Hey all,
New owner of a D110 with explorer pack. Taking delivery in a week or two. I am not sure if I would have 'optioned in' the Explorer pack but I liked a lot about the car otherwise so I went with it. I searched the forums a bit but haven't been able to figure out two initial questions:
1. The dealer told me that the factory roof rack restricts the opening of the moon roof. Was kind of a bummer to hear this but ultimately not a deal breaker. Is this true?
2. They told me taking off the lunch box was no big deal. Now I understand will have exposed mounting points in the trim. BUT if you REMOVE the cargo box can you mount a factory ladder on the same side. using front two mount locations vs. rear two.

So sorry if this has been covered a million times. Just getting my head around what's easy to change vs. what I just might decide to live with. Really not a fan of the box.
Any advice, help, or straight up mocking appreciated.
Tim

 

Congrats!

Quick answers:

1 - There is no restriction to opening between the expedition rack and the normal glass panoramic roof (which is what most ppl have). Some people moan about how it's noisy, but others say it's not noisy. BUT - if by chance you optioned the (pretty cool) folding fabric roof / yes, there's some issue to be aware of. Chk out Post #14 here

2 - You can take off the lunchbox on the passenger side. It will leave holes (2) in the piece of trim. See 12:50 to 13:10 in this video - . But you could simply replace that long narrow piece of trim, which is easy, but may be annoying in that you have to have that trim painted to match the car.

You can indeed mount a ladder on the passenger side if you'd like, there's a way to do it. I watched a video about it online I believe last year when I was wondering the same thing... there are right mount and left mount ladders out there I believe. But you cannot mount the lunchbox on the drivers side (speaking "USA drivers side here") -- unsure if true - that the reason why the lunchbox is only allowed on passenger side is that there are stronger mounts/reinforcements in that area because of the rear side opening door hinges in that same area. Makes sense but I can't imagine really how much weight you could get in that thing, and have never read / seen JLR confirmation of this.

 

@nashvegas nailed the answers. But I should add a couple other thoughts.

1. I have both and the sunroof functions as designed. However the rack's cross rails are very wide and take up almost half of the view. Worst, the rack makes it very difficult to clean the glass so it's pretty funky up there anyway. I love the rack so if I did it again, I'd just not have ordered the sunroof. In my case I think it came with the trim, but I would have actually preferred not to have had it.

2. Doing the roof or lunch box install is not tough for a DIY. Maybe 2 on a scale of 1-5. Here's the link to Accessory instructions if you want to do a look see: Link. Two things to note. Before I installed things myself I went ahead and bought the little trim piece under the window (~$90/ea). Now I can replace to stock if I ever want to remove them. Also, I didn't know if I would F it up. I didn't and really didn't need to. Next up the two sides have different spacing of the two rivnuts. I think that the lunchbox and ladder have different spacing requirements. I'm not totally sure, but I'm reasonably confident. If I'm correct, you will need to install a rivnut on one side. PowerfulUk has a video on installing external molle plates that go over installing a rivnut. The 2 on the scale is in case you need to do this. Otherwise it's a 1. I vaguely remember that one side (forget which) has all three rivnuts already (for either the lunchbox or the ladder), but the other has only two. Depending on which way you want to go you would need to install it. You should watch the PowerfulUK Molle video as he covers it there. Here's the video: .

Good luck however you mod your Defender to meet your uses! You'll love it.

 

Question 1 has been answered. No impact whatsoever except for grime. The bars can be spaced more to allow light into panoramic roof if you wish.

Ladder can be mounted either side without modification. Lunch box on USA passenger side only (unless modification is done)

It's a dead easy DIY doing the rack and ladder

 

Hello, everyone,
there are always openings and riveting nuts on the side of the car for left- and right-hand drive with other holes. So the ladder cannot simply be placed from left to right and vice versa. In case you want to do that, you have to drill two appropriate holes with a given pitch. I also wanted to place the ladder by the left-hand car on the right-hand side so that I could use the left-hand fan awning, which, when opened, would cover the open rear door of the car, making the cargo area accessible comfortably even in the rain. On the left side, I wanted to put a lunch box on the stove and accessories that would be under the awning. Unfortunately, it can't be done without drilling, and I didn't want to drill into the new car. Maybe I will in time. So I put the marquise on the right side, and unfortunately the back door has to be circumvented outside the covered space by the awning.

 

Thanks so much -- that's what I thought. I am thinking that I unmount the lunch box and stick the ladder on that side. Hopefully the factory install has a clean hole -- which I might just plug with a grommet avoiding the headache of painting a new trim piece.
The other thing I am thinking is to just paint the new piece of trim matte black (or plati-kote) and call that done.

But thanks so much for confirming this to me -- got some pretty shaky information (although well intended) from the dealer.
Really appreciated.

 

It seems to me that if you want to do this, you are very likely to drill some holes into your Defender. Many have done it, many fear doing it. Depending on what you want to do, you are at least going to drill one set of holes in it. These are thru the trim below the windows. It is a long thin strip and easily removed. The above PowerfulUk video shows you how to do all that. If you want to know the best way to drill, here's another PowerfulUk video re: his "unscientific" results on different ways to do it: .

The second drilling is a lot more concerning for some folks. The above is guaranteed, these while not optional are actually conditional depending on what you want to do with what side. That is the drilling thru the body of the Defender to install the rivnuts. If the rivnut is done properly, you silicone it afterwards, and return the trim piece - you have minute chances of any weather issues. The closer you get to the Goonzquad motto of "OEM quality" the better off you are going to be. It's the SAME thing JLR does with the other four rivnuts. This is not something novel to the Defender. This is all covered in the Molle Plate video.

Good luck.

 

Thanks. Nothing like drilling into a $100k car with under 100 miles on it to get the heart going!
Appreciate the link here. Pretty confident I can go no drilling (other than an extra trim hole) by swapping out the lunch box and replacing with the ladder on the passenger side. Really appreciate the help - looking forward to learning more and contributing to the forum.
Tim

 

Hate to ask, but why would you want to remove the accessories? They’re bad ***. Add ladder to left side. Anyway it’s your truck. Just seems wasteful to remove. They’re all functional.

 

You raise a great point! And you have IMPECCABLE taste in color.
the side bag just seems a little useless and trying to hard. Short of some fish, muddy sneakers, or roadkill I'm not sure what I would put in it that couldn't get tossed in back.
I would use the ladder a lot and felt like it's less to be hanging off the side. This is going to be my DD for 5 out of 7 days.
But you may have just sold me on leaving the bag and adding the ladder!!
beautiful photos! Thanks!

P.S. sincerely interested in your use case for the lunch box?