Thread: 130 Station Wagon with side fold pop top build

I though the gauge meant you were welding in 30 deg heat - now I read 30kg

Nice work - will be interesting to see you total costs at end - I would never have thought of making one of these!

Have you thought about reinforcing the rear corners - you don't have much meat left after the trim and much of the side and rear now glass. I just wonder if you need some sort of reinforcing vertically and for twisting for the rear corner.

well done.

Originally Posted by Skiboy

I though the gauge meant you were welding in 30 deg heat - now I read 30kg

30 ha ha, it was 36C when they were welding the frame, the dodgy Mackay bitumen was liquid out the front of their shop.

Originally Posted by Skiboy

- will be interesting to see you total costs at end

It's adding up, I've got a big pile of receipts, plus the massive number of hours that I've put in.... But it will be far cheaper than the 20G our second hand Trayon slide on camper cost, plus lighter, with far more room and better suited to our needs.

Originally Posted by Skiboy

Have you thought about reinforcing the rear corners - you don't have much meat left after the trim and much of the side and rear now glass. I just wonder if you need some sort of reinforcing vertically and for twisting for the rear corner.

Yes I've thought about this. Jaffle never had any issues, and he had done over 200K with the pop top when we sold him. When I shortened the rear side panels on this one, I only chopped out flat panel, no vertical reinforcing ribs etc. The back corner has multiple layers of metal folded, overlapped and bonded, plus the verticals around the rear door are strong, and the 125mm depth of the box section (3mm thick) of the frame, should distribute the weight over a large area. Despite appearances the frame flexes diagonally relatively easily.

I estimate that my pop top roof (including, mattresses, canvas etc) will only be about 30-40kg more than the standard roof alone, as I have now gone for a high-tech (dear as poison) light weight composite fibreglass roof/lid. More details/photos to follow in the next days (hopefully). Alot of people have way more weight up top with roof racks weighing 40+kgs, roof top tents 40+kgs, tyres 35kgs etc driving around over bad roads. Our roof load will only be high when stationary/sleeping and still be under 200kg. I am not expecting any problems.

I wanted to attach a photo of a Series LR crossing the Sahara desert with 20 Jerry cans on the roof, plus tyres, spares etc etc but couldn't find it. Must have been over 500kg up there including the rack. I don't recall reading about any roof problems, but I'm sure some people would have overdone it.

Originally Posted by Skiboy

well done.

Originally Posted by VladTepes

Very impressive.

Originally Posted by TeamFA

Absolutely impressive...

Thanks Keith, Vlad and Team FA - I really appreciate your kind words. It's turned out to be a long process somehow, and I've run out of steam on occasion. Sometimes the sheer number of jobs still to do can weigh you down. Its tiring always trying to think a few steps ahead so I have the parts etc ready to go when I need them. The light at the end of the tunnel is starting to glow again I'm looking forward to driving this machine, and going camping with my family.

I remembered I had these photos of Puma 110 hardtops. Land Rover have not left much meat on the rear corners either. They are still constructing them the same way in side too, but have omitted the horizontal strengthening ribs.

The hardtop sides are mounted to the tub at 5 points per side (front, corner, door and two down the sides). Due to the shortening - the mounting tabs didn't line up with the holes in gal capping, and I also wanted them more evenly spaced. So I trimmed the rubber seal retaining strip, then drilled the appropriate sized holes for the stepped rubber buffer with a step drill bit. The rubber buffer/washer is supposed to have a part number 338550, but as you can see they are only 1 inch across not 1.5 inches. 338553 is the other part number listed but is no longer available.

I then used a wire brush to strip the last of the pesky rubber seal out from under the retainer. Was a very messy job!

While the vehicle is in pieces I decided to replace the seal under the windscreen. Undid the 3 bolts per side and off it came. Windscreen and surround was surprisingly heavy, weighing 15kg.

The two locating pins on the right were rusted? Left side were perfect. Lots of leaves and rubbish behind the windscreen, I had given this all a good vacuum when I bought the truck.

The new windscreen sealing strip (FAJ100020) is only 6mm thick while the original is about 9mm. Hope it does the job, it will be nice not to have the accelerator foot water leak, though I think even the new ones have this feature...

While the windscreen frame was off, I lined it up on the frame, to drill the holes for the bolts, to save having to do it upside down.

The Britpart FAJ100020 at 6mm thick definitely does not do the job. There was a gap under the screen. I ended up buying a strip of 24mm wide, 12mm high EDPM rubber which is probably too tall, but was closest they had.

Next up was to fit the rubber seals to the sides and bolt it up. Seal 333490 is the rear tub to side panel seal, and 334610 and 334611 are the roof "P seals" which go from the side panels to roof (or frame in my case). The "P seal" is also the same profile seal which goes into a recess in the top of the B pillar.

With the aid of 3 G clamps and 4 straps, the house of cards all lined up - yay. Shame the next step was to take it apart again to make the roof to size and prepare the rest for painting.

So Plan A was to reuse the Series 3 roof as the fold over bed. The front of the Series 2 and 3 roofs are flat saving time filling in the front section of a defender roof. A friend gave me the back section of County roof to make up the length of a 130 (these roofs also have the ribs on the outside).

However I was surprised at the weight of the original Series roof - 39kgs. Plus the original roof is 190mm high, this meant that when the roof was folded over we wouldn't be able to open the passengers side doors (as the frame is only 125mm high). The shape wouldn't be ideal to sleep on due to the curve on the sides narrowing the bed width, plus the taper towards the windscreen. I also wanted to keep the car as low as possible as defenders are already pretty high.

The search for options was on. I thought about Aluminium, but there was no way I could make it lighter than Mr Land Rover. In the end I went for a fibreglass composite panel. Or in marketing speak a "structural foam core laminated with a high performance epoxy resin reinforced with multi axial E-fibreglass". At nearly 2K delivered , this is by far the single most expensive part of the whole project! The 15mm core thickness of my panel has a weight of 3.3kg/m2. And doing some research on boating forums, someone calculated that this 15mm thick panel supported on the edges at 1.5m and 2m spans - the core and laminate failure are at around 6 tonnes! Wow! It's still alot of money.