Obviously, Bill's block contains some pretty technical terrain. It's kind of a laboratory for researching what constitutes capability. He's had the block about 30 years, and, his SWB land rover has been "tuned" in the terrain he has there.
If you were wondering about the old green landrover parked up by the house, here it is in action:
That's quite a lot of suspension movement, but also note how level the body is, considering the relative positions of the axles. Those that were stadning around the ramp when we were working though the cars might recall I was talking about how in a perfect world the front would do equal, or maybe more of the work of the suspension work to keep the car level and balanced, and that's a dramatic example.
He is reworking the front suspension because he's not happy with some of its characteristics. If you're interested, you can read what he's working on here:
http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/mercedes ... -roll.html
A few of us picked apart the operation of his 6WD car, which is just a rotting chassis mostly now. Here is a short video of it working (and an LJ50!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZuJHchxpvQ
You'll notice that Bill could lift one side of the car to counter a side angle. He could also lift the centre axle to increase ground pressure to improve traction. (although that's not in the video)
I'm aware that this stuff is all pretty out there, and not all that relevant to most of us, but it's a nice counterpoint to what 4WDing has become, where we complain about the prices of equipment that we can just bolt on to our cars to make them do what we want. When that 6X6 was made, there was almost no 4WD accessory industry - he even made the difflocks himself.
Anyway, there's some food for thought.
Steve.
