Whats it all about ?????

Over 30 years of buying, breaking, building, cutting, welding, riding and selling greasy old mo'sickles. Bare bones bikes from the middle of nowhere!

Tuesday 29 November 2011

Tigger's Trials and Tribulations

Tigger was my old series one Landrover, a 1958 swb that I bought in 1988 from Alex Lindsay in Broxburn.It was already kitted out for CCV trials with the fuel tank boxed into the pick up bed and a very dodgy steam tube roll bar. The drive home highlighted a few ..er . issues. First off the motor was knackered , it was still fitted with the old IOE 2l that it had had when it left Solihull, the bigends were rumbling away and it smoked its way through a couple of pints of oil on the slow run home to Glasgow.
I was lucky, my Dad managed to get me an ex MOD 2l IOE motor that had been used by the army cadets as a demo motor. It came in a crate with a little brass plate on the side that said it had been rebuilt by the REME in 1964 and it didnt look like it had been fired up since!

The motor was swapped in over a weekend and fitted with an alloy head from a Rover 60 saloon car and a freshly rebuilt SU carb. Fitted a front axle with the bigger 11" drums up front from a later series 3 LWB and 5 leaf springs as used on MOD airportable (lightweight) landys.

I took the now much healthier tigger over to Alex in Broxburn and had him fit a full truck cab roll cage to the then new ARC regs and fitted a set of Firestone SAT tyres onto wide weller spoke wheels


For the best part of 5 years Tigger was my only car, used every day to get to work on the building sites, and trialled with the SLROC at weekends, it only finally got taken off the road in 1998 to get the chassis replaced..... after years of abuse it had cracked right through below the cab, it was only the roll cage holding it together!


I moved north from Stirling in 1998 with Tigger in bits strapped to a trailer with the intention of rebuilding it with a new galvanised chassis once I had some spare time.................

Five years on, The engine had been sold to a friend to keep his series one going, the body work had all but dissapeared with various uninvited visits from tinks in white vans to the yard where it was being kept, and all I was left with was a logbook, a flatpacked rollcage,  and a V5c. An advert on the Highland 4wd Clubs website caught my eye.. and a trip down to Drumnadrochit saw me coming home with a spaceframed coil sprung special strapped to the trailer..... Tigger2 had arrived!!!


An early rangerover rolling chassis cut n shut to 86" wheelbase and fitted with a tubular space frame with trimmed down series one wings and doors. The motor is a nice and healthy late 60's Rover V8 from a P6 saloon car mated up to a rangerover 4 speed box..








Monday 21 November 2011

The Anderson Special

Built and developed in the 1920's and '30s by Glasow garage owner James Anderson. The Mk2 Anderson Special is powered by twin humber engines and was a successful hill and road trial car of its time.


Some really forward thinking innovations on the csr, fold away headlamps, wind up main windscreen, fully independent suspension...

















The mk2 was capable of speeds in excess of 100mph and was very competitive in its day.
Now on display at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow

Id love to take it for a blast up the "Rest and be thankful"

Thursday 17 November 2011

The Black Sheep gets Ram Air

Rosie did some artwork on the Ironhead's air cleaner 8-)



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Monday 7 November 2011