Quick back-story: several years ago I was the lucky recipient of the Land Rover Bursary, an expedition grant administered by the Royal Geographical Society.
As well as a generous pile of cash, JLR’s Special Vehicle Operations built us a bespoke expedition Land Rover Defender 110 called Georgina.
Pretty neat, right?
Land Rover Owner magazine thought so too.
But this vehicle is not what this blog post is about.
Instead, I want to share the DIY Defender camper conversion that was inspired by Georgina.
That Defender stayed with me for four years as I explored, surveyed and mapped the route of the Transcaucasian Trail long-distance hiking path across the Lesser Caucasus Mountains between 2016–2020.
Yet as time went by, I began to wonder: how would I now build Georgina differently… and better?
As luck would have it, in October 2020 I was given the chance to answer this question when an older and more experienced Defender fell into my lap.
It was also a 110 Country Station Wagon; a 300Tdi of 1996 vintage, rest-of-world spec, and having lived out its life in the relatively dry, relatively rust-free climate of Armenia.
Though I haven’t been able to verify its provenance, word on the street is that it originally belonged to one of the European embassies in Yerevan, back when the crumbling roads of post-Soviet 1990s Armenia were bad enough that 4×4s for foreign diplomats were a necessity rather than a status symbol. Sold off after serving its time, it passed through at least one Yerevan-based private owner before being bought by an Iranian-Armenian hotelier living in the north-east Armenian resort town of Dilijan.
Then, after a decade or so, apparently sick of forever fixing the damn thing, he upgraded to a shiny new Puma. The old ivory-coloured 300Tdi bounced around among various Dilijan-based expats, one of whom was an outdoor instructor at the town’s international sixth-form college, with whom I’d made friends while working on the Transcaucasian Trail through the area.
Then suddenly – in the combined chaos of COVID-19 and the September 2020 outbreak of war between Armenia and Azerbaijan – I was offered the chance to buy this beaten-up old 300Tdi.
That is, if I was able to actually find it in whichever mechanic’s yard it had been abandoned, neither contact number nor address recorded before its owner had fled the country.
A wiser buyer might have at least tracked down and inspected the vehicle before committing.
But I had been offered it for the token amount of 500 Pounds Sterling.
I’d barely finished spluttering “yes!” before setting off for Yerevan to scour the vehicle repair districts, asking random groups of retired men playing backgammon in bus shelters if they could remember seeing a clapped-out old Land Rover trundle past in the last year or so.
To my astonishment, I was pointed down a series of back-streets until I arrived at the sturdy metal gate of an unmarked compound.
And upon entering I quickly spotted – buried behind a gaggle of half-disassembled vehicles in an overgrown corner of the yard, and resprayed with a year’s worth of dust and grime – the unmistakeable outline of that once-proud Defender.
Over the following 2½ years, I spent most of my spare time disassembling and rebuilding the Defender I christened Georgina Senior, spending many times more on replacement parts than I’d paid for her, watching hundreds of hours of YouTube tutorials (thanks Will, Mike and Chris) on everything from installing door seals to reverse-bleeding clutches to replacing rusty chassis crossmembers.
But the internet doesn’t need another story about some guy fixing a Land Rover.
What perhaps is worth sharing is the improved version of Georgina I did eventually get to design, build, and use.
And here she is.
It sleeps two in the back on a full-size double bed platform, with flexible stowage compartments accessible from the side and rear doors, and accommodates all the usual overland accessories (fridge, inverter, compressor, water tanks, etc).
The conversion took a few hours to plan, one long weekend for two people to build it, and required little more than a few sheets of plywood, some everyday fixtures, and a basic set of tools.
Here’s how we did it…
My Low-Budget DIY Defender 110 Camper Conversion: Guiding Principles
Every good design starts by considering the user, their intentions, and what will happen when their intentions collide with reality.
And after years of daydreaming, my requirements were already crystal clear:
1. It must be achievable (for mere mortals).
I sometimes watch YouTube videos about Defender camper conversions in which the creator has rented a warehouse, installed a four-poster hydraulic lift, and spends episode one by talking about how they’ve just ordered a £10,000 pop-top roof kit and forcing me to sit through a timelapse-to-music of them and their mates lifting off the roof capping with a winch.
Well – I am not that person, and I’m pretty sure most of the DIYers reading this aren’t either.
I have a broad spread of basic practical skills, a small workshop containing an average collection of tools, and the desire to push my creativity as hard as necessary in order to make do with what I’ve got.
I did not have the luxury of time or money. The material costs would need to fit within my general living budget. I had a single volunteer assistant on hand (thanks, Lapo!), and a gravel driveway on which to carry out the project, and about a month to get it done in whatever spare time I could carve out.
Put another way, I would need to base all my decisions on highly constrained resources.
Faced with any choice, simplicity and cost-effectiveness would take priority.
2. The result must respect the realities of Defender ownership – and how I intend to use mine.
If I’d wanted a road-going campervan that was comfortable, reliable, fuel-efficient, quiet, and generally quite pleasant to live in, I would probably have simply bought one second-hand from a retired vanlifer.
Because a leaky old 110 is never going to be that campervan.
Sure, you can create more headroom by (as mentioned) spending £10,000 on a pop-top or embarking on the considerable faff of making your own. You can deck out the cramped rear loadspace with intricately shaped kitchen units and folding furniture and what-have-you in an effort to create some semblance of liveability. You can slap endless sheets of sound deadening on the floor pans and bulkhead in an attempt to muffle to agricultural growl of your 2.5-litre dirty diesel. You can cover it all in tongue-and-groove pine cladding so it looks nice on Instagram.
But the truth is that a Land Rover Defender is one of the worst vehicles you could choose to actually live in.
(And of course, no matter how much you spend, you’ll still be dribbling a cocktail of lubricants and losing the fight against encroaching rust wherever you go.)
So what’s actually good enough about a Defender to warrant this project at all?
Firstly: it can take me places most campervans can only have metallic dreams of. Old or new, my Defenders have got me where I want or need to be; inevitably places wild and remote and challenging to reach, for work and for pleasure.
Once converted, Georgina Senior would have to be just as off-road-ready as before, fully set up for self-recovery and trail-side repair, happy in all weathers and trail conditions, and supporting my goal of spending time primarily out of – not inside – the vehicle.
Secondly: I can fix it. This is important because it’s 28 years old and breaks down regularly. I’ve had most of it apart enough times to know how it works and how to bodge a repair or recovery in a pinch. Nothing about the conversion should impede me from getting my hands dirty with its innards, or be in any way irreversible.
(This is doubly important when combined with point one above.)
3. The goal is to make camping more, not less, convenient.
There is a version of car camping where you chuck a tent, sleeping bag and roll-mat in the boot and be done with it. Why? Because it’s easy.
There are strong arguments in favour of doing this with a Defender. Indeed, this was the guiding principle for designing Georgina. She was built to support two or three people camping for a few days at a time in the wilderness, not to provide an indoor living space for them – hence a fridge, roof rack and shade awning, but no built-in kitchen or sleeping quarters.
Yet my main gripe with Georgina was this very lack of options. It often turned out that, on a long road trip, we simply wanted to park for the night and go to sleep. But without, say, a roof tent or interior sleeping space, this wasn’t possible – at least, not without making ourselves unreasonably conspicuous. (I did sleep on the roof a couple of times, but I’d rather not make a habit of it.)
A key feature of the conversion was therefore to enable exactly this: for two people to be able to park and sleep inconspicuously with minimal effort.
This is what attracts many people (usually those with prior experience) to build campervans that could, at a glance, pass as utility vans. Park in a layby, hop in the back, sleep undisturbed.
As well as ruling out dead giveaways like pop-tops and roof tents (which I couldn’t afford anyway), this criteria helped reinforce the DIY ethos with which I would approach the project.
The existence of pop-tops and roof tents does highlight something we all know: there’s limited headroom in the back of a Defender. This is why it would be important to doubly acknowledge its purpose as a space to sleep, not a space to live.
As long as the bed came with roughly the same width and headroom as a typical 2-berth ground tent, the result could be justified sufficient (for me and my wife, at least).
What this also suggested was that cooking, ablutions, remote working (god forbid), and other such lifestyle functions normally performed inside a traditional campervan would instead have to happen outside.
So the conversion should acknowledge and cater for those scenarios too – again, taking into account the way we would actually use it.
4. What it looks like on [insert social media platform here] is of least possible significance.
I’m writing this having just returned from a campsite near Yerevan which is very popular with overland travellers.
And I couldn’t help notice the prevalence of the #VanLife aesthetic that erupted during COVID. You know what I’m talking about: shallow depth-of-field photos taken at golden hour featuring hot young couples parked at a secret beauty spots, wine glasses glinting in the sunset, expertly illuminated van interiors in the background, unfeasibly well-groomed dogs drooling on the bedclothes.
(Upon googling “vanlifer”, one of the first video results was entitled “Mercedes Sprinter Camper Van Build For Under $25K”. Seriously? That’s the kind of budget we’re being told we need to live in the back of a delivery van?)
But when I talked to the owners of these faded artisan camper conversions, most of them had bought them second- or third-hand from people who, I imagine, had long ago got bored of actually trying to live in a cramped, condensation-ridden, bug-infested, forever-breaking-down, impossible to insure, often un-parkable, unnecessarily complicated tin box on wheels.
Either that, or they were in the category of people for whom their former utility van had been built for pure convenience. Drive somewhere, do what you actually went there for, go to bed, and screw Instagram.
Because living in a van is basically – when you boil it right down – just a crap version of being indoors.
My Defender camper conversion will win no awards for aesthetics. Nobody will coo over it at an overland expo. I won’t get on the front page of Google with this article, nor build a following on social media to leverage for sponsorship.
This magic final principle – to genuinely not give a f*** how pretty it looks – freed me up to concentrate on the far more important considerations of making my conversion eminently achievable, sympathetic to the vehicle, and radically utilitarian.
And now to the process itself.
How I Converted My Defender Into A Campervan: An 8-Stage Breakdown
I had about a month to prepare for the build, which itself would be crammed into a single long weekend. So it was important to be efficient and methodical about the project from day one.
Stage 1: Strip Everything Out
Defenders have a reverse-Tardis effect: they get smaller when you go inside. So the first thing to do was to reclaim maximum possible space.
Out came the second-row seats, seat mounting brackets, seatbelt assemblies, and the rails on the wheel boxes used to anchor the inward-facing third-row seatbelts.
I removed all of the interior side trim from the rear side doors backwards, creating maximum width for the bed platform. (Although this would have been a good opportunity to remove the headlining and insulate the roof, I was too short on time.)
At this stage, I test-packed the loadspace with some of the luggage I imagined loading it up with. This helped me get an idea of what kind of layout might work best, given the sizes and shapes of the various boxes, bags and bits of gear I already had, and how I’d want to access them.
Stage 2: Prepare the interior
Stripping out the cab revealed a few big bolt holes in the body panels and a lot of small screw holes from previous owners’ DIY attempts.
After refitting the bolts and anchor plates for the second row seat mounts (I’ll explain why later), I got the rest of the holes patched by a local aluminium welder for a few quid.
It was then time to give the now-empty loadspace a bloody good clean out. After vacuuming and using a 12V air compressor with a jet nozzler to blast the crud out of the nooks and crannies, I gave it all a good scrub with warm soapy water and let everything fully dry out.
Next, I lightly sanded the original paintwork on the floors and wheel boxes, primed all the bare aluminium patches with a rattle can of wash primer, and gave the whole lot a couple of coats of heavy-duty black enamel paint.
This would all eventually be obscured by the camper structure, but I wanted a clean base for the build, protected from inevitable spillages and grime accumulation over time.
(Incidentally, I found sponging on the paint gave a better finish than brushing – in combination with plenty of masking tape for a neat finish – and worked out way cheaper than spray cans, with no risk of overspray.)
Stage 3: Draw, divide, and conquer
Prep done, it was time for the fun part: actually sketching out the design I’d got in my head.
This required one piece of scrap paper, a pencil, and a pen.
I wanted to subdivide all the available floor space into flexible stowage compartments, the dividers of which would simultaneously provide a supportive horizontal plane upon which to mount the bed board.
The layout I eventually settled upon somewhat echoed the ladder chassis of the vehicle, with two main “beams” running the full length of the rear loadspace from tail door to second row footwell, supplemented by various “crossmembers” and “outriggers”.
The central part of the loadspace I wanted to divide horizontally into two, with the front part accessible via the rear side doors and the rear part accessible from the tail door. The divider itself would also provide extra support to the central bed board, where a lot of bodyweight would rest.
The narrow stowage channels created above each wheel box would be divided similarly, with access from both ends.
In the second row footwell – both the lowest and most central stowage space in the vehicle – I decided to put a single divider down the middle. (It would actually be slightly offset to the driver’s side, in order to accommodate the specific items I wanted to stow here, on which more later.)
This divider would butt up against a shorter “crossmember” at the front edge of the footwell, narrow enough to allow both front row seats to be pushed fully back, but wide enough to provide maximum support for the front edge of the bed board when unfolded (again, on which more shortly).
Once complete, this structure would be the backbone of the project, with all else literally fitting around it, so it was important to get it right.
Stage 4: Test the theory
It was time to take the design and make it real.
This would require materials.
Plywood was the obvious choice of construction material for the main structure. It’s plentiful, affordable, durable, easy to work with, and can be finished in a variety of ways.
It was also a material I could have cut to order at a local builders’ merchants with millimetre precision, which would take a lot of the legwork out of assembly (I also don’t have my own laser-guided band saw).
While 18mm-thick ply would have been my first choice, only 15mm was available on the day, so I adjusted the dimensions to match.
Ordering pre-cut plywood made it even more important to double-check all my measurements. Defenders being hand-built (and often hand-rebuilt), I took multiple measurements for each dimension so I wouldn’t get caught out when things weren’t quite square. The other side of that coin, of course, is that the boxy body – mostly straight edges and right-angles – is a gift to build on.
I ordered the plywood, collected it a few days later, and set about putting the pieces in place without any fixtures to check everything was as expected.
A couple of pieces did require very slight trimming to fit, in particular the fore-aft divider down the middle of the second row footwell, and the horizontal partition dividing the main central loadspace. I used an electric planer to shave off the edges of the boards a millimetre or two at a time until I was happy.
Stage 5: Install the framework
It was finally time to install all my carefully-designd components!
Out came the drills, screwdrivers, nuts and bolts, a big pile of wood screws, and a couple of other commonly available bits of hardware and fixtures.
For several of the main pieces of the framework, the lower edges needed a few notches cutting to accommodate rivet heads, bolts, and the like. (I found an electric router was best for this job.)
The two main “beams” deliberately didn’t meet the tail door aperture, leaving a small gap through to the wheel box top stowage area. This was firstly to accommodate the rear end door check mechanism and lock striker; and secondly for drainage when my Defender inevitably leaked, or I forget to close the side windows, or I spilled a bottle of water somewhere.
(In all aspects of this build I left space for liquids to drain towards the side or rear end doors.)
When bolting the vertical boards to the vehicle body, I took the opportunity to add lots of lashing points. Clamping these fittings through the vehicle body would provide a lot of strength. You might not immediately see the point, but as mentioned earlier I do a lot of off-roading, and I really don’t want heavy water canisters and packing crates sliding about while I’m bouncing through the mountains. (I speak from experience on this!)
While I did drill a few holes on the inside surfaces of the wheel boxes, elsewhere I reused existing mountings, including the second row seat mount bolt holes located along the rear edge of the footwell and their corresponding anchor plates, where I also fitted lashing points.
Structure in place, I installed a few right-angle brackets near the top of each joint for rigidity.
To even out the very minor discrepancies in height (all less than 1mm), and to reduce vibration noise when on the move, I lined the top edges of all of these vertical boards with self-adhesive 3mm-thick closed-cell foam tape before installing the bed board.
The front corners of the bed board would also need support. This had been one of the trickiest problems to solve, and I had been around the block several times with convoluted ideas involving folding legs, weird-shaped brackets mounted to the seatbelt mounting bolts, and things like that.
Once I’d stripped out the trim, however, a more elegant solution had revealed itself in the form of a two unused threaded bolt holes on the insides of the door pillars (I assume serving some function in another Defender variant).
I’d recently started to learn welding, so I found a piece of scrap angle iron, cleaned it up, and fabricated two simple brackets that would mount to the available bolt-holes and support the bed board corners on the same plane as the central support.
The bolts, for reference, are the same gauge as those used for the door hinges. (Worth mentioning I took extra care to shape and finish the edges so they wouldn’t damage the seatbelt.)
Stage 6: Install the collapsible bed platform
Installing the bed platform would be when everything slotted into place. Excuse the pun.
My original plan was to construct this platform in three segments, but I couldn’t find a satisfactory way to get the whole thing to easily collapse, given the limited access and the necessity of being able to do it solo.
What I eventually came up with was a bed board in four segments of different sizes, with two complementary mechanisms for stowing and unfolding.
The key segment would be a permanently fixed central board, overlapping a small part of both central stowage areas and supported by their dividing “crossmember”, but blocking access to neither.
The two identically-sized segments in front of it – each a little shorter and a few millimetres narrower than the central piece – would be mounted on piano hinges and fold back concertina-like on top of the central board.
In case you’re wondering, a single hinged board would not work here because of the limited headroom and because of the tapering shape of the Defender’s upper body. Even with two segments there’s just a couple of millimetres’ clearance between the door pillars, which are the narrowest point in the whole length of the cab. A bigger central board also wouldn’t work without partially blocking the side doors and access to the central stowage compartment.
I thought about this bit a lot.
The fourth and final segment – that at the rear of the vehicle – would not be fixed at all. When the bed was unfolded, it would slide into place and be locked in by two pairs of short plywood rails on the underside, with a couple of metal clasps at the rear end to hold the board down if deployed while driving.
When stowing the bed platform, these same rails would guide the board as it slid precisely into place on top of the other three segments.
Deployed, the result is a fully-supported bed board measuring 2000 × 1400mm – the size of a standard double mattress, a very reasonable amount of space for two people to sleep, and actually a bigger bed in terms of surface area than I’ve seen in a lot of very flashy and expensive campervan conversions.
A few nuances and details are worth mentioning here.
Deploying the bed platform requires that both front seats are folded forwards at least a couple of notches (mine are the factory seats that came with 300Tdis of this vintage; yours may differ). But if you get the position and the angle right, the back of the seat actually acts as a headboard on which to rest your pillows. Magic!
The standard cubby box between the two front seats needed its lid hinge moving slightly forward so that it could be fully opened with the plywood crossmember in place.
We used a small handheld electric router to bevel all the outer edges and corners of the bed board. This made a big difference to the ergonomics and should also help protect the structure against damage, for a relatively small amount of work.
We cut out notches on either side of the front segment of the bed board to allow access to the rear side door handles from inside the vehicle (these would be beneath the mattress when sleeping, but they do the job).
We cut similar notches in the vertical support to accommodate the grab handles, although in retrospect we could also have removed these handles completely.
Another notch was cut out for the rear windscreen wiper motor housing of this particular vehicle, although I subsequently removed the wash-wipe system completely (many later Defenders didn’t even have one).
That little router got a lot of use here.
For grip, vibration damping, and protection, all of the floor space was lined with lightweight foam-rubber matting, which I bought in a single large roll and then cut to fit each individual space.
Compared to traditional heavy rubber mats, foam rubber would also act as an insulating layer, the additional weight would be minimal, and it was a heck of a lot cheaper than anything I’ve seen off-the-shelf.
Stage 7: Install storage & equipment
Plywood structure complete, it was time to add the various containers and accessories that would make these empty spaces functional.
To return to the locations of the various dividers and “crossmembers”, given that they would need to provide support for the bed board, I otherwise based these decisions on the dimensions of what I wanted to stow where.
For the main loadspace accessed from the rear end door, for example, I needed to be able to stow and lash down four packing crates and still be able to close the door. (The crates furthermost from the rear end door would hold relatively heavy spare parts, tools, and recovery gear, while other two would hold food and kitchen gear for easy access. Large, light and often-used items like camp furniture and overnight bags would sit on top.)
I gave over all of the remaining space in the central stowage area to the front compartment, which I envisaged as a kind of “bedding bin” for the various mattresses, pillows, sleeping bags, blankets, tents and hammocks we’d use when either camping outside or sleeping in the back of the car.
For the wheel box channels, again using body panels as braces, we installed a single divider at the front end of each wheel box where it sloped down towards the second row footwell in parallel with the side door. This created long, deep, partly-enclosed compartments for stowing smaller, little-used items at the back, as well as random bits and bobs at the accessible open end near the tail door.
It also created weirdly-shaped cubbies just inside the rear side doors, which after a little experimentation I’ve found perfect for keeping a change of footwear and for dumping bags of groceries while on the go.
In the second row footwell, I positioned the divider to accommodate a heavy leisure battery as centrally as possible, lashed down with a ratchet strap. I used the divider’s surface to mount associated electrical components including a second fusebox, an inverter, and a solar charging controller.
This setup also meant a short cable run to the starter battery under the driver’s seat, where I put in a voltage-sensitive relay (VSR) to automatically split-charge both batteries off the alternator. (The solar controller would eventually be connected to a rooftop panel I have yet to install.)
In front of the leisure battery there was just enough space for two 20-litre plastic jerry can-style water containers, one of which was fitted with a spigot (tap), which could also be strapped down. When camping, this would put water access on the driver’s side of the vehicle and under the awning where the kitchen was likely to be set up. The canister with the spigot could simply be inched forward to act as a water supply tap, with another 20 litres in reserve.
(This would also put another potential 40kg of dense weight low and central to the vehicle.)
On the far side of the divider I put the fridge-freezer – a nice ARB model salvaged from Georgina. It’s a big unit, but there was just enough space for the water canisters, leisure battery, divider, and fridge to all snuggle up, with enough airflow for the fridge’s compressor (I cut extra holes in the divider to help with this) and the front seatbelt spools.
Opening the fridge lid fully requires that the passenger seat back be folded a couple of notches forward, but it’s still possible to get a hand inside without.
Stage 8: Add finishing touches
The finishing touches we managed to implement before time ran out included:
- a couple of additional lighting circuits (one LED strip just inside the driver’s side rear side door, and one floodlight above and to the side of the rear end door),
- self-levelling cup holders (thanks again, Georgina), and
- a refitted roof rack with space for three more packing crates.
Bonus Stage: Actually hit the road
To test it was all working as planned, we immediately spent the next 10 weeks driving and hiking around the Mediterranean coast of southwest Turkey.
The engine rocker shaft did snap in three places in the middle of nowhere, but that’s another story…
Epilogue: What I’d change
This Defender camper conversion worked out far better than I could have hoped for – but we did come home with a list of additions and improvements to make.
Among them:
- Insulating the roof capping to reduce condensation levels and keep more body heat in,
- Making removable insulated window covers, maybe with magnetic attachments – we improvised basic “curtains” using clothes pegs and bits of scrap fabric,
- Adding more stowage for personal items at head height above the bed – perhaps a row of small cargo nets above each sliding side window,
- Installing more interior lighting – the LED strip worked well, so maybe one above the tail door aperture and one above the passenger side rear side door opening,
- Adding hooks to attach a mosquito net above the bed platform – ask us how we know,
- Painting or varnishing all the plywood for a smoother surface – we found some fabrics had a tendency to catch on the unsealed wood grain.
There are also a few nice-to-haves that we’ll probably end up doing without, including:
- A full-length expedition roof rack and access ladder – with relatively limited stowage inside the vehicle, flexible rooftop stowage for a few more packing crates would be nice,
- A step or platform below the rear end door for easy of entry/exit – although I like my departure angles as they are, and a folding plastic stool works just as well,
- A diesel heater for a little more comfort in cold weather – but I do also have a winter-rated sleeping bag,
- A better location for the air compressor – it’s currently in a free-floating case, but could easily fit inside the battery box,
- Better soundproofing in the cab – but this is a Defender, isn’t it, so it’s a bit of a lipstick/pig situation.
But for now, I have what I always wanted: an off-road/overland hybrid Defender 110 with a double bed in the back, DIY-built for a couple of hundred quid’s worth of plywood and fixtures.
I’m calling it YADCC (Yet Another Defender Camper Conversion), and because I’m a DIYer and I believe in sharing and sharing alike, feel free to copy, adapt, improve, or constructively criticise it in any way you like.
Maybe one day I’ll produce some technical drawings, cutting plans, materials lists, and exact measurements.
Or maybe I won’t, because every Defender is different, and all it should take is a measuring tape and a pencil and paper to figure out your own version, then take it somewhere cool.
That’s it! I’d love to see what you come up with with your own Land Rover Defender 110 DIY camper conversion project, and I’m sure others would too, so feel free to share your stories, tips and links in the comments.
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