Building for the future

[roguevogue]

It seems to me that people with money to spend have always been able to buy performance enhancing kit or modifications to cover up for their inability to use the kit that they have.

Recently it has been the trend towards portals, presumably because bigger tyres were hard to get so portals is the only way to get over other peoples ruts without the skill to think around the problem.

Portal axles are legal but they have the obvious disadvantage of making the vehicle centre of gravity higher.

The latest "must have to be better than the others" is full hydraulic steering. Hydro steering is great but not road legal, therefore it is my opinion that this is a step too far and should be disallowed.

Should there be a class for vehicles where "anything goes"?

Imagine, if you will, a lightweight, 2wheel drive quad with an ep9 front and rear. Would it win? Would you want to disallow it?

[honitonhobbit]

It seems to me that people with money to spend have always been able to buy performance enhancing kit or modifications to cover up for their inability to use the kit that they have.

Recently it has been the trend towards portals, presumably because bigger tyres were hard to get so portals is the only way to get over other peoples ruts without the skill to think around the problem.

Portal axles are legal but they have the obvious disadvantage of making the vehicle centre of gravity higher.

The latest "must have to be better than the others" is full hydraulic steering. Hydro steering is great but not road legal, therefore it is my opinion that this is a step too far and should be disallowed.

Should there be a class for vehicles where "anything goes"?

Imagine, if you will, a lightweight, 2wheel drive quad with an ep9 front and rear. Would it win? Would you want to disallow it?

Heresy - for that you must be burnt but only after you repent of your sins and fit portals etc. We must all pray for the soul of Brother Vogue for he is doomed to eternal damnation

[tobes]

....we need to keep in mind that many events have got many roadmiles between stages. Hell, on the RFC we drove from singapore to Kuala Lumpur (350 Km), then from KL to the prolog (250 KM), then 1000 jungle KMs and then 250 KM back to KL.

I dont rate specials with that cant go on the road and carry only 10 litres of fuel personally, Although they are obviously more competitive on one day concealed area events

There is lots of talk about 'stiffling' the development of the vehicles and how offroading needs to move forward, but would the 'super-dooper, all singing, unrestricted non-road legal vehicles' actually stop the competitions advancing?!

Bear with me please! I am not very good with words and it'll probably not come out how i mean

A while back on d4x4 there was a discussion regarding the future of uk events (not the vehicles), if i remember correctly it was discussing how the uk is being left behind in terms of decent events, there was also discussion about a 5 day (or certainly a longer) event.

If people are travelling abroad to events such as RFC/ladoga/croatia trophy etc which are a longer 'tougher' events then surely there must be a market for a longer event in the uk? Obviously there are other attractions to going abroad... Sights/location/the sheer hell of it/locals/local beverages

However the uk doesnt have the space like lots of other countries (i know i wouldnt like to spend X amount of days driving around in the same quarry), even the spaces we ARE aloowed to use are becoming more restricted

If we allow vehicles to not be road legal then are we restricting the events themselves? There cant be many sites in the uk that could be home to a longer event due to size surely? The terrain of some events (ladoga?) vary vastly, is there a site in the uk that has all these different terrains? If we were to have an event to compete with some of the 'big' events then we need to offer the space and the varied terrain.... To do this (i have finally reached my point! ) then i think the only real way to do this is to use multiple sites.... for which there would need to be road sections.

Personally i reckon that all competing vehicles should all be road legal. There is a lot of enjoyment in building and developing a conpetition car, finding new ways to overcome a problem/situation. Can 'keeping it road legal' not be added to that? trying to find a solution as to how to achieve what you want and be MOTed? I know it is hassle though.

Sorry to deviate slightly off-topic, i hope you all see the point i am trying to make... even if it isnt very clear

[filthy boy]

Hi stranger! No, not banned yet but are you sure about your choice of axles?

Hi Paul

It will be finished soon! It really has become a labour of love and also fairly expensive. Going down the full on motorsport tech route has been interesting. Will we get abuse for spending too much? Does it matter?

The axles are a very good choice for the vehicle we are building and the performance we want. But others would say different . And that is the great part of it all.

I wish we could get away from 2 things. First lets build and compete in anything we want and start to see some real innovation. Some of it will be wrong and some will be blind alley development but so what? Secondly lets stop getting bothered about how much or little people spend. I really admire people who can do things all for themselves and on a shoe string but I also have no issue with people spending money (unless they stole it off me).

Drop by if you are in the neighborhood.

Tim

PS we intend to be fully and properly road legal because we don't want to be limited to 1 day or 1 site events. And I want to drive it to the pub!

[pugwash]

It seems to me that people with money to spend have always been able to buy performance enhancing kit or modifications to cover up for their inability to use the kit that they have.

that's true, but those with money/time are "usually" those that win as well! some of us like Pete, have better things to do with our time than sit in a garage fabbing up bits of steel- it's cheaper, quicker and more effective just to pay someone to do the work professionally whilst we can be trying to earn our respective fortunes!

Recently it has been the trend towards portals, presumably because bigger tyres were hard to get so portals is the only way to get over other peoples ruts without the skill to think around the problem.

for me, portals were much cheaper than other options around- only slightly more expensive than going down the route you went down nick- my mog axles with 10,000miles on cost me £215! how many ARBs do you get for that?

Portal axles are legal but they have the obvious disadvantage of making the vehicle centre of gravity higher.

this is a bit of a misnomer- they don't have to increase the CofG at all as long as you design the vehicle sensibly- i did the calculations a while ago- rather randomly the heavier mog axles actually lower the c of g compared to a similarily tyred rover axled 90

Should there be a class for vehicles where "anything goes"?

Imagine, if you will, a lightweight, 2wheel drive quad with an ep9 front and rear. Would it win? Would you want to disallow it?

hell no- sounds like great fun why the hell would anyone want to ban it? as long as it's got 4 wheels and space for a passenger then that should be all it needs!

oops- didn't mean to pick on your post nick

i'm with filthy boy and bathtub on the money thing. Why does it matter how much money anyone spends on their vehicle? is it envy and jealousy? any way you look at it a vehicle is either going to cost a lot of money or a lot of time. if people don't like badly thought out vehicles then that's fine- but it's nothing to do with money- i can screw up a vehicle with £100 just as easily as with £10grand lol it's one of the most negative aspects of the challenge scene- why are people so obsessed with spending money?

[Les Brock]

So...just for the record how much has yours cost Jim ?

[white90]

I'd suspect In the range of 5-6k to date and growing

a whole lot less than my boring 90 has set me back

[pugwash]

So...just for the record how much has yours cost Jim ?

Tony's about on the money at the moment- hoping to be less than 5 figures when up and running and fully finished.

for what i've got thats an absolute bargain BUT i do owe a a few people some huge favours for that! i totally couldn't have got this far without a lot of help from some very very nice people.

[dollythelw]

Recently it has been the trend towards portals, presumably because bigger tyres were hard to get so portals is the only way to get over other peoples ruts without the skill to think around the problem.

The latest "must have to be better than the others" is full hydraulic steering. Hydro steering is great but not road legal, therefore it is my opinion that this is a step too far and should be disallowed.

Hi Nick, that covers 95% of all the cars in the Tr3 and Tr4 classes either they're good for the terrain or theres a whole heap of foreign people that cant drive making some really dumb mistakes

[Corrode Finger]

Hi Nick, that covers 95% of all the cars in the Tr3 and Tr4 classes either they're good for the terrain or theres a whole heap of foreign people that cant drive making some really dumb mistakes

Just out of interest and kinda on the future building topic, who was the first person to think 'ooh, portals, they'll be good under a landy?'

Just a thought cos they must have been really wrong, for everyone to copy them!

[dollythelw]

blame those nasty foreigners, Malaysia, Scandinavia, the Baltic...... gits

[Corrode Finger]

Soo there is no known single person who can take the blame/ credit?

EDIT TO SAY

We cant balme it on you then Jez for bringing voodoo to blighty and making this offroad lark , 'just not cricket'

[dollythelw]

nope - not guilty

[FridgeFreezer]

First I saw of Portals was the rather spanking Malaysian RFC support trucks - 109" CSW's on Volvo portals pulling all the rufty tufty bunch out of the s**t

TBH even if no-one had done it, I'd have given it a go anyway when I was offered a rusty 303 for low oney. If that hadn't happened, the *original* plan was to build a front salisbury although these days, if I didn't have the portals I'd be looking at stuff like TLC axles which seem to be very good value.

Dan's comment made me think, although a tyre restriction in the lower classes would be good - f*** it, if people want to build BigFoot style challenge trucks then let 'em, you can always lay the punches out to make it hard for something that big to get in.

Nick - You're entitled to your opinion but if you are suggesting that people fit portals because they can't drive round big ruts you're talking arse gravy quite frankly I could say that you're clearly incapable of getting round a corner because your wheelbase is 9" shorter than mine, you big nonce

My reason for fitting them was that they were (a lot) cheaper than upgrading my LR axles to any sort of standard, the drop box on the end was really quite secondary to my decision.

However, your comment about CoG tells me you've been listening to the experts so I won't argue with you

[roguevogue]

The comments that I made and will make are not aimed at any individual, more a view which I have of what I see. There are undeniably some very expensive cars built for people who have a huge budget to compensate for their abilities. I must draw this conclusion because they still don't win.

If you are going to have a limit, which I feel is the correct thing to do, then the "Vehicles must be road legal" tag seems a good place to draw the line. If a vehicle has full hydro steering then it is not road legal and that is obvious to any scrutineer or marshal. If the tyres fitted to a vehicle have been recut or are not "E" marked (or US equivalent) then a scrutineer familiar with these markings can easily identify the fault.

Whether the vehicle is registered as a Skoda or a Defender is neither here nor there for our purpose as far as I can tell.

[FridgeFreezer]

If you are going to have a limit, which I feel is the correct thing to do, then the "Vehicles must be road legal" tag seems a good place to draw the line.

You're in danger of taking this round in a circle - if you define road legal as being within the C&U / SVA / VOSA definition then about 75% of the line-up at any event would be turned away, and potentially not the guys with the wacky looking trucks either. MogLite is more legit than a tax exempt hybrid for example.

If you draw the line as "must have an MOT" then hydro steer and other mods (again not necessarily just the "wacky" ones) are allowed in. Personally I think the MOT is about the best yardstick we have, if you go stricter than that you get into the minefield of scrutineering... and then we've gone round in a circle

[filthy boy]

The comments that I made and will make are not aimed at any individual, more a view which I have of what I see. There are undeniably some very expensive cars built for people who have a huge budget to compensate for their abilities. I must draw this conclusion because they still don't win.

So people who spend money are just compensating? Maybe they like nice things and it's what they want to do?? And it is their money.

This is no more fair or reasonable than saying those people who don't have a "huge budget" must be stupid because they can't get a good enough job to make enough money. So they compensate for that by slagging off people who do have money. That would be an obviously ridiculous opinion.

Let's just get off the budget abuse.

Things are driven forward by BOTH investment and backyard / barnyard ingenuity. Or even a combination of the 2.

Tim

[roguevogue]

I have not said, nor do I intend, that everyone who spends a large amount of money is either no good or compensating.

If anyone wants to feel slagged or dissed or even just confused then please go ahead.

[filthy boy]

I have not said, nor do I intend, that everyone who spends a large amount of money is either no good or compensating.

If anyone wants to feel slagged or dissed or even just confused then please go ahead.

I just think it is sad that people feel the need to keep bringing this sort of thing up.

Interestingly, you hardly ever see it on Pirate where there just seems to be interest in people building cool vehicles right across the spectrum of spend. But maybe this is just the English way.

And I feel neither dissed nor slagged, quite happy doing my own thing. And I know I can't drive!

[Les Brock]

I go back to my earlier comment....who cares how much or how little you spend as long as you have fun...

no matter how much or how little I spend....I'm cr@p no matter what I do

[filthy boy]

I go back to my earlier comment....who cares how much or how little you spend as long as you have fun...

no matter how much or how little I spend....I'm cr@p no matter what I do

Les

And there endeth the debate!!!

Tim

[honitonhobbit]

Interestingly, you hardly ever see it on Pirate where there just seems to be interest in people building cool vehicles right across the spectrum of spend. But maybe this is just the English way.

That's because a large proportion of the Pirate 'Clique' are so far up their own bottoms they need a lantern and so anti anyone suggesting anything that might be different from the norm that they could all be Jesuits. God help anyone that suggests anything different unless they have more than 20K posts and have sworn allegiance to the Good Ol' USof A. Just my opinion and not necessarily those of the any other free thinking inhabitants of planet earth

[pugwash]

If anyone wants to feel slagged or dissed or even just confused then please go ahead.

is this a free service?

if so, yes please.

[dollythelw]

I think Nicks got a fair point (not necessarily the budget one though) and although this is nothing to do with me, if a yard were to be set for the UK for any event emcompassing a transit section then set it somewhere realistic - Cars must have a valid MOT. Unless you SVA every vehicle ON THE DAY, and in the condition and fit out its going to be raced in, then holding a certificate is surely meaningless.

Les (hope you dont mind me using you as an example ) has an SVA, but by the time he has put his car to the spec he wants it to be I doubt very much it would pass the same test. This in effect makes a mockery of holding the SVA as any form of compliance tool, or will someone stand up and say... "well I like this mod after the SVA so thats ok but I dont like that mod so thats banned"....... and what agenda would they be working to? by setting yourself (or the organisers of an event) up as the "mods police" you are assuming responsibility for ANY deviation from original SVA passes, are you prepared to do that and on what grounds would you base your descisions?

Personally Im up for the fun and games of building a truck to be SVA'd in combat trim - but Im not sure how many others would want to, have the time to, or could be bothered with doing the same?

I dont feel slagged/dissed/narked or whatever about the portals comment - I think maybe if you saw them at work in the terrain they excel at you would change your mind though, but even used as a sledgehammer to crack a nut whats wrong with people doing their own thing? After all Toy axles may have been consided hericy a few years ago..?

[Les Brock]

No problem Jez

If you look at kit cars, they do exactly the same build it for the SVA then bolt all the goodies....total farce.....but you are IMHO less likely to get hassle from my Q plate than the 1964 plated coil sprung tax free Hybrid...or the highly modded 90

Its been SVA'd and ALL the mods are listed on the insurance still only cost me £220 fully comp agreed value