africa-overland

30/05/07 - What's new? Scroll down to see an end of trip kit review.

We are travelling down in 1995 300tdi Defender 110 commercial station wagon. It was originally built in Solihull and then shipped to South Africa where it stayed until a few years ago. It was then shipped home and I purchased it from Foleys in May 2005. It has covered 135000kms

Landy in Libya with Arabic plates

We've gone for Old Man Emu shocks and springs all round. Foley fitted an extra set of rear shock mounts. I had OME kit on my 90 before and they really did transform the ride. Part numbers are:
751 Front Springs
754 Rear Springs
N115 Front Shocks
N44 Rear Springs.
Once I fitted them they gave the vehicle an almighty lift. It all looked very impressive but really knackered the drive train. I ended up have to replace the trailing and radius arms, fitting red polybushes at the same time, and then fitting a very expensive double-carden front prop shaft (£330) due to yoke bind. The lift also changed the angle of the panhard rod which pulled the axle 15mm to the right. I then had to fit an adjustable rod to compensate. Be aware that fitting heavy duty suspension might not be as straight-forward as it first seems. I would recommend speaking to Kevin at Scorpion Racing if you're thinking about doing it. Although they don't do OME he really knows his stuff.
For OME kit contact Devon 4X4. They are another very experienced and friendly company that can give you the advice you need. They also do loads of other stuff

We went for 265/75R16 BF Goodrich All Terrain KO on 16x7in Silver Grey Modular rims. I went for the wider tyre to give us a bit more stability. BF Goodrich seems to be the brand of choice at the moment, although tyre choice is personal. Tom Sheppard has some good advice on tyres in is book Vehicle Dependant Expedition Guide. Tube or tubeless, it's up to you. Do your research though as tyres will be one of your most important and expensive purchases. You should take 2 spares and tyre repair kits.

Fitted tanks or lots of jerry cans? Read the Brownchurch expedition planning page on their website before you make your mind up. There are lots of pros and cons of both systems.
Our landy came fitted with 2 long range tanks under both front seats. This gives us an extra capacity of 140l and a total of 220l. We will also be taking 2 spare 20l jerry cans on the roof. Plan is to leave one of the under seat tanks full at all times and drive on the other 2 tanks. This means we have 150l to drive on which should mean we have a 1000km range with a further 500km (at least) spare.

I had 50l water tank fitted in the rear wheel arch by Foleys. We will also be taking a 20l jerry can for dirty water and a 10l jerry can for clean water. As well as several 1l water bottles. To purify the water we are using iodine and Aqua Clean tablets. To filter it we have bought the highly recommended Browhchurch electric ceramic filter with shower attachment. Plan is to carry 70l of dirty water. Once it is put in the vehicle water tank we will put the purifying tablets into it and filter it into the 10l and 1l bottles when required. By all accounts fresh water is available in most places though.

I wired in a second Exide Maxima deep cycle battery using a simple split charge relay purchased from Foleys. The second battery provides power for all our accessories and also runs an innvertor for laptops etc. There are lots of different split chargers out there, ranging from very expensive to very cheap. I settled on a small unit that cost me £45 and works perfectly. It is very simple to wire up. You run a hefty 50amp wire from the postive on the started battery into the unit and then out of the unit to the second battery positive terminal. You must also earth the unit. The split charger only starts to work when it senses the main battery is fully charged and has a blocking diode to stop any power being drained from the main battery to the aux in the event of the aux running dry. Fitting took 30 - 45 mins. The systems is simple and therefore has less to go wrong.

I also fitted an extra VDO battery gauge on the dash with an on-off-on swith to monitor the charge in both batteries. Along with this I fitted a VDO oil temperature gauge (speak to John at Croytec regarding the senders and t-pieces required) and rev counter. I'm no expert at wiring. However, all of this stuff is simple to fit and also a necessity that allows you to monitor most elements of the vehicle's systems. To cope with 2 batteries I fitted an uprated 120amp alternator.

The back section of the vehicle has been set up to be inaccessible from anywhere other than the back door (hopefully). A dog guard welded to the roll cage and bolted to the floor prevents access through the main vehicle cabin. The side windows have been replaced with aluminium sheet and the rear windows have been midnight tinted and then had security grills fitted over them. The back door has had an extra padlock bolted to it. Hopefully this will be enough to deter most thieves.

Within the vehicle we have a lockable cubby box in the front. There is also a hidden safe in the vehicle. In the back we have got a lockable store chest and store drawer bolted to the floor. This should give us lots of different places to secure money, passports etc and build in some redundancy if one of the safes is compromised.

Underbody Protection

Again this all comes down to personal preference. The goal with the vehicle is to keep the weight down as much as possible. If you then go and fit loads of underbody protection you lower the amount of kit the landy can carry. Aluminium is lighter than steel but arguably has less strength and is more expensive. The key with this in mind is to do as much research as possible and then make your own mind up.

We went for QT Serivce front and rear diff guards. Apparently a must if you are driving through long grass as we will in Kenya / Tanzania. A steering guard for the vulnerable steering rod and panhard rod. Finally we fitted a dan bar to protect the track rod. We haven't fitted a fuel tank guard.

Sleeping and camping

Being concerned about keeping the weight down I decided to use the Brownchurch Overland 2000 roof tent. This is a different design to the rest in that it doesn't incorporate a built in sleeping platform. Instead you sleep on the base board for the roof rack, (see photos courtesy of Brownchurch Ltd). This also means that it is a fair bit cheaper then other tents on the market.

The pros of this design are that the weight is only 17kg as oppposed to 60kg of normal tents and that when stowed it takes up a very small area. The cons are that it takes longer to put up. However, seeing as time is something we will have a lot of this isn't too much of a problem.

We have also bought the Browncurch awning, see photo. I was dubious about the benefits of these but after having spent a month camping in France without one I now see them as invaluable!! To give us a bit more privacy we have a basic 4 man tent to put up.

We have not fitted a winch, instead we will taking a hand winch and a high lift jack.

I have fitted jackable side sills from Rebel 4x4. It isn't always advisable to jack a 110 from the side. However, in an emergency I have no problems with doing it.

At the front we have a heavy duty Scorpion Racing recovery bumper with jacking ang towing points. At the rear are the standard jacking points the Land Rover put in.

Kit review
This stuff only applies to landies I have no knowledge of any other car. Also, there is an argument that if you are driving another car you probably won’t have need of this info!!
In terms of the kit we took and the kit the other truck we travelled with took this is what I can say about it. Obviously this is our own experiences and everyone is different so you need to make your own mind up.

Winches. We didn’t have one, our friend did. His was a 9000lb Warn X9 and when we got stuck in the mud badly it wasn’t powerful enough to get us out. This happened in Sudan, Tanzania and Botswana. So either get a much bigger winch or do what we did. This is was to high-lift jack up each wheel, put a waffle boards under each wheel and drive out. This worked ever time without fail. Even in thick black cotton soil. The next time I do a trip like this I still won’t take an electric winch but I will take an extra set of waffle boards instead of the sand ladders I have been carrying and never used. 4 waffle boards, a good hi-lift and base plate and you’ll get yourself out of anything. It is time consuming and you get muddy but I (and my winch owning mate) are completely sold on the idea of jacking and waffle boards. Food for thought.

Sand ladders: ditch them, take 2 more waffle boards! If you are driving in sand let your tyres down and read the ground carefully. If that fails then you have to jack, dig and you can use the waffle boards as ladders.

Fridge: absolutely invaluable. The single best piece of kit I took. Would take 2 if it was necessary! They are expensive and need another battery but after 1 day in the desert you will feel your cost justified.

Diesel Jerry cans x 3: I never used them except to transport water. I have 3 long range tanks built in giving me a total of 240l. This makes jerry cans irrelevant. The longest stretch we found between fill ups was 600km and you could do this at a stretch on a single tank. Obviously you wouldn’t want to but I’m just making a point. My mate had no built in tanks and so most of his room was taken up with jerry cans. Tom Sheppard makes a good point about fixed tanks being harder to repair if contaminated etc but there has been no-where we’ve been that you couldn’t get good fuel. The space they save can be filled with other valuable pieces of kit. Next trip I am going to convert on of the 80l tanks into a water one and fit another 40l one at the back, giving me 200l of diesel and 120l of water.

Water tank: 40l isn’t enough. You need double that, and even then you are pretty limited. I would ditch the diesel jerries, and take 2 extra for water. Obviously if you hop from campsite to campsite water isn’t an issue but most true overlanders don’t do this, and certainly if you want to bush camp you need at least 90 – 100l of water for 2 people for 5 days. (More if you want to shower and wash clothes).

Brown church Filter and Shower: Another well-worth it buy. Filter is brilliant and when you have water to spare the shower can make you feel human again.

Underbody protection: this simply depends on how far into the bush you want to go. We went pretty far off the beaten track and even driving as carefully as we could hit some pretty large rocks, with the diff guards etc taking the brunt. If you plan simply to stick to the main roads and take it easy on the Moyale – Isiolo rocks in northern Kenya you probably don’t need any under body protection and could save yourself 75kgs of weight.

Polybushes and non-standard steering + suspension items: You obviously need heavy duty suspension. However, be aware of going too extreme with it because if things break you simply won’t be able to find spares for them. One of my poly bushes split so I had to then buy genuine part replacements not only for the one that went, but for all the others as-well so that they were all even. Although land rover bushes aren’t great I would run on them on another trip. I would take a load of spares and check them regularly (you should be checking them anyway). They are cheap and can be replaced anywhere in Africa. The fancy double-carden prop shaft I brought wasn’t up to it. The ball-joint that joined the 2 yokes snapped off. I then had to buy another genuine part, but because of the lift kit this clipped as it went around so I had to have it lengthened and then the yoke ground down to allow the uj’s to turn with interruption. Be aware of mucking around with the basic drive train by putting big lifts on your truck. It stresses the whole drive train and when your specialist replacement parts go they can’t be replaced. On the back of my truck I will run standard 130 springs with the interior helper springs for my next trip. These are available anywhere and do the job adequately. For the record I would, however, definitely still use the Old Man Emu shocks. They are brilliant.
Having thought about it, the one advantage of Polybushes is that they are much easier to replace than genuine parts. Without a press or vice you can’t get the old bushes out and news one in. Still think I’d take genuine though!

Roof rack: we had a super heavy duty roof-rack that weighed about 100kgs. This is far in excess of what you need. The basic premise to a roof-rack is that you should keep as little as possible on it. Therefore why does it have to be so heavy duty? We didn’t use a standard roof-tent but used the Brownchurch Overlanders 2000 tent. This means you have to lie on the roof rack as the tent doesn’t have an inbuilt base board. This meant that I couldn’t carry much up there anyway. After a while I ditched the old rack and brought a new aluminium one that weighs 35kgs. This works perfectly with our roof tent and because that only weighs 15kg we have kept our weight down hugely.
Think about your roof-rack. You should really only have your hi-lift, jerry cans and waffle boards up there. It might even be worth getting half a roof rack and having your normal roof tent on roof bars. Look into your options but your over-riding concern should be weight reduction, not only up top but in all aspects.

Roof tent: Although our roof tent takes a little longer to put up then the howling moon etc versions and means we have to carry air mattresses in the car. I would still use it again. It saves about 55kgs in weight over other tents and this is what is important to me. There are some modifications I would make to it but I am very happy with it. It also cost a lot less than other tents.

Wolf storage boxes: excellent pieces of kit. Very robust and fit together nicely. Your packing is very important and these can make life much easier. They aren’t cheap but are worth the expense

Mobile storage systems store draw and store chest: More excellent kit. Expensive but very useful. A must for me

Gas cooker: I have had second thoughts about this. Although we never ran out of gas we did come close. Gas can be got fairly easily and if you bush camp most of your cooking will be done on a camp fire. However, I would prefer the option of using a petrol as well as gas. With this is mind next time I would use a Coleman dual burner, simply because of the flexibility it gives you.

Spares kit: So far I have used:
Master and slave clutch kit.
Hub Bearing
Lock washer and lock nut
Fuel Pump
Pulley bearings
Diff oil seals.
Hub oil seals
Drive belt (service itme to be fair)

The spares kit that Foley put together for me has been spot on. The kit they supply costs about £500 so isn’t cheap it has done me proud so far. Having said that I have been able to get all the spares I need out here. I was surprised how easy getting spares was. They are widely available although you do have to check that they are actually genuine part even though they say they are. I have also been surprised by the number of bush mechanics around. There are loads of them and as labour is so cheap it makes sense to use them. However, make sure you watch what they are doing. The brand new genuine part you supply for them to fit is worth big bucks, also watch your tools. This is because most places I went to didn’t have their own and had to use mine.

Out here items like drive members and pulley bearings are service items that get changed every 10000km. In the UK I don’t think I have ever checked my drive members and these are something I would replace with heavy duty items for a future trip. I would also replace my half shafts with heavy duty ones. If you snap a half shaft, rare in the UK but scarily common out here, you are buggered. If you can get the broken end out you can drive one 1 axle in diff lock but the strain this puts on your transfer box on bad roads can not be ignored. If you lose the teeth on a drive member you don’t have the worry of getting the broken bits out but still have the transfer box strain to content with.

I took a land rover genuine part starter battery with me and it lasted half the trip. That’s actually not that bad but it was a worry and for piece of mind I would take a sealed gel battery. The corrugations destroyed the last one by shaking it to death. This can’t happen with a gel one.

Piczo