Asphalt wrote:
The 'Quadra' spoken of being driven from Adelaide to Sydney was NOT built by the factory or some prototype as is claimed in that article. It was built by 'Mad Max' in SA (giday mate!). It had a custom made gearbox, similar to that made by Leyland Aust, but after that it was basicly made from crap. To get it all to fit, the body has been raised on the front subframe and it has M1100 Front Hubs (because Max couldn't afford the right brakes at the time), Triumph Herald Rear leaf springs and brakes. All the factory ones used Rubber Suspension in a slightly modified rear subrame and pot joints front and rear. The Gearbox was done in such a way that it was not necessary to raise the body (as it was on that one built by Max). If memory serves me they started playing with the idea in 1979 and had a couple of running cars by late 1980. It was not long after that that the decision had been made to cease Australian Production of the Moke. If it had not been for that, they were scheduled for Production from early 1982.
Apart from the Genuine one in Perth, the only other one resides in Bathurst on a farm.
These genuine ones also used JKD straight cut drop gears, with a reduced ratio to get overall lower gearing. Quite Noisy!!
The 4WD Mini shown in Asphalts post above does look nicely done, but I doubt that it was done by the factory. Those in the UK were all done by the 'twini' method.
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