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Choice of Vehicle
After a lot of consideration and research into potential vehicles, the Land Rover 127 Ambulance (from Witham Specialist Vehicles) came out a clear winner. Not only did this give us the space needed in the back for crashing out after a tiring day, but as it is an ex-RAF vehicle, the vehicle had travelled only 15,000 miles since 1988!
Deciding whether to keep the 3.5 litre V8 was a tough decision - buying a 300TDi would set us back another £2k. A lot of the other expeditions used diesel engines due to the increased mpg and the cheaper fuel. However, nothing sounds as sweet as a V8 and after putting together a spreadsheet detailing comparative costs of fuel in various countries, we determined that the cost we would save on fuel during the journey was similar to the cost of replacing the engine. Additionally, keeping the V8 maintained the possibility of getting an LPG conversion and having a dual-fuel vehicle.
The vehicle, before modifications weighed in at just over 2 1/2 tonne, so we really needed to lose weight. We produced a design we were happy with and then asked various friends what they could do for us. We went in with the idea that anything was possible and all it would take was little hard graft...and plenty of spare time! We can tell you straight away that not a a single one of the intial designs stayed the course.
The most important thing for us, apart from getting from a-b with a decent engine, was being comfortable during our 25,000Km trip and being able, when needed, to sleep in comfort and safety inside the vehicle. This instantly gives rise to luxuries such as heaters, a shower, toilet, fridge etc. but we dispensed with these (well, apart from the last that took a donation to actually put it into the vehicle). Not only are they very expensive, but they are heavy and essentially they are not needed. The more you have, the more things can go wrong. If you're interested on what we took and what we dispensed with, please see our modifications below.
We also got a lot of information from books such as Tom Sheppards 'Vehicle Dependent Expedition Guide' - an invaluable reference for anyone wishing to undertake this kind of trip. It outlines exactly what you need to take and what is considered a luxury. Many other expedition websites also give him a lot of well-deserved credit, and there are really some excellent expeditions sites out there too that gave us lots of information.
Modifications
After getting the MOT done in Wales during November, we enlisted the help of Richards cousin Michael and his Land Rover enthusiast friend Jamie. Both helped us a great deal and Jamie was particularly helpful, and a master of diplomacy: given mine and Dwyer's lack of technical knowledge, he just bit his lip and smiled politely. Great guy!
The first thing we needed to do was decide where we were to sleep - the most important thing for us. We had three separate places for stretcher beds in the back of the Ambulance, but it was decided pretty early on to keep the fold down bed but get rid of the bed directly underneath it. This gave us a a lot of room on one side, but also meant that we had to stare at one another's ugly mug at night from across the Landy. Can't have everything I suppose.
   
We also needed to get rid of the military olive green and go for something more passive. Richard was convinced of a yellow and Dwyer was open to all ideas apart from yellow. We have to admit, we didn't really care as long as we didn't look military...so we chose battleship grey. 'Genius' we hear you cry! We've managed to decrease the value of the vehicle by several thousand by this home made paint job, but we now have the added benefit that no one bothers to toot when we slowly accelerate at traffic lights as they expect someone over the age of 120 to be driving. So that plan worked out well.
Lightening the Load and Finding Leaks
As said above, the first thing we did was to rip out the spare bed with a chisel and a hammer. Not the best way to do it we imagine, but it did the job. Because this was run as an ambulance at some stage, excess baggage was a premium: stretcher runner rails, stretcher adapter plate, oxygen tank holders, rear facing seat, mains hook up, engine pre-heater control boards, a rotten wooden partition etc. You get the picture I think. So we spent a good few weekends ripping these things out and stripping our flabby landy. There's a picture below of just how much weight we managed to get rid of.
Also, and this is the great part about the MOD (God bless those boys!), none of the electric's worked. Instead of wires just being left and things, you know, working, they'd just cut wires left, right and centre so you'd had no way of tracing where wires went without ripping apart the entire inside. It did make us feel better though that there were several RAF guys sitting around chuckling to themselves thinking 'the guys who get this vehicle are going to be completely lost! ha ha ha'. Well it got us through some bitterly cold days in Wales and Manchester anyway.
  
Fortunately Richard's parents had stored up some old mattresses, and these fitted perfectly. However, after leaving them in overnight we found the roof leaked. Removing the vent, we quickly stumbled upon a shed load of rust that had been hiding from us. Just for comparison, we've added the new mushroom vents next to it. Much neater!
Driving Comfortably and seeing...things
The next job we found was to sort out the partition between cab and ambulance - the drivers seat being pushed far too close to the steering wheel for any driving comfort. Our friend Dave in Warrington helped us out here (as well as for tonnes of other things)- some artistry with a fantastic pneumatic saw and grinder are shown below. Ideally we'd like to have removed the entire partition, but this supports the vehicle so this was not an option. Well, it was, but not a good one. Also, there's Dwyer looking pleased with himself after getting one of the lights in the back to work.
   
As a consequence of more light, we stumbled across a rusty looking Eberspacher heater we didn't even know existed! As you may or may not know, Eberspacher are the daddy of all heaters, but unfortunately ours had seen better days. We managed to obtain a detailed line diagram of the benzene Eberspacher (built in West Germany!) that showed us we were missing about 5 parts. Again, thanks to the boys at the MOD we gather. Here's a picture anyway (and no, we don't know how we missed it either!). Thanks to Automotive Electrical Ltd, the UK distributors for Eberspacher, a new one was fitted and donated to our cause. Thanks to the Managing Director of Automotive Electrical Ltd, David Hodgson for the pics below.
  
Wheels, Tyres, Tanks and Trimmings
In March we had some great looking tyres donated and fitted from Matador UK. Finally we saw the back of the old MOD tyres! Matador was also kind enough to fit the new tyres onto the brand spanking new wheels donated from Bronco 4x4. You can see instantly that both actually take years off the landy, and the wide tyres mean that the vehicle is more stable when travelling around corners and at higher speeds. And they look great too!
  
We enhanced the drop down stretcher bed to a proper bed and thanks to some help, managed to have a very stable bed that could fold out of the way at the drop of a hat.
After quite a barren spell, in April it was time to crack on with the LPG conversion thanks to Hants Auto Fuels and Steve Sheppard. Arriving at Fareham, we saw just how big the 140 litre tank was - very impressive indeed. This little baby was not only going to put out less fumes than the normal carbon monoxide produced from petrol, but cost us £30 less per fill up. In early May we had the vehicle back and the nightmares started to kick in - only 2 months to go! The quiet month of April though was not totally lost as the credit cards took a hammering as it was buying time! A duel burner, a water tank, a tool kit and drill, jerry cans and water cans, sand tracks, springs, steering guard, rear diff guard, Katadyn water filter, mosquito nets, first aid kit etc. were all bought. And then it was time to do some installing!
Both of us took a few days off work and tried to get as much done as possible - 12 hour days became the norm which is not ideal when both of us work long hours anyway. In one weekend we managed to fit the battery management system and inverter, acoustic matting in the cab and bonnet (much quieter!), shelving, mushroom vents, halogen headlamps, fire extinguishers, steering guard and the ariel, put the roof rack back on, fasten down the speakers and fit curtains (with a little help of Richard's Mum and Dad). This was a busy couple of days indeed and we tried to capture as much as possible on camera.
The battery management system was donated by Antares, and they also kindly donated a much better battery than we had already. Connecting this in parallel with our own battery would make sure that we were never low on power out in the wilderness, and that through the inverter they also donated, we could have a few home comforts when needed too.
  
The acoustic matting was donated by Noisekiller and to be honest we were a bit sceptical: not only was our landy loud, we literally had to shout when driving because we couldn't hear one another. It was bordering on ridiculous to be honest and we knew it couldn't go on, but couldn't envisage anything being able to keep out the racket. However, we love being wrong! The mats were self-adhesive and were cut pretty easily with a stanley knife into the desired shapes needed. The acoustic mats for the bonnet were easy to fit too and you can just about see them shining under the bonnet in the photo below. So not only have we saved our ears, but our voices too!
  
We decided to paint the roof white, and thanks to Richards rubbish painting, some of the side of the Land Rover body as well. As we were travelling in summer most of the time this choice of colour made sense.
Shocking gaiters, springs and shocks
Driving up to Warrington saw us have another weekend with our expert enthusiast Dave. The pictures below are testament to the pain and anguish suffered by Dwyer (mostly mental to be fair) in fitting the gaiters. Judging by the cursing that was uttered that day, Dwyer strongly advises never fitting these unless you have to. And even then take a long hard think about it. The shocks and springs were next, the former donated by Explorer Pro Comp UK. As with all the other stuff donated, they looked cracking once fitted and other than trying to get the old nuts and bolts off that had never even seen the light of day, these fitted in easily and finally gave us some much needed padding!
  
You can see from the shots also just how worn out current shocks and springs were - the shocks have absolutely no bounce in them at all. Not to mention the dirt that had built up over the years in the spring caps. We had a good work out too trying to remove the nuts and bolts that had been secured by the factory and probably never tampered with until we found them. We were also surprised to see that our back wheels had double springs - a smaller set of springs were inside the large heavy duty springs. Excellent!
Protection, Safety and Storage
The light guards were also fitted and God help us if the bulbs blow! One was secured easily enough with screwing bolts, the other with much pain using normal nuts and bolts. StraightForwardSupplies was also kind enough to donate a front differential guard to the cause and this fitted in well behind the steering guard we had purchased. All the research we had done highly recommended both guards and we were really glad that we managed to fit them with relative ease.
  
So that our valuables would be protected from thieves, SentrySafe kindly donated this large safe that could also hold our laptop as well as cameras, documents, passports etc. It also bolted easily over the wheel arch - leaving enough space to fit two jerry cans (or the duel burner) quite comfortably between that and the newly created shelving unit that fitted over the LPG tank. The 80 litre water tank was also put in place with some angle iron, rope and straps. Again we've opted for a simple solution: using gravity from a tap and a bit of tubing, we've mounted the tank on top of one of the beds. Although this lessens the sleeping/sitting space, there was nowhere else to put it! Mounting it on the right side of the vehicle also balances out the weight distribution with the LPG being on the left side. The jerry can in the top pic was later replaced and water tank held closer to the wall - the stink of petrol is best left outside we thought.
The pictures below also show the huge roof box donated by The RoofBox Company. Ideally this should be fitted longways rather than side on, but given that we're hardly an aerodynamic machine in the first place and we had enough space to fit it side on, we decided to fit that way. It also means that to open it you have to literally climb up there to undo the locks, so from a security point of view it works out perfectly. The RoofBox Company also donated some great heavy duty outdoor boxes which we've stored inside the vehicle for now.
  
  
We made our own roof awning (on the left of the roof box) from dark green canvas and used bamboo as supports. It may not be secure in a storm, but if such bad weather does hit us we certainly won't be enduring the ordeal under an awning anyway. As you can see, we've gone for simple solutions throughout our modifications and the awning is no different. Awnings on the internet were priced at £140 minimum which we considered this a great expense. Our solution was based on 10 bamboo poles for £2 and some canvas for £7. It may not be pretty but it should do the job.
Fitting the sand tracks onto the roof also added more walking room for the top and lessened the chance of us putting our foot through the roof. The jerry cans kindly donated by Challenger 4x4 would also fit neatly on the roofrack as well (empty obviously). This would mean that we had a total of four jerry cans for petrol, each giving us another approximately 60 miles - an extra 240 miles if needed.
Hasps and padlocks were fitted on the rear doors for added security and a padlock bought to secure the front wheel on the bonnet, as well as to secure the bonnet in place to hamper thieving tykes trying to steal things directly from under the bonnet.
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