This is Trevor, our 1989 110 V8. He was bought direct from Whitham SV after leaving the army in 2003, complete with squaddie shaped dents and artistic paint-work. Originally a full soft-top Trevor has undergone a serious make-over to become the vehicle he is today.

Before too long it became apparent that the military spec engine was decidedly lacking in the performance stakes and although de-restricting the engine helped there wasn't much improvement. However from this moment on the tinkering began....The first changes were to add some protection and you can just make out the front diff guard and steering bar protector in the picture below.        

 

 

In the early days driving Trevor in the wet was always an 'entertaining'experience as the original 7.50x16 Michelins XCL's were not really up to the job. Swapping them for the larger 285/75x16 ProComps X-Terrains (bigger but surprisingly quieter!) was a big help and gave us a little more ground clearance, always useful with the long wheelbase

 

 

 The next thing to be changed was the suspension as the standard setup only really worked with a couple of hundred kilo's in the back. The initial set-up consisted of ProComp +2" springs, Pro-Comp +2" shocks and the Equipe 4x4 Stage One kit (lowered turrets, extended bumpstops, rear dropped shock mounts and cranked trailing arms). The kit was fitted over the Christmas of 2006 on the driveway (not much fun!). Can you guess which end got fitted first? 

 

 

The handling with this new set-up was interesting to say the least but changing to the QT castor corrected front radius arms kept us out of the hedgerows along with the poly-bushes all round. The propshafts where also changed at this time to a double cardon front and wide-angle rear, again from QT. Trevor stayed like this till early 2008. At that time Erin's impending arrival meant that the two seater soft-top (sports car?) layout wasn't really appropriate, hence the change to the current hard-top you see today. The roof swap was carried out on Carls drive and thanks to the efforts of a number of club members (and a good supply of hot drinks!) was completed in a day. The Series II 'cat-flap' tailgate was also fitted at this point as we wanted to keep the drop-down tailgate from the soft-top. To add a bit of modern luxury we removed the Series tailgate prop and fitted a pair of gas struts to hold the cat-flap open.

            

 

 In order that there was enough room for all of us we had to add a second row of seats. Mounting the set of Series Deluxe front seats in the rear was not too difficult but finding some way of securing the seatbelts turned into a complete nightmare. In the end we decided to have a roll-cage built by Tornado Motorsports which was tied into the chassis and all belts were mounted onto this. The bulkhead into the load area was also removed and replaced with a bracing bar from North Off-Road. To ensure the passengers could have an idea of where they were going we also added a pair of custom made side windows, tinted naturally!

 

 The eagle-eyed amongst you may also spot a clue to the next change. With so many new panels it was decided to change from olive drab/black to sand (roller painted over a weekend to keep with the military theme!).

 

 

Towards the end of 2009 we were offered a crash damaged 300 Series Discovery with the 3.9 EFI engine. We?d been muttering about doing this conversion for some time so when this opportunity arose it was too good to turn down (the Disco had no AC and a manual gearbox). Between January and May 2010 the original 3.5 V8 was removed and replaced with the 3.9 EFI. While being a relatively straight-forward swap there were a number of small issues that slowed the project down. So much so that it was finished two days before the Gaydon show.

Out with the old.... 

 

 

In with the new... 

 

Since the engine swap was completed the X-Eng X-lites have been fitted to the cage, Exmoor Trim Acoustic Mats added to the rear, a smaller steering wheel has been fitted (the manual steering box was swapped with the PAS box from the Disco) and a rev counter installed in the spare hole in the dash. The rev counter has been really useful, especially as the engine has just been rebuilt (thanks Stuart and Tristan) so we're slowly running it in.

So there you have it, a long and not always pain-free journey from MOD standard to where we are now. Is there more to come, well only time will tell.. 

 

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