Featured vehicle:
Wayne and Mike Smith's Range Rover

This is the vehicle and team that won the 2000 Rain Forest Challenge.
Vehicle details provided by Mike Smith.

The base vehicle is a 1980 2 door Range Rover.
The body is lifted off the chassis by 40mm with spacers and support blocks
The springs in the back are either 185 foot pounds by 18" or 220 foot pounds by 18"...Former for light unladen load the latter for Malaysia or the Outback with all the food and spares on board.
The springs in the front are 220 foot pound by 17" for the winch , batteries and bullbar.
Koni adjustable shock absorbers all round, two on each corner.
Steering links are as a Landrover Defender with the stabiliser on the front of the diff attached to the chassis and pitman arm. The rear track rod is the military version which does not bend especially with the sliding diff bracket restricting its movements.
The SIMEX tyres are 35x10.5 on 16" rims.
The brake hose brackets are lowered 50mm and the exhaust supports shortened.
We attach a Perspex cover over the distributor bolted to the water pump housing
To ensure wading is safe we have a snorkel from Rangie Spares and we have lightly pressurised the distributor with an air horn motor.
All our air comes from an air conditioning compressor that fits on the opposite side of the engine to the alternator using brackets from another model which has the alternator on the other side. It is driven by a dual pulley on the crankshaft with a Range Rover adjustable tensioner bolted to the block. This compressor can drive rattle guns, inflate tyres and if desired paint your car.
The transfer case has a tapered bearing kit and we vary the high range ratios to suit the event. The old 4 speeder suits us due to it's strength.
The 4.7lt engine puts out over 200hp at the rear wheels with an Autronic engine management system and there is no air box to clutter up the air intake. It has been balanced and the heads worked with larger valves to ensure smooth running from 800rpm to 7000rpm. The compression is 10.2:1 so we must run 98 plus octane fuel.
The diff locks are Maxidrives which include heavy duty inner axles and front stub axles. we had no joy with 110 CV's so we are back to using new RR CV's.
Extended breathers are fitted to the axle housings and swivel housings with 6mm nylon and an in line cheap petrol filter at the end near the firewall above the drivers side brake booster ensures water is not sucked back down.

The following video clips are reproduced from the event video with the kind permission of Mr Luis Wee, organiser of the RFC. To see the MPEG video clip, click on the image of your choice. You will need some software capable of displaying MPEG video.

Clip 1 (Approx size: 2.8MB)	Clip 2 (Approx size: 8MB)	Clip 3 (Approx size: 8.5MB)
Clip 4 (Approx size: 6.2MB)	Clip 5 (Approx size: 3.3MB)	Clip 6 (Approx size: 5.4MB)
Clip 7 (Approx size: 3.8MB)	Clip 8 (Approx size: 5.7MB)	Clip 9 (Approx size: 8.7MB)
Clip 10 (Approx size: 6.5MB)	Clip 11 (Approx size: 5.1MB)	Clip 12 (Approx size: 6.7MB)
	Clip 13 (Approx size: 5.3MB)