Well, the day finally came – after many months happy tarmac driving to and from work, the time came to see how the Sahara would cope in the muddy stuff.
The chosen venue: the Land Rover Owner Magazine Spring Adventure in Driffield.
I have to admit I was incredibly nervous – partially because I couldn’t stop myself thinking “but I built this thing, who the hell am I to put something like this together, it will fall apart instantly and have to be trailered home at massive expense” and partially because my passenger/co-driver was none other than Ethan, our 4 year old budding off-roader.
So as well as worrying that I may have screwed the build, I was also being nervous dad!
After an hour or so of pre-flight checks (checking fuel/water/oil/breather pipes etc.) and loading up the boot with a moderate pile of tools and a jack etc. I bit the bullet and off we went.
First stop, the show itself – LRO Driffield is always a nice start to the year because it’s the first major show after the winter break and it’s always nice to wander around looking at shiny new bits that I could buy!
Ethan had a great time looking at all the Land rovers, but he also spent a good bit of time on the petrol quad bikes and the bouncy castle – I have a sneaky suspicion he may actually be a better driver than me….
Eventually I couldn’t put it off any longer and off we went to buy our tickets for the Off-road course – Ethan was incredibly excited, whilst I was still pretty nervous… Andrew from work had also come along in his Defender 90 and was ready too, so down the course we headed.
In the end of course, I really shouldn’t have worried – the Sahara was absolutely brilliant and performed fantastically.
Driffield is famous for it’s thick gloopy muck so i unrolled my Rugged Guide Winch and Wade Blanket to cover the radiator and headed off. Unfortunately due the fantastic weather it was largely unneeded – but it did prove that my Brunel Performance Radiator was up to the job and and the thermostat I’d fitted for the fan were set up correctly as without air flow the water heated up pretty quickly!
A quick stop to roll the blanket up (it has integral velcro so you don’t have to use mucky straps or anything) and off we headed.
Ethan and I spent a fantastic hour driving round the course which was fantastically bumpy with a lot of quite hair raising hills and drops, but never so much as to be unsafe. With the incredible ground clearance on the Sahara it didn’t bottom out of even snag once even when we headed down some of the Red and Black sections.
The only bit I did avoid was one particularly short sharp peak as I’m yet to sort out any major underbody protection and didn’t want to stuff a diffcase or steering on my first time out. (I’m off to LRSeries in the next few days to get that situation sorted though – just don’t tell Ellie…)
There was one very gloopy spot left on the course where apparently they had been bowsering water over all day and Ethan and I both had a grand old time plugging through it – so much so that I had no problem at all buying the pictures from the official photographers on the way out later on. I’ll admit that cleaning it all off after was a pain in the proverbial though…
As it was the first shakedown I was trying to keep a mental list of any bits that I needed to work on and although I did think of a couple of things it was mercifully short:
- I need to look into softer springs as the ride is a bit harsh – not surprising as the springs are designed for a normal Disco1 and the Saharas body is a LOT lighter.
- I also need to get underbody protection sorted too.
- The screen washers are FAR too weak, but I need to check the routing of the pipes as they may be a little kinked.
- I could do with thinking about a CB and also an aerial for the radio for a bit of light entertainment (and some decent speakers for the front passengers), but for now my ipod lead in the AUX jack is fine.
- Other than those bits, I’m really, really chuffed with how well the car behaved and we’re both looking forward to getting out there again as soon as possible – in fact Ethan asks almost every day if we can go off-roading again instead of going to school/work etc.
All in all a fantastic day 
