1997 NAS Defender 90 Station Wagon
Accident Repair and Upgrades
This Defender 90 Wagon has come to us from Rhode Island with some unfortunate accident damage. The LH side was mildly side swiped and it needs some work. The good news is that none of the damage is too bad, and it can be brought back into shape. The customer will also be adding some upgrades and major service to his D90 while it is in for repairs here at ECR. In the image above you can see we have started to strip down the LH front fender to remove the damaged skin.
The Defender 90 had a factory style brush bar on it and although they may look cool they can not take a hit. The first thing the wrap around factory brush bars do in an impact is "wrap around" and smash the fender skin. In this D90's case that means a more costly repair than if the brush bar had not been installed. The image above shows the damage the cheesy brush bar did to the LH front fender. It not only smashed the outer skin, it tagged the main part of the fender as well (see green arrow). The skin we will remove and replace with a new one, and we will do some metal work on the inner fender to make is as good as new, with no body filler ever used in our Defender repairs.
Here you can see the damaged fender skin has been removed and the repairs to the inner fender have been completed. The D90 has been wrapped up so that no paint gets on the rest of the vehicle and the front panel section will now be primed and painted in Alpine White in our state of the art spray/bake booth.
This image show the D90 going back together. The new fender skin has been painted and installed, the safari cage put back in place and the lights, along with a new parking light, and other small items are being re-installed onto the vehicle. The fender flares need to be replaced as they were also damaged in the accident, and we'll be installing those shortly.
Here you can see the almost completed repair to the front. We make sure the body lines are correct and that ever detail is the way it should be, right down to a new "V8" logo in the proper location on the new fender skin.
The rear quarter of the D90 also suffered a slight hit in the accident, shown by the green indicator above. We'll remove the flare and re-work the metal in this area to remove the dent. This type of metal work is a lost art, most shops just pull the dents and fill things with plastic body fillers, like Bondo, to make repairs. At ECR we will work the metal until it is correctly in shape and there will be no visible trace of this dent, and there will be no body filler.
The D90 is moved back into the spray booth and the rear quarter is primed and painted in the correct Alpine White (shown here in the primer phase were we give it 3 coats of epoxy primer and 3 coats of PPG top coat).
As you can see there is no trace of the accident damage, yet all the factory spot welds are still in tact and still visible as they should be with a proper repair to a Defender, or Series Rover.
In the front of the D90 the customer decided to go with an ARB winch mount bull bar instead of the factory brush bar. This will help the D90 out next time someone brushes up against it, and it adds a much better look to the vehicle, We'll be installing a Warn 9000 winch into the bumper shortly.
Here you can see the repairs to the rear body are complete and that only a new flare is missing. Land Rover keeps sending us damaged flares, and we keep sending them back, so hopefully soon we'll have some good new flares to install onto this Defender 90.
These images show the Defender 90 Wagon with its accident damage fully repaired. We are still going to do some routine service on this Defender so it isn't done yet, but its nearly ready to head back to its owner in RI. Can you see where the damage was? Neither can we, and that is the point of any accident repair, to get your Rover back into shape, correctly, without cutting corners. It doesn't take any longer to do it right.
Here you can see the completed D90 ready to go. All the accident damage has been repaired and a major 60K mile service has been done along with a number of work orders to get the 90 in tip top shape. Notice we've also now installed the Warn winch and we also replaced the wheel flares on the RH side so that everything looks correct. If your Defender needs anything from a routine service to accident repair damage contact ECR. We'll be happy to make your Defender world class... just like this one.