1994 Land Rover Defender 90

[LandRoverLad]

Hello, My name's Tom I'm 15 and I own this Land Rover Defender. It came in part exchange at the Land Rover dealership where my dad's manager so after talking to me about it we decided to buy it as a project and make get it ready for being my first car when I'm 17, I hope you'll agree it's a bit more original than a corsa?;) unfotunately in it's current guise it's a bit of a heap, there's plenty of odd jobs that need doing but it's MOTed until June of next year so it's completely road worthy (my dad is going to use it on the road for just general getting about until I can drive.) There's much to be done including a proper set of off road wheels and tyres;) and removing the awkward looking roof rack as well as general body work maintenance and a few interior jobs such as fixing the the passenger side window mechanism currently a lump of wood haha. Anyway, thanks for looking and I'd like to know your opinions, as well as advice on what to do to make it a serious off roader but still practical, bearable and safe to drive on the road.

Edited by LandRoverLad on Saturday 30th November 20:35

[Markgenesis]

Hi Tom, welcome .

Cool looking Landie, 110 van ?, those wheels look like early Range Rover steels.

Land Rovers are more than capable offroad as standard but a set of modular wheels with all terrains would be good, this will keep it civilised on the road though i have wide Mud terrains on my Disco 1 and it's fine (not as scary in the wet as some have suggested)

[LandRoverLad]

Markgenesis said:

Hi Tom, welcome .

Cool looking Landie, 110 van ?, those wheels look like early Range Rover steels.

Land Rovers are more than capable offroad as standard but a set of modular wheels with all terrains would be good, this will keep it civilised on the road though i have wide Mud terrains on my Disco 1 and it's fine (not as scary in the wet as some have suggested)

Thank you,
And I think it looks longer in the photo, it's a 90 van. My dad also said those wheels looked like Range Rover steel wheels so I'm fairly certain they must be, they're fairly scruffy looking with a fair amount of surface rust though so will definitely be getting resprayed or even more likely be replaced with either original wheels or wider steel wheels with more off road orientated tyres.
And thank you for your advice, we've spoke to a few people and they recommend upgrading the tyres to make it more capable of road so that's definitely going to happen in the future.

[LanceRS]

Good lad, as you say a bit different to a Corsa. I hope you enjoy it. Just out of interest, what will the insurance be like?

[LandRoverLad]

LanceRS said:

Good lad, as you say a bit different to a Corsa. I hope you enjoy it. Just out of interest, what will the insurance be like?

Haha thanks, I've been able to drive since I was 11 (I've had a mk2 Volkswagen Polo before this and driven dad's company cars on private land) and when I drove this I really liked it, I'm not sure why just felt right. And insurance has been quoted at just under £3000 for a year with my dad as a named driver (just put my age at 17 on a comparison website) although for my dad to insure it's £120 for a year

[Aviz]

At nearly 20 years old I suspect talking to a specialist insurance broker might help. My dad had me on his range rover at 17 insured via NFU even though we have nothing to do with farming.. It was peanuts compared to what the mainstream insurers were quoting. Maybe even a classic policy might be possible in a few years?

[LandRoverLad]

Aviz said:

At nearly 20 years old I suspect talking to a specialist insurance broker might help. My dad had me on his range rover at 17 insured via NFU even though we have nothing to do with farming.. It was peanuts compared to what the mainstream insurers were quoting. Maybe even a classic policy might be possible in a few years?

Thank you for the advice, my dad has home insurance with the NFU and we'd never even considered putting the defender on insurance with them, it definitely seems like a good idea though and something I'll look into further. Do you mind giving a rough figure of what it cost to insure you for a range rover with NFU?

[aspirated]

You're a lucky lad Looking forward to seeing what you do with it

[kamilb1998]

Nice to see a young lad enthusiastic about something other than a poorly modified Corsa.

I'm 15 too and have had an old Jag since I was 10, take a look at my profile.

[MegaMinion]

When I was 17 I was driving around in my parents Defender until I'll could get my Series 2a on the road. It was so much fun, and my friends all loved it, so I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

[Ayahuasca]

Tom, you are a lucky, lucky young man!

You car is already a serious off-roader, but there are lots of bits you can add if you want to spend money on that sort of thing.

Mine has Mud Terrains, a 2 inch suspension lift, expedition roof-rack, spotlights front and back, winch, tow bar step, snorkel. Since the pic I have fitted headlamp guards. Thinking of getting chequerplate for the wings. Things I ought to get: roll-bar (difficult with this roof rack) and tree-sliders to save denting the sills. Things I would like to get but haven't convinced myself of the cost / benefit yet: diff lockers.

[Aviz]

LandRoverLad said:

Thank you for the advice, my dad has home insurance with the NFU and we'd never even considered putting the defender on insurance with them, it definitely seems like a good idea though and something I'll look into further. Do you mind giving a rough figure of what it cost to insure you for a range rover with NFU?

I think it might be of little use as it was a long time ago . Just using it as an example. I have quite often got much better deals with insurance brokers than any of the comparison websites.

I honestly can't remember. It was 1998 and adding me to his brand new range rover was a few hundred at max . £600 seems to ring bell for the whole policy. . . I think NFU wre still very much national farmers union, and they might be a bit more mainstream now, but worth a try. I learnt to drive in that, until I got my own Nova SR which cost an absolute fortune in comparison .

I think classic or specialist brokers are your best bet.

[Tayne]

[quote=LandRoverLad]My dad also said those wheels looked like Range Rover steel wheels so I'm fairly certain they must be, they're fairly scruffy looking with a fair amount of surface rust though so will definitely be getting resprayed or even more likely be replaced with either original wheels or wider steel wheels with more off road orientated tyres.


Back in the early 90s Defender 90 County Station Wagons left the factory with those wheels, they may be original to your van if it has the County pack (full headlining, nicer seats soundproofing etc).
They weren't fitted to 110 CSWs as they don't have they load rating to cope with a fully laden 110.

[LandRoverLad]

Did a few jobs today and I'm actually pretty pleased. First of all I checked the oil I have it a good clean with a pressure washer and autoglym car shampoo followed by removing the roof rack which was a right pain in the arse to do, the bolts holding the roof rack on came of easy enough it was just the ones holding the ladder on that were seized but with some gentle persuasion (read as 'shearing off' ) they came off fairly easily. Next job was to fix the window winding mechanism on the passenger side so I removed the door card and discovered the window regulator had seized, My Dad had already said this was probably the problem so he'd ordered a replacement and I fitted it with no trouble. Unfortunately we also discovered the door bottoms were fairly rotten so that's something that needs sorting in the future. After that I cleaned the interior, pressure washed the van part and then emptied all of the rubbish from behind the seats which included removing a foot long chisel, various empty beer bottles (slightly worrying) 4 cans of de icer, a jar of engine oil and about 2 quid in change... Hopefully next week I'll get the chance to get it on my dad's friends ramps so we can assess the chassis and give it a more detailed going over before deciding whether to spend the money on off road tyres and wider modular steel wheels. A few little things that still need doing are replacing the drivers side seat bottom, new wheels, sorting out the doors and trying to do something about the fairly poor stereo.

[LandRoverLad]

Ayahuasca said:

Tom, you are a lucky, lucky young man!

You car is already a serious off-roader, but there are lots of bits you can add if you want to spend money on that sort of thing.

Mine has Mud Terrains, a 2 inch suspension lift, expedition roof-rack, spotlights front and back, winch, tow bar step, snorkel. Since the pic I have fitted headlamp guards. Thinking of getting chequerplate for the wings. Things I ought to get: roll-bar (difficult with this roof rack) and tree-sliders to save denting the sills. Things I would like to get but haven't convinced myself of the cost / benefit yet: diff lockers.

Thanks for your reply! Your car looks really good and has pretty much all the upgrades,I've been looking at getting, do you notice a vast difference on road with the 2 inch lift?

[LandRoverLad]

Tayne said:

Back in the early 90s Defender 90 County Station Wagons left the factory with those wheels, they may be original to your van if it has the County pack (full headlining, nicer seats soundproofing etc).
They weren't fitted to 110 CSWs as they don't have they load rating to cope with a fully laden 110.

Thank you, I'm not sure if my van has the county pack fitted? There's full headlining in the passenger area but none in the van part if that's of any use and I'll try and get a photo of the seats.

[aspirated]

Are you going to be fitting rear windows?

[Lefty]

Nice one! How's the chassis and bulkhead? Most other things are easy to fix and bits are cheap.

Personally, I wouldn't go nuts with mods - learn the basics just with a set of at tyres so that when you do get big mud tyres and diff lockers you'll be a much better driver because you've put in the effort to build skill not just specs...

Just my tuppence worth, good luck with it!

[anonymous-user]

Cool first car

[billzeebub]

absolutely brilliant first car, definitely something that will create memories that will stay with you forever. I really wish one of these had been my first motor. Look forward to seeing your progress with it. very, very cool