Sam Odio, founder

Off-roading in the Land Rover LR2

October 22 2011

Filed under: freelander   home   land-rover   lr2   off-roading  

Last year I came across a 2008 Land Rover LR2 for a very reasonable price. After some light off-roading during a trip to Fresno dome I've decided that I'm going to equip the LR2 for some more serious adventures.

After all, what's the point of owning an SUV if you don't use it?

Unfortunately I haven't really been able to find many people online who have modded their LR2 for off-roading. That's crazy. This is a land rover, after all. It'm starting to think that an adventurous ride in an LR2 involves dropping kids off at a soccer game in the rain.

In the hopes of providing a resource to other owners that want to off-road in their LR2s I'm going to blog about my experiences here. I'll cover the trails I take the vehicle on, the modifications I make (and plan to make), challenges I've found with the car. To start off here's a list of modifications that I've made:

• Tow hitch. I purchased a tow hitch from and installed it myself. Installation was pretty easy and it did not require any drilling. The only tool necessary was a socket wrench. I'm happy with the quality of the hitch. I've towed about 1,5000 lbs of stuff approximately 1,000 miles without any incident. It decreases the departure angle a bit, but I've found that not to be a problem. It can actually be a good thing. I'd rather that the hitch bottoms out (feels very sturdy) than the plastic shell that it protects. Total cost was about $115 vs the dealer estimate of $1,083.21. I have not yet installed the towing electrics. I expect to use this hitch to mount a winch.
• Carry-on 4x6 open trailer. Purchased for about $330, refurbished. I've gotten over 4,000 miles worth of use out of this thing. Completely worth it.
• Raised roof rails. Part #LR007220. Because of the complexity of the installation, I purchased these from the deal and had the dealer install them. It looks like others agree. It involves drilling into the roof of the vehicle and I didn't want to have to deal with leaks. Cost was pretty outrageous - approximately $1,400. I'm very happy with them, they've supported about 1,000lbs of weight no problem.
• Thule 50" roof rack bars. Straightforward, relatively easy to install. Purchased for $224 from Amazon.
• Roof rack accessories. For the roof rack I purchased a universal rack tray (designed for jeeps), a snowboard carrier, and an all-weather bag. I fastened the rack tray to the Thule roof racks with a ratcheted strap. It's been there for about a year without any problems. This setup works well, I can easiy fit 2 snowboards and a set of skis in the carier and the all weather-bag holds about 4 large duffel bags. The bag fits almost perfectly into the rack tray. The rack and accessories noticeably decrease the vehicle's highway gas efficiency (I now average about 19MPG from the previous 22MPG).
• ROMIK Bull bars. I recently installed ROMIK's bull bars on the front of the Rover. I had hoped that they might attach to the frame of the car in some secure way. This was not really the case. Update: You can review my review of this product here: ROMIK 2.5" bull bar review.

Sam Odio on the web: Crunchbase | Angellist | Linked In | Quora | Google+ | Github

sam.odio.com has a new blog.

August 11 2011

Filed under: home  

Since moving off Blogger (here's why) and loosing all of my blog's comments my blog has fallen into a bit of disuse. Now that I'm freshly unemployed (at least, that's how my Dad calls it) I aim to change that.

Action items:

1. Create an open source lightweight django blog.
2. Crowd-source a blog design using crowdspring.
3. Realize that crowd-sourcing is a failure, convince Michael to donate his time and patience to fix it.
4. Port all old blog posts to new platform.
5. Port all comments (which have recently disappeared) to new platform.
6. Make myself a Margarita and relax ... more