The Money Pit

[sawtooth4x4]

I let it sit a week and thought about it some more. I purchased some steel so i could plate the area and weld everything together.

So i started in on it again.

Started welding in plate and adding strength to it.

Sorry the pictures sucked. My iPhone at the time was a pile of crap. No flash.





Adding Roset welds between the original bumper metal and new metal.

Built up the front side and starting to clean everything up. It was hard to not melt everything that was made out of plastic.

Time for the fairlead

 

[sawtooth4x4]

I had to clock both sides of the winch since i mounted the feet forward in my bumper.

 

[sawtooth4x4]

Had to modify the crush cans. I didn't think they would hold up under winching. So far i have yet to pull the bumper off in 3 years and extracting myself and others.

 

[sawtooth4x4]

Bumper and Winch installed.





I built a skid plate that runs down from the bottom of the bumper to the radiator cross member.



I bent it to fit the contours of the bumper steel. kind of hard to see in the photo.

 

[sawtooth4x4]

The stock winch control box was huge, ugly, and wouldn't fit anywhere sensible. Time for some customization.:greg:

There is a large battery box on my Range Rover. I found a spot in it where my solenoids would fit perfectly.

Stock winch solenoid box

Doing a bit of test fitting.

Mounted and running the cables to the winch.

 

[sawtooth4x4]

After that was done, I went out and checked my clearance.

View attachment 81765

I tested it out on an easy pull to make sure i wouldn't pull out.

View attachment 81766

View attachment 81767

View attachment 81768

View attachment 81769

 

[sawtooth4x4]

After the winch was installed I lost about an inch of lift up front. I decided to redo the front spring perches.

This was the coil spring conversion part that was on there when i got it. My plan was to add about 1" under it and weld everything solid to the axle. This part was held in with a clip.



I used some 5" pipe. I think it was schedule 40. I couldn't find anything else to use in tubing. So far i have had no issues 1+ years later.

Welded the top closed.

then added the spring retaining plate.

Welded on with my crappy pawn shop welder that was flux core. maybe not very pretty, but it holds.



Cleaned up and welded onto the axle.

 

[sawtooth4x4]

Then it was time to head down to Moab. 1200 miles away.

Loaded with essentials. Water, oil, coolant. Its a Range Rover. Gotta be careful about overheating.

 

[sawtooth4x4]

Ready for the road trip from Montana



Checking out the Flaming Gorge

 

[sawtooth4x4]

Some Moab Pictures. We only had two days to spend down there. Wish we would have had more time. It was a blast!

We ran Golden Spike, Gold Bar, and Poison Spider in one day. All alone, no support, no help, no issues.

 

[sawtooth4x4]

Popped my front springs going over the crack. opps. Broke out the handy Land Rover bottle jack and got them back in place.

 

[sawtooth4x4]

Continued on. Didn't take any pictures for awhile. The trail got had with all the ledges. We were worried we would have to turn back and focused on getting to Poison Spider.

On Poison finally.

Coming down the waterfall

Off the trail around 5.00pm, passed about 3 broken jeeps on the way out. some dudes on 44" tires passed near the end of the trail.

 

[sawtooth4x4]

Some videos of the trails.

[video=youtube;dt-YEQrbfrM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt-YEQrbfrM[/video]

Brakes were loud, may want to mute this one.

[video=youtube;C72c_JwUx2w]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C72c_JwUx2w[/video]

 

[sawtooth4x4]

[video=youtube;Fl7TsZ_F5KM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl7TsZ_F5KM[/video]

[video=youtube;6EupSQrGzTU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EupSQrGzTU[/video]

 

[sawtooth4x4]

More to come...............................................

 

[sawtooth4x4]

So the stock stereo system sucked. The tape deck wouldn't work and the sub-woofers in the rear were dead. Time to do a bit of an upgrade. I called a stereo shop and they were too stupid to wire it correctly to get all the stock speakers to work. or too lazy. who knows. if you want it done right, do it yourself.

Old Deck

So i figured out after doing some research all the speaker wires are in the back of the vehicle with the stock amplifier. There are 10 speakers no counting the stock sub-woofers.

The deck i purchased had four channels and 55 watts per channel. Mosfet of course. I started by measuring out 4 pieces of 20' speaker wiring... I started at the front and ran the wiring down the driverside of the vehicle.

The wiring harness for the stock amplifier



Time to tie into the wiring

 

[sawtooth4x4]

Removed the stock AMP and sold it for enough to cover the cost of the wiring and new deck.



I bought this deck at wal-mart. it was $150 and had iPod control-ability. just what i needed.



I played around with the wires for the amp to speakers. I figured out which wires did what and then soldered it all together. Luckily the stock stereo had capacitors built into the tweeters so i didn't have to worry about blowing those speakers. While i was in there i removed the stupid navigation system. Works well and sounds good. I also added a 600 Watt amp and 10" woofer.

 

[Stephen]

Cool build. Always nice to see Range Rover being used for what they were designed for.

 

[Gravy]

so you have HID bulbs in the stock non projector housings?

 

[sawtooth4x4]

yup. I rarely get flashed. they are aimed well. They really are not bad. I have stood infront of them and yes they are brighter then the old bulbs, but not blinding like they would be in a honda. I used 4300K bulbs. They are white