Prepping the Defender

I am really enjoying driving the Defender, it has a presence on the road.  People stare as I pass.  Most likely they are wondering what that old car is doing on the road.  I am sure owning a Defender polarises opinions, but I do not care.  I have always loved this iconic car and have wanted one for as long as I can remember.  So in Auckland traffic, reslpendent with Remuera Tractors that probably go no more off road than the school sports field, the Defender and I stick out a bit.  We do not so much as cut a swathe through the traffic, we propel in front of us a force field that just seems to clear narrow streets of smaller cars, they just seem to dive for safety behind a phalanx of parked cars and let us pass through.

City driving is not without its issues however, I have yet to execute a parallel park in space anything smaller than an articulated truck might contemplate, High Street might pose a challenge too far.  I have yet to work out what the true weight and height of the car is.  I did not park on the elevated parking spaces at Sylvia Park this weekend for fear of falling through to the next level!  In addition to the above, the clutch is heavy and my atrophied muscles of my left leg are finding this a challenge as I recuperate from my back injury!  But despite that, I am still loving it and am itching to get past the 1000km service, which I shall be booking this coming week, so that I can finally stretch the legs of the beast and take it where it wants to go, where the roads are barely there or there are no roads!

In preparation for our planned off road adventure in the South Island, I have been purchasing equipment but I have also been preparing the Defender.  One of my regrets is that I did not specify solid windows in the rear of the Defender when I ordered it.  The rear of the car offers no privacy and the sliding windows offer scant security.  I intend to tint the rear side windows at some point in the future and convert them to solid panes of glass to prevent casual theft.  In the meantime I have been creating a false floor so that I can place goods out of sight.  I have installed a sheet of MDF into the rear and am now looking for some black carpet to cover it with.  So in the future when we are out shopping we have a space to place goods that are out of sight.

The other purpose for the shelf is for me to be able to store goods, whilst we are on the road that we do not want access to all the time.  So under the shelf will be the recovery chains, the box with the tools in and the box with the cooking equipment in.  Take a look at the work in progress, still got to find the black carpet.