Building my dream truck in 25 minutes - Twisted Land Rover Defender

and I really love this

truck

. This van really speaks to me quite a bit like Workhorse and those gray wheels and all the craftsmanship behind them is impressive, but the price, well that doesn't speak to me, £195,000, it's quite expensive. car and I don't have that kind of money, so this afternoon I make a bold decision. I'll try to build a Defender like this and then I'll take it to the mountains and go fishing before winter comes, so today I'm driving this nice Land Rover, but can I manage to transform it into a Twisted replica? Well, let's try it.

I start the project by ordering some new parts and it's time to service the car too, but my little tamarak pup helps me open the boxes, wait, so I dive in. the

defender

to my workshop, then the work can begin. My plan is to start under the car by renewing the frame, axles and suspension and fortunately the frame of the car is in very good condition which is rare for an 18 year old vehicle. Old Defender I start by removing all the rust from the surface and then I will treat it with a special type of paint after it is stronger, then I install a set of new shock absorbers to freshen up the brakes before I can put in what will really make this car look .

Cool the wheels. I bought a set of new genuine 18 inch classic twist wheels with 35 tires and gears. This is my biggest investment in this build and it set me back a lot, but it's crucial to take a look at what I'm looking for and that's it. The

defender

seems much tougher, but for me this is just a small start because I haven't finished transforming this car. I'm back at home working on the plan on how I can transform my Defender into a pickup

truck

and to do this I have to get very creative so the parts search begins.

I study the truck to convert my car into a double cab truck. You'd need three essential pieces: a crew cab roof panel, a rear window panel, and a tailgate, so not much later. Searching online I found some interesting listings and a seller on eBay UK has a rare old window panel and also a tailgate lying around so we agreed on a price of around 500 for the lot; He kindly packed everything on a pallet and shipped it. If we go to Norway, there is the roof panel, which is quite difficult to find for a cheap price. A new one from Land Rover costs over £8,000, so that's totally out of the question, but I do find a trashed double cab. sitting in a scrapyard in Sweden but the roof is unusable.

Too bad, before I start modifying a car, I like to make a small model first. I think I had a great idea because on all Defenders the front part of the roof on the driver's side that piece is the same on all Defenders so take a second look at the Swedish Defender and the rear half of the double cab roof is not It looks so damaged and if I buy that Swedish roof I can try putting it on the roof of my original truck. I think so. I guess there's only one thing to do: call Sweden and speak some Swedish.

Fortunately, my English is better than my Swedish, but I have such a good roof. roof at least after a few days the dented roof comes to my door, but it needs some love and care, so I need to get out my favorite tools, a hammer and a block of wood, after massaging it a little with the hammer, it's Time to try Feit. from the roof to the rear window panel and they seem to go quite well even though they are from different cars, after a quick wash the preparation of the window panel can begin and I give it a coat of black paint based on primer, then that's the problem.

To take apart the interior and really begin the truck to van conversion, there aren't many hidden bolts or nuts here, it's pretty straight forward and everything comes out pretty easy. The body work, the plan is to cut there, keep that front end. of the roof and remove the rear, cutting a perfectly good roof is a bit crazy to do, but sometimes you can't think too much and just do it, it's just two small cuts on each side of the roof, it shouldn't be like that. So I have to drill out the spot welds that hold the roof pieces together and the roof comes off pretty easily, but I plan to keep all of these pieces that I'm going to remove and paint them later so I have the option to switch between a van and a van. what I love about Defenders is that everything is so easy to take apart it's like a big pee, setting up the truck cab and then the big moment of putting the truck cab in, will it fit?

It looked good. the ground but it's now that I'll get my answer but with some adjustments and brute force it slides into place some of you might think it's easier to sell the truck and just buy a truck but defender trucks are pretty rare and not many of them here in Norway and for me the fun is

building

one, so that's the point of all this, the rear bulkhead, but what I haven't mentioned yet is that I need a rare bulkhead, which is the wall that separates the cab bed, in other words the front of the truck, this is something I need to design myself, but I have some nice sheet metal from an old storage rack lying around and they could do the job riveted together Land Rover style and then sprayed with some Bas primer paint.

I'm happy with the result, the tailgate, installing the tailgate is a pretty simple job, just screw on some brackets and the hinges and slide the tailgate right, maybe some fine adjustments are needed, the paint job I start with removing all the trim and lights before I can start sanding and prepping the body for painting, but my little pup is a bit of a rascal and decides to get my attention and grabs one of my orange gauges. Yes, King Flip Flip, good night, get down. Sanding is certainly not my favorite job, but it's worth doing, otherwise the paint won't stick and before you know it, you'll have finished the whole car, then mask it off, wipe off the dust, close the doors and we are ready to paint.

I'm all set and ready to spray my favorite Defender color, Coris Grey. It won't be a million dollar paint job, but it will do for me and then a couple coats with clear paint. On exteriors like this, it's not the recipe for a perfect paint job, but I have to say I'm very pleased with the result and it really is the best paint job I've ever given a car. The paint is water based, dries very quickly and looks amazing. The car immediately looks much more modern. The finishing touches, then it's time for a facelift. I'm swapping out the old grille and headlight surrounds for a more modern look, but to replicate the iconic Twisted-style front end I need to get a little creative.

I get rid of of these big plastic headlight frames and instead I use headlight frames from an old Tree Land Rover series from the 1970s. At the moment I installed the orange turn signals and one of them has a bite mark, but I plan to get some transparent with orange bulbs. later and to top it off I put on a mesh front grill I found on eBay, then it's time for bed. I prepared the bed of the truck with a special paint that is very strong and durable and should withstand me throwing things in there. Twisted Interior sent me a package of sound deadening material, this will greatly help reduce the noise inside the car and make the ride more pleasant.

You're supposed to use a fancy roller tool to stick them properly, which I don't do. I have but I have a paint roller and it does the same job but I want a fancy tire so from xmore trim I get this center console made in brown leather with real Harris Tweed and it even smells good like a fancy seat. The Twisted covers install easily and my interior looks much more elegant and is still very practical. My

dream

was to build a Defender truck like this. This is what my car looked like when I bought it, so now let's see the result of my work.

Time for a test drive, it feels like a totally different car even though it's actually my old truck. Well, the car is almost finished, but there is one more thing left to do and that is the Charles Faet piece. founder of Twisted, I had noticed on social media that Charles seemed a little upset with the copycats faking his Twisted badge and I understand that so I decided to do something about it, so I bought these stickers which made Woodsman one of one, Well, it's important to say. that these decals are only made for entertainment purposes and that this car will never be branded as a real Twisted if it ever goes on sale, but it does in fact carry some genuine Twisted parts.

I think it's at least sticker worthy, so I won't wait. I have to go to jail, it's already late fall and winter is just around the corner, but before the lakes freeze over, I want to take Fender to the lakes and try to fish one last time the higher I go in altitude. the rain turns to snow the season suddenly changes to winter it's a beautiful

land

scape when the seasons collide as well as all the colors of the forest and a fantastic painting but it's a beautiful journey from the it's a little hard to believe it's my entire season car and I am very happy with the result