"Spot lights are not necessary if all goes to plan, however they are extremely useful if you do get caught out. In many countries other road users don't have any lights on their mopeds, cows, donkey carts, children, etc, and more often than not they'll be on the wrong side of the road, you do not only need them to see the road ahead."

One of the 'main' rules that we have set ourselves, but the one rule everyone seems to break is don't drive at night, so I am hoping... touch wood.... that as you say they will act merely as a precaution against other things/people we may drive over. All we are going for is a simmonites a-bar with two fitted wipac lights- something we have been meaning to get done for a while and now we have...

Everything has been about cost cutting vs efficiency and vice versa, the only things we have had fitted professionally have been 5 new tubeless cooper discoverer s/ts on 5 new rims and a new set of terrafirma shocks and heavy duty springsm, but after what kevinrbeech said I have double checked all the turret and bottom nuts. We were so nice to frogs island that they also gave us a spare steering damper!

Storage wise- the mobile storage systems are wonderful but expensive, so instead we have decided to nab some old army surplus boxes and stick them on top of a home made drawer system. We've decided the best option is to get two heavy duty drawer runners bolted on to the wheel boxes, put a tough board between it which'll slide in and out, and another board on top to sandwhich in the ammo boxes. Does anyone know the best runners to use/where they can be got in the UK?

Back on the load guard front...it just seems to be too much of a hassle to get a custom made 'official' one- so the next best option appears to be a sheet of ply which can slide in behind the passenger and driver seat to separate it all off- will also double as an all purpose removable board ( always necessary... of course )

The roof tent idea has gone down the pan....too expensive basically. Instead it's an oztent RV2 which we'll use to extend out the back of the land rover.

In terms of spares, the water pump sounds like a very wise idea... is there any other genuine replacement parts we should take, or will nuts, bolts, cable ties and gaffer do?!

The next big thing before departure on 5th July is to get the electrics done. This bit makes me very nervous but I think, instead of paying £700 for Frog's island to do it, we're going to fit everything ourselves.

As it stands we're installing an additionaly optima yellow top, national luna 'DIY' split charge kit and one extra cigar lighter socket. In terms of powerpoints around the vehicle- what's the best bet? We're not taking a fridge or a winch, but still want the 2nd battery.

Everything else we install ( 2x national luna 'c' fluoro lights, 1 x compressor, auxiliary lights & work lights, inverter (?) and 3 pin power points (?) ) we will hard wire in. Having never been particularly technical, this is the bit that scares me, especially when it seems everything has to be piled on top of the battery. Any help on this front would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks again,
Tom

For runners try Haefle (sic) - german manufacturers of just about every conceivable type of drawer/door fitting known, and top quality.

Elecs - just remember not to use too thin wire, crimp ends, grommets where it passes through body work, and fuses or circuit breakers for everything (as close to the battery as possible. With a split system remember power can flow from either battery, so should have a circuit protection device at each end. Oh and keep the inverter dry! A cheapo multi meter is a handy tool when doing your own electrics. Can't think of anything else obvious,
good luck,
G

Ref the drawer runners - if you have one near you, try Ikea.
They do loads of stuff with slide out runners on, sometimes you can buy the runners seperately from the bargain corner bit, worth a mooch.

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Faults