1995 NAS Defender 90 Station Wagon
Upgrades
If you cruise the ECR web site often you'll know this truck well. This D90 Wagon has been upgraded by ECR over the years and has even gone with us to Labrador and other places. The Rover was recently sold by ECR and now has a new owner. The new owner wanted to make some more upgrades to the D90 to make it his own, so we brought it in and made it even better.
The first upgrade was to get rid of the BFG All Terrains and install some 33x11.50 Swamper SSR radials as you can see in the image above. This will make the D90 do what it should off road and believe it or not makes the on road ride smoother. We also removed all the decals and brought everything up to snuff.
We also did a number of bolt on upgrades like rear bumper corners and these wing top protectors, a rear fuel tank skid plate and recovery point in the back.
Up front we tossed the cheesy factory winch mount bumper and installed a new front bumper, front skid plate and 3 new Hella 4000s to light up the night.
In case the D90 gets stuck we also added 2 ECR ROX recovery points in the front. These take a standard 5/8 shackle and make for a great place to tie things down for various recovery techniques.
In the rear of the D90 we had to make some changes to the ECR ROX rear ladder. We originally built the ladder for use with the stock step/tow bumper, but for added departure angle that piece has now been removed in favor of the Safari Gard corner guards that you see above. So we altered the ladder and then epoxy primed and painted it in black. Why didn't we just use the factory ladder or the Brownchurch ladder? Those ladders requires that you drill holes in the body, with our ladders you can easily unbolt them with no tell-tale signs in case you don't want to carry the roof rack. So we retain more options for the customer by doing it this way.
We apply the same "leave no trace" theory when we install work lights and antennas. Defender 90s are pretty pricey here in the USA, so drilling big holes in them is not our favorite things to do. In the image above you can see the mount we have made for the Hella twin bulb work/reverse light for this D90 Wagon. The mount bolts on underneath the rear door hinge and allows you to have a nice work light that is out of the way and you don't have to drill any unsightly holes in your D90. We also primed and painted the bracket in the factory Coniston Green for a nice hidden custom look.
Inside the D90 Wagon we installed a factory 3 way switch that allows us to control the light so that it can be simply off, or it can come on and off with the reverse lights, and we can turn it on manually so that it can be a work light around your camp site. The switch looks factory correct and keeps your interior looking clean and functional.
Here you can see the Hella twin bulb work light installed and ready for action. The light is placed so that it is below the roof line so that tree branches will not harm it, and it does not interfere with any aspects of the rear door or roof rack. In fact with our system you can even take the roof rack off and still have your work/reverse light in place and doing its job.
Below the work light we have made the departure angle of the D90 a lot better. We have removed the factory step and tow bumper and installed a new alloy fuel tank skid plate, and a class III receiver tube as a recovery point. This gives the D90 a lot more departure angle and gets rid of the rusting fuel tank skid plate. This customer still has his sway bars on this D90, so we modified the fuel tank skid plate to accept the mounts for the rear sway bar, as you can see above.
To correct the on and off road gearing with the larger SSR tires we installed a set of 4.11 gears front and rear. The D90 already had ARB air lockers, so we swapped over the new 4.11s onto the ARB carriers to give the D90 a better off road crawl ratio, and correct the engine rpms on the highway. In the image we have pulled the front and rear differentials and are ready to rebuild them with new seals and the new 4.11s.
Here you can see the differential has been pulled and being rebuilt with the 4.11s. These will make a welcome addition off road for the D90 Wagon.
While we were inside the differentials we took the time to update the air lines. The ARB supplied air fittings have a tendency to loosen up when you service the air line from the outside. That means for something as simple as changing a damaged air line you may have to pull out the differential! That isn't any good for field fixing your D90 on the trail, so we update the air lines into two separate fittings. Above you can see our unique ARB air line set up. This allows the inner fitting to always stay tight and locked, no matter what happens to the exterior fitting. The new exterior fitting also points the air line down the axle and away from exhaust systems and driveshafts, making it harder to damage. Experience off road teaches us these tricks, and we are happy to pass them along to our customers.
Here you can see the completed D90 all tricked out and ready for anything the new owner wants to throw at it. The D90 now has just about every trick in the book, with out past years of upgrades and these new installs, and it should give the new owner years of on and off road enjoyment. Keep an eye out for this D90 because the new owner plans to attend a number of upcoming treks that ECR will be involved in. If your D90 needs anything from a few small repairs to a long laundry list of upgrades feel free to contact us. We'll be happy to help make your Defender world class... just like this one!