1998 Defender 130 HCPU |
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ALLOY-LUIA! Stacked with aluminium accessories from top to bottom, this award-winning Defender looks a million bucks - and everything's functional, too! WORDS BY MIKE JACOBSON PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROBB COX Steel or aluminium? Throw that hot potato into your next campfire discussion and duck for cover. Both have their pros and cons: steel wins on price and strength, aluminium on weight and corrosion. One man who's well and truly in aluminium's corner is Ken Wright. An ex-panel beater, Ken's been making things from the lightweight alloy for donkey's years. He reckons that you can use aluminium for a helluva lot of stuff on a fourby, and his Defender 130 HCPU (High-Capacity Pick-Up) is living proof. Ken's company, Aluminium Engineering, in Brookvale on Sydney's northern beaches, made most of the bolt-ons for the Defender. Not just light-duty stuff like radiators and interior fittings, but serious gear like the bullbar, rear bar, sidesteps, scrub bars and bash plates. It's just a matter of picking the right type and thickness of the metal, he says. "Aluminium is about half the strength of steel but a third the weight, so twice the thickness gives you the same strength for two-thirds the weight!" Makes sense. Ken became a Landy nut - is there any other kind? - in 1998 after shopping around for a 4WD ute to convert into a go-anywhere camper for himself and wife Maria. He wanted A1 off-road ability (scratch IFS), coils all-round (delete 78/79 Series) and a dual-cab (bye-bye GU). In typical Landy fashion, the Defender ute's wheelbase is 3in shy of the advertised 130, but it still beats a 78/79 Series by 122mm. Lots of room for Ken to let his imagination run wild in the ute 'tub' (see More than a canopy) Don't let those ‘Tdi’ decals fool you, though. This Defender has got some serious stonk, in the form of an International HS2.8 TGV. It's a step up the evolutionary ladder from the original Tdi 300, and gives the Td5 a run for its money (see Down the Driveline). While Ken's unsure about the HS2.8 TGV's exact DNA, he believes the motor started life in Brazil. A factory there kept making the indirect-injection, mechanical fuel pump, pushrod, four-cylinder 300 Tdi after Land Rover switched to the direct-injection, EFI, SOHC, five-pot Td5 c.2000. A Pommy mob, Motor and Diesel Engineering (Anglia) Ltd (www.mdengineering.co.uk), imports the 2495cc Tdi replicas back 'home' and gives ‘em a thorough working over. Apart from an extra 290cc, the mods run to a redesigned block for better cooling, a forged crank instead of a cast one, a better rear crank seal to stop oil leaks (really!), stronger conrods, different pistons, a laminate head gasket and a revised combustion system. The result: power up from 85kW to 101, and torque up from 265Nm to 375Nm. That's 11kW and 75Nm more than a Defender Td5! (The Defender's Td5 is detuned from the Discovery auto’s 101kW.) They ain't cheap, though. Ken reckons his cost around $14K, including spares. And a few thou in airfreight, because he couldn't wait for it to come by sea. "A mate had some experience in this sort of major job, but he would have left town by the time the ship arrived and so it was a case of do it now or wait another year," Ken said. Cooling was an issue after Ken replaced the viscous-coupling radiator fan with a thermostatically controlled electric one. He's gone to great lengths to keep the power-sapping fan switched off as much as possible. The air-conditioner heat exchanger and cooling fans are now in the front roofrack, the radiator and water pump have been uprated, the exhaust went to Competition Coatings in Guildford for a ceramic treatment, and air vents poke out of the bonnet and front mudguards. There's a turbo timer to keep the engine idling when the hairdryer is still a bit hot after a hard run, and a Kenlowe 24OV pre-heater to minimise engine wear on the short drive to and from Ken's factory. Before the engine transplant, Ken fitted an auto to the Tdi after an industrial injury to his hip made manual gear changing too painful. He bought an ex-Range Rover ZF four-speed from SA in "a box of bits", and had them rebuilt by Col Voss Automatic Transmissions in Brookvale. Ken fitted it with an oil cooler, and put a second Safari snorkel on the passenger's side to feed air into the tunnel. "A bloke with a Troopie told me he'd heard about the idea," he said. As well as the standard centre diff lock, there's an ARB Air-Locker in the front and a Maxi-Drive locker in the rear. Like the Air-Locker, the Queensland-built Maxi-Drive is also driver-activated, but it uses vacuum from the engine inlet manifold (via a tank) instead of compressed air. Ken's happy with the BFG A/Ts on Defender Xtreme alloys, and while the brakes are okay, he's looking at bumping up the discs. UK Scorpion front-wheel spacers have reduced the 130's ocean-liner turning circle. This one's a stunner from every angle. Not just because most of the add-ons are in polished aluminium, but because there are so damned many of ‘em! Here's a run-down of the feature attractions. The chunky winch bar is structural-grade alloy with holes on the passenger's side that feed cool air into the engine bay. The winch is a Ramsey 9000 low-mount wound with lightweight (of course) Polaris rope, and stainless wire mesh protects the radiator. Two of the four Hella driving lights have gone since our photo shoot because Ken reckoned two were enough, and that box on the bonnet holds a ground anchor. On the roof are two aluminium roofracks. The one over the cabin's a bi-level affair with the air-con heat exchanger and a remote-controlled swivelling marine spot lamp. The rack over the canopy sits behind a pair of Solex 4.5A solar panels. Ken's gone to a lot of trouble to make the Defender's bare-bones interior more homely and practical. A dashboard pod holds VDO oil-temperature and pressure gauges and the original analogue clock, while smack bang in the middle is a TV screen hooked up to the Clarion reversing camera that peeks out over the kerbside tail-lights! Down on the floor, the 'railway-signal-box' handbrake lever has been moved to a less-annoying position. The starter battery is now under the driver's seat. Where it used to be - under the passenger's seat - are two smaller batteries, separate from the cranker and kept charged by the solar cells on the roof (see Outside story). Under his seat, Ken has a Super Panther MkIII AM CB and a GME Electrophone hand-held TX6000 UHF. A GPS is on the shopping list. The two back-seat passengers get a comfy ride on front-type seats that have replaced the old bench. Each seat has a storage compartment underneath, and there's a Hi-Lift jack jammed in there somewhere. An overhead light comes in handy to check the stock of coldies in the Autofridge between the two buckets! MORE THAN A CANOPY To call the bodywork on the back of Ken's Defender a 'canopy' is like calling Michael Schumacher's Formula-One Ferrari a 'car'. It's made to look like a Defender wagon from the back, with a custom version of the trademark centre door, complete with spare wheel, flanked by authentic windows. BRIEFLY
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