Why Team Robert weren't in the 2011 Land's End Trial

It's engineless! Team Robert were at this stage grubby but unbowed.

Close but so far away, it was a sterling effort by your brave boys but in the end our dream didn't come true.

It all began to go wrong when Rob discovered what was making the funny tapping noise when he revved the engine on the Candidi Provocatore Allard. This machine is now under his stewardship and he discovered that a stud holding on the centre main bearing had broken, allowing the main bearing cap to fret about.

If you look closely you will see only one stud for the centre main cap. The other stud is in two pieces, one of which is still in the block. Rob tried drilling it out and did a good job but the main bearing cap would still need replacing. To get the replacement to fit the block properly, that would need line boring the block caps and that's an engine out and strip job. Doesn't the oil pump look vulnerable without the sump on?

This can sometimes happen on these engines if they are revved hard. The options were either a) to drill the stud out and fit an undamaged main bearing cap and hope that it wouldn't be too out of whack to last the 600 miles or so that doing the trial would involve, or b) to replace the engine with one of his spare ones. Since he is something of a perfectionist and I knew he had an ex-French Army unit that had only done about 1000 miles since it head been built in 1991, I went up the weekend before the event to help swap engines.

Not the best picture I've ever taken but you can see where the new flathead V8 came from.

The French Army flathead Rob has was made as late as 1991 in downtown Clermont-Ferrand for a light 4x4 truck built by Simca and colloquially known as the SUMB. They were sold off as surplus some years ago and the Robster bought one. Several got squirrelled away across the Allard community and you can bet everyone knows where they've put 'em (unlike the squirrels and their nuts).

The new engine had been sat around for a while, though, so while I set about stripping the ancilliaries for the engine swap, Rob tore the engine down and then re-assembled it with new bearings, seals and gaskets.

There a few other items to sort out. The gearbox mount had been soaked in oil over the years and had to be replaced. Fortunately this is a truck part and Rob had one in stores. He also had new water pumps (there's one for each bank of cylinders) and a reconditioned gearbox.

It was a good thing the weather was fine the week before Easter for although the car was in a car port we were working largely in the open. By late on Saturday, Rob had assembled the bottom end and I'd got the engine out after taking off as much as I could to lighten it. The bonnet on these cars is so long the engine crane couldn't reach in from the front so I had to go in sideways. It was very tight against the wall of the house but I managed it.

Space was nearly the final frontier for us, too.

The following morning we made an especially early start for we still had much to do but were quietly confident we could get the engine to run. After an especially fortifying breakfast courtesy of Tina (Mrs Binky), who was dangerously becoming more like an Allard widow as the weekend sped by, there was the ceremonial swapping of sumps (the French engine has a very nice alloy affair but for trailling you really need the pressed steel variety) and the traditional decoking of the cylinder heads, which occurred early this year due to global warming. Obviously.

Are you one of those people who tries this at home when they say "Don't try this at home?" I was quite pleased I worked out a way to dangle the block like this with Tina's washing line (let's hope she's not reading this) so I could swap sumps. Note the twin water pumps.

Meanwhile, Rob fitted the valves and timed up the engine.

This engine is a sixteen valve - count them. They fit into strange casettes  that look like medieval instruments of torture (see contents of nearest re-employed lemon sorbet container). Only Grand Whizz-herds of the Dark Arts can get these to fit properly whilst invoking the spirit of St Sidney.

Fitting the gearbox onto the torque tube was a sod. We had to work together on this, which was something of a surprise, as we'd been doing our own things for 20 hours or so beforehand. But it's good to have two of you blitzing a project like this because you spur each other on and bounce ideas off each other. We didn't get in each others way much and there no trapped fingers. Bonus.

So then we came to fit the engine in. Getting it in was easy for giants of engine punkery like Binky and Ginger of Team Robert but getting it to fit was another matter. Darkness fell and so did our hopes of hearing the engine burst into life. I had to drive back to Cornwall that night and tore myself away at 2100 with the engine hooked up on things we could no longer see.

There was still a week to go before the Land's End but when I checked in the following day Rob had bitten the bullet and taken the engine out again so that he could fit the engine to the gearbox. And did I tell you what a bastard it was to fit the box onto the torque tube? Rob managed it in the end. Some neighbours took pity on him and helped heave when he was hoeing underneath the car. The only thing was the engine was not in line with engine mounts and it was fouling the bulkhead.

At last we discovered why no-one had fitted a Simca V8 into the Candidi Provatore car before. The block is stronger by virtue of being slightly bigger in most directions. After Rob put in a marathon of grinding the bulkhead back in very restricted circumstances, we realised we wouldn't make the start after all.

I was still determined to be entered somehow and put the word out I was available as a bouncer and incredibly a complete stranger offered us his spare trials car. Well, I suppose Mike Warnes is a gentleman of the MCC so I shouldn't be that surprised but, all the same, this really goes beyond generosity. However, while I was still focussed on simply making the start, Rob was more focussed on getting the car right. It was just too late to arrange insurance to cover us in Mike's Escort based special, which he calls a Husky, or organise picking it up from South Devon.

Mike Warnes on Blue Hills in his Husky during an earlier Land's End. Obviously not a Hillman Imp estate but the subject of a very generous offer that in the end we regrettably couldn't make use of (Photo : Mike Warnes)

Rob also sensibly pointed out that if we broke it, we would have two cars to get going again instead of just one.And frankly, that one was enough.

So I spectated this year, while Rob carried on at home with the Allard. Next year, everything should be sorted. The bulkhead must have been made of dural for Rob was on his back grinding it for the best part of two days so that the boss around the oil sender unit wouldn't foul on it. There were some little jobs, too, like fitting the heads, carb and dynamo back on and getting it MOTed.


Were we so deluded that we could've managed it? Obviously we were, with the benefit of hindsight but in a wholly good way. So long as your foresight is faulty enough that it doesn't pick up on the inevitable problems and you have faith in your intellectual capacity to deal with any eventualities you are duty bound to have a go.

If we knew what lay in store for us we'd never get out of bed.

"I say Ginger," said Binky, "why not see if your Micra engine will fit instead?"