Just seen this, love it!...you should be proud of yourself

...by the way, black. Silver looks posher but black looks more, well, Land Rover!

Keep up the good work
 
The switches have gone off now to have a wiring loom made. I went for the Silver In the end when the score was 2-1, l will have another look when they come back.;)
This is another sketch, but this time the basic layout of the electrical system.
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The two black boxes are the batteries, one starter and one leisure AGM 110 Ah. From there the Ctek will control the
power management and the power from the solar panel.
There are two switch panels, the main one consists of four switches, these operate the water pump heating etc. And the row of three operate the the rear and side lights. Quite basic.
l do also have three displays. Fresh water and grey water level indicator, heating thermostat, and one
LPG gas indicator linked to the underslung gas tank.
The gas tank will hold about 30 litres will run the Propex HS200 heater, the two ringed hob and the BBQ point.
First l will have to clean the chassis up.:)
 
I had some carpet felt left over and l decided to cover the inside of the car side box.
The carpet was cut to size and the six securing bolts were covered over with masking tape.
Round cutouts were also made in the carpet, the fixing nuts go through these.
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I sprayed the carpet and the inside of the box with heat resistant spray glue and left it it for a minute or two. No turning back now.:confused:
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The masking tape was then removed and the carpet pressed onto the metal. Black plastic covers are then pressed onto the stud nuts.
All finished, the only thing l have to do at a later date is to add PIR lights to the inside of the box.
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I have just finally received the new striker plates. The old ones were extremely tatty and large.
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The reason l redesigned the striker plate was size, l wanted to be able to drop the seats down, and then lock the
cabinets/units in place when the double seat was tumbled forward. The old Unit was also too high.
The new ones .
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Stainless steel, so that the paint won’t come off and should stay looking half decent. These will fit in the recess of the wooden floor.
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Compared to the the old one you can see how much smaller they are.
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Tomorrow l will finish the floor off, just have to pick up the adhesive for the flooring, and some bolts. Update tomorrow.
 
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Lovely! In case you haven't already done so, have a think about whether an AGM battery is for you. There are some good articles and videos that discuss the merits of AGM - deep cycling is not one of them and it takes a long time to get them back up to capacity. It does depend on how long you will be camping for though, and how long you are driving for thereafter.
 
Lovely! In case you haven't already done so, have a think about whether an AGM battery is for you. There are some good articles and videos that discuss the merits of AGM - deep cycling is not one of them and it takes a long time to get them back up to capacity. It does depend on how long you will be camping for though, and how long you are driving for thereafter.

My Defender battery l will keep as standard, only my leisure battery will be AGM, seems to be the norm for campervans. I am hoping the solar panel will provide enough battery top up, but is it big enough? I will see over the coming months l guess.
Electrics are not my strong point, but I did spend a lot of time looking into a split charge system. The first system l purchased was wrong, looked into a bit further and was advised this CTEK charger was excellent and l was told charges in a very efficient way.

“The CTEK is a fully automatic, 5 step charger that supplies up to 20A of power to any 12V lead acid service battery from 40-300Ah, including Wet, EFB, MF, Ca/Ca, AGM and Gel. It has selectable charge voltages for AGM batteries and can use power through its dual input from alternator, solar panel and wind power. When the service battery is fully charged, the D250SE will automatically redirect maintenance charge power to the starter battery. The D250SE can maintain a stable output up to 20A to vehicles fitted with smart ECU controlled alternators and also has a temperature sensor for optimised charging, regardless of weather conditions.“

I also have a monitor to tell me how much battery life l have left, just to be sure.
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I laid out the floor ready to be fixed down.
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Not too bad to do, a lot of cuts around the plates and under the cargo track.
All finished, the Aluminium trim is the only part missing, my circular saw blade was too blunt to use attempt this at a later date.
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From this angle you can see the finished footwell minus the trim on the edge.
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I thought it was a good time to test the seat with the new striker plates. First I stripped it down and removed the foam and covers. The seat will be recovered at a later date and removing it now made it so much lighter to lift back into the car.
Locked into position.
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Tumbled forward.
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The right hand side striker plate works well, but the left hand side seems to just sit on the striker plate bar. Used l think just for the single seat, and giving the double seat support. I will have to have a play around.
But generally works well.
 
My Defender battery l will keep as standard, only my leisure battery will be AGM, seems to be the norm for campervans. I am hoping the solar panel will provide enough battery top up, but is it big enough? I will see over the coming months l guess.
Electrics are not my strong point, but I did spend a lot of time looking into a split charge system. The first system l purchased was wrong, looked into a bit further and was advised this CTEK charger was excellent and l was told charges in a very efficient way.

“The CTEK is a fully automatic, 5 step charger that supplies up to 20A of power to any 12V lead acid service battery from 40-300Ah, including Wet, EFB, MF, Ca/Ca, AGM and Gel. It has selectable charge voltages for AGM batteries and can use power through its dual input from alternator, solar panel and wind power. When the service battery is fully charged, the D250SE will automatically redirect maintenance charge power to the starter battery. The D250SE can maintain a stable output up to 20A to vehicles fitted with smart ECU controlled alternators and also has a temperature sensor for optimised charging, regardless of weather conditions.“

I also have a monitor to tell me how much battery life l have left, just to be sure.
View attachment 212350
Looks good.
I have one of these for mine.



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I found another great use for the house vacuum cleaner. Not only is good for hovering up dust in the living room
or the hallway. Stick a piece of cut hose on the end secure with tape and you have a great cleaning tool to suck up
crud from the rear chassis. :D
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Just a small update regarding the internal trim.
The Landy internal trim had been bashed about a bit lots of nicks and scrapes and l thought too tatty to leave as it was.
So what do l do? I could buy new, but difficult get new at a affordable price, get rid of them altogether, but l loose the Defender look inside, or l could cover them.
So l went for the recovering.
The trim not looking too good.
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I filled the holes and dents with car filler and then sanded the whole surface
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Next l worked on the window trims.
Although it also didn’t help when l reversed the car accidentally onto the corner of the trim.:mad:
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All looking better with some filler.
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Because l was using one of the trims around the window l wanted it to look neat and tidy around the internal edge of the trim. And unfortunately the window trim surrounds had a small square cut out top and bottom to allow the side panel strengthening bars to sit, so l decided to fill these. One side l left, but the window side l filled using a fibreglass
kit.
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And then filled.
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I cut out a small square hole and is where l will fit the three light switches.
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The last thing l did was to remove all of the stick out rivets on the window trims and rear quarter panel trims and replaced them with flush pop rivets, l then repainted the brackets. These new rivets hopefully won’t show through the covering material.
Photo below shows one trim before and after.
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The last thing l did was to remove some of the edges of the trim with a Dremel sander. The reason being is because
I fitted sound and thermal insulation to all internal surfaces it made the trim fit too tight.
At the moment l have sent the window trims to be covered, but l have just received the other ones back including the A and B posts, and the sun visors (photo to follow).
They are now covered in black grained leather with grey stitching.
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All of the electrics have now all arrived including the two switch and control panels.
The charging controller and trickle charger are in the middle with the 240 V electrics top right.
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A couple of close ups.
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My next job was to fit a battery tray and leisure battery, not easy because the tray was not a perfect fit and l had to make sure that the tray cleared the bottom/ side wall of the battery box. The way the battery’s are secured could be better. I will design a new ratchet system later. Sound proofing was also added at this stage.
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The main battery cables had to be lengthened, and new fuse added to the positive, (clear plastic tube).
Leisure battery in.
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The first lights are connected at the back. Photo shows two LED strip lights and the Colour change controller box.
The side light above the side window was also connected.
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Another LED PIR light secured just above the rear door also added and connected.
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Many new updates to come.
 
Finishing off the flooring.
I cut out various lengths of aluminium angle and secured them in place using CT1 adhesive and screws.
The two side pieces were cut to shape and then bolted through the flooring.
Great care was taken to obtain precise cut angles.
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finished flooring.
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Another recent upgrade was the adding of a second solar panel. I was concerned that off grid l could have some days of no or reduced sunlight. The car has now 260 Watts increased from 130 Watts. It very easy to add and just had to make some more brackets, and link the two panels in parallel.
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l removed the headlining and drilled two holes, one through the cab roof and the other through the main roof. The wire was fed though and secured in place using cable ties and adhesive pads.
Two cable glands with double entry were used. Below picture shows the cab roof one.
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And below under the headlining.
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Top roof view.
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The headlining was placed back in position and the two trimmed sun visors were also secured.
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The solar panel cables were pulled trough under the headlining and along the top part of the door trims.
They are now ready to connect.
 
More...l have added the rear door card organiser, secured with pop rivets.
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Also had all of the windows tinted from the B- post to rear of the car (5%).
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The rear seat brackets have also had a clean up, stripped and powder coated.
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I have received and fitted internal trim all looking okay, main switches for the external lights are also in.
The trim was quite tricky to fit, because l had to trim each piece down with a Dremel to compensate
for all of the extra layers:
2 mm of sound proofing, 7 mm of Dodo thermal insulation and 5 mm of Veltrim carpet.

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Light switches positioned in the window trim.
ON and all lit up.
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You can just see a small part of the newly upholstered 2nd row seats, section to follow.
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I could have gone for an easy option of just boarding out the internal sides, but l still wanted it to look Defender. The cabinets will have a also have some Defender styling, and these are currently being worked on.
First cabinet in progress. Pop rivet and Aluminium.
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