Pimp my SJ

With 3 weeks to go now and piles of kit are beginning to form in our respective houses, thoughts have turned to how exactly we were going to fit it all in the back of Shaznay. We began by removing the two back seats which revealed a massive floor space, we were keen to keep the back of the SJ well organised on our trip with different sections for food, kit, tools, water and fuel. We decided to get down to the local DIY shop and purchase some chipboard.

We then set to work with an assortment of power tools, and the good old Black & Decker Workmate and began creating a masterpiece. Within only a few hours we had the beginnings of our storage unit.

We have boarded across at the level of the wheel arches leaving us space underneath for a sliding in crates of tools, car spares, tents and other heavy things. This means they are well out the way but can be accessed easily when we need them. Above we now have a flat surface for the rest of our stuff, here we will have on one side jerricans, fresh water and radiator water containers with bungee cords to tie down. On the other will be our own personal kit, food and everything else.

We have put in partition at the front to stop things hitting the back of our seats and we have also created a shelf behind the seats for general bits and bobs for when we are driving

Obviously, the home cinema entertainment system, hot tub, mini bar and tennis court will be fitted at a later date once we have both agreed on the exact layout!

You know when you've been Tangoed

Looking around todays roads you can see a lot of dull, uninteresting cars - add our Mongol chariot to the pack and things only get worse.

So in order for people to notice us we decided to take the dull plastic exterior of our meccano hard top roof, paint it a bright orange and remove the grey decals along the side of the car revealing the original jet black bodywork.

This has had the effect of turning this ...

Into this ...

Now with our transformation complete peoples heads will sure turn as we drive past making our car a good choice for advertisement. See the complete transformation in our photo album, here.

A clean shave

When we bought the SJ, we were informed that it once upon a time in its life it was a soft-top and that someone had converted it to a hardtop using a a bespoke kit.

With the warmer weather finally setting in we decided to return the car back to its former glory and remove the plastic roof - half an hour or so later, with some slight 'modifications', we have ourselves a topless SJ! See photos of the glorious event here