The Rover Shop
Explorer
Well here is a brief bit about the objectives.. Prepare my camel trophy 110 for a trip around the world...where we go and how long we are gone for is completely undecided...all that has been decided is that it needs to be done real soon because lets face it guys...this world is going to crap in a hurry, even as we speak civil unrest and crime is on the uprise... anyway, back to my objective.. prep the camel for any real world scenario I can thnk we might encounter but do the modifications without altering the originality of the camel...when I got my camel she was missing most of the original bolt on goodies and still to this day I am not sure of her history. Went about ordering the correct front bumper and brush guard from Rovers North (these guys are the best, especially Les, he knows his stuff) Have ordered the correct brownchurch rack with Jerry can holder installed and am waiting patiently for that to arrive.... here is a pic when I first got her..
One of the first issues was to repair the bad sections in the frame, I really should have just gone ahead and replaced the frame but I think we all know where that goes...4 times as much as we planned and 4 times as long...and as i said i wanted to try and keep her as original as possible...may just do a new frame after RTW...
once that was mostly tackled I needed to make a way to keep valuables as safe as possible so I designed a safe to go under the drivers seat in the cubby box where the spare gas tank sometimes is placed...now i only made this about half as high as the cubby box so that once closed i can put stuff on top of it and hopefully make it look like there is just cleaning supplies in there, that is of course if somebody even knows there is a cubby box under the panel under the seat..in order to make the safe as secure as possible the decision was made to cut the side of the seat box out and slide it in from the side...this was necessary because the cubby opening in the top isn't as big as the box itself...this section i cut out will be replaced with new sheet material and then covered with the seat box trim..
The ribs you see on the underneath of the lid are to stop anyone from getting in there with a lever and prying it open....and to give rigidity to the lid, the lid is intentionally curved so as to stop the lid from rattling once locked...I used a medeco lock unit to lock the lid and it worked out perfectly...have to have it painted once she's finished..
Next step was to address the issue of fuel...the 200 tdi is pretty good on gas but i wanted to be able to carry more...so I set about designing and mocking up in cardboard a tank to sit in the empty area behind the left rear wheel...this tank should give me about another 10 gallons of fuel...so 20 gallons in the tank...15 gallons in 3 jerry cans on the roof (3 out of the 4 are fuel..the other one is water..) should give me a total of 45 gallons or about a range of 1200 plus miles..???? This aux tank will be plumbed in with a 3 way valve so that I can dump it into the main tank or in the event of pucturing the main tank I can switch to this and use this as the main tank..it will be filled from the inside with a non-venting cap so that I don't get any fumes inside
next was instruments.. I wanted something a little more.....shall we say reliable...in the way of instrumentation so i swapped the standard units with some similar looking units from sunpro and added some more in a binnacle over where the ashtray was...the temp guage now is a mechanical unit so it always shows the temp...I will get to the reason for this later..I now have fuel, volts, oil pressure, coolant temp, turbo temp and amps guages..should satisfy the mechanic in me...
next I started to address the storage and cold weather sleeping area... First of all I made a drawer box that was the same level as the side boxes, I elevated this off the floor by about 1/4 inch by using some of those rubber feet pads they used for furniture... I did this because i know at some point in time I will be fording some deep water areas and i wanted to allow stuff to dry out in the event water gets inside...also acts as a heat insulation air gap..once that box was done i started making the second layer...this posed a bit of a problem due to the camel trophy interior roll cage, I didn't want to drill through the roll cage so i first of all made some side boxes to allow some boards to lay across...this gave me additional storage on the sides and still kept enough support for the plywood upper shelf pieces...I did it this way so that when its too cold to sleep in the roof top tent we can sleep inside in the comfort of heat...Now i am 6'2" and I can't stand being cramped into a space so i needed every inch of space inside...so when we sleep inside another board joins up with the forwardmost one..hence the reason for the lip left on the front section of the side boxes..
and it rests on top of the fridge and storage box...this allows me to have my head at the back door, so you don't lose your pillows and my feet have plenty of room on top of the fridge...makes for an interesting maneuver to get out in the morning but oh well.., when not needed these panels all stack on top of each other or can be removed completely...
One of the first issues was to repair the bad sections in the frame, I really should have just gone ahead and replaced the frame but I think we all know where that goes...4 times as much as we planned and 4 times as long...and as i said i wanted to try and keep her as original as possible...may just do a new frame after RTW...
once that was mostly tackled I needed to make a way to keep valuables as safe as possible so I designed a safe to go under the drivers seat in the cubby box where the spare gas tank sometimes is placed...now i only made this about half as high as the cubby box so that once closed i can put stuff on top of it and hopefully make it look like there is just cleaning supplies in there, that is of course if somebody even knows there is a cubby box under the panel under the seat..in order to make the safe as secure as possible the decision was made to cut the side of the seat box out and slide it in from the side...this was necessary because the cubby opening in the top isn't as big as the box itself...this section i cut out will be replaced with new sheet material and then covered with the seat box trim..
The ribs you see on the underneath of the lid are to stop anyone from getting in there with a lever and prying it open....and to give rigidity to the lid, the lid is intentionally curved so as to stop the lid from rattling once locked...I used a medeco lock unit to lock the lid and it worked out perfectly...have to have it painted once she's finished..
Next step was to address the issue of fuel...the 200 tdi is pretty good on gas but i wanted to be able to carry more...so I set about designing and mocking up in cardboard a tank to sit in the empty area behind the left rear wheel...this tank should give me about another 10 gallons of fuel...so 20 gallons in the tank...15 gallons in 3 jerry cans on the roof (3 out of the 4 are fuel..the other one is water..) should give me a total of 45 gallons or about a range of 1200 plus miles..???? This aux tank will be plumbed in with a 3 way valve so that I can dump it into the main tank or in the event of pucturing the main tank I can switch to this and use this as the main tank..it will be filled from the inside with a non-venting cap so that I don't get any fumes inside
next was instruments.. I wanted something a little more.....shall we say reliable...in the way of instrumentation so i swapped the standard units with some similar looking units from sunpro and added some more in a binnacle over where the ashtray was...the temp guage now is a mechanical unit so it always shows the temp...I will get to the reason for this later..I now have fuel, volts, oil pressure, coolant temp, turbo temp and amps guages..should satisfy the mechanic in me...
next I started to address the storage and cold weather sleeping area... First of all I made a drawer box that was the same level as the side boxes, I elevated this off the floor by about 1/4 inch by using some of those rubber feet pads they used for furniture... I did this because i know at some point in time I will be fording some deep water areas and i wanted to allow stuff to dry out in the event water gets inside...also acts as a heat insulation air gap..once that box was done i started making the second layer...this posed a bit of a problem due to the camel trophy interior roll cage, I didn't want to drill through the roll cage so i first of all made some side boxes to allow some boards to lay across...this gave me additional storage on the sides and still kept enough support for the plywood upper shelf pieces...I did it this way so that when its too cold to sleep in the roof top tent we can sleep inside in the comfort of heat...Now i am 6'2" and I can't stand being cramped into a space so i needed every inch of space inside...so when we sleep inside another board joins up with the forwardmost one..hence the reason for the lip left on the front section of the side boxes..
and it rests on top of the fridge and storage box...this allows me to have my head at the back door, so you don't lose your pillows and my feet have plenty of room on top of the fridge...makes for an interesting maneuver to get out in the morning but oh well.., when not needed these panels all stack on top of each other or can be removed completely...
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