After the first mile, I realised I couldn’t put up with the driving position. Every time I operated the clutch, the very low dashboard would skin my shins and the high position of the throttle pedal was uncomfortable, all that coupled with the steering wheel stuck in my ample gut. People must have been much smaller in those days.
However on the plus side, the massive straight through Borla silencer sounds fantastic! It has a quiet, but fruity burble as you trundle along, exactly what I hoped for. The ride is quite bouncy with the aluminium V8 being a lot lighter than the original all iron engine, but the steering is surprisingly exact and doesn’t wander at all. The brakes are awesome, you only have to gently stroke the pedal to stop it on a sixpence. It passed its MOT with flying colours, so I got it taxed as such (actually it’s exempt due to its age) and took it out for a shake down, that ended up lasting a week or so. Having given it a 250 mile shakedown, including some gentle greenlaning, we set about improving the ergonomics and addressing the final modifications. We managed to refabricate the drivers seat that effectively moved it back about 5” without needing to do the customary chop on the wheel arch. This is a huge improvement and had made it much comfier to drive.
The next job was to address the very low gearing and fit some higher ratios in the diffs. It now sports 4.27:1 ratios that work well with the V8 allowing full use of the 3 speed gearbox. Before it would pull away in top (3rd) and accelerate to the engine redlining at around 70 MPH! 1st was redundant unless you wanted a crawler gear. I had a look at a couple of overdrive units initially, rather than change the diff ratios, as the crawlers gears would be nice to keep off road. But decided against it ultimately, all the extra gear changing and the extra gearstick cluttering up the cab ruled them out.
The end result is a lovely toy. Loads of character, that turns heads wherever it is parked and will return 20+ MPG whilst cruising at sensible speeds. It is nippy without being insanely fast, very torquey, capable of embarrassing the odd hot hatch from the lights, mostly due to the surprise element, they just don’t expect it to be able to sprint. It is a lot of fun!
I might build some more. If your fed up with the modern plastic stuff and fancy something with character, give me a call.
