Land Rover Defender 110

[BlrwestSiR]

A couple years ago I came across a conversion kit made by C1 Models for the Revell Land Rover Series III kit. It allowed one to make a later updated version of the Defender as seen in the James Bond film Spectre. 

Here's a comparison of the stock kit body with the one in the conversion kit. 

The Series III body

The Defender body. 

The fender flares, roll bars and bash bar are all separate add-ons, much like they would on the real thing. 

[BlrwestSiR]

The biggest challenge with this kit is the lack of instructions. They include some for the assembly of the external roll cage and there's a short video on their website that shows how the suspension goes together. So there's no real information on what to cut/modify on the kit parts. There's also no engine included. On the actual vehicle, a Chevy LS V8 was swapped in place of the stock inline -6. One can either use the kit engine or source a V8 from somewhere else. I ended up buying a Revell 2005 Corvette to act as an engine donor. 

The first step is to cut down the floorplan to make it fit the pickup body style. 

I cut it way too short the first time so you can see where I glued it back together and tried again. 

Next, the central transmission tunnel is cut away between the front seats. Unfortunately I don't have a pic of this. 

Lastly, to fit the front shock towers, a couple openings need to be cut into the front fender linings. 

But before that, the shock towers need to be mounted to the frame. 

Fit the front axle to the frame but don't glue it in place. Then fit the shock towers the frame using the axle as a location guide. 

With the shock towers in place one can figure out where to cut the openings in the fender linings 

[DocRob]

Three car builds on LSM at the same time must be a record 
Great work with the Defender, Carl. Bummer that there is no thorough documentation with the conversion kit. Love your version, but don´t like LED lights too much on classic off road cars . I opted for very good conventional lights on my 1/1 scale Jeep.

Cheers Rob

[BlrwestSiR]

Thanks Rob, I think you're right about how many car builds there are being a record. 

As for the lights, I have to agree with you. They do look a bit out of place even if they're better. At least they're separate parts so I can leave them off.

[Martinnfb]

Nice work on this beast Carl. I’m glad you stared this dedicated thread. Will follow with interest. 
 

Cheers

Martin

[BlrwestSiR]

Sorry for the lack of updates. Our cat was reenacting The Exorcist and so we were a bit busy that he didn't end up in a Pet Semetery situation. 

Back to the Land Rover, I fitted the replacement transmission tunnel. This needed a fair bit of test fitting. It was mostly small tweaks to the edges to get a cleaner fit. 

When I test fit the floor assembly to the body, I noted a gap between the console and the inner cowl. 

I used strip styrene on the console to help fill the gap in. 

[BlrwestSiR]

Engine time. I assembled the engine block and heads from the donor LS V8 engine. I also cut the transmission housing shorter and grafted on the Land Rover transmission/transfer case. My initial test fit showed that the stock engine mounts would need to be moved/replaced. 

First step was cutting the existing mounts off the chassis. 

At this point I decided to replace them as they were not the right shape for a good fit. I decided to use the front subframe from the Corvette kit. 

I then cut the engine mount crossmember free. Turned out this was pretty much the same width as the Land Rover chassis rails.

The crossmember glued in place. 

Test fitting the body with the engine now in place showed that the engine was too far back and didn't have enough clearance around the firewall. 

I extended the transmission housing a bit and moved the crossmember forward a bit as well. 

Now the valve covers will clear the firewall. 

[DocRob]

Nice surgery and kit bashing, Carl.

Cheers Rob

[Martinnfb]

Sweet!  

[PanzerWomble]

LS swapping a 110  love it ! 

 

[BlrwestSiR]

Thanks to everyone checking in on this. It's makes the problem solving more satisfying.

Speaking of which, a new one has popped up. It seems that C1 Models uses the same body shell for a standard style 110 pickup as well as the custom Bowler one as seen in Spectre. You just add the Bowler specific bits- fender flares, roll bar, bumpers, suspension, and so on. Except they don't tell you what mods are needed on their body. 

With the chassis and floor pan fitted to the body shell, the front fender liners are lower than the standard 110 fender openings.

It looked odd to me and I figured that the fender flares would cover this up. Except they don't. In fact, they require that the fender openings be increased in size.

The same goes for the rear.

Even worse, it looks like the if you don't do this, the rear tires may not fit. 

What would be the easy solution of just cutting away the front inner fenders, and increasing the wheel openings won't work. The floor pan is mounted to the body by the inner fenders. 

Here's the mounting pegs on the upper side of the floor pan. 

After some thought, I decided to narrow the inner fenders and started by notching the front and back.

I then scored the inner fender in a straight line on the underside.

This was then bent upwards. 

It looks like this should work. I'll have to fill in the cut on the bottom. The black on the body is roughly how much I'll need to cut away. 

The added bonus of doing it this way is I won't have a gap around the inside of the inner fender. 

The rear won't be as complicated as the pickup bed is there.