Elisfor Loses Her Head.

Lifting the roof. That's the conclusion we reached that we reckon will give us what we want. We retain all the advantages of the Defender as an "exploring off road" vehicle but gain the ability to live more comfortably inside.

The downside...the price. Nearly £8000 for the kit alone, and then it has to be fitted. This wouldn't normally pose a problem as our DIY skills are easily up to the job. The problem is manpower and suitable places to do the work. Mike built a small aeroplane in a garage once and could only get the completed fuselage out of the door by letting all the air out of the tyres....There's no chance of doing the work in our workshop-cum-garage and the muscle necessary to do the lifting we don't have. Then there's the fact that we'd be putting a lot more money into the vehicle that might not be justified given her age. A DIY build using sourced materials would be cheaper and easier to justify the cost. It would just take a long time.

This left us trying to work out how, if we made the investment, how we'd fit it all together. This is where LVB Overland come into the picture.

While researching the options I'd given them a call as they seemed to be the closest dealer to us. When I say close - a mere 420 miles - it gives you some idea of the logistics involved in obtaining anything more complex than a bag of sugar if you live this far north. Yes, they could supply an Alu-Cab roof but the lead time would be quite long as they're pretty much a "special order" item. They did have one in stock, though, but it was reserved for another client. If that deal didn't complete, would we be interested in it? We'd said we would and left it at that and heard nothing more for over a month.

So, while watching the rain beating on the windows and listening to Sue's coughing from her sick bed, I got a call from Larry at LVB. Did I remember our conversation? Yes, but had assumed it was now history. Not so! He had a roof but now no client - were we still interested? This was one of those "make your mind up" moments...Larry was clearly under some pressure and needed a decision, Sue and I hadn't discussed it in detail and we only had a vague idea of whether it would do all that we hoped and kind of favoured the DIY approach in slower time. With Larry still pressing for a deal, I said as much and with Sue being ill and not really able to concentrate on the question I had to say "sorry, wrong time". Larry suggested that a chat to one of his other customers might answer our questions, but we left it at that.
Not wanting to miss the chance I called the number he'd given me, not really expecting a response. I was lucky and got to speak to a lovely lady who was able to answer some of our questions and clearly loved her new roof. Hmmm...I made Sue another cup of tea and we had a chat...

Four weeks later, and this is what we have:

Fortunately we were able to co-ordinate the fitting with another planned visit "Down South" - Sue's graduation. If you've been following this blog for a while you'll know she's been studying for a MSc in Forensics and Criminology for what seems like an eternity; but the course is over, she passed with a Merit and we spent a couple of days in Leicester for the ceremony. 

This went well and Leicester is a fascinating city. The town centre that we paid a brief visit to is packed with interesting architecture and proper shops, unlike many "vanilla" city centres nowadays that seem to be clones of each other. Our celebration meal wasn't quite what we'd have chosen had we known the area a little better....the little family-run restaurant served great food, but we didn't realise until too late that a celebratory glass of alcohol was going to have to wait until later - the place didn't serve anything stronger than orange juice. Anyway, well done us...well, Mike helped with  some of the hard sums and emptied the waste paper baskets of half a forest-worth of rejected drafts!

We'd dropped the truck off at Doncaster and Larry loaned us a car for the trip to the University. Saturday morning saw us back at LVB...

Larry Butterworth outside his garage in Doncaster

Larry and his team had promised the job would be done, and they'd worked until 4-30 that morning to finish it. We arrived at 9-30 with no sign of anybody but Larry turned up a few minutes later having taken Elly to the car wash! How's that for service? The result is everything we'd hoped for: the engineering and finish is aircraft-quality, the amount of space it provides is nothing short of amazing and it makes such a difference to be able to stand up and stretch out. The extra room can be better used if we redesign (again!) Elly's back end so once we've finished the wiring and put some things back in that had to come out for the new roof, we'll get busy with the plywood once more.

There are quite a number of companies, mainly on the Continent, who provide bespoke campervan conversions of the Defender, and we'll draw some ideas from them. One of these is here and while we won't be spending that kind of money we'll have to produce something similar if we're going to do justice to the money already spent. Another solution, from France, is like this:

The old roof and headlining was sold via eBay prior to it being removed, and we dropped it off in Harrogate on the way home. Likewise the ladder extension that we found under a tree in Morocco. The Hannibal roof tent and Jumbo kit had been sold locally so, after all the dust had settled we managed to make up about 20% of the cost of the conversion. All we need now is a bigger garage door - with the added height of the Alu-Cab there's no chance of being able to work on Elly while staying out of the weather. Before, we could remove the rack and she'd just squeeze in, not so now. Given the difficulties of raising yet another roof - this one of tiles - I think it might be easier to build another one next to the one we have!