OK, so I parked the disco beside a transit the other day, and the wheelbase looks quite feasible for 110-chassis-under-transit-body.
Question is, will anyone buy it if I make one?
Anyone want a transit van/minibus with the off-road capability of a Land rover?
I reckon it's quite a viable prospect - the transit body would be much better on internal space than the 110 one is, transit parts are readily available and cheap, so are 110 parts. Provided the non-standard bits to join 'em together are kept to a minimum, it should be quite practical to run too.
Ford used to make a 4x4 Transit but AFAIK they stopped production of it. They were certainly making them in the early 1990s. It was popular for motorway construction use but they didn't sell very many. Other than the novelty value of having a LR 4x4 setup rather than a Ford one I'm not certain you'd find many buyers.
OTOH this is the sort of thing that should be done because you want to do it, not something you would build in the hope of selling it IMV as you'll never get back what you put into it.
Yes please, I know most of us in the Mountain Rescue World would love a van like this BUT at a sensible price. The main reason for wanting something like this is for a mobile Communication, Command & Control vehicle that can take you where a 110 can :)
Ford used to have their Transits converted by County, which is now know as Countrytrac, to make them 4x4 but the as far as I can remember the price was unbelievable something like an extra £20K on top of the price of the transit. Iveco made a 4x4 truck which the RAF MRT's used as a C3, Witham's did/still have some on there website £2.5K + but our contacts in the RAF tell us to get one based in a Southern RAF MRT as the Scottish ones are well hammered !!
No its a good project and my Team would love one :) We just cant afford one, now if there was some kind person who would donate us one well let me think........
The transit is the service van, doing roadside repairs on trucks, the range rover is used with a straight bar, for shunting trucks around in the yard, and occasionally for doing off road recoveries when some muppet has tried to drive a keved up fiesta/corsa/saxo etc. on the beach/in the middle of a wood etc (its funny, but there always seems to be 2 people in them when we get to them, the male looking sheepish, and the female looking very pissed off!)
If I could combine the 2 vehicles, then it would save a hell of a lot of messing about. Occasionally I need to use the transit to move a truck, e.g. a breakdown in a dangerous position (blocking a junction say) that needs moving somewhere safe before I can work on it. While I have used the transit to do this (17 tonnes is the heaviest its moved so far!) having a RR transmission would make it so much easier!
Main problem I could see would be the weight of the thing, my van is currently just short of 3.5 tonnes, and if you add the weight of the rr chassis, axles etc, this would probably add about a tonne to the weight, bringing it to about 4.5 tonnes, which is just a little bit more than a range rover chassis can handle (in the eyes of the law at least!)
Somebody will, but I can't see you getting back what you put in.
This has been done before. There's a guy who sells/services outboard motors somewhere in central Scotland/Fife area (can't remember exactly - was with someone else and visited a million places that day - he also has a Ford RS200 in his workshop!) and he has a transit bodied range rover chassied vehicle. Kept the V8 I seem to recall, very nicely finished on the outside. Inside the front looked a bit odd if I recall and the gear level was in an odd place (it was a manual) but from the outside it looked the business. Worked very well for him, ideal for launching boats, towing and carrying vast amounts of stock if need be.
I'm afraid I don't know if the chassis was extended/shortened at all - seem to recall the body may possibly have been cut and shut'd but that might be me havering. Anyway, the end result for him was an ideal vehicle for his purposes so there you are, it can be done, it can be done to look really nice, and it can give you a practical vehicle for day to day use. I'm booking a cup of tea at your house in a year's time for us to admire the finished vehicle ;)
What you are suggesting is a Forward Control Land Rover. They didn't sell too well.
I've seen an 88" Series One made into a FC. There is no reason why you couldn't do the same to your current 110. Make it right and you'll have an amazing vehicle which still looks like a Land Rover.
FC series IIs weren't particularly good vehicles, were very slow and pretty ugly to boot. I believe they were expensive as well.
FC 101s on the other hand probably would have sold in much greater numbers than Series IIs had they been sold to the general public. Llamas would have sold in much greater numbers still if they had been brought to market at all!
I personally really like the llama design and would love to get hold of one from Dunsfold to restore and use.
It just looks funny and wrong IMO. Too small to be practical.
I would have thought that this would involve much more work than the suggested transit body drop-on.
On or around Sat, 13 Nov 2004 09:42:58 GMT, Alex enlightened us thusly:
In fact, however, Ford never made a 4x4 transit. They marketed a County conversion, which doubtless made it expensive. and while it was indeed 4x4, it wasn't in the same class as a Land Rover off road.
On or around Sat, 13 Nov 2004 10:07:56 -0000, "Dave H" enlightened us thusly:
no wonder they didn't sell..
I was guesstimating figures the other day, and came to about 5K or a bit more for a new 110 chassis and recon engine/box/axles. add another grand for stuff like steering parts, rad and so on.
given that you could buy a reasonable transit for under 5 grand (condition of mechanicals is obviously mostly-irrelevant) then it ought to be doable for something in the region of 12-15K. using all-new LR parts would push it up to probably about 20K overall.
looking at it another way, as a conversion to an existing transit it'd probably cost about 8K for new chassis and recon mechanicals.
OK, you're not as such getting a new vehicle if you use a second-hand body. But there are lots of transits about, so finding a sound body should be easy enough. The important bits would be new or recon, and all the bits that might need replacing should be either standard LR or standard Transit, and thus easily available.
On or around Sat, 13 Nov 2004 11:36:46 +0000 (UTC), "SimonJ" enlightened us thusly:
I was gonna use a 110 chassis, though...
since I'm looking at the small-sized transit body (the twin-wheel one is too big to fit nicely); the van itself weighs a bit over a ton empty, and is probably about 2.5T gross. By the time you remove the engine and axles and so on, the body ain't gonna be a lot heavier than a 110 body.
I think all the "Ford used to make a 4x4 transit" mob missed the point, what would a Landrover chassis be like with a transit body I think is what was asked.
Probably HORRIBLE, but it'd be a nice experiment ;)
You can put almost any kind of special body on a Land Rover chassis, however the problem with a transit body would be the height unless you cut and shut it. If you really wanted to turn a landie into a bus the anser would be to use it as a tractor unit for an articulated bus body, rather like the thrid wheel caravan solution. If I had more money than sence I would get myself an outfit like that (caravan no the bus). Mind you most folks of my aquaintance already think I have more money than sence to be driving a landy in the first place :(
Leyland produced at least one 4WD Sherpa van in the late 70's early
80's. It is rather a long time ago but ISTR that it was based on a LWB LR chassis. I might have a piccy somewhere, the one I use was owned by BBC Bristol to house a single camera unit before broadcast camcorders etc where available.
On or around Sun, 14 Nov 2004 10:18:09 -0000, "Larry" enlightened us thusly:
I reckon it could be modified suitably. If I get the chance, I'll try it. After all, the LR body and floor level and so on is pretty high anyway. OK, the whole vehicle will be a bit higher, but only about foot or so and the top bit of the body is light anyway. If I can get the floor level somewhere around the same height as a standard 110, it'll work pretty well.
On or around Mon, 15 Nov 2004 06:54:07 +1100, JD enlightened us thusly:
Still gonna have the same chassis and mechanicals, though. The transit body can't be all that heavy, though - I'll obviously be stripping all the ford mechaincals from it and probably some of it's chassis/frame, as it's not gonna need that, or not much of it anyway. And while the transit body is steel, it'a fair bet that it's about half the thickness of the 110's alloy panels.
roof rack might be pushing it a bit. I could always fit my cunnignly-designed anti-roll bars which you can decouple to go off-roading. Actually, they're probably more saleable than the hybrid transit-rover. One design ought to work on all steel-sprung RRC, disco I, 90 and 110...
Poor-man's ACE, innit. 'course, there's nothing stops you unbolting an ARB in order to go off-roading, but it's a lot of hassle. My one will just need the removal of one big bolt.
I suspect the Transit body is significantly heavier than a 110 body, and more important, has a higher centre of mass. So you are going to end up with a significantly higher c of g than the standard 110, most of whose mass is in the chassis and mechanicals. Mind you, probably not as bad as a standard 110 with a roof rack loaded with six months' supplies and camping gear. Then you could put a roof rack on the Transit body..... JD
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