Thread: Defender 110 Roof Console

G'day all!

Something I have been wanting to do for a long time is construct a roof console. It would have been nice to be able to purchase something that did what I wanted, and was affordable for me, but the two criteria don't co-exist in a product that I've found.

I was looking at designs for a long time, as well as construction methods. I wanted a "T"-shaped design, from left to right in front of the driver and front passenger, and down the centre towards the back.

I had pretty much made up my mind on making it out of MDF/plywood, when I came across the efforts of James (rainman), and his construction of very tidily finished aluminium.

A visit to see his work first-hand convinced me it was the way to go. Lighter than anything else I could think of, as well as getting the most useable space out of the material (no thickness of MDF/ply taking up space).

After much difficulty, I managed to secure a 2400 x 1200 sheet of 1.2mm aluminium, from G James at Eagle Farm. Nobody closer to me that I could find. $49 for the sheet, not too bad. Fits very nicely on a full-length Defender roof rack, by the way.

I ordered a nutsert kit from eBay (around $80) - cheap and basic, but ended up doing the job perfectly well - came with enough nutserts and plenty left over.

I'd read about people making their own bending tools, and came up with a design utilising a couple of hinges, some angle iron, a couple of bits of old timber, and a wooden saw-horse. It does the job pretty well on the 1.2mm stuff - nowhere near as good as a professional brake press, but good enough. Much cheaper, too. Hammers, pieces of wood and a nice, new bench vice also came into play for bending the aluminium.







Cutting was done mostly with a metal blade in the jigsaw. Occasionally I used a hacksaw, and very occasionally a cut-off wheel on the grinder. A dremel with cut-off wheels was brought into play for doing the switch holes in the dashboard extension piece.

Covering was with some nice textured vinyl from Spotlight, glued with a gel contact cement. Not much padding (ie. none) in this material, so the kids have complained a couple of time bumping their heads on the centre section. Harden up, kids!

Before I jumped in to the roof console, I decided to get the hang of working with the aluminium by making up a dashboard extension piece first. A previous owner had relocated the ECU, relays and fuses from under the seat to behind the dashboard, which necessitated the removal of the stereo unit, and the construction of a very crude plywood spacer behind the centre dashboard section to allow room for everything. I've never liked this, and it was a major mission to replace a blown fuse. The stereo unit was relocated to the top of the dashboard via a wobbly piece of metal, which then required wiring to be run along the front of the dashboard. A boost gauge and voltmeter, shabbily mounted to the dashboard in front of the driver (with associated exposed wiring) completed the ensemble.



I decided to make a replacement section, and incorporate a mount for our Android tablet at the same time (which would perform all on- and off-road navigation, as well as music duties).

I came up with a design which relocated the existing switches to the sides of the unit, which left the main face free for the tablet.

















The front face now comes off with 4 screws, allowing much easier access to the relays and fuses. I might replace this with something easier, including possibly putting a hinge along the bottom side, and a couple of wingnuts or similar on the top.

There's a few quickly-made zig-zag shape brackets I made up out of aluminium, that the tablet slides into. I might revise this, though it works very well - it's just a bit daggy. I spaced the brackets so the tablet would fit into it with the leather sleeve ON (folded back behind itself), that way the tablet doesn't ever have to come out of it's protective cover - you just flip the cover around and slide it in, the slide it out, and flip the cover back over the tablet, ready to go. I've had phone brackets that annoyed me, as you had to stuff around with taking covers off phones to put them in a cradle.

I also quickly whipped up a little pocket that sits in front of the passenger seat, to replace the smaller, rougher plywood one I made up a while ago. You can never have too much storage. This one got heaps of use in its plywood version, the new one is bigger, smaller and lighter (bigger inside, smaller outside!).



Now, on to the roof console.

James' design followed the arch of the top of the windscreen, which meant he could keep the rear view mirror and sun visors in their original position.

I wanted a bit more storage space, so decided to run straight across from the sills above the doors. This would also give me something to screw to at the sides. James suggested this might block visibility, but at 180 cms, I still have miles of room above my eyeline with the way I've set it up.

I ended up with a design that is basically 3 pieces - the centre section stretching front to back, and a side section over the front of the driver and front passenger.

Each section was put together from a couple of pieces - a top section that screwed to the roof, the bottom section screwing to that, and then the side/rear sections. Doing it this way makes it relatively easy to get into and out of it for modification or removal, you can assemble or disassemble in stages.

The stereo unit now sits in the centre of the console, behind the original light and the speaker for the UHF. It's a bluetooth unit, so gets the music piped to it from the tablet.

The speakers have some plywood (screwed into the sill above the door and windscreen) above the aluminium that they also screw into, for some extra protection against vibration and rattling. Currently there is a bit of rattle with the real loud, bassy stuff - but I think that's coming from where the console top piece is screwed to the roof, which should hopefully disappear when I line the roof.

The existing sun visors were put in with some C-section aluminium bracing them above. Their new position is excellent, lower than stock. The stock position didn't get low enough for my wife to block out horizon-level sun, now they do that easily. The rear view mirror was ditched - I removed it a long time ago, as all it did was project diffused light from cars behind me at night time into my eyes, and provide a view of sky and 35" spare tyre via a grubby rear window during the day.

Some rubber trim around the holes for putting stuff in, from Clark Rubber. When I have the console apart again (to do the inside roof trim), I'll paint the inside black, or coat it with something dark, thin and soft.

I added an $11 eBay special LED light above the rear seats. It's a 3-position, so can come on with the existing internal light on the door switch, or manually, or off. It's perfectly positioned, the kids can see everything in the back, right to the floor at their feet, which was impossible with the stock light in it's position. It also helps light up the front of the cabin, but not as much as upgrading the front light. We'd rather keep the front light as standard (dim and yellow), so that if we have to use it at night, it won't trash our night vision too much.























Some finishing off still to go - I might have to make some bigger covers than the standard plastic ones for the windscreen pillars to hide the extra wiring - some strips of aluminium might do nicely there, and there's the roof interior to cover - I still don't know what the best answer for that is, yet. I picked up some more rubber edging to do the surround of the holes to the front compartments the other day, still to go on. When the rear large compartment is used, I'll work out whether or not any netting is required to go across the access holes, to prevent stuff falling out.

I wanted to post this up, even though I'm not finished, otherwise it will always sit in that "I'll get to it one day" category.

I made up a couple of brackets to mount the UHF remote unit and microphone to the front of the cubby box. I wanted to find a place where the microphone cord wouldn't dangle around, or get in the way when being used. All solutions for putting it in a roof console or on the dashboard didn't appeal to me, and this seems to work well. The cable is also at rest, so hopefully should last longer than the last cable (you can buy replacement microphone cables for this UHF unit, I found out!).

Now that I have a taste for doing this, I want to completely replace the cubby box with something better, as well as making a surround for the transmission tunnel, similar to what James has also done.

They're on the list. Better finish this one first, though. Oh... and there's a handbrake cable waiting to be fitted to replace the broken one, as well. Should probably do that first...

Awesome DIY