True Colours

Originally Published: May 2012 Words: Graham Scott Pictures: Steve Taylor

Mounted using polybushes, the castor-corrected front radius arms have been dimple-died to take back the weight that was added by welding on flat plates to shrug off the wrong kind of ground pressure

At the blunt end, the axle is located using cranked trailing links and a standard A-frame. Standard but for lots of bright blue paint, at least. The propshaft visible here is, Scotty thinks, a Discovery front unit. It seems to fit and to work

Heavy-duty steering bars will survive an impact that would bend the chassis, and an adjustable panhard rod ensures the axle they’re attached to is as close to the centre of the vehicle as you’ll ever get. Both axles are from the 300Tdi Discovery that also donated its engine and gearbox; both are fitted with diff guards front and rear, and since this picture was taken they’ve also gained a pair of ARB diff-locks

Red, yellow, blue – quite patriotic, if you happen to be Romanian. Bright colours for the chassis and suspension display a new side to Scotty after he’s glazed you over with his grey bodywork. At the front, the 2” lift kit sits on tubular top mounts and is set up for dislocation. Oh, and the bump stops are orange and clash frightfully with the chassis

A Discovery gave its life, much to the surprise of its owner, to donate the 90’s 300Tdi engine. This was swapped in complete with turbo and intercooler, as well as an auto box in case Mrs McIvor deigns to come out to play. At the top you can see the snorkel snaking into the engine bay. Most of the wiring you see was done before the wings went on, so Scotty had more freedom to wave his elbows around

The flexi arches are extra wide, and there’s plenty of arch that’s been cut away beneath them so the tyres don’t rub. The 35” BFG Mud-Terrains lurking below them are fitted using spacers for better lock, though, so it’s no great surprise that they still manage to chuck mud everywhere

The cage, made from eight six-metre lengths of CDS, is designed not only to protect the vehicle but also to be able to come apart, albeit with a certain amount of effort. Useful though for when you need to replace a panel after a rock or tree makes it past this first line of defence

The cage is actually rather elegantly done, isn’t it? It also provides a useful base for the high-lift jack and connects up with the rock sliders and the rear winch bumper tray. ‘Don’t follow me, you won’t make it’, it says on the door, which must really confuse the people behind Scotty in their Nissan Micras as he turns into Tesco’s car park

Scotty built the rock sliders, which connect front and rear with the cage for added strength. They don’t look as though they’ve had a fight with any rocks yet – or at least if they have, they’ve won

Looking rather like a periscope, the snorkel has a rough filter on the end. Enough to keep ducks from being pulled into the intake, at least

Straight-through exhaust goes straight out the side and won’t be getting wiped out by any tree stumps. The eco warrior tag marks this vehicle’s owner out as a bit of a legend and hopefully makes the greener-than-thou brigade spit organic feathers in their soya latte

The rear winch, like the front, is a 13,000lb Winchmax running Plasma rope. Both winches are wired up to an Optima Red Top and are unlikely to want for power as a result

Winchmax has as a slogan ‘guaranteed to pull’, although whether that particular guarantee extends to Wales is unknown. But a 13,000lb pull is not to be ignored. The wireless system sits in the winch bumper, which is connected to the cage

When Brian ‘Scotty’ McIvor built his 90 from scratch, he painted it grey with a grey roll cage. Don’t be fooled, though. Because when you get underneath it, this Land Rover is very colourful indeed.

Some years ago, the editor of this magazine lived in the middle of Nottingham. Back then, he was, by his own lame standards, a bit of a health freak. Every day, he’d head off on his mountain bike, punish himself for a couple of hours and finally gasp his way home, sweating and cross-eyed with pain, along the side of the River Trent.

This is relevant because as he neared the city, he’d pass the Pork Farms Riverside Bakery. And his tired, troubled soul would be tortured by the smell of freshly baked pork pies wafting up his distended nostrils as he fought to keep his pedals turning.

The man responsible for that smell is Brian ‘Scotty’ McIvor. Sort of, at least. He’s a night-shift maintenance engineer at the bakery, and we have to assume that unlike the editor, the smell of porky snacks being baked to perfection doesn’t bring him out in tears.

Now, a night job in a factory would be enough for most of us. But not Brian. He also runs his own engineering company specialising in the removal and installation of machinery. Plus he runs a light commercial repair garage. He got a Mr Busy award, but couldn’t make it to the prizegiving ceremony as he was far too busy.

By the way, his garage, in nearby Ilkeston, welcomes special builds. Since, in Brian’s words, ‘something that is interesting is cool to work with’. Here endeth the plug.

Despite being gainfully employed, and being nicknamed Scotty, and having a surname of McIvor, Brian actually grew up in Wales. ‘I was living in the valleys, in a small village, and the forestry was less than a mile away from my home. I spent most of the six-week holidays off-roading in the forestry with motorbikes.’ At this stage he was only about 13 and was living in the village of Gilfach Goch, a name that sounds like you’ve just swallowed a fishbone, if not the entire fish.

As he grew up, Scotty displayed an unnatural predilection for converting perfectly ordinary Land Rovers into traybacks and bobtails. So when it came time to pick a project vehicle, guess what he chose. The subject is a Defender 90, to be precise.

Why? ‘Because it’s easy to replace the parts when they’re damaged, and it comes completely to bits so there’s no worry about denting the roof or a rear quarter panel. You can change it easier than on the Disco, so I did all the work myself, with some help from my mate Big Tim Barron.’

Naturally he didn’t choose all of a Defender, just parts of one, as he explains: ‘I bought the Defender for a grand after someone had stripped it, and had had the chassis shot-blasted and coated with red oxide primer. That’s as far as they’d got so I built it from scratch. I didn’t plan it that way but it went together rather quickly as I have lots of Defender and Disco parts at my yard, after years of messing about with them.

‘The 90 also had a 200Tdi engine with it, and a gearbox in bits, so I went out and bought a 1997 300Tdi Discovery for the engine and box. Mind you, the bloke wasn’t too happy when I told him he could keep the road tax as I was going to cut the Discovery up!’ Ingrate.

Since Scotty clearly has a bit of the Welsh bard in him, we’d better let him continue with his epic tale in his own words. ‘So a pair of the 300Tdi Discovery axles was stripped and cleaned, with new bearing seals. The discs and pads and the calipers that came with them were cleaned and painted bright yellow. The front swivels were also stripped and rebuilt. The chassis got post office red paint and off I went. I had been collecting stuff ready for a build but wasn’t sure what to fit them on!’

And now he was sure. He also had a thing about bright colours, as red, yellow and blue are in primary position throughout the build. Clearly a Personal Colour Analysis of Brian would be a fascinating thing, particularly as those bright colours are then cloaked in a skin of metallic grey.

What do we learn here about his innermost desires? Fascinating, Brian, fascinating.

Anyway, dragging ourselves away from Scotty’s psyche, we come up abruptly against his dislocation cones. They’re fitted front and rear as part of a 2” lift kit. All the suspension was polybushed, with extended bump stops fitted as well. Along with these went cranked rear arms and front correction arms, heavy-duty steering bars and an adjustable panhard rod. The front arms got flat plate for extra protection and both the diffs got new guards.

He also fitted a new fuel tank as the old one ‘seemed a bit rough around the edges’, and the brakes benefited from copper pipes all round with extended hoses front and rear. Now it was time for the engine, and for the bard to continue.

‘The next thing was the engine and gearbox, which went straight in from the 300Tdi that I’d bought for the transplant. It had an auto box. Why? Just in case I can get the wife out in it one day!

‘Next to fit were the bulkhead, seat box, tub, back body and roof, all in one go. Then I fitted the 300Tdi radiator and intercooler, bunged a bit of temporary wiring on and fired it up. I wired most of it up before I put the wings on as it was easier that way, with more room to work.‘

Brian kept working industriously away, in between sorting the bread ovens at the bakery and moving large lumps of industrial machinery from one place to another. He made a new exhaust, which was straight-through but also straight out the side. He removed the now redundant clutch pedal and blanked off the hole (he later sold the hole on eBay for a profit) and then fitted the front wings and bonnet, alongside the front end panels. A snorkel went on, ‘fitted for later progress.’ After this it gets a trifle hazy.

‘I’m sure I used a Discovery front prop on the rear’, he muses, ‘and it went straight on and is still working well now. I also definitely used the Discovery handbrake lever and fitted it beside the driver’s seat so that now I don’t have to bend out of the bucket seats to reach it.’

The Compomotive alloys that came with the vehicle were shod with some 35” BFG Mud-Terrains that Brian had left over from a Defender he’d rolled a few years before. ‘I knew they’d come in handy!’ As they do. To give some clearance, he cut the wheelarches as high as possible and also fitted extra-wide flexi arches to keep the tyres inboard. Has that worked? ‘It still seems to chuck the mud all over me’.

Over that body went the cage. Cages seem to bring out the cage fighter in many builders, who put more time and effort into them than they do the vehicle it’s designed to protect. Scotty isn’t quite in that category but clearly he loves his metal tubing. Just a surprise he hasn’t painted it a violently bright colour – but then, most of the colourful stuff is hidden away, isn’t it, and would only be revealed if Brian and his rig rolled on their back with their wheels in the air. I can feel those of a psychiatrist-like persuasion leaning forward with beady eyes at this point. Back to the cage.

‘Do you know’, says Brian, ‘that it takes 130 pumps on a hand pipe bender to get a 90-degree bend? I’ve done plenty of pumps! I used a Bridgeport miller to notch the tube out to get good close welds. And it’s not scaffolding tube, it’s the proper stuff – eight six-metre lengths went into this.

‘The cage is mounted on to the rock sliders in two places front and rear, and also mounted on to the front and rear winch bumpers. I’ve also made it so that it will come off with a little bit of effort, which makes it easier for painting and repairs to be carried out – at a later date no doubt.’

No doubt. And those winch bumpers actually hold a pair of winches. Each is a Winchmax 13,000lb job, and both winches are wound with Plasma rope. They’re wired into an Optima Red Top battery which also powers a variety of things including, via an inverter, a laptop. This runs Memory-Map, which in turn is connected to his Garmin Quest. Brian thinks that this system is ‘brill’, to quote his words, explaining: ‘I also have a hand-held for backup, and to save good places we have been and points of interest.’

Inside, amid the standard bucket seats and laptop, it’s all pretty spartan, which is just how Scotty likes it. ‘The interior is bare metal for easy cleaning. But it does make it a bit noisy on the road on the way to sites.’

Not that he’s complaining. ‘It’s really brill, people look at it when you drive past them or are beside them at the lights. It’s a real head turner and I wouldn’t change it a bit. I love it!’

HEAVY-DUTY STEERING, DIY ROCK SLIDERS, 90, DEFENDER, ARB AIR-LOCKERS, ADJUSTABLE PANHARD ROD, DIY ROLL CAGE, BF GOODRICH MUD-TERRAINS, WINCHMAX WINCH, OPTIMA RED-TOP