“Chassis rotten? Or do you just dream of the comfort of coils?
Which ever – Designa Chassis have the solution for you.”

Iain Blenkinsop has been involved with Land Rovers since 1982. He is now concentrating on offering replacement and alternative chassis for all Land Rovers through his steel fabrication specialist company Designa Chassis, which was founded in 1991 and is still based in Doncaster, Yorkshire in the North of England.

Designa Chassis have for over a decade, been leading the way in offering replacement galvanised chassis for all leaf spring Series Land Rovers. The company is also, and probably better known for its range of replacement heavy duty galvanised coil spring chassis for Series vehicles, 88, lightweight, 109, 90, and 110. All the Designa Chassis are built and jig assembled in house with 3mm side rails (4 or 5mm also available) using computer designed machined parts. These chassis allow you to convert your old Land Rover ‘leafer’ into a ‘coiler’ with little fuss and without the need to look around for a donor vehicle chassis to cut and re-weld to the correct wheelbase, bearing in mind that the donor chassis is old and its condition is unknown other than what you can see on the surface.

Large numbers of older Series vehicles have now been successfully transplanted onto Designa coil chassis. Not only has the new chassis extended the vehicles life but after driving a Lightweight with a galvanised ‘Coil’ chassis fitted, it can certainly be said the difference between that and driving an original leaf sprung model is – well no comparison at all. It brings an old Series (cart spring) Land Rover into the twentieth century.

The possibilities of chassis available from Designa Chassis are almost unlimited. Designa Chassis offer coil sprung specials built to whatever you require. 110 chassis extended to 127 or 130, 4x4, 6x6 camper motorhome chassis also available. In fact any size chassis from 88 inch to 26 ft can be built.

From an article by Wayne Mitchelson
“Land Rover Monthly” July 1999

The rust bug is no stranger to the Land Rover, and my Series II was no exception. There was no way I could sell it, as the chassis resembled a colander and buying a new 90 was out of my league, so the only alternative was to rebuild my 88” and bring it into the 90’s.

It was in fact, the 90 that provided the inspiration to build a coil-sprung hybrid. I use the term loosely, as I’m still not sure whether I ended up with a hybrid or not.

While poking about under several hybrids looking for ideas I discovered “those who can weld can” and those who can’t shouldn’t bother making hybrids. However I took a closer look at one of Designa Chassis examples and decided this was the very answer – I can’t weld and don’t pretend to, the guys at Designa Chassis can and do it well!