Jeff's Defender

The garage finished painting the chassis and started working on the front grill/bumper/skid plate.    The front and rear bumpers/grills are "homemade", so the garage worked on smoothing the welds, seams, and primed them.  Also removed the sidesteps, they will be replaced with a running board. When I bought the Defender, it had a lot of backyard mechanic work holding it together.  Very close to being held together with duct tape and wire...  nails replacing pins, water replacing some fluids, the emergency break cable was broke and held together with a "U" bolt... not very safe and broke on me as we couldn't tell it was held together with a U bolt.  Luckily the break was in an unsafe spot...  The coils had been heated and stretched to give the Defender a "raised" appearance.  The shocks were welded extended to compensate for the stretched coils...  Lots of fun. Latest picks below:

Once we reached Costa Rica and saw the availability of Defenders, I started researching how to get one home... long story short:  25 years old, original chassis, VINs, and engine (or an engine from that model year).  I looked for a year, Abby found it for me, thank you... Below are the first photos I had of it: This is one of it setting at my house. This is when I had the tires and brakes replaced. I'll add more photos and keep y'all up to date.

So, now that we have the Defender running, I put it in the "shop" for the cosmetic restoration.  New paint, fix the rust and scrapes, restore the seats, new lights, clean up the bumpers, new tint, add features to the cargo area...  We will see what else I can afford.  First step is they are scraping, repairing and painting the chassis.  The ETA for completion is Christmas.  The tire will be removed from the hood and runners along the side to replace the individual folding steps.  Going to have it painted Keswick Green. The goal is for it to look similar to this: I hope we can get it close...

I've wanted a Land Rover Defender for a long time... Finally bought one in April and have been restoring it the last few months.  The plan is to bring it home with me next summer... This is it, a 1995 Land Rover 110 300TDi...  Took a team effort, but we got it running well.  This is on it's trip to the garage when the alternator died...  So far, I've replaced all the brakes, tires, shocks, coils, rear differential, alternator, manifold, turbo, new battery...  lot of seals, belts, and hoses.