Marshal Law

Originally Published: September 2015 Words: Mike Trott Pictures: Mike Trott

A 90 of this age wouldn’t have had disc brakes at the back, but this one does. There are various ways of achieving this, but Carl took the cheap and easy one by fitting it with a pair of Discovery axles. Not that he was averse to investing in doing it right, because these are stuffed with Ashcroft air-locking differentials and 24-spline halfshafts, the latter strengthened with heavy-duty shaft caps<br />

There’s an above-average level of flexibility on display here, which comes from a widely chosen selection of off-the-shelf parts combined with a few classic examples of homespun ingenuity. Both ends are held up by Britpart +2” coils, for example – but these are used in combination with X-Springs to free up the movement a conventional bottom mount would restrict. Nothing homespun here, of course. However…<br />

…there definitely is here. The X-Springs are used at the front as well as the back – which means something ain’t normal. That something is the presence of Carl’s own cantilevered shock turrets, which combine with new lower mounts to relocate the shock outside the main spring – making the room that’s necessary in there for the X-Spring unit<br />

The shocks themselves are +12” up front and +15” at the back. The latter are fitted up top on Extreme rear mounts<br />

The front axle is held on by three-degree castor-corrected radius arms from Qt Services, in combination with an adjustable panhard rod. Not the polyurethane bushes – everything in the suspension is fitted using these<br />

At the back, the conventional A-frame set-up is retained. There’s polyurethane here, too, including in the bump stops, and the trailing links are heavy-duty double-cranked efforts to allow more droop and cope with the extra stress while it’s happening<br />

What’s the best engine Land Rover has ever made? Many would say the 200Tdi – strong, simple and free from the curse of electronic control. Carl made an interesting mod, though: ‘The intercooler has been bypassed due to the truck only been used at low speeds,’ he told us. Despite this, he’s wound up the fuel pump, so however low those speeds are he can get up to them more quickly. He’s also given the engine a full rebuild, treating it to new piston rings, shells and valves, citing its age as the reason for this – well, that and the fact that it was starting to burn oil like a transatlantic liner…<br />

A performance air filter barely counts as a modification, what with being so common there are more old 90s with one than without. As is so often the case, it tops off a raised air intake<br />

The transmission turns the axles via a pair of Bailey Morris wide-angle propshafts, which can take its suspension height and flexibility in their stride<br />

However skilled you are in the workshop, if there’s one thing you buy in it makes sense for it to be your roll cage. That’s what Carl did, buying one as a kit from Whitbread Off-Road and fitting it with the help of his family<br />

Aside from the small matter of a tubular front end, the truck’s body is well protected from the impacts it can expect to receive whenever Carl takes it out to play. The sills and fuel tank are well protected by heavy steel, and there’s a set of body sliders running the length of the vehicle. There’s no such thing as invulnerable, but this truck does a decent impression of it<br />

Wheels and tyres alike are of a classic design. The former are Challenger five-spokes, which sit on 30mm spacers, while wrapped around them are 265/75R16 Insa Turbo Special Tracks<br />

Up front is a true classic, in the shape of a Warn 8274. This has been fitted with a Bowmotor 2 motor and runs 38mm Dyneema rope with a competition hook and air freespool. At the blunt end is a 13,000 Winchmax, although this is soon to be moved to the middle and replaced at the back with a Goodwinch TDS challenge unit with Bowmotor 2, large drum and air freespool. The rear mount is a homemade bracket made from 10mm steel, which goes through the tub to the chassis, and the winches are juiced by an Optima Yellow-Top – this is the second battery in a split-charge system, the first being a Red-Top from the same manufacturer<br />
<br />

The main things you’ll notice inside the vehicle are bucket seats, four-point harnesses and a lower-diameter steering wheel. Keep looking and you might spot some flashes of silver from the stainless gear and transfer levers, as well as a dash pod for the extra controls, but in keeping with a thing that ain’t broke the Defender’s interior hasn’t been fixed<br />

Carl Everett stumbled upon the 4x4 game by accident on a family holiday that happened to be next to an off-road site. Soon he was accompanying his dad to Land Rover shows as both embarked on a new-found life of modifying vehicles – though unlike most of us, who get into either laning, playdays or some form of competition, Carl found that his inspiration to build a winch truck came from the noble art of marshalling…

It’s an accident of geography and history that Britain is a small country with a big 4x4 manufacturer in it. The result is that the off-road scene here has always been hugely dominated by that manufacturer – and the number of Land Rover vehicles being modified into toys or comp cars far outweighs that of everything else put together.

There are those who see this as a bad thing, but by definition most of the UK’s off-roaders seem happy that Land Rovers originate not from Spain, or China, or the USA or wherever, but from the heart of the West Midlands. There’s a huge aftermarket serving Britain’s Landy owners – and while there are some who favour the green oval just because it’s British (you wouldn’t believe some of the stuff we’ve heard over the years), most favour it because the company makes great trucks.

Carl Everett is one of them. Like so many others who’ve fallen for the charms of a Landy, he caught the bug young.

‘My first taste of off-roading was on a family holiday where an off-road site was located nearby,’ says Carl. ‘We wandered along to have a look and watched people off-roading their vehicles round the site.’

It must have been quite a vacation, because after arriving back home things began to change on the Everetts’ driveway. ‘Not long after that my dad, Joe, bought a Discovery, which we took along to the Land Rover shows and drove around the off-road courses there,’ Carl continues. ‘Ever since then I’ve been interested in Land Rovers and as soon as I turned 18 I bought a Discovery Td5, which I still own to this day… it’s just a lot more modified than when I bought it!’

So after their Discovery of the Land Rover scene (geddit?), Carl, his dad and pretty much the rest of the family all needed to have a Land Rover in their lives. But Carl, being young and hungrier for more, needed to satisfy his urge to drive a Land Rover whenever possible, and he soon found that the family-orientated Discovery just wasn’t going to pay the bills when it comes to the more serious end of off-roading.

‘We started going to the shows and doing more of the off-road courses,’ he explains. ‘But then one year we volunteered to marshal for Vince Cobley at one of his events. We enjoyed it so much we started doing it on a regular basis, marshalling at playdays which Vince ran and just getting more and more involved.’

All sounds good. But as with all the best stories, there’s a twist. ‘I had several accidents in my Td5 and it ended up being damaged,’ says Carl. ’So I decided to buy my Defender and started to build my challenge truck. This is now what it is today!’

The 90 may be over three decades old, but of course people still aspire to own one even today. The Defender offers so much off-road performance out of the box, with what can seem like a trillion options on how to enhance it further – no wonder its popular, as much with those who would never modify theirs as those who would.

On that subject, off-roaders never seem to be fully satisfied with their vehicles. However much you’ve done to your truck, there’s always something more still to come – they’re nearly always ongoing projects and, as you’re about to find out, even a tricked out 90 like Carl’s still has room for improvement. It’s all in the pursuit of perfection.

When I first spotted Carl’s truck, it was busy being a hero at the Yarwell off-road site. Old marshalling habits die hard, obviously… he was rescuing vehicles from the clutches of the lake and just generally everyone how to use your kit properly. And he’s got plenty of kit to use.

This includes winches front and back, a Whitbread roll cage and challenge-style tubular wings with the ramming power of a bison (or, more accurately, the impregnable protective strength of Windsor Castle). Beneath the bonnet is a 200Tdi with the wick turned up to mix together a blend of strength, power and usability across any type of terrain, and to help keep it moving it can flex like a flamingo on cod liver oil.

The shocks have as much travel as Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, and down below the suspension works like the legs of a swan - up top, all is smooth and graceful, but below decks the legs are working flat-out to keep moving.

‘All the work on my cars is done by me,’ smiles Carl. ‘Apart from the welding, though, because my dad’s a lot better welder than me! My challenge truck is still a work in progress, and I’ll soon be upgrading my rear winch and fitting a centre winch.’

Despite the vast number of Land Rovers in Britain, there still aren’t too many purple and yellow Defender truck-cabs out there doing it on the off-road circuit. So if you happen to recognise one bossing an off-road site near you, it is highly likely that Carl has come over for the day to put the latest fruits of his hours in the workshop to the test.

‘Hopefully one day I will be able to swap the chassis for a galvanised one so I can have many more years off-roading,’ he says finally. Which just shows that while almost every modified 4x4 is still a work in progress, that doesn’t mean their owners are fickle. The day when Carl lays off the spanners will probably never come – and neither, you’d imagine, will the day when he gets bored of driving this fine example of Land Rover’s most legendary vehicle.

Marshal Law

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