Interior Refinements

I’m in the process of completing the last few interior details for the Alpine trip, and have had a few amazingly serendipitous moments. I’m just hoping that I haven’t used up all my luck in one go…

The tool box that is being used for the tools themselves just happens to perfectly fit the space under the right hand side second row seat (the left side seat area housing the Jackall farm jack, LR bottle jack and T-Max tyre compressor). The top of the box just clears the underside of the seat by 1-2mm, and has lateral clearance of about 5mm – it really could not have be planned so neatly.

I set about making a wooden frame to mount the Waeco fridge on the right side wheel arch, behind the second seat (in place of the folding Trakker seat, removed for trips), with legs to support the front of the fridge which overhangs the tub floor. This presented a problem: the fridge fouled the side mounted first aid kit by about two inches. I didn’t want to fit the fridge on the left side (in front of the net equipped side panel) because I had already fitted the power sockets to the right side (see further below), and didn’t want power cables running across the floor. I also wanted the fridge on the right because of the way that the door opens – I want as unobstructed an exit for the kids as possible, just in case of an emergency. The fridge is almost identical in depth to the width of a Defender seat, and with the fridge in position, it’s front face is just recessed from the edge of the seat back, providing plenty of easy passage space between the seats and the rear door – it’ almost looks purpose made.

I was able to invert the aluminium angle strip that supports the bottom of the first aid kit, so the ledge is now at the top, and gained a one inch improvement, but there was still some overlap. Then the second moment of good fortune occurred: I had removed the fridge frame to sit the fridge directly on the wheel arch for comparison, which worked out snug but perfect, and went into the garage to get a new but unused plastic tool box (birthday present from the kids) to temporarily support the front edge of the fridge. Amazingly, the top of the tool box is the perfect height to support the fridge level, and is the perfect length to fit tightly between the fridge’s front legs (so they won’t point load and crack the box, and provide positive location). I was already using a second plastic tool box for all the spares, with nowhere yet to store or secure it, but by swapping the boxes over, I have killed two birds with one very lucky stone. The tool box will be sat slightly way from the wheel arch to provide support along the edge of the fridge, rather than supporting the flat bottom, in order to support a strong area of the fridge. They will both be secured with ratchet straps .

The left side storage was tried out successfully on the trial-run camping trip the other weekend. The left Trakker seat gave way to two “cool box” containers, holding non-perishable foods and cooking/eating equipment. Unchanged from before are the location of the Jackall and Land Rover jacks, the T-Max compressor (in the black bag) and the fairly recently added Anderson socket (for connecting the main battery to the jump-leads). The cool boxes are secured with ratchet straps form the high outboard cargo rail to the low inboard rail at the floor edge. The Jackall is mounted on its own purpose made mountings, while the Land Rover bottle jack is secured to the inside of the seat support (“biscuit tin”) with a large QuickFist. Small and medium Quickfists secure the wheel brace and bottle jack handle to the side of the wheel arch, below the Jackall.

On completion of any trips, the fridge and cool boxes are removed (along with their ratchet straps), and the two Trakkers eats are refitted to their hinge brackets in about ten seconds each. Refitting their seat belt stalks requires just one nut and bolt each, returning the vehicle to six-seat status in less than five minutes.

The auxilliary battery has had four more internal power sockets attached – two of the capped cigarette lighter type and two capped DIN type. These are all fitted with independent 20A fuses within six inches of the battery connection. The feed wires run from the battery compartment (the rear left cubby box), along the top of the rear cross member and into the right rear light cover with the light wiring loom. The sockets have all been fitted in that cover. the reason for their location there was the proximity of the fridge – it allows the fridge to be neatly powered on the move, and because there would be plenty of space between the fridge and the rear end for storing all the small electrical camping kit for recharging (the airbed inflators and camping lights). Also, having the sockets by the back door means that the extension cables can be used to maximum advantage for external electrical power.