The Vehicle - Up To OverLand Spec

Roof Rack And Roof Tent     Extra Fuel     Drinkable Water

How Much And Where To Put It?

In all my research into independent over land travel all the vehicles involved carried extra fuel on top of what was carried in the standard fuel tank. This is because of several reasons. The first being that depending on your route some times there are just stretches where fuel is not available and fuel consumption is high. Like in desert crossings. The other being situations where fuel is available but for one reason or another you don’t consider it a good source. Like rural fuel stations, where the fuel could have been sitting around for ages in the tanks and possibly be contaminated. The extra fuel capacity means you can plan to use major town stations where fuel is regularly used and they are equipped with modern pumps. This extra fuel was carried in one of two ways. Some had fitted tanks which are convenient to use, but are costly to make/fit. Others used jerry cans, which were cheap but involve manually having to transfer the fuel. Which is a bit of a messy job. The added thing I liked about using jerry cans was that if you got bad fuel you would not have contaminated good fuel stored in other cans. Or if one can developed a leak you would not loose all your extra fuel. Where as if you got a leak in a secondary tank then it is likely that you would loose all the fuel in that tank.

So after deciding to go for the cheaper option of jerry cans it was then a question of how many to take where to put them. Inside the vehicle was out of the question as far as I was concerned. As you would smell the fuel all the time and it would be hazardous to your other kit if it were to leak. So it had to go on the outside somewhere. The obvious place is on the roof rack. But many people had reported problems with that much weight on the roof rack. As each jerry can when full is 20Kg. Either the rack it’s self or where it was mounted to the body would start cracking under the strain. Also then there is the issue of being top heavy in rough of road conditions, so making you more likely to roll over. I had seen in the past that military Land Rovers often had side lockers which they put the jerry cans in. I thought this was a great solution and decided to build my own. Each locker would carry two jerry cans and so with two lockers you could carry an extra 80 litres of fuel. This would effectively double the range of the Land Rover as the main tank on a 110 is 79 litres. With all my research into my possible route, this sound about right and allowed for some spare.

It was a involved job and took a lot of work to complete. I started with an 8 foot by 4 foot sheet of aluminium, which was folded into a box shape with two open ends, one of which had a flange. This was then slid into a hole cut into the body of the Land Rover. The back of the box was then slid in and everything pop riveted into place. The edge that met the bodywork was also reinforced with flat aluminium strip. A frame was then cut from right angle aluminium for the doors and a skin pop riveted to it through more flat aluminium strip. Hinges where added and then attached to the inside of the boxes on the forward edge. This was so that if the catch where to open for any reason the door would not be ripped open by the wind. Extra out riggers where then placed under each locker and welded to the chassis. To support the weight in the locker and transfer it to the chassis.