Land Rover Perentie in the shed

• Part 1: Tour of Duty
• Part 2: Catching the Perentie bug
• Part 3: Improving the formula
• Part 4: Moreton bash
• Part 5: Oily Morning Coffee
• Part 6: Virus Escapee
• Part 7: 1976 LC FJ40 joins in at Moreton Island
• Part 8: Decisions, decisions

Part 1: Tour of duty

So I bought a Perentie. It’s all Robbie Emmins’ fault. If I hadn’t taken his 1956 Series 1 for a drive a while back, the Land Rover flame may not have been rekindled.

The Perentie 4x4 is actually a Defender 110 built in Sydney for the ADF. In soft-top form it’s a rough, tough, noisy, flapping tent on wheels that has all the ergonomic comfort of sitting in a hay shed during a hailstorm. They’ll happily sit on 100km/h all day long, but the sensation is similar to being in a low-flying crop duster.

However, the Perentie is quite possibly the most capable Land Rover ever built, and best of all they’re also part of Australian manufacturing history. And, for the beach bums out there, they sit on a galvanised chassis.

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I’d been watching the Australian Frontline Machinery auctions on Grays Online, and the prices seemed to have stabilised somewhat. There were, after all, only 2500 Perentie 4x4s made and roughly 600 6x6 variants. As the clock ticked down on the auctions in Darwin and Sydney I couldn’t help myself and threw in a bid, and then another, and then got completely caught up in the hype.

The Minto NSW auctions make the most sense for east coast buyers. These vehicles come with a NSW blue slip ready for rego, and it’s an easier location to inspect the goods beforehand. As a result, these trucks always go for more dough.

I, however, did things completely arse about, and bought one for substantially less in Darwin, sight unseen – which, of course, you should never do. I then decided to do something even more inadvisable, I decided drive it back to Brisbane across the heart of the outback to give us some bonding time.

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I checked over the new purchase on arrival. It was cosmetically a little shabby; sitting around in the tropics had weathered a few bits and pieces. But the 66kW/245Nm 3.9-litre Isuzu diesel coughed into life with no dramas. The coolant was where the coolant should be and so was the oil. I checked for anything that may be loose, threw my swag in the back and then hit the road south.

Perenties use a four-speed LT95A transmission and the gear ratios are quite tall, which is good for highway driving. They have a reputation for eating clutches if driven unsympathetically, though. Front and rear diffs are Salisbury and Rover.

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4x4 models are naturally aspirated, but the 6x6 variants are turbocharged. That said, the unstressed Isuzu donk took the drive in its stride. I was even able to pass a triple road train or two. I was tempted to divert via the Savannah Way, but figured I was pushing my luck as it was.

On road these Landies handle like a bowl of porridge, but Perenties came standard with a 2.5-inch lift (over a standard Defender) and sit on coils all round, so show it a bit of dirt and it’s immediately at home.

The trip wasn’t entirely without incident as I had some lighting issues, so I had to drive mainly through the daylight hours – the wiring is a dog’s breakfast. It would also occasionally jump out of high-range, but some zip-tie engineering got me home.

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I may now be a little deafer, but I’ve well and truly succumbed to the Peretie bug. Now it’s time to get it ready for rego and perhaps the addition of a turbo. Let the fun begin.

DATE ACQUIRED: February 2017
PRICE: $7700
TOTAL KILOMETRES: 97,368km
KM THIS MONTH: 3609km
AVERAGE FUEL USE: 11.7L/100km 

Part 2: Catching the Perentie bug

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I’m afraid Perentie fever has well and truly taken hold.

That’s the thing about these Landies: they’re basically a big Meccano set that invites you to pull stuff off, bolt stuff on, and generally tinker with it. After the big shakedown trip from Darwin to Brisbane (June, 2017), it was time to get the old bucket of bolts roadworthy.

I tackled the obvious stuff: keyed ignition, light switches, wiper rubbers and shock absorber rubbers. The only issue that was presenting a real challenge was the intermittent jumping out of high range. And while I’m loath to treat specialist businesses as a free information resource, I finally bit the bullet and had a yarn with Brad at KLR in Sydney – these guys specialise in Perenties and really know their stuff.

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I was changing the oil in the transfer case anyway so, while I was at it, I removed the locking plate on the main gear cluster shaft. Sure enough, there was some play in the shaft, so I nipped it up, put the plate back on, and the issue was solved. While I was at it, I changed all fluids and filters to ensure all moving parts were happy and healthy.

So, with a Queensland safety certificate in my hand, the Landy was soon wearing a set of shiny new number plates. It became clear after a camping trip to North Stradbroke Island that the military rubber had to go.

While the stiff army-spec run-flat Michelins will probably last forever, they are crap on sand and there’s very little bag to be had from dropping tyre pressures. Plus, being on tubed rims meant sand was getting between the sidewall and the tube, making annoying little pinhole punctures.

So a set of 16x8-inch steelies soon came my way, and I opted to shod them in 265/75R16 Mickey Thompson ATZs. A review set of Narva 215 LED spotties also landed on the Perentie’s snout, but some mounting tabs needed to be fabricated to get them into the right place, which wasn’t an issue.

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My attraction to the Perentie is based on it being a tough and reliable beast rather than any passion for military history, so the camo canvas top got the flick as well as a lot of the supporting bar work. Long-term plans are to ditch the camo paint job as well, but that will be a while down the track.

The 4BD1 Isuzu engine may be a bulletproof powerplant with a very usable torque curve, but it’s a pretty agricultural thing. It’s loud and lacking finesse, and the torsional stresses it creates means it’s essentially trying to destroy the rest of the vehicle.

New engine mounts are on the shopping list. On the other side the coin, the engine is pretty simple and easy to work on. I realise the Moab crawler meets Land Rover look I’ve gone for may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it makes for a pretty awesome beach buggy. Mechanical upgrades are sometime down the track, but in the meantime I’ll keep on grinning every time I head out. Even if I do end up with bugs in my teeth.

Part 3: Improving the formula

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As you stare at an invoice with lots of numbers and dollar signs on it you may find yourself asking ‘why’? As I was handing over a fair whack of my hard-earned recently, it occurred to me that there are probably much cheaper hobbies than farting around with old Land Rovers … pinning butterflies to bits of cardboard, for example.

The ‘why’ is most likely down to a childhood spent rattling around the family farm in my mum’s Suzuki LJ60, a bare-bones live-axle four-wheel drive that sounded like a thousand angry lawnmowers and had all the creature comforts of a sliced-open 44-gallon drum.

That bloody thing went everywhere, albeit trailing a stream of blue two-stroke smoke from an exhaust mounted on the front bumper. Mum shed more than a couple of tears when time and tin-worm saw it pass into other hands.

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So now, I find myself embarking on the financially questionable journey of improving my Land Rover Defender 110 Perentie, code-named Project AWOL.

To date, I’ve been content to spin my own spanners getting the old girl into shape, but, for the sake of my neighbours (due to intermittent garage profanity), I elected to farm out the installation of a turbo kit and power steering to someone with much more expertise and patience than I seem to possess.

After dedicating valuable office time to scouring internet forums, I now know the correct colour code for a SWB Land Rover Series III Game. However, I was none the wiser on the best way to extract some usable, reliable grunt from the 3.9-litre Isuzu 4BD1 engine. So I had a chat with Brad at KLR Automotive in Sydney. These guys know Perenties inside and out and have put together a reliable yet rewarding turbo kit for the Isuzu donk.

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In naturally aspirated form this engine is only good for about 66 lazy kilowatts. The addition of a non-intercooled, relatively low-boost turbo is said to effectively double that output. The turbo in question is a Garrett GT22, and it manages to produce boost pretty much just off idle, which comes in handy in those mucky situations we find ourselves in away from the blacktop.

I then got onto Landy specialists MR Automotive in Redcliffe to see if they could handle the heavy lifting on my behalf. I was already using these guys as my go-to for parts, but they have a loyal following among Landy aficionados for mechanical work as well. The kit arrived complete with a crossover pipe, headers, etc.

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The old-school truckie in me couldn’t resist also getting an EGT gauge and tacho installed at the same time. The EGT ended up being an easier ask than the tacho, as the Perentie’s alternator lacks a W wire to transmit rpm to a tacho. I persisted!

Anyway, it also gave me an excuse to get a leak on the alternator-mounted vacuum pump fixed, which also turned out to be the reason why I was having issues getting the centre diff to lock. All this disruption to engine-bay plumbing required a new exhaust system, so a new 2.5-inch exhaust system was also installed.

And then we reach the point many car nuts reach: where to stop? And in the case of the Perentie, what is the weakest link with the gain in power? The answer to that question is, without a doubt, the clutch. The standard clutch is barely adequate at the best of times, so I opted to go for a heavy-duty clutch while I was at it.

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After a long week of unbearable anticipation, the day finally arrived to pick up my revamped rig. It was a revelation. As the 4BD1 is essentially a truck engine it has a long, flat torque curve from about 1000rpm, but take the revs above 2200rpm and you’ve pretty much run out of torque. That’s why the Isuzu engine doesn’t really need a very big turbo or a gutful of boost.

If you’re wringing the revs out to 3000rpm to get boost you’re not getting the benefit of the windmill where you need it the most. Not only that, you’re also thrashing it.

With just 15psi of blow and the addition of Isuzu power steering, my camo-clad 110 is in serious danger of becoming almost zippy. It has transformed the Landy to a usable and fun off-road animal.

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I just can’t stop smiling when I drive it. The turbo has even quietened the engine to the point where an actual conversation is possible at speed. Not only that, it also manages to elicit an off-idle whistle that is reminiscent of an old 14-litre BC3 Cummins truck engine… it doesn’t take much to make me smile.

With all this new-found power and aural satisfaction, I’ve decided to head to Moreton Island for an extended weekend – the perfect environment to put my newly boosted Perentie to the test. That said, in the back of my mind I am wondering if this newly minted turbo powerplant will cause issues with the rest of the truck. Stay tuned, more money may be required… stuff may break.

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TOTAL KILOMETRES: 104,140km
KM THIS MONTH: N/A
AVERAGE FUEL USE: N/A 

Part 4: Moreton bash

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The long-time Moreton Island resident squinted at my Perentie as it sat in the sand outside the general store at Bulwer. “I suppose if you’re going to get stuck on Moreton with a two-wheel drive, a Land Rover is the one you want.”

As John trundled away in his weather-beaten Disco 2, I thought he was probably right, as my maiden off-road voyage post turbocharger, clutch and power steering upgrade wasn’t exactly going to plan.

A few days on Moreton Island had seemed like the perfect way to play with the newly upgraded Perentie. Plus, it had been too long since I’d ventured across the bay to one of my favourite weekend getaway destinations.

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It’s hard to be in a bad mood as the ferry churns its way to the island – wind in the place where my hair used to be, a fresh espresso in hand and the glowing beaches of Moreton just peeking over the horizon. The warning signs on what was about to come should’ve been there, in hindsight, of course, but I was feeling way too cocky about the Landy’s capabilities.

After dumping our gear at Cowan Cowan I was pretty keen to explore the island, so we trundled down the beach towards the middle road that traverses the island, with the aim of running down the ocean beach to Karingal.

However, things didn’t exactly go according to plan. Warm weather and a long weekend for Queenslanders meant the sand was soft and badly churned up along the middle road. More than a couple of stock fourbies had given up and headed back to the beach; but not me, I was driving a Land Rover, after all.

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As the going got tough I kept my foot planted to maintain as much momentum as I could muster, but the Landy started to bog down and then there was a cracking sound from the front end. I stopped. I may have even used a couple of bad words.

After crawling around in the sand to check if there was anything obvious, I tried to gently move. With the centre diff lock in, I had two-wheel drive; without the centre diff lock, I had no drive. It was pretty clear I’d snapped a front axle; there was the even worse possibility that I’d blown the front diff, but I figured that would be pretty unlikely for a Perentie.

Luckily, a well-kitted Triton soon idled up behind me. I explained my predicament and old mate kindly offered to tow me back down to the beach ... not the most dignified of journeys.

I should’ve expected a development like this. After all, I’d just increased the power output of the Isuzu mill by a large margin, and if there was a slight weakness in the driveline somewhere, churning through the sand was going to find it.

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So while I sat under a tree contemplating what the next four days of two-wheel driving was going to look like for me, I thought I’d call ahead and book the Perentie in for an axle upgrade ASAP. The guys from MR Automotive were going to get another visit when I made it back to the mainland.

While its off-road capability may have been limited, I still managed to tackle the beach at low tide to get to Bulwer for supplies. In fact, the Landy did quite well as a 2WD; although, getting off the beach required a fair pace. I also managed to shred my Treds when I did get stuck; it’s safe to say that I’ll be replacing them with a different brand of recovery track.

After limping home and delivering it to MR Automotive, we discovered the front right-hand axle had indeed busted. So I bit the bullet and opted to replace both front axles with heavier duty Maxi-Drive items, as well as convert the hubs to oil bath. I know there are different schools of thought on greased bearing versus oil bath, but I’m definitely in the oil bath camp ... maybe it’s the truckie in me.

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Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to head bush since picking the old beast up from the shop, however that doesn’t mean I haven’t been driving my camo-clad wheels around with a stupid grin on my moosh. It’s brilliant.

However, I have a trip to Fraser Island planned in the next couple of months, and this trip better be hassle-free as I’m heading up with a mate of mine and his Jeep Wrangler. If anything breaks on the Landy, I’ll never hear the end of it.

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TOTAL KILOMETRES: 104,610km
KM THIS MONTH: N/A
AVERAGE FUEL USE: N/A 

Part 5: Oily morning coffee

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Caffeine is the capital letter, comma and full stop to my daily grind. At risk of sounding like a complete tosser, I even go bush with freshly ground coffee and a pneumatic espresso machine. So it’s kind of fitting that coffee was involved in the diagnosis of my latest Land Rover ailment.

A rarely touted feature of the Land Rover Perentie is the Steyr rifle butt cutouts between the front seats. They actually make excellent coffee cup holders as they are deep enough to stop lateral movement as well as being angled back to prevent my freshly brewed latte from pitching forward into the footwell.

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After finding the lower half of my morning-commute coffee soaked in transmission fluid while winding my way to work, it became immediately clear that I needed a new rear output shaft seal. You see, the rifle butt cutouts have little drain holes; so while the Perentie’s handbrake drum had filled with transmission fluid which was now being sprayed around the underside of Landy in a fine mist as the tailshaft rotated, this fluid was now seeping up through the drain holes and consequently desecrating my morning brew.

Cue Land Rover oil-leak jokes…

I considered tackling this job myself, except a couple of factors came into play. One, my tool kit is pretty much made up of the kind of cheap crappy tools that have a habit of rounding off/and or splitting when used in a harsh manner. Second, this truck spends a lot of time at the beach, and even with a lot of diligent Lanotec-ing, stuff underneath has a habit of rusting into place. Those two factors alone would’ve probably seen me with broken knuckles and buggered spanners.

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So back out to MR Automotive at Redcliffe my Landy went. And while I was at it, I thought I’d complete the Maxidrive axle upgrade process I’d started last year. The fact that I’ve been wrestling with some wiring issues and currently had no windscreen wipers or headlights didn’t rate a thought. You can’t put 35-inch tyres on wiper arms! It’s a matter of priorities.

The wiper and wiring issues are most likely a result of me taking the truck for an unplanned dunk in a lagoon on Moreton Island last year. The resulting bow wave rolled up the windscreen, through the bulkhead vents and saw my wife and I driving down the beach with both doors open to drain out the gallons of brackish swamp water and reeds. Yep, she’s a keeper. The wiper motor is probably now a solid block of rust.

I thought my headlight issue was a burnt-out light switch, but once replaced I still had no low-beam lights. I have a long and not-so-proud history of throwing parts at problems before being forced to use my noggin. I may have to dig out the multimeter on this one.

But, hey, I’ve now got heavy-duty axles front and rear along with heavy=-duty drive flanges and oil bath hubs all ’round. And the plan is to eventually go for 35s because … well, just because.

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The 31-inch Mickey Thompson MTZ P3s the Perentie is currently sitting on are wearing pretty well and are a great choice for beach driving, though for an all-terrain they do have a definite off-road bias (noise, on-road traction etc.). They suit me down to the ground, so the new shoes may be a while off yet.

I’ve now got to get my butt into gear and fix all the small stuff, as we’ve got a trip planned. Busted knuckles ahead.

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TOTAL KILOMETRES: 110,694km
KM THIS MONTH: 720km
AVERAGE FUEL USE: N/A

Part 6: Virus escapee

Some people should not be allowed to have the internet.

There’s the usual crowd of 5G-contrail, COVID-is-a-conspiracy-tinfoil-hat-wearing-types who lurk in the darker recesses of your favourite social media community. And then there’s me who should not be allowed to buy cheap, crappy automotive electrical products online.

I’m sure I’m not alone when I say the recent lockdown posed an opportunity to catch up on some garage jobs; in my case, the niggling and, for the most part, self-inflicted electrical woes that were plaguing my Perentie. I was missing a RHS park light, main beam lights and wipers, and it had an intermittent indicator fault.

Then there was the fact I’d mixed up cheap, crappy LED products with old-school filament globes. I’d also added relays and lots of nice, new wiring harnesses to power the Narva 255s and the Big Red light bar on the snout of the Landy. But all that nice, new wiring still had to get its energy from the old dodgy Lucas wiring that powers the rest of the car. I’d like to be able to tell you I completely rewired the Perentie to ensure maximum reliability, but I didn’t; I just fixed stuff, and patched where needed.

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The park light was easy, a plug had just dropped out. The main beam headlights turned out to be a broken wire behind the fuse box. The wipers ended up being a bad earth where it joins the firewall.

However, I did take the opportunity to add some quality electrical components such as a set of Narva LED combination stop, tail, indicator light clusters. Which, luckily enough, just pretty much bolted on in place of the old clusters. Of course, adding so much LED into an old truck like this was always going to send the indicators haywire, so I stuck an 8ohm resistor into the circuit at the rear.

Being in Queensland during lockdown I didn’t have a great deal to whinge about, but after being in Stage 3 for a few weeks I was pretty quick to plan a weekend trip to Fraser Island as soon as I legally could.

The national park day-pass allocation system in place to ostensibly avoid creating COVID crowds at popular tourist spots meant that Fraser was the quietest I’d ever seen it (this was before the June school holidays). I was torn between feeling bad that so many tourist operators and local businesses were struggling in the absence of international tourists, and unbridled joy at not having to share the beaches with thundering convoys of 4x4 buses.

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As we’d stayed overnight at Rainbow Beach, we had just planned a quick day trip. Although we’d been to Fraser a few times, I’d never taken my wife to see the turtles at Lake Allom. Seemed that maybe a few cute, little turtles bobbing around a lake in the middle of a rainforest on the world’s largest sand island was not a bad way to block out the outside world for a bit.

And sure enough, we had the lake and the turtles to ourselves. I’m not sure how long we just sat there on the edge of the lake with the silence only broken by bird calls and the plop of Krefft’s river turtles surfacing for a gawk. But after the movement restrictions I couldn’t think of anywhere else I wanted to be right there and then.

On the run back down the beach towards the ferry (and grown-up responsibilities), it started to rain, then my wipers stopped working again.

So, parked outside the Eurong Bakery, I pulled the left-hand corner of the dash out to expose the wiper motor and the resulting earth plug that had dropped off … again. I tried to squidge the connector up a bit tighter which then broke it. Which meant I had to jerry it up with a spare connector, which worked.

It’s not often that you find yourself on the Bruce Highway feeling good about life, but that flying post-iso trip had me smiling all the way home, that is until the indicators stopped working … again.

TOTAL KILOMETRES: 116,240km
KM THIS MONTH: 600km
AVERAGE FUEL USE: 11.3L/100km 

Part 7: FJ40 joins in at Moreton

“AAARGH! I just landed on my nuts!”

The eldest had one hand clinging grimly to the Jesus bar of my FJ40 and the other clinging grimly to his nether regions. And that pretty much sums up off-roading in a classic, leaf-sprung, short-wheelbase 4x4. Regardless of testicular discomfort elsewhere in the Toyota, I was having a ball.

The loaded FJ was pitching and bucking its way through the soft Moreton Island sand with admirable aplomb. The ride for anyone not actually holding onto a steering wheel was admittedly pretty rough, though.

The idea for some time on Moreton had been brewing for a while. The only issue was we had three young adults to transport and the maximum seating capacity of my Cruiser was three and my Perentie two. So we decided to take both cars.

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I was two-parts thrilled and part-terrified of taking my precious FJ to Moreton – thrilled to get it dirty, terrified of damaging it. I Lanotec’ed the crap out of it to reduce the impact of the salty environment on the chassis and panels of the Cruiser.

The other issue was fuel efficiency, or lack thereof in regard to the 2F petrol powerplant. That little under-seat fuel tank was not going to be enough to last a couple of weeks on a sand island with no servo.

I decided I would try using a 200-litre fuel bladder rather than jerry cans, as it seemed like quite an efficient way of carrying a lot of fuel. I figured I could carry this in the Perentie and use it to fuel the Cruiser.

My wife loves the Rover, but in the weeks before departing I decided to catch up on a couple of jobs, namely installing an Eaton Detroit Trutrack locker in the rear diff and replacing the shocks all ’round. I didn’t realise just how bad the old shocks were until I drove the Landy with new Terrafirma Pro Sport +2-inch long-travel shocks fitted. Don’t get me wrong, it still drives like a tractor, just a flatter-cornering tractor that nearly even stops better.

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The addition of the Detroit in the rear transformed the off-road performance of the Perentie. I love the mechanical simplicity of the Trutrack. That said, they do occasionally bang and clunk on road as the diff unlocks, mainly at low speed when parking or going around a roundabout. While it doesn’t bother me, it may bother you if you’d just forked out for a 200 Series Cruiser.

While the Landy proved an absolute weapon on this trip, the big shout-out has to go to the little Cruiser. This thing never fails to make me smile. Everything you need and nothing you don’t. It went everywhere with ease.

My fuel average off road from the 2F was 38L/100km. To give that some rather terrifying perspective, I can get the same fuel from an 11-litre 450hp prime mover towing a tri-axle trailer grossing 42,500kg.

The main difference being that you can’t take an off-road beach holiday in a semi.

You’d think that this would be a deal breaker for the 2F, but I have to put my hand in the air and say I’m a fan of the venerable old F donk. A design that can trace its ancestry all the way back to 1928 and Chevrolet. The F performs much better on road than its diesel contemporaries and when in the rough stuff, its torquey enough to idle on through without much in the way of high-revving histrionics.

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The off-road veterans out there will just smile and nod as none of this will be news. The idea of a fuel bladder, however? Turns out that it wasn’t such a great idea in an open vehicle, once it had some fuel out of it the bladder had a tendency to breathe like a fume-laden bellows and fill the Rover cockpit with fuel fumes. It also rocked the car around quite a bit once it was half empty.

So the guts of it is, the Cruiser needs a long-range fuel tank and a jerry can holder or two. The Perentie, however, decided to revisit it’s old jumping out of high-range habit, but regardless of tension on the intermediate gear cluster shaft, it has persisted.

Sadly, I think I need a high-range rebuild, roughly $2500 worth.

The Toyota just needs a new muffler. That’s the thing about these old trucks, Land Rovers are awesome when they work, LandCruisers just bloody work!

PERENTIE
TOTAL KM: 118,188km
KM THIS MONTH: 520km
AV FUEL: 14.0L/100km

1976 LC FJ40
TOTAL KM: 82,680km
KM THIS MONTH: 620km
AV FUEL: 38.0L/100km

Part 8: Decisions, decisions

You'll often hear the word 'compromise' bandied about when it comes to modifying cars. In the dirt-stomping world of off-roading that compromise usually comes in the form of off-road performance versus on-road performance.

The better your jigger is off-road, generally the crappier it is to spend long periods of time on the open road. Hence the spectacle of events like Ultimate Adventure in the USA where participants have to spend days living out of their purpose-built rock crawlers, often covering hundreds of kilometres by road between tracks.

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While not a built crawler by any means, a recent road trip in my Perentie over the New Year period highlighted some of the drawbacks of mods I’d made in an effort to build my best beach buggy.

My Perentie recently fell back in to its old habit of jumping out of high range unexpectedly. Rather than being organised and getting it fixed properly, I took the opportunity to change the oil in the ’box and transfer case. A little bit more adjustment to the slack on the intermediate gear cluster shaft and, hey presto, fixed. I do realise that I’m putting off the inevitable here!

Turns out driving from Brisbane to country Victoria, then to Melbourne, then back to Brisbane with some bush detours in a car with barely any roof and no windows was a character-building exercise. This really came to a head just north of Urana in the southern Riverina, when I drove in to a supercell thunderstorm. With no cover, violently shifting winds, hail bouncing off the inside of the windscreen and my raincoat hood laced up so tight I looked like Kenny from South Park, I was seriously questioning my sanity.

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It’s been quite a while since I’d spent long days on the road in the Landy. In fact, I hadn’t really done a trip like this since I originally picked the Perentie up from Grays Online in Darwin and drove it back to Brisbane. A lot has changed on the old bus since then: more power, chunkier rubber, power steering, new suspension diff-lock, heavy-duty axles, lights that occasionally work … and fewer windows.

To be fair, weather aside, it handled the trip with ease; relatively tall gearing means it hums along at highway speeds with ease and enough grunt to overtake when required. Coil springs, the ADF-issued ISRI seats and a 110-inch wheelbase make for a pretty comfy truck.

To handle road tunes, I hung a Bluetooth speaker from the top of the windscreen and streamed through my phone. The downside of this is that at 110km/h between the flapping on the bikini top, the slap of the Mickey Thompson P3s on the road surface and the uncivilised yodel of the 4BD1 Isuzu engine, Rufus Du Sol sounds a lot like the McClymonts.

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However, if this was a hearts and minds campaign, the Perentie made friends wherever it went. People in passing cars with fancy equipment like windows and air-conditioning and stuff tooted their horns and waved. I mean, who doesn’t love a sunburnt middle-aged, pudgy bald dude in a flapping camo shitbox? Perhaps don’t answer that.

But sunburn, chapped lips and hail aside, it was an overdue reminder of how much I love this old banger. Pesky Land Rover traits regarding Lucas electrics aside (I now know the right place to kick to get the indicators to work). The Perentie loves a road trip, in this case a total of 4860km.

My stripping down of the cab for beach and bush works for me most of the time, however I have been pondering getting my hands on a ute cab. Basically, a Landy ute cab will bolt on to the existing structure just in front of the Perentie ROPS. The downside, apart from claustrophobia and sharp edges, is that this mod has become quite popular and I haven’t been able to find a decent cab that doesn’t require a mortgage yet.

The trouble is that I just know that the experience of driving this truck along 75 Mile Beach on Fraser Island wouldn’t be the same sitting inside an aluminium can. The age-old dilemma of compromise rears its head again. Clearly there’s only one solution, a solution used by car nuts to the chagrin of their families the world over. I need another Land Rover.