Picture Perfect

Originally Published: December 2013 Words: Dan Fenn Pictures: Dan Fenn

A guard is just a guard, but it’s the axle behind it that’s interesting. Pete needed to fix it after smashing the diff spider cogs – but rather than doing it the traditional way, he pulled the whole lot out and replaced it with an entire Isuzu Trooper front end. ‘It was easier to replace as a complete unit rather than repair the original,’ he explains. ‘Isuzu components do have a reputation for stronger build quality, and this is certainly true of the differential spider cogs I have compared’

Whoever designed this axle case clearly wasn’t expecting the diff to get hot. They probably weren’t expecting it to get welded up either, though, but that was the fate awaiting the one in here. Pete has an LSD axle from an Isuzu Trooper sitting in his garage, and one day he intends to sling it under here in place of the old Vauxhall unit – he admits that while the welded axle is brilliant off-road, it’s horrible for low-speed manoeuvres on hard surfaces and causes very rapid rear tyre wear

The front suspension is lifted by what qualifies as the usual means in Frontera-modding circles – simply winding up the torsion bars

The suspension is lifted by 2” at the back using heavy-duty springs and home-made steel spacers bought on eBay. The +2” Pro-Comp ES9000 shocks were bought as a set of four from a guy stripping a Frontera that had been rolled, but one of them turned out to have been damaged in the process so Pete bought a pair of new ones to go on here

Pete didn’t take long to learn that he was a big fan of the Isuzu-sourced 2.8 TD engine. ‘It’s a mechanically solid unit based on a design that’s 35-40 years old,’ he says. ‘No ECU and associated sensors – a major plus in my book, pure mechanics all the way.’ No surprise that aside from blanking off the EGR unit and vacuum advance system, and uprating the battery to a heartier Numax unit, he’s left well alone

Dare we call the Frontera’s cabin ‘classic’? If you drove one in the days when they were new, its quirky layout and chunky buttons will take you straight back… you might not want them to, but they’ll do it. Pete’s is pretty standard, all the way down to the magnificent not-quite-tartan trim…

The snorkel’s story is that somebody made it up at home and then, some time later, Pete bought it off them second-hand. The offside front wing is the only body panel on the vehicle that’s had to be replaced – not because it was damaged, but because Pete found he needed to do so while fitting the unit on the vehicle

Pete bought the vehicle as an MOT failure, but it turned out only to need a new exhaust to get it back on the road. Beyond this you can see the back of the transmission it left the factory with, while to the left of the picture is one of the +2” mounts Pete made up to lift the body, making way for bigger tyres and creating space to fit the winch bumper and rock sliders in place

Pete made the body lift by cutting 2” sections from a length of 45mm nylotron, drilling 10mm holes through their centres on a bench drill and threading them with 160 x 10mm nuts and bolts. At the back (not shown here), 153 x 10mm fine-thread bolts were needed to match the captive nuts, but sourcing these was a problem; after a lot of discussion with fellow Frontera Owners Group members, Pete solved it by using matching cylinder head bolts

Lifting the body made space for the front winch bumper to go on, though its mounts needed to be modified first – it was originally made by a blacksmith to go on an L200. Pete bought it for £110 on eBay then had the mounting brackets fabricated and welded for custom fit – using metal from a guy he knows who supplies RSJs for the building industry and salvaged it from the frag bin

Pete looked at the price of winches from premium brands like Warn and concluded that spending £200 on a 12,000lb, 12-volt budget unit would do him just as well for the off-roading he wanted to do. ‘To date,’ he says now, ‘I’ve been spot-on.’ He’s not so sure about the height of the winch fitting, though, as it means the winch is pulling down as well as forward: ‘it hasn’t caused any major grief to date, but I feel I need to add a bit more support to the winch bumper’s fixing to the chassis. That said, it’s high enough to be out of harm’s way when off-roading’

Another advantage of the 2” body lift was that it made room for a set of rock sliders to tuck in under the sills. Fabricated in box and tube, these were an eBay find which Pete bought in after someone had fabricated them as a one-off – as you can see, the nearside one has taken a big hit for the team at some stage…

The mountings for the rock sliders are seen here. So too is the notable fact that the front torsion bars and rear trailing links emanate from exactly the same point along the length of the chassis

Pete’s a big fan of the fuel tank guard. He even brought it back to life (in a ‘gentlemen, we can rebuild him’ kind of way) after it was what saved the vehicle when a failed hillclimb ended in a dramatic backwards toboggan run down a field of stumps

All the lift made way for a set of 265/75R16 Insa Turbo Special Tracks mounted on steel eight-spokes originally intended for a Pajero. That locking hub you can see there is an Aisin unit which Pete fitted while replacing the axle – it’s a Trooper job, remember, and this is a common mod among owners of that vehicle. As usual, he sourced the hubs on eBay – even with shipping from America, they only cost about £100

Pete King decided to have a go at off-roading after flicking through a mate’s pictures from a green lane day. When he started out, he didn’t even know how to engage four-wheel drive – but five years later, he’s built a DIY Frontera with a sky-high grins-per-quid fun factor. It might not be as pretty as a picture itself, but it owes him next to nothing – and these days, he’s gone from newbie status to knowing it inside-out. A perfect result…

Who among us hasn’t at one time or another clapped their eyes on someone else’s off-roading pictures and thought it looks like fun? Even if you already do it, for some reason when you see what other people have been up to you want to do that more.

No wonder, then, that when Pete King took a look through a mate’s green laning pics, he found himself wanting a piece of the action. His friend had been out doing it in a standard Hi-Lux Surf and given its back end a bit of a whack in the process, so between them they decided to buy a very cheap 4x4 and run it as a pure toy.

As very cheap 4x4s go, Vauxhall Fronteras are pretty much unbeatable. They’re tough, plentiful and old, they’ve got the right stuff off-road and they don’t hold their value. Especially not with a blown engine, which was the reason why Pete was able to pick one up for £200.

Obviously, buying a car with no engine is one way of having one that’s off-road, but that’s not the kind of action he had in mind so he joined the Frontera Owners’ Group to pick some brains. It didn’t take long for him to conclude that the 2.8 TD engine was the one he should be after – though he also decided that since this was meant to be a hobby, as opposed to a complete and utter chore, he’d be better off buying another vehicle that had the right engine in the first place. ‘I concentrated on doing my own modifications and starting playing, rather than spending time repairing the 2.0-litre.’

So now he had two Fronteras – yet he’d still only spent £600. ‘This one was on eBay as a standard, stock motor. It must have been stored up somewhere, because the tax disc showed expiry in 2006. I believe I’m the fourth owner.

‘It originated in the Nottingham area and I bought it from a dealer from Ilkeston in Derbyshire. There was evidence of a possible attempted theft, because the driver’s door lock showed signs of forced entry and I found shattered glass in the passenger’s door, but all I really know is that the seller had bought it eight months earlier in an auction with the intention of selling it on. Without doing any work on it, he decided that he didn’t have the time and listed the Fronty on eBay with a reserve price of £500.

‘After it didn’t reach its reserve, I made contact with the seller and offered him £400 cash, which he readily accepted. That was after an online check to see if it was registered stolen or had any outstanding finance, which came back clear. So off I went to Derbyshire with a hired trailer and my brother’s borrowed Discovery, and bought the car without even viewing it. Although I broke all the rules, I was lucky because all it needed was a new exhaust system to get it roadworthy again.’

That was in 2008, and the Frontera has remained roadworthy since – though the half-decade that followed has seen it become increasingly biased towards off-roading. ‘Initially, I didn’t know anything about it,’ says Pete. I can even remember asking how I used four-wheel drive first time!’

As you can tell by looking at the vehicle, he’s come on a long way since then. Ironically, he’s not done a lot of green laning, but he’s a real pay-and-play veteran now, both with the Frontera Owners’ Group and at the legendary Slindon Safari. And with the mods he’s made along the way, this is a truck that might not look all that pretty but is actually a lot more sorted than it appears.

The drivetrain is standard all the way to the axles, but that’s where it gets interesting. Up front, where of course the Frontera is independent, the diff didn’t think much of what was going on and ended up destroying itself. Time for a new diff… or not. ‘Both Vauxhall and Isuzu were under the General Motors umbrella when the Frontera was launched,’ explains Pete. ‘When Vauxhall introduced the Frontera on to the UK market, it utilised the already available Isuzu MU/Rodeo design rather than going to the drawing board for a new 4x4.

Consequently, the early Frontera’s running gear is the same design as the Trooper’s – so correctly matching Isuzu axles can be swapped straight in. Although not infallible, the Isuzu components do have a reputation for stronger build quality, and this is certainly true of the differential spider cogs I have compared.’

He’s going to be playing the Isuzu card at the back, too, with a Trooper LSD axle sitting in his garage waiting to go on. For now, though, he’s still got the original unit – albeit with the diff welded up, which is one way of not having to shell out for a locker if you’re not going to be using your truck for much else.

‘The options for the Isuzu axle are to fit either a cheaper Chinese copy of an ARB Air-Locker or a Lokka ratchet locker. I’ve already got a Lokka waiting to be fitted in the front differential; for the back, it does need an open third member, whereas the Air-Locker copy can be fitted into the LSD axle.’

It’ll be pretty clear from this that Pete’s Frontera is still very much a toy, and that spending big money on trying to turn it into something it’s not doesn’t interest him. The suspension lift, for example, involved simply winding up the torsion bars at the front and combining heavy-duty rear coils with custom steel spacers – enough to give him all the articulation he wants and, with a 2” body lift also in place, make room for a set of 265/75R16 Insa Turbo Special Tracks. These cost £67 each from Paddock Spares and were fitted for another £5 a corner by a friend of a friend.

Equally, the rock sliders and heavy-duty winch bumper are both eBay purchases from sellers who either home-fabbed them or got them blacksmith-built. The latter wasn’t even designed to fit a Frontera, so Pete got it modded to suit. It ain’t pretty, but it’s pretty strong and that’s what matters on a vehicle whose battered bodywork tells endless tales of fun and games in the woods. So too does the recovery kit it carries: ‘Two decent longish ropes, which used to be one very long rope…’

Which brings us back to the reason why Pete bought the Frontera in the first place. He thought off-roading looked like fun, and it turned out he was right – in fact, he’s probably found that it’s more fun than he could ever have imagined. And the Frontera has been a big part of that – even if he did have a false start with the first one.

‘Having gone through a few learning curves,’ he admits, ‘I’ve reflected on whether a different 4x4 would have been a better choice. But balancing that against costs, the modded Frontera hasn’t done a bad job for me. It does have its limitations – but so does my wallet!’

FRONTERA, PRO-COMP SHOCKS, NUMAX BATTERY, DIY BODY LIFT, INSA TURBO SPECIAL TRACKS