We have bought our faithful 1999 Land Rover 300tdi “George” back after selling him 12 years ago. We travelled East Africa with him in 2005/06. He has acquired rear windows since we owned him before.
We have plans to sort out paint blemishes, possibly replace the side lockers with stainless steel ones, replace the roof tent (with an Alu Cab or Tuff trek one). The bull bars need sand blasting and re-powder coating. The side steps need attention too (basically sound but coating has flaked and rust is getting serious).
Much work has been going on – Tuff Trek roof tent installed (roof rack had to be cut to accomodate it), Renogy DC-DC solar system with 200 watt solar panel and 50Ah lithium phosphate battery.
Bull bars, side lockers, side steps and paint sorted out. New bespoke made drawer storage system. Hi lift jack overhauled and reattached to rear of vehicle.
Spare parts, fluids, oils and new spare tyre purchased (realised it was a tubed rim so will need to stick with an innertube).
Tred pro recovery boards purchased and secured to the roof rack. All spare fuses and bulbs purchased. ARB tyre repair kit and gaitors. Ex army spade mounted on the side of the roof rack.
The bull bars didn’t fare well at the shotblasters and had a number of holes. Instead of infoming me so they could be repaired they just powder coated (and an incredibly thin layer at that). Had to fill the holes with epoxy and spray it. Not ideal.
We have purchased a tyre table this time that fits over the Land Rover wheel to form a table. It is lighter weight than other tables we have used and stows away more easily and neatly.
We also have Frontrunner foldable chairs to replace our more bulky chairs that we bought in Cymot Namibia. Again lighter and more easily stowed away.
We have also bought a Jackery power station that we can charge from the car and solar panel to use to power laptops and phones in the evening.
We also repaired the awning. Rachel rebound the edges with tape, all hand stitched! It was also thoroughly scrubbed to remove algae and looks a lot better for it. It is one of the Hannibal self supporting ones so is now vintage (and in keeping with a Land Rover!).
It will be much easier to get and set up local SIM cards now compared to 18 years ago when we travelled East Africa. Then only WAP or GPRS was available and was very slow. Now with WordPress sites can be updated on a mobile. Using your mobile as a hotspot for your laptop is also easy. Photo upload is often the problem though as digital photo files are large.
This time we are trying to strictly limit the weight we are taking (easier said than done!). Collected our Carnet de passage (customs document for the vehicle) so all set!
This time we have a GPS logger to record our tracks. In the past we have downloaded the tracks from our Garmin handheld daily but it gets very unwieldy dealing with that many files.
We wondered what to do about gas cylinders and connectors. We concluded that getting converters for every combination type was too complicated and expensive. So we will buy a new cylinder when we need one and the burner to fit it.
We will be using the invaluable iOverlander app to find fuel stations, campsites (official or wild camp) etc.
Updated George with new roof tent and solar system:
