Vehicle
Our base vehicle was a 300 TDI 110 Defender. It was originally built as a soft-topped pickup. We chose a 300TDI engine because it is significantly simpler than new engines (like the TD5 for example). It also has minimal electronics, which are impossible to fix without specialist equipment. In spite of this, over the 15,461 miles we recorded on our trip, it returned an overall 24.45 miles per gallon. We regarded this as pretty impressive, given that it was quite heavily loaded and we were using some pretty dodgy fuel to cover terrain which was at times quite terrible.
By the time we started our trip, it had the following additions and modifications:
 | Hard top, with sliding side windows taken from a Defender 90 Hard Top, and fitted neon strip lights inside to supplement the single bulb of the existing inside light |
| Extra folding seat in the rear, with safety belt (this was not a success - it was quite a climb to get into, you felt quite trapped when you were in it, and not a little queasy. We found it much better to cram the three of us into the front when we were driving three up.) |
| Roll cage (we came very close to needing it once!) |
| Uprated springs and gas shock absorbers all round (without the gas shockers especially, the ubiquitous corrugations on the "roads" in Mongolia would have killed the suspension within days) |
| Safari schnorkel |
| Recovery point on the front of the vehicle (we asked for Jate rings, but the steering guard prevented this, so a single large shackle bolted through the front bumper to the chassis served the purpose). We thought about a front-mounted winch, but settled for a hand winch instead - on the basis that we were likely to be pulling ourselves backwards out of trouble at least 50% of the time, for which a front winch would be useless. And we were right! |
| Concealed storage between the wheel arches (accessible only from the inside) with two jerry cans of spare diesel. The roll cage tubing stopped the original plan of having two cans each side, so we carried another one on the roof rack which we filled when we were concerned about when we might find our next fuel. |
| 6 Runway Enduro All Terrain tyres, with one spare mounted on the bonnet and one on a Bearmarch spare wheel carrier bolted on behind the rear door (it broke under the strain, and we had to get it welded in the middle of Mongolia! Bearmarch apparently refused to talk about replacing it when we got back - be warned!) We used locking nuts or padlocks for all the wheels. |
| Steering guard (though we still managed to bend the steering a bit) |
| Front differential guard |
| Sump guard |
| 'A' bar with extra lights |
| Extra in-line transparent fuel filter with lots of spare elements (frequently changed) |
| Galvanised steel roof rack with rear access ladder |
| Extra leisure battery (gel type) with twin charge system and isolator switch. Also a National Luna dual battery monitor, which was extremely useful |
| Security grilles on sliding side windows (on outside, so you could still open the windows) and on rear window (inside - looks less "interesting", but means you can't clear the dirt off the inside of the rear window) |
| Dog guard grille separating the load area from the cab - to provide extra security for the load and, if we slept inside at any point (which we didn't), for us. Not sure we really needed this, and it did stop us from reaching easily into the back for stuff |
| Stage 1 Intercooler - to improve MPG and pulling power |
| Concealed engine immobiliser switch (actually came in useful once to prevent the police from kidnapping the vehicle in Mongolia!) |
| Brownchurch Overlander 2001 roof tent. This was excellent throughout. We had been tempted to fit it further forward so it folded out over the bonnet, leaving more of the roof rack clear. But in fact we mounted it at the front of the roof rack, opening backwards - much more stable, and we didn't need the extra roof rack space anyway. We left sleeping bags, pillows and pyjamas folded up in the tent during the day |
| 500 watt mains inverter - to power laptop, phone chargers, power tools and other minor bits and bobs. Very useful indeed. Don't leave home without one |
| Concealed floor safe hidden in the passenger footwell - for storage of money, passports, etc. Vital. The border guards never found it during their searches! |
| Fold-down two ring gas cooker attached behind the rear door in a Storage Solutions cabinet. One large gas cylinder lasted us easily for the whole trip. We took different regulators in case we needed to buy a replacement and could only get the other sort of gas |
| Lockable storage chest by Storage Solutions, fitted near the back door across the well of the load bay. This was a bit of an obstruction, and next time we would move it further forward in place of the extra seat. We had to climb over it ten times a day. Useful for storing valuable stuff out of sight, and really quite dustproof |
| Sand ladders, padlocked to roof rack. These formed a really neat patio area outside the tent door, making it much easier to get to and fro. For where we went, though, waffle boards would have been more useful - we were generally stuck in mud and bog, not sand. |
| Elasticated roof net inside the roof of the cab - useful for stuffing maps, clothes, etc etc |
| Ditto inside the main load area, supported by ratchet straps between the roll cage members - again, very useful for storing light stuff like shovels, folding chairs, roll mats, loo rolls, etc high up out of the way but easily accessible |
| Solara SM160M 45W solar panel, wired through a Sunsaver SR60 regulator into the main leisure battery. The panel itself was an unusual design, a comparatively small (and very thin) semi-flexible one mounted on a stainless steel plate, as used by Ellen McArthur (apparently). We made a plywood base for it which stayed padlocked on the roof rack behind the tent when we were driving, but which could be moved and attached at a suitable angle to either side of the vehicle to catch the sun when the tent was up. This provided enough power to run the fridge for several days without having to drive anywhere to charge the batteries, and it also provided a backup trickle charger for the batteries in case they went flat for any reason. Tough enough to walk on without worrying - and we did |
Equipment
| Sale or return spares pack, put together by Liveridge, with 2 driveshaft UJ's, a pair of wheel bearings and a hub seal, 2 drive flanges, clutch slave cylinder, full set of brake pads, 3 oil filters, 1 air filter, 3 main and 3 ancillary fuel filters, length of fuel hose, set of injector pipes, a stop/start solenoid, a fuel lift pump, a fan belt, a water pump, a used starter motor and a can of "stop leak". We also took far too many fuses and spare light bulbs for everything, but we DIDN'T take plastic sealing plugs for the cooling system (which we should have) or a brake vacuum servo pump or a brake calliper (both of which failed on us and caused some problems). We used the spare wheel bearings and one of the UJ's, all of the filters, but nothing else apart from a few bulbs. |
| Recovery equipment. We took a heavy duty hand winch (Turfor type) with associated steel cable, plus a snatch block and an array of rated shackles, strops, ratchet strops and a basic three pin ground anchor array, with sledge hammer. It got us out of a lot of sticky situations, both forwards and backwards. We also took a kinetic recovery rope. We stored all this in a large Really Useful Box at the front of the load area |
| Hi-Lift jack (indespensable). Rich wanted it attached to the outside of the vehicle, in true hard core fashion. I vetoed that suggestion on naffness and security grounds |
| Took kit. Apart from the expected range of spanners, pliers, screwdrivers, saws, files, hammers, etc etc we took a 240v drill and angle grinder - both of which came in very useful, running off the inverter. We also took a small bench vice which came into its own for pressing UJ's together and apart, and for undoing a really bodged and rusted junction nut between the rear brake calliper and the brake pipe. Our most versatile tool was a Kalashnikov bayonet, purchased in the Black Market in Ulaan Baatar! Also essential were the special Land Rover universal joint socket and hub nut socket, as well as the gear box oil plug key (mentioned below). |
| Consumables such as oil for two full changes (only really needed one) and all normal fluids and lubricants. We were pretty punctilious about daily levels checks and weekly checks on the hard bits - though we found we didn't have the requisite key to open our gearbox for an oil check (we managed to buy one in Russia on the way bac eventually!) Hint - don't store large cans of WD40 upright where the top can get pressed as you drive along, spraying the full contents of the can over the other things in the box! |
| Shower/water filter. Our main white elephant. It sounded like a good idea in theory to be able to have a shower by the vehicle at the end of a hot day's driving, but it never happened. And if we had needed water filtration (we didn't, as we were always able to get enough bottled water), a much smaller water filter would have served us much better. Maybe in the Sahara we might use the shower - but I doubt it. We had a combined unit from Brownchurch in a large box which just sat there and annoyed us |
| Laptop. We took a Panasonic Toughbook CF18, with memory upgrade to 1.5 GB. It was fantastic and never let us down. It got dropped, trodden on and generally abused. It has great battery life, and stood up to Gobi sand easily. Highly recommended. We used an external GPS antenna via a USB socket, which drove our Fugawi mapping software. I had picked a cheap Leadtek antenna, which caused us a few problems (it had been rather badly converted to USB when it wasn't really). Next time I will buy a more expensive one! By saving our Fugawi tracks and using a clever little software utility, we were able to create the Google Earth tracklogs really easily (well, Rich was...) We ran the website on this laptop, using an old copy of Microsoft FrontPage. When we were in GPRS reception areas (most of Russia), we were able to use an ordinary mobile phone (O2 network - much the best coverage in that part of the world) as a modem (connected to the laptop by BlueTooth). That enabled us to update the website and do emails on the move. When we were in a WiFi hotspot, that worked as well. We also loaded all our music onto the laptop and played it through the car's dodgy radio cassette via a simple jack connector. "Back in the USSR" was a big favourite! The laptop also housed our online workshop manual for the vehicle. We kept the laptop and GPS antenna out of site when we were stopped by the traffic police in Russia, though I suspect they wouldn't have been that interested in it. |
| Satellite phone. Iridium was the obvious choice. We bought the 9505A handset, then bought a Sim card with a fixed (fairly short) life and a number of minutes. We made the mistake of trying to use this setup to update the website and do emails when we were out of GPRS range. After a lot of fiddling, it just about managed the emails (slowly), but quite expensively - especially as it had a habit of dropping the connection at the critical point. It did come in very useful on a couple of occasions when we were calling for help, though - in the wilds of north west Mongolia (mechanical advice from Liveridge on a major breakdown, and at the border when we were trying to get some consular help to get across in less than a week). It also gave us the option of texting (and receiving texts) for very little money or free, anywhere in the world - potentially extremely useful. We arranged things with our airtime supplier so that we could just call them up (or send an email) to buy extra minutes when we were running low. |
| Waeco Coolfreeze CF 18 Fridge. Runs off a Danfoss BD35F compressor, highly efficient, specified to maintain 5 Celsius in ambient temperature of 32 Celsius on about 8 watts per hour. We agonised about whether to get a larger fridge, but were glad we opted for this size in the end. Big enough to take milk, a few beers, and quite a lot of fridge food, without taking up too much space or power. 12v only, no gas or mains power option (which was fine for us). Goes well below freezing temperature if required. We could have done with a slightly more robust power connection than through the 3-way cigarette lighter socket we had installed, though. And the thermostatic control was a little variable |
| Comfy camping stuff - folding chairs, table, home made sunshade/rain shelter which attached to the side of the roof rack (or the rear, to shelter the cooking area). We also carried a spare tent and sleeping mat for when we were travelling three up, but we never used them |
| Large handheld spotlight. Didn't use it much, but glad we had it when we wanted it |
| Large 12v air compressor. In fact we didn't use this very much (we never got a single puncture, and we didn't need to change tyre pressures a lot for soft/hard surfaces, etc) but it was good to know we had it. We had basic puncture repair gear (including inner tubes) as well, though with two spares we never came close to needing it. I suspect we would have found puncture repairs a real challenge with no special tool to break the bead on the tyre wall |
| Our ammo boxes were really useful for all sorts of bits and pieces, though they did cause an initial flurry of excitement at the Russian border |
| 25 litre clean water container - which we filled using bottled water then drank from. Also a 25 litre "non-drinking" water container for washing etc which we kept on the roof |
| You can never have enough ratchet straps for tying down, tying up and generally securing |
| Maps and guide books for everywhere. We had the USAF maps for Mongolia scanned and loaded onto the laptop before we left and calibrated to work with Fugawi. That was good, but the tracks have shifted quite a bit since the 1980's. Good maps of Mongolia are hard to come by, and the only ones we were able to buy in the UK were not much use for GPS, as they had erratic scale and no projection information. We found some good 1:500,000 maps in the Map Shop in UB (mentioned in Lonely Planet) and bought a whole load of them. But we were unable to scan them in to use them on the laptop with Fugawi, so we just had to use them in the old fashioned way - though they did have accurate lat and long on them, so we were able to read GPS data across from the laptop to give ourselves a very accurate fix . For Russia, we used both of the two available road atlases ("Trivium" and AGT Geocentre Allmaps) - each of them was better than the other in certain ways, you should get both |