The Disco: Intro

So I thought I'd take the time to talk about my vehicle/ongoing project/expedition rig.

Basically stock, with just bigger tires

At first, I was in the same camp as the majority of Montana offroaders. I had a big pickup truck on 35's with  a mean engine I built myself. I had fun with that... for awhile. Then the logistics of the vehicle hit me in full as I started wanting to do overland travel.

• It was horribly unreliable. Once I even broke down about fifty yards from my driveway. 
• It was a gas-guzzling pig, struggling at the best of times to get over 6 mpg.
• There was no space for people, being only a single cab pickup.
• There was no interior space for cargo, although this could have been rectified by adding a topper.
• The ride was awful.
• The suspension flex was terrible.

So, I started looking for something that was more practical. I had always liked that safari style look that I now know is called overland. So I wanted something like that. At first, I wanted something like a Nissan Frontier or Xterra, or maybe a Toyota Tacoma or Land Cruiser, but I soon saw some problems with them. Xterras and Frontiers are plentiful, and the prices aren't too bad, but they're much too small to be all that useful. A Frontier would have been the better option there, but the options near me were a little sparse. And again, they're too small. A Toyota Tacoma or Toyota Land Cruiser would have been even better, and they're not hard to find, but the price was a little excessive. My main focus, though, was a Land Rover. I knew they had a few reliability concerns, but I'm not afraid to work on things myself, and after some research, I found that those reliability problems were mostly over-inflated. To me, the quintessential "safari" vehicle was a Land Rover. My favorite was, and is, the Land Rover Discovery. And it has a lot going for it. 

• Their offroad prowess is undeniable.
• On the road, they're very comfortable. 
• They have a stylish look that looks good and at home anywhere. 
• They have short wheelbases. 
• They sport solid axle, coil sprung suspensions that are tough and flexible offroad. 

So the Discovery makes a great overland rig. A buddy found a crackin' 2001 Disco II with 100,000 miles on it for a reasonable price. And, as a plus, it's the top of the line SE7 trim, which has real leather heated seats, two sunroofs (yes, two), the factory rear air suspension, seven seats, as well as some other nice creature comforts. It was driven by a woman who took very good care of it and babied it for most of its life. So I bought it. That was a great decision, as I now have a good platform for an expedition rig. So the next step was to set about modifying it.

Being an overland rig, it has some unique needs, which I broke down into five categories:

1. Off road suspension.
2. Traction.
3. Protection.
4. Storage.
5. Expedition gear.

Most of these will get tackled in a rather haphazard manner, because that just seems to be the way I do things. =)