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I'm super intrigued by this -- almost surely over my (non oil-changing) level by far, but would still be interested in more info on it. Is it something that is

I'm super intrigued by this -- almost surely over my (non oil-changing) level by far, but would still be interested in more info on it. Is it something that is advertised by the shop? In what location (or region) was this? What was the expectation in terms of timeframe, and how many hours were you typically putting into the project in any given week? If you're comfortable, shop info/specifics would be great but no worries if not. Awesome outcome BTW, and is something you can be very proud of and continually enjoy -- love it!

swozey 9y ago
I'm not Op but I'll bet that this was probably a shop run by an owner big in the Land Rover/offroading community. Working on Land Rovers is probably his favorite hobby and he can cut breaks for people that will probably get into the community more. The offroading community is huge and tight knit.
- chrissnell 9y ago
  In my case, the shop was still very new and the owner wanted to get into restorations (he was in the parts biz). After my project, he took on a few more owner-builds but now primarily focuses on doing resto jobs himself for his customers.
chrissnell 9y ago
The build was done at Defenders Northwest [1] in Gig Harbor, WA. I was fortunate to live in Tacoma at the time, just across the bridge, which made the process easier. It took eight full weekends to get the truck on the road and back to my house. That's an 8 or 9AM start on Saturday and Sunday, working until 5 or 6PM. It was done over a PNW winter and there were lots of days spent out in the rain, as you can see in some of my pics on the previous post. Tough work but so worth it. Once the truck was rolling, I took it back to my house to finish up the non-essential things, like wiring up the speedometer and aftermarket things like my winch and bumper. There were a bunch of little things that needed to be solved and the last 5% of the build took at least 50% of the time, mostly due to having to air-freight less common parts from the U.K. Defenders Northwest is owned by Brian Hall and he's a great guy to work with. However, if you're seriously interested in Defenders, take some time to do the basic research on your own before calling a builder. I run one of the big Defender forums, NAS-ROW (NAS being "North American Spec" and ROW, "Rest-of-World" spec). https://nas-row.com https://nas-row.com - lots of info there. [1] https://www.defendersnorthwest.com/ https://www.defendersnorthwest.com/

swozey 9y ago

I'm not Op but I'll bet that this was probably a shop run by an owner big in the Land Rover/offroading community. Working on Land Rovers is probably his favorite hobby and he can cut breaks for people that will probably get into the community more. The offroading community is huge and tight knit.

chrissnell 9y ago
In my case, the shop was still very new and the owner wanted to get into restorations (he was in the parts biz). After my project, he took on a few more owner-builds but now primarily focuses on doing resto jobs himself for his customers.

chrissnell 9y ago

The build was done at Defenders Northwest [1] in Gig Harbor, WA. I was fortunate to live in Tacoma at the time, just across the bridge, which made the process easier. It took eight full weekends to get the truck on the road and back to my house. That's an 8 or 9AM start on Saturday and Sunday, working until 5 or 6PM. It was done over a PNW winter and there were lots of days spent out in the rain, as you can see in some of my pics on the previous post. Tough work but so worth it. Once the truck was rolling, I took it back to my house to finish up the non-essential things, like wiring up the speedometer and aftermarket things like my winch and bumper. There were a bunch of little things that needed to be solved and the last 5% of the build took at least 50% of the time, mostly due to having to air-freight less common parts from the U.K. Defenders Northwest is owned by Brian Hall and he's a great guy to work with. However, if you're seriously interested in Defenders, take some time to do the basic research on your own before calling a builder. I run one of the big Defender forums, NAS-ROW (NAS being "North American Spec" and ROW, "Rest-of-World" spec). https://nas-row.com https://nas-row.com - lots of info there. [1] https://www.defendersnorthwest.com/ https://www.defendersnorthwest.com/