Goof afternoon yall. I am new to the land rover world. I have a 1995 d90 and was going to build it out to be and overland vehicle.
I was wondering what are your opinions on the best modifications to make that really make your vehicle function the best in that space please?

 

The 90's biggest limitation for overlanding is the low volume of cargo capacity and the second is the low fuel capacity combined with poor fuel economy.

The small cargo capacity may be practical if you overland solo. Accommodating more people will make a roof rack an important modification unless you plan on using a trailer. My Land Rover has a 100" wheelbase and more capacity than a D90, but I still need a roof rack sometimes. I don't really care for the roof rack if it's not necessary. Mine is aluminum, but it still adds weight up high, adds wind resistance, noise, and generally encumbers the vehicle. So my advice is not to get one if you don't need one, but I suspect it will be necessary for any substantial overlanding in a 90.

Adding fuel capacity is difficult to do safely. If it's a gasoline engine, there are no safe ways to store extra fuel outside the tank. For God's sake, don't put gasoline on the roof rack. Putting it on the bumpers is what made the Ford Pinto the butt of jokes. Just don't do it. A fuel cell inside cargo area could work, but will consume already scarce capacity.

Sorting out the vehicle so that it is dependable is more important than modifications, and Land Rovers from this era need plenty of sorting. Provided you can depend on what's there prior to modification, you could consider some modifications that protect the vehicle from damage offroading or make recovery easier. The extent of these modifications should be guided by the hazards of the terrain you intend to traverse. More armor adds weight, impairs handling, and reduces cargo weight capacity.

Differential guards are advised because they don't add tremendous weight, the weight is very low, and they protect the lowest-hanging part of the vehicle. Their main drawback is they reduce the ground clearance under the differential even further.

Rocker panel protection sometimes called sliders or nerf bars are advisable in boulderous terrain, but the 90's short wheelbase makes them less necessary than on a 110 or JKU. You could forgo them unless you're certain you'll be rock crawling.

Bumpers protect the front and rear ends and can provide easily-accessible recovery points. Excessively heavy bumpers are like boat anchors on the far ends of the vehicle. I advise being conservative with the bumper design and your driving.

It's often desired to integrate a winch into the front bumper but this also adds weight, especially with a steel cable. Winching is probably not necessary when you have other vehicles to help with recovery. Just use a strap. If you travel as a single vehicle, a winch can be helpful, but it depends on the terrain to provide an anchor. Burying the spare tire might be done in sand, and there are portable winch anchors, but these methods are mostly impractical and you don't have room in the 90 for an anchor. You should consider forgoing the winch entirely, but if you do have one installed, choose a lightweight (low capacity) winch and use synthetic line. Don't go over 8000 pounds. Whether there are lighter winches on the market now, I don't know, but there may be some intended for SxS that are like 4 or 5 thousand pounds and those could save you some weight. A ****** block doubles your winch's capacity and weighs little, especially the plastic ones.

Hi-Lift jacks are a popular accessory, but I am skeptical of their practicality. I have one and am not likely to use it. It's very versatile -- it will do an amazing number of things, but all poorly. I store mine under the back seat (not on the roof rack!) and not outboard the bumpers. I'm contemplating leaving it behind. On a lighter, smaller vehicle like the D90, it's very doubtful I would carry one.

I'll write more about modifications in a later post.

 

An offroad vehicle's traction is greatly improved by the reduction of the air pressure in the tires. Airing-down adds traction by grealy increasing the size of the contact patches. Tires cannot be driven at high speeds with low pressures or they will overheat and the tire will be quickly destroyed. Therefore airing-up is also necessary and requires an air compressor. The most convenient systems are central tire inflation systems (CTIS), but it is impractical to modify the design of the Land Rover's hubs to allow for the air lines. Instead, it's most practical to simply get out of the vehicle and air-up or down as required. Staun deflators make air-down convenient but are a costly solution to a simple problem. Personally, I just pull the valve cores to deflate the tires to 12 to 15 psi and re-insert them. To air-up, a portable compressor can be used or it can be mounted on the vehicle. I initially bought a portable compressor. I was vexed by an inability to find a location of an onboard air tank. Then I realized that I could mount my portable compressor on the vehicle without a tank. I plumbed a hose to a convenient place and now instead of taking the whole apparatus out of a bag and setting it up, I simply pull a hose from where it is stowed and flip a switch on to pump the tires up. I had been convinced that onboard air would work best with a mounted tank, but now I realize that a small tank is not likely to fill all my tires and after it is empty, the pump would have to work to fill both the tires and the empty tank. While neither of us are likely to find room for a tank, what's better than a tank is a second compressor to fill tires twice as fast. The fastest method is a CO2 or Nitrogen tank. The cost of refills depens on how often you air up. I like my onboard air and my single modestly-priced pump fills up my 33's in 15 minutes or less.

Modifying the drivetrain may be advisable if you have the budget. The Rover axles are an excellent design. They're brilliant. Unlike the Jeeps that need the poor stock axles swapped out, the Rover's leave nothing to be desired. They do accumulate wear though. The steel axle shafts will get twisted whenever the torque exceeds their elastic deformation limit. As this happens repeatedly over the life of the axle shafts, they will eventually break. To ensure dependable service, they should be replaced with ones that are not worn. They can be replaced with chromoly axles that have a higher elastic limit, but this would be most advisable for a vehicle with substantially larger-than-stock tire size. The stock axle shafts are strong enough provided they're not fatigued. Offroad on fartigued shafts, and they'll break and give a poor impression of these great axles.

The Defender came from the factory with open axle differentials. This is quite suitable for overlanding. For more aggressive offroading or if your budget allows, locking or limited slip differentials will provide more traction in challenging terrain and conditions. The Detroit is an "unlocker." It's normally locked and is suppose to automatically unlock in turns. It's known to unlock abruptly and will put stress on axleshafts when driving on the street. If those shafts are fatigued, they'll break and the Detroit will also break. It's best used for vehicles driven mostly offroad and with chromoly axles. Since it's locked whenever it's not necessary to be unlocked, it provides unbeatable traction, giving locked performance even when the driver has not realized the need to select it. Selectable lockers are activated by air or electric solenoids. Air-actuated lockers for the Rover axle are available from ARB and Ashcroft. They're activated by buttons. The limited slip differentials available for the Rover axles are Detroit TrueTrac and Ashcroft ATB. These are not clutch-type limited slips (like Posi) but they use helical gears. They're automatic, full-time, but they won't lock the axle when the traction has extreme bias (like one wheel in the air). When there is extreme traction bias, they can be helped with application of the wheel brakes. Rather than lockers, I recommend the TrueTrac or Ashcroft ATB for an overlanding vehicle but they could be an unnecessary expense depending on the difficulty of the terrain expected. The air lockers are a good design, but the ARB is substantially more expensive for a benefit that is doubtful for an overlander. The Ashcroft look more affordable. While Ashcroft is reputable, the ARB have been around a lot longer and have been proven in many applications besides Rovers.

When you add weight to the Land Rover, it would seem advisable to change the springs out for ones with a higher rate. I would caution that many aftermarket springs are specified for inches of lift and sold to people trying to lift the vehicle to fit larger tires for vanity. The spring rates are often too high and while they may result in vehicle loaded for overland travel looking good, they will be oversprung. Your loaded vehicle should be riding with the springs compressed, not topped-out. Topped-out springs allow the fitment of bigger tires, but it's a stupid modification. Even if you occasionally load the D90 to 6000 pounds, it ought to be sagging when you do so. It shouldn't be bottomed-out and it shouldn't bottom out on the smallest bumps, but when you hit a bump hard, it should be on the bump stops. I don't have D90-specific tech on spring rates, so I can't help there.

You want to control your load with shocks not springs. The springs should just hold it up. The control should come from the shocks and not excessive spring rate. The best bet is to get owner-rebuildable shocks and learn to revalve them. If you're willing to revalve them 6 or 7 times, or maybe more if you take some time to learn the process, you can find a good shim stack. Most people don't have the patience and commitment to that. I don't know else what to recommend. The springs tend to come with too high rate, and then the shocks commonly sold do not have near enough rebound damping to control those springs. If it were a popular late model vehicle, you could probably find a high-end shock kit for it. Raptor trucks and broncos, TRX, Jeeps have some great suspension options. With 30 year old Land Rover's, you're pretty much on your own to take the aftermarket components from King, Fox, Bilstein and work it out. Most people just buy OME or Terrafirma -- they're garbage, but probably not unsuited to a typical Rover build.

A good modification is a coilover conversion. It will take fabrication. It's not a bolt-on option. Whether it's worth it for an overland vehicle is up to you. It's probably not popular with overlanders because the cost is high for the benefit, but once accomplished, it would be a very simple matter to fit good components (springs and dampers). It wouldn't do anything to help the D90's limited cargo capacity though, and that is a greater liability for an overlander than the shortcomings of the stock suspension.

I suspect that many people offroading a Land Rover remove or disconnect the sway bars. There are aftermarket sway bar kits that allow for good corner control and disconnection when offoad. I suggest the X-Deflex. It would definitely make sense for a loaded overlander that is driving a lot on the roads.

The last mod I'll mention is rollover protection, a cage, and to what degree that can provide better occupant safety than a 1995 model, I don't know. Did the '95 D90 come with SRS airbags? That was the first year for the RR. If I was doing a lot of overlanding in any vehicle, I'd want some protection better than the standards of those days. I don't have a simple solution. I had previously thought that a cage and harness would work, but those are designed to work with the driver held against the seatback, requiring and ASB, a helmet and neck restraint to work as intended. We might imagine an overlander being driven in the outback with no traffic and the biggest risk is hitting an errant giraffe. But that's fantasy. Reality is that we most often have to pass hundreds of miles and many hours of roads filled with traffic that includes drunks putting on their makeup and looking at their phone.