Workshop Projects

Project 110 came about with the need to replace our Bobtail Rangie for international and speed events. We had 3 real options :

A) Just use our current 90 which would suit most applications,

B) Stretch the 90 to a 100 inch, we would have achieved this by moving the spring mounts back by the required amount, fitting longer radius arms and A frame arms. This was quite a serious option and could well happen in the near future, however as the vehicle will be for international events I felt the need for more power so a V8 had to be added which would not have been practical for the 90.

C) Build a new vehicle, the obvious choice being another RR, the down side of this was the fact that it would still be an old vehicle and I wanted to use something that looked current so that just left one choice, a Defender.

In an ideal world I would have opted for a wheel base of around a 104 to 106 inches but I just did not have time for this for the sake of just a couple of inches so it was to be 110 and project 110 was born.

The first job was to source a 110, this in itself ought to have been an easy task however when you want one there isn’t one to be found. After three weeks of searching I eventually purchased one over the phone, it was a fairly scruffy example of a 110 Hi Cap in red (needless to say I wanted one in Coniston green.)


The other major items that needed to be sourced were a V8 Gems engine complete with ancillaries and an auto gear box.

As luck would have it one of the team (Tim) had a 4 litre V8 Gems engine in his 90 that he wanted rid of and I had a 300tdi engine and gear box that he required so a swap was agreed and we had an engine. The gear box was much simpler to sort out, I’m not a fan of second hand auto boxes so the only choice was to contact Dave Ashcroft, Dave has built several competition boxes for us over the years and after a short call to Dave we were sorted. I will come back to the spec later.