13: Back To The Lab Again

...Continued from previous page

So it's now April 2007 and the 109 is mostly assembled but there's no wiring or plumbing or brakes - typical eBay “unfinished project” condition you might say

The HOFS team are pressing on with their racer “Petal” and approaching the time when they'll want me to come along and help with things like wiring before heading off to Russia in June for Trophy Raid Ladoga.

To make matters worse, way back when this was in the offing, they'd persuaded me to come along as a technical support car - it'd be fun, they said!

However, now I was staring at a rapidly approaching deadline where the vehicle I was supposed to be driving as a support vehicle was still far from finished - but race entry, ferry tickets and hotels and the like were booked & paid for months ago!

The 109 was dragged back to the lab for finishing off “all hands on deck” and so that I could be doing whatever was most useful on the race car if needed.

It's at this point the photographic record breaks down like Don Hertzfeldt's Rejected Cartoons as the pace got far too frantic for photos - we were working all night almost every night (as well as having day jobs), at weekends we'd go into the lab on Friday night and more than once didn't emerge again until Monday morning (we dubbed these “Friaturndays”).

Food and coffee were kept stocked and everyone just had their heads down working flat out on whatever needed doing - in addition to getting two cars built there was a whole load of logistics to be sorted assuming we actually did manage to make it to the ferry on time!

We had to fabricate some sort of exhaust - the front half was standard Range Rover, using tubular headers & stainless Y piece I picked up at Sodbury. The back half didn't exist yet…

We debated just doing it in flexi but decided we're not animals - so various bits of pipe and other exhaust systems were skillfully cut & shut to create something.

…conversion!

The Volvo axles use drums very similar to Series Land Rovers with all the drawbacks that entails. Jez had been working with some Americans to develop a good disc-brake conversion (because holy crap have we seen some terrifyingly BAD conversions!) and so I got one of the first kits - discs had been on the plan since before the Volvo axles turned up so despite the financial pain it was a no-brainer.

I had bought TFE braided hose and fittings from Think Automotive on the grounds that it's easier to route & terminate than faffing about flaring copper, and will take a knock or two off-road. No, it doesn't make the pedal spongy - ask the Project Binky lads as they've done the same. It also means fewer joints in the system and joints that aren't there can't leak!

Yeah, best not ask… a load of assorted coolant hoses were chopped up and it all kinda worked but I re-did it all more nicerer in the 2019 refresh.

Fuel was plumbed in standard high pressure hose, a Facet lift pump and then a Bosch high pressure pump under the driver's seat… again, I intend to re-do this one day to make it neater.

Oh god…

By now we were really getting down to the wire (geddit!?), one of the problems with agreeing to be the technical truck is that (theoretically) I could be required to go into a TR4 Proto stage to recover Jez, which means driving in where a load of trucks on 40“ boggers & portals have been… and they don't stop for lakes or rivers:

A major problem, then, is waterproofing electrical things like the ECU… necessity being the mother of invention I elected to bolt the whole dashboard & ECU to the ceiling and worry about it when I got back from Russia…

I started this neatly and then the clock kept ticking!

I spent about 24 hours like this - wiring the truck on a car trailer, first in the rain and then in a barn. This will absolutely kill your legs after many hours leaning in through the door.

It turns out some of the injectors had seized up in storage and were hyraulicing the engine on its own fuel! A panicked run down to RR Parts for a 2nd hand set of injectors later and it coughed into life!

I have left out a million little jobs here but it was right down to the wire but to give a little timeline:

• Wednesday 23rd May 2007: 1st drive, round the corner from the lab to the MOT station (passed!)
• Thursday: Trailered home to pack stuff, finish odd jobs, leave Range Rover at home
• Friday: Drove it into town on the Range Rover wheels & tyres (VERY slowly!) to go to the tyre place and swap the 9.00×16's off the Volvo rims, drove it home to fill it with all my stuff for the trip..
• Saturday: Drove it ~25 miles with the laptop data-logging, ran an auto-tune on the fuel map in a Tesco car park, drove the remaining 25 miles to the lab & did another auto-tune. Crammed 5 tons of gear and tools into the back and then set off for Russia.
• Sunday: Drinking beer somewhere in Holland with Leo & Benny
• Monday: Getting on the ferry at Rostock
• Tuesday: Somewhere in the Baltic sea
• Wednesday: Collecting yet more people & tools in Finland
• Thursday: Driving round St Petersburg looking for the starting line

And by “loaded up” I do mean fully loaded - this was the view from the back of the 109:

And it made it all the way to Russia!

You can read about the whole trip here - but here ends the rebuild classic restoration! …although there were a fair few unfinished jobs left for later.

Oh and while the 109 was being rebuilt, Petal got a bit of a makeover too: