Tony Spear
Established Member
Thanks chaps, it's nice to be appreciated! 
To clarify a couple of points.
Land Rover: I had a 11A for years, but eventually I got fed up with the trek from Oxfordshire to Exmoor with two dogs and a full length roof rack full of camping gear, fishing tackle, photo kit and half of the (ex) wife's shoe cupboard. Trundling along the M4 at about 50 mph with my foot flat to the boards wasn't too bad, but when we reached the slopes near Swindon and we struggled to maintain 35 it was a bit frustrating!
I could have bought a 90, but I liked the look of the Series machines, so I decided to build the machine that Land Rover should have built when they first got the aluminium Buick V8 instead of that crappy 2.6 Litre straight 6.
The beauty of mine is that the the chassis was specifically built (by an approved Land Rover replacement chassis builder) to take all the Range Rover stuff without moving the rad forward and making it look like a 90.
Having the wider wheelbase of the Range Rover axles coupled with the 88" wheelbase means that you can chuck it around like a Mini!
When I first put it on the road a bloke in the village who drives customised Land Rovers and Range Rovers in off-road competitions drove it and said "bloodyell I've just got to build one of these!). The guy over the road from me drives in Hill climbs (Austin 7 special and Ginetta, Prescott and all that stuff dontcha know) and he drove it and said "I never knew a Land Rover could be such fun!
My best mate looked underneath and said that it'll outlast both of us, to which I responded "I bloody well hope so, 'cos I'm taking it with me when I go"!
As far as bastardising is concerned, I wouldn't dream of of mucking about with something like a Series 1 80", but what I really like about the Land Rover "community" is that nobody gives a monkey's what you do with 'em as long as you remain true to the spirit.
I'm proud to say that apart from some of the electrics, mine is still all Land Rover and a hell of a lot of fun.
I just can't wait until I get the all clear from the Doc. so I can get out and about with it again. :twisted:
Cameras: The Pentax Spotmatic was the first SLR with TTL metering, so when they first started appearing on the secondhand market I bought one. Of course at that time, you weren't regarded as a "serious" photographer unless you had one of those horrible clunky range finder Leicas, which cost an arm and a leg and were impossible to reload with cold hands (I've got one, so I know what I'm talking about). When I eventually decided that I'd like a camera with a bayonet fit lens instead of the Pentax screw thread, I went to my local camera dealer in Cheltenham ( a bloke who had worked as a photographer for the RAF during WW2 and as a pro, so he knew what he was talking about unlike the muppets that you meet in Jessop's) and said that I was interested in getting hold of a secondhand Nikon F2AS and he pointed out that buying a secondhand Nikon was a minefield as being a camera extensively used by Pro's you never could be sure if it had had 50 or 50,000 rolls of film through it. If I was prepared to wait until he had one that he knew the provenance of and could wait up to a couple of years he was sure that he could help, BUT Pentax had just brought out this new camera aimed at the Nikon market and why didn't I try it? It also meant that with an adaptor I could still use some of my more extreme existing screw thread optics (albeit very manually). He then lent me the the first LX that came into the shop and I used it for two months before either of us had to part with any money. I've never regretted it since.
To clarify a couple of points.
Land Rover: I had a 11A for years, but eventually I got fed up with the trek from Oxfordshire to Exmoor with two dogs and a full length roof rack full of camping gear, fishing tackle, photo kit and half of the (ex) wife's shoe cupboard. Trundling along the M4 at about 50 mph with my foot flat to the boards wasn't too bad, but when we reached the slopes near Swindon and we struggled to maintain 35 it was a bit frustrating!
I could have bought a 90, but I liked the look of the Series machines, so I decided to build the machine that Land Rover should have built when they first got the aluminium Buick V8 instead of that crappy 2.6 Litre straight 6.
The beauty of mine is that the the chassis was specifically built (by an approved Land Rover replacement chassis builder) to take all the Range Rover stuff without moving the rad forward and making it look like a 90.
Having the wider wheelbase of the Range Rover axles coupled with the 88" wheelbase means that you can chuck it around like a Mini!
When I first put it on the road a bloke in the village who drives customised Land Rovers and Range Rovers in off-road competitions drove it and said "bloodyell I've just got to build one of these!). The guy over the road from me drives in Hill climbs (Austin 7 special and Ginetta, Prescott and all that stuff dontcha know) and he drove it and said "I never knew a Land Rover could be such fun!
My best mate looked underneath and said that it'll outlast both of us, to which I responded "I bloody well hope so, 'cos I'm taking it with me when I go"!
As far as bastardising is concerned, I wouldn't dream of of mucking about with something like a Series 1 80", but what I really like about the Land Rover "community" is that nobody gives a monkey's what you do with 'em as long as you remain true to the spirit.
I'm proud to say that apart from some of the electrics, mine is still all Land Rover and a hell of a lot of fun.
I just can't wait until I get the all clear from the Doc. so I can get out and about with it again. :twisted:
Cameras: The Pentax Spotmatic was the first SLR with TTL metering, so when they first started appearing on the secondhand market I bought one. Of course at that time, you weren't regarded as a "serious" photographer unless you had one of those horrible clunky range finder Leicas, which cost an arm and a leg and were impossible to reload with cold hands (I've got one, so I know what I'm talking about). When I eventually decided that I'd like a camera with a bayonet fit lens instead of the Pentax screw thread, I went to my local camera dealer in Cheltenham ( a bloke who had worked as a photographer for the RAF during WW2 and as a pro, so he knew what he was talking about unlike the muppets that you meet in Jessop's) and said that I was interested in getting hold of a secondhand Nikon F2AS and he pointed out that buying a secondhand Nikon was a minefield as being a camera extensively used by Pro's you never could be sure if it had had 50 or 50,000 rolls of film through it. If I was prepared to wait until he had one that he knew the provenance of and could wait up to a couple of years he was sure that he could help, BUT Pentax had just brought out this new camera aimed at the Nikon market and why didn't I try it? It also meant that with an adaptor I could still use some of my more extreme existing screw thread optics (albeit very manually). He then lent me the the first LX that came into the shop and I used it for two months before either of us had to part with any money. I've never regretted it since.
