Overlanding with a Land Rover (1 of 3)

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I am currently in Sydney, Australia having reached the end of a nine month trip by Land Rover, from the UK. We left on the 8th February, and arrived here in Sydney on the 10th November.

We visited 17 countries altogether, as follows: England, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria, Germany, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Australia.

The vehicle we used was a Land Rover Defender, 130" wheelbase. It had a 5 seat crew-cab, with a box-van body on the back. It is powered by a 3500cc Rover V8 petrol engine (low compression - allows virtually any fuel to be used, even vodka if you are very desperate!).

This vehicle was chosen for its price, ease of maintenance and 4x4 ability. It is also capable of seating five people in relative comfort (as far as comfort in a Land Rover is possible!) and it has enough storage capacity for spares, extra water and fuel and personal luggage.

The group bought the vehicle about 4 months before the trip departed. Its history is that it was built in 1987 and sold straight to the South-West Electricity board. They are the main users of these vehicles for the same reasons that we wanted one. After they had owned it for several years (I do not know how many), it was sold to the guy that we subsequently bought it from. He used it a great deal, leading Aid convoys in Yugoslavia at one point. Along the way he removed the original engine and fitted a newer unit from a Range Rover - basically the same engine but with slightly different power and torque figures. As a friend of our group, and no longer having a use for this vehicle, he offered it to us for the trip. We paid £3500.

When we brought it home it was in rather a sorry state, having been sitting in a yard for sometime. At one point thieves had stolen the doors, so we had to replace them with doors from an older Series 3. These are a direct fit but have sliding glass rather than the more modern wind-up. This also caused some confusion whenever we met a Land Rover fanatic - "What is that? Series 3 or Defender?" they would ask.

The first task was to MOT the vehicle. This process is very similar to rego-ing the vehicle in Australia - the vehicle is given a thorough road-worthiness test by the local authorities to clear it for the road. As is is usual for 12 year old vehicles, ours failed on several items.

We had to rectify these before we would be allowed to drive it anywhere. It ended up that the entire exhaust system was replaced, from the manifolds backwards, all the shock absorbers were replaced and the entire braking system was overhauled. This involved stripping each wheel down and checking all the components, replacing where necessary.

The braking system on this vehicle is a single-line, servo-assisted hydraulic system, with ventilated discs at the front and 11" drums at the rear. Several of the lines at the rear were replaced with long-life copper pipes, and new shoes and pads were fitted all round. We also replaced the two rear brake cylinders, and fitted new pistons and seals at the front.

The power steering pump was leaking as well, so this was replaced with a reconditioned item. We did the same with the oil pump, just as a safeguard to it failing at the wrong time. When all this had been done we were given the MOT, so could then use it on the road without breaking the law.

The next stage was to begin preparing the vehicle specifically for an overland trip. To ensure that we didn't suffer from chassis-rot, the whole underside was given a liberal coating of Waxoyl. This is a disgusting, thick, black, tar-like liquid that guarantees to get on your skin, in your hair and all over anything you want to keep clean, as well as the thing you are actually trying to paint. It is a very effective rust inhibitor, however.

The engine was also receiving some attention at this time, with the two carburetors being stripped down and cleaned up, before being re-fitted. Later, we would take the vehicle to be professionally tuned, as we could not do that ourselves.

Given the extra weight we would be carrying, and the bad roads we would undoubtedly meet, we decided to fit helper springs at the rear. All Defenders are coils-sprung all round, and the new springs fit inside the existing coils to give them a helping hand.

In addition to the helper springs, we fitted 'Ironman' poly-bushes all round. These replace the standard rubber bushes in the suspension with stiffer polyurethane bushes, to give sharper handling and longer bush life. The manufacturers are very confident - they offer a lifetime guarantee on their products. We left both of these jobs to the professionals.

The standard size fuel tank on this vehicle is 80 litres. While this is adequate for normal use it is clearly insufficient for a long trip. The easiest solution was to fit twin underseat-tanks, borrowing the style from the short wheel-base Series Land Rovers. For £20 each, ex-military tanks were purchased; unfortunately the mounting brackets are extremely expensive as this is not a standard conversion. However, after two weekends of hard work they were in and giving us and extra 90 litres of capacity.

We did not have time or money to plumb them in to the normal fuel system, instead we used an old electric fuel pump from a Range Rover to transfer the fuel into the main tank when required. While this was slow it did the job very well.

We also upgraded the electrics by fitting a second battery to a split-charge system. This allows the main battery to be used only for starting and normal running, while additional electrical equipment is run from the second battery. We also bought larger capacity batteries to give us the best possible chance of not running out of power.

Whenever we replaced an item we kept the old one as a spare, providing it wasn't worn-out. This policy meant that a lot of the things that could go wrong were new, but we had good spares if they did fail. While it would have been better to have brand-new spares as well as new bits on the vehicle, we did not have nearly enough money to do this.

The interior was in rather a sorry state after sitting in a damp yard for so long, but after a good hose out it looked much better. The local car-parts shop sold us some rather unpleasant, but hard-wearing seat covers while the headlining was cleaned up and then painted with household emulsion. For a while afterwards this gave our hands a blue-ish tinge whenever we touched it, but it soon dried and gave us no further problems.

On the subject of painting, we decided that the original green was rather too military-looking, and a new colour should be found. Various options were debated: white, shows the dirt too easily, looks like the UN; black, too dark and look like a rock star's limo; purple, I think this was a joke!; red, people might think it is a fire engine!. In the end a decision was made on yellow, and so it was sprayed on weekend with egg-shell exterior paint. Slightly lighter than banana, we soon failed to notice the colour, especially once there was some dirt on it. This paint also gave us no problems, only flaking a little bit under a pressure-washer.

When we bought the car, an assembly was in place for a PTO (power take off) driven winch. All Defenders and Series vehicles are able to drive a front or rear PTO (or both), to drive winches, agricultural machinery or any other equipment necessary. Our winch was complete apart from the cable and the prop-shaft from the engine to the winch. Despite many conversations with the manufacturers to try and source this part we were unable to find one, so ended up leaving home without a winch.

Luckily, we never found ourselves in a situation where we would have needed one, so saved lugging the thing all this way! It was extremely heavy and would have put a lot of strain on our front springs. Its position would have also interrupted airflow to the radiator, thereby not assisting the cooling of the engine.

During the time before we left we tried several times to find a roof-rack that we could use for extra storage space. Eventually we found one made of galvanised steel (heavy) that had been used as a race-horse viewing platform. Having been mounted on a Series 3, the roof supports were slightly too close together, and had to be re-positioned to fit on our roof. A local welder did this for us. Unfortunately one of the front legs that ran down to the base of the windscreen was in slightly the wrong place, pushing the glass inwards. We only discovered this in Iran when a nasty crack was fond in one corner of the screen.

Later the crack grew to such an extent that we were forced to remove the rack altogether, and find space for things inside. However, while it was on we found it extremely useful. We stored our 3 fuel jerrycans on the front, as well as 2 water cans. However, we only did this when they were empty. Once filled, they went inside. We were conscious of overloading the roof - in all probability the roof-rack exceeded the 90kg limit on its own, so having 5 full 20 litre cans up there would not have been a good idea.

We did, however, built a lightweight wooden box to keep some equipment like tents and sleeping bags secure and dry on the roof. This box proved surprisingly sturdy and reasonably water-proof, despite the heavy snow and monsoon rains it was subjected to at various times.

We also kept a couple of shovels on the roof, with the idea that we could dig ourselves out if we ever got stuck (See lack of winch above!). Since we never actually got stuck the only thing these were used for was to dig an outback dunny on occasion somewhere in Australia. Not quite what we had packed them for but very useful, nevertheless.

The best thing of all that we bought for the vehicle was the Carnet de Passage. This is basically a passport for the vehicle and allows the car to be temporarily imported into a country, providing it will be exported and not sold, without paying any duty. Most countries in the world except the Carnet - the two exceptions I know of are Thailand and the USA. In Thailand a similar scheme is run by the government.

When you purchase the Carnet (in the UK from the RAC or the AA), you are asked to say which countries you will use the Carnet in. The cost of the document itself is quite cheap, but to guarantee that you will not export the vehicle from any country a refundable bond is collected by the issuers. In our case this amounted to 4 times the stated value of the vehicle, which at £2200 was close to £10,000. Obviously this is beyond the reach of most people, so instead you buy insurance against that value. If the Carnet rules are then broken, the insurance company pays the bond. If we had had the £10,000 we could have paid that ourselves, and this would have been refunded if and when we returned the vehicle to the UK.

When you enter a country the Carnet is stamped by customs officers at the point of entry. This has to be done or else the Carnet will not be valid. When you leave, it is re-stamped to show that the vehicle has been re-exported. Once you return the vehicle to the UK, you give the Carnet back to the issuers, who the refund your bond or part of your insurance premium.

It is still possible to sell your vehicle under a Carnet, but you will have to pay import duty in the country where you are selling it. Without a Carnet, you would have to pay duties in every country you visit, then claim them back when you leave. I can imagine this would be next to impossible in some countries!

Vehicle Costs
I have collated our expenditure figures together to give an idea how much a trip like this can cost. All prices are in US dollars.

Vehicle cost: $5800
Total cost of Carnet: $2200
Preparation and spare parts: $5000

Total: $12,000 (approx)

We split this 5 ways since there were 5 people in the group. When we return the vehicle to the UK we will be refunded $1100 from the Carnet, and will receive money from the sale of the vehicle, and of any spare parts we can sell.

Fuel and Transport Costs
During the course of our trip we used:
6443 litres of fuel, averaging 5.98 km/l and US$0.45/l.

The most expensive fuel was in Italy, at $1.13 /l, and the cheapest in Iran at $0.025/l. In total we spent $2950 on fuel alone. We drove 38,270km altogether.

Additionally we spent $360 on ferries: $160 UK to France and $200 Italy to Greece. We also spent $720 on shipping from India to Malaysia and $1498 from Malaysia to Australia.

Petrol was generally available everywhere. In India and Pakistan especially, the quality and availability varied dramatically. We would often pass 2 or three filling stations which only sold diesel. Where petrol was available, it was often very low octane. (81 was the lowest we found, in Pakistan). In all cases diesel was significantly cheaper than petrol, up to 50% less.


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