r.tec wrote:ian.rees wrote:.. time to work on things other than the car ..
...but that's just part of the fun!!!
My dad bought a brand new Mini Moke "Californian" in the very early 1970s. It was one of these
For a brief period around 1971, Leyland Australia produced a variant referred to in Leyland literature as "Moke, special export", but commonly called a "Californian", which had a 1,275 cc engine and was fitted with side marker lamps and different rear lights to conform to US FMVSS standards.
that quote is from wikipedia here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_Moke ... lian_Mokes
We had no pollution control back in those days so the small light car plus relatively powerful engine and (for its time) extremely good handling...meant that the thing used to absolutely fly....it out performed the big sixes common in Australian cars of the time and even the v8s were shocked when you left them behind when taking off from a standing start (although they would get you by about second gear!) and when you hit any corners ....they were just completely out classed.
It did another thing very well....when you got it bogged in mud ...it was so small and light that you only needed a couple of mates to pick it up and lift it out of the mud! Also being front wheel drive, it tended to pull itself around corners in very slippery muddy conditions and keep going in conditions where a typical family car of the time might get bogged. The Australian outback still had a lot of unsealed roads back then....it still does but nowhere near to the extend it did back then.
It was rather mechanically unreliable and had some design/maintenance short comings but that was probably common back then.
It had a "bash plate" added below the engine (good idea with such a low engine)and the grill was a fixed unmoveable part of the front body work...later models had removable grills ...this meant that to get to the oil filter you had to undo a lot of bolts and remove the bash plate. It regularly broke the top engine mount. The suspension according to my dad had been originally designed for the small wheels "10inch"? but they put big wheels 13" on this model from new, so from new it regularly wore out or broke suspension parts.
. -Ian-
