| Jim Comments:
In November 2004 I bought my G4 D2 in bits, i.e. the vehicle was
supposed to be scrapped after it returned from
the 2003 South Africa section of the event, I bought the body, the
chassis was scrapped so I
lost the original number plate - BP52 GNU built
August 2002 and sold to Land Rover January
2003.
I re-chassised it on a new chassis and used the running gear from a
written off similar spec vehicle of the same age, the engine came from
JE Engineering, a 5 Ltr V8 310bhp (bored and stroked 4.6) with an up
rated HP24 gearbox, Quaife torque biassing diffs, Koni Heavy Track Raid
shocks, plus all the usual mods!
I re-registered the vehicle in February 2005
to "G4 CAR", the best plate I could find for £500!
In August I took her back to South Africa to do a 4X4 rally
http://www.4x4xplore.com/ she is
on the front page of the web site! The rally involved 29 cars, 5 of
which were Land Rovers, starting in Cape town, where she was recognised
by the LR dealer, (I used their work shops to adjust the shock
absorbers, found I was carrying more weight
than I had anticipated) and drove up the east coast of SA, into Lesotho,
up on into Swaziland then Botswana and up as far as Zambia before we
turned west to Namibia and then down the skeleton coast back into SA and
home to Cape town. The rip took 4 weeks and we covered about 10k miles,
of which 45% was on unmade dirt roads!
http://www.4x4xplore.com/taa/index.html
Sorry a picture of the wife on a game drive,
only included because of her G4 Jacket, she thinks she is the game
tracker! Dust was a problem in Namibia, nearly all the roads are gravel,
but very fast - you could keep up a 100mph for some good long stretches.
I have now managed to pressurise the cabin better so not so much dust
comes in! Still managed to smash 2 sets of shocks and burn a hole on my
petrol tank, but still finished, even with only half an exhaust! (over
1,600 pics taken on the event!)
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