Posted by Witchdoctor

Awesome job danielan, very impressed.

David

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Thanks David, its great to be finally driving it around, using the camper - and not working on it. Alan

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Originally Posted by madtom

Hice car, I have one question - do you have any problems from twisting of the long body or twisting of the frame? I'm currently moddifing my TD5 130 HCPU to an station wagon, because our current Discovery 2 is a bit small for traveling in 4. I have rear body from Def 110 HT witch I want to place to rear of 130. So I will have something like 110 HT with one more row of seats added in middle.

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Hi Tom, We have now done a lot of offroad travel in this car and have not had any problems with twisting. As you can see in the photos in post #148 the car did a lot of suspension flexing and twisting while traveling the old telegraph track at Cape York. The vehicle handled this twisting very well with no strange noises, distorted panels or any other problems. Land Rover allowed for this twisting by rubber mounting the body tub onto the chassis, using rubber washers between the tub and the sides etc. Once you unbolt the individual body pieces it is surprising how lightweight and seeming flimsy the body parts are, this also allows everything to flex and twist. Good luck with your project.

I have attached some photos of some 130 station wagons including some from the UK emergency services to give you some inspiration. I can't remember now if they were done by Land Rover special vehicles or Nene Overland?

Thank you for the info. I have found a lot of pictures, but personal experience is a bit more accurate. And yes - body of Defender is everything else than rigid.
Currently I'm modyffing factory A/C to something a bit usefull and less restricting space in car. Here are some pictures:
ok2mtm | 2014_06_11 Defender 130 A/C - original and modiffied - evaporator moved into original heater box ? rajce.net

So time to get this thread up to date. According to the photos its been nearly 6 months since I did some of these jobs!

First job was to take out the silly stove and put in the sink. We got one with a strainer this time as it is a nuisance having the wet dishes dribble water everywhere. We chose one with a small but deep sink to use less water and a bigger strainer.

I use a garden two way tap under the sink, inline before the water pump to allow switching between two tanks. The pump just squeezed in behind the set of 4 draws. Then I cut 4 holes into the right hand wheel box just before the wheel arch, one as an inlet for each water tank, with one hose out to the rear left corner tap. We use a short 3m length of hose on this tap with a garden hand sprayer to have a quick shower etc. And finally a big 20mm hose out for the sink outlet which exits at the rear of the side step. A short length of hose can connect to this to allow collection in a bucket etc without the splashing noise. The rear wheels go right up into the wheel arch boxes so the hoses need to exit either infront or behind the wheel.

For the second water tank I got a stainless steel sill tank made for the left hand side from Mulgo. It's well made, sits flush with the chassis and is tapered up at the sides. It survived the cape trip with no issues, but I have to admit driving a little more carefully with a grands worth of tank hanging down at the side. According to my water meter it holds exactly 65litres and the one under the back seat 50litres. This can be supplemented with a 100 litre bladder across the rear floor. I still have plans to get two tanks made up to go in front of the rear wheels.

I used another series water filler on the left hand side to fill this tank. The fillers look the part but in hind sight they dont work so well with the fiamma water fillers. Sand, dust, mud etc collects in the base of the filler as per the photo. I give it a wipe each time before filling, and I dont think anything makes its way into the tank, but it is annoying. It probably would have been better to mount them directly to the vertical body work.

The Webasto diesel air heater fitted very neatly in behind the right hand seat drawers. You can see the hot air outlet tube behind the sink in a photo in the previous post.

As there was just sikaflex holding the panel on the cupboard behind the right rear seat passenger, I also riveted some strips of Aluminium inside the cupboard to stop its contents flying out in a sudden stop. There is nothing heavy in here anyway - just muesli and empty pots and pans.

I then wrapped the clear filling hoses for the water tanks with an old block out curtain to reduce the chance of mould growth. And made some very quick speaker holders for kids speakers.

And another photo of the sill tank, how it is angled upwards at the side and fits neatly with the side step.

Next job was to make a fly to cover the tent section. On our Trayon this had made huge difference in reducing the heat inside and in the rain had meant we could pack up the canvas almost dry. I spent ages searching for something light weight but heavy duty enough and preferably silver reflective. In the end I got sick of looking and bought a 3.6x6m hiking fly. The 3.6m length means it hangs about 30cm over each end (front and back of car) and gives extra shade/rain protection. It is supported by 3 lightweight aluminum hiking poles (Well the low quality chinese version of that anyway). It is attached to the car by 5 stay put bungee (bunji) loops on each side. It simply attaches to the fibreglass roof before folding over and then is pulled over as the roof flips over. Well it would be simple if the little ropes to stop it flapping in high winds didn't get caught in the spare wheel, high lift jack, windscreen wipers, door hinges etc etc.

I also made curtains for the windows.

I forgot to say in the previous post I needed to buy a sewing machine so bought a 1960's model Empisal from the recycling centre at the local tip for $5. The sewing machine man gave it a service for $99 and pronounced it as new. It is the same size a household machine but is solid steel and weighs about 20kg. It has since sewed 4 layers of canvas to a zipper without breaking a needle. I like reusing too.

For the rear door I did something different this time. Using press studs around the window opening. It is neat as it opens with the rear door and we leave it on most of the time. The disadvantage is or I guess the advantage of having one going right across the back of the car is that it catches most of the dust that comes in the rear door.

Instead of having the side window curtains slide open, I made then roll up and stay up there with velcro tabs. I think this makes it neater.

I made some seat covers out of left over roof canvas, with some 50mm foam inside. The canvas is hard wearing and easy to clean.

Added 4 ciga power points for the camper section. The led lights are working out great. This one under the table shines into the fridge and gives a good light but keeps the top section of the camper dark for when the kids are asleep. You can also see the curtain that goes across behind the rear seats. This gives the defender aircon a smaller area to cool during the day.

I also put in some straps to hold down a box which we use for overflow food and fruit. We were originally going to put a porta poti here but find the food storage area more useful. For short trips we can leave the box out and have more floor space.

I found the long poles down the length of the canvas would bend a little when the canvas was wet. This would then let water pool on the canvas over the folded out bed as there is not much fall on this section, which would cause the pole to bend more, collecting more water etc. So I replaced all the long poles with 3mm wall tube. I also made up an extendible spreader bar which clips onto the centre of these two poles and lets the water run off. This clips behind the fridge when it is not raining.

For the mattresses I got two of these self inflating mattresses as their construction makes them water proof and easy to clean - 5cm Thick Double SZ Self Inflating Sleeping MAT Mattress Camping Hiking Magenta | eBay A foam mattress acts like a big sponge, and these mattresses are better than the oz trail 4WD mattresses as the outer material is bonded to the foam, this makes them more comfortable and cooler as the material doesn't balloon up. We use doona covers as mattress protectors as they fit on neatly.

Unfortunately there was not enough space in the roof when closed for the mattresses to stay in their sleeping positions. It seems I didn't allow for the canvas bulk in the space calculations. So the kids mattress gets folded in half and strapped to the rear of the fold over roof (on the left in the photo). Straps are 50mm seat belt webbing with 250mm long x 50mm wide velcro strips. Pillows and blankets are stored on the kids bed in the area the poles don't occupy.

The MULGO conversion is exactly what I want on my Rigs. Thanks for the link! You have done an excellent job on building your rig. Thanks for the thread.

Well I never finished updating this thread last Nov (2014), and now another year has past!

Anyway, I was sick of getting flat tyres and was starting to realise it was only due to the poor quality of tubes available. So despite being a long time fan of the tube type 130 steel rims (ease of bead breaking and changing tyres) found myself looking for some suitable alloys for the 130.

Some Performance Alloy Challenger rims came up at the right price. 16x7 with 15 positive offset they are ideal. They save about 6kg a wheel, and are rated to 1200kg. Unfortunately the bloke only had 4 of them, and Performance Alloys went out of business and sold the molds for scrap! I'd been keen to buy one or more rims if anyone knows of any???

The tyres were worn out aswell and having a good run out of BFG muddies, was going to get them again. But the cheapest I could find them in 235/85R16 at the time was $340 a tyre. Dad suggested KMart tyre and auto and they had the (then new) Bridgestone D674 muddies for $180 a tyre fitted and balanced. Deal done.

They are quite a tall tyre at 818mm OD. They are also fairly aggressive. At the beginning they had about the same noise level as the worn BFG muddies. They have got noisier on smooth bitumen. They are great on gravel, with few stones thrown up.

Update 1 year and 20tkm later. They are wearing well. Chipping is very minimal after some very rugged tracks. Still pretty noisy.