LONDON TO CAPE TOWN Archives - Page 12 of 13

English weather, you odd thing!

We have been in england now for a week, and i can certainly say that the climate here is nothing to that of a December back in Brisbane. 2 Days ago we had a bit of a snow fall, and all the lakes and puddles are starting to crust over with ice. The wet roads are ridiculously slippery in the mornings with black ice on the tarmac. And nothing ever dries out, if it rained today (which it did) and it didnt rain any more, the roads would still be a drifting track in 2 days time.

All the fiddling about and last minute adjustments and preperations on Penny are done….. and in two weeks time right now we will be taking off from the start line at the House of Lords in central london, bound for almost all-night driving and time trails through the Kent forests before heading to the Dover ferry for 4AM departure to France.

LONDON TO CAPE TOWN December 15, 2011

T-Minus…. not long now.

by: James Stephenson

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So, me and dad have been in england for a few days now and our rally is getting close and closer. All year long January the 1st seemed so so far away, but after spending a few days doing some last minute tinkering and preperation on our old girl, the realisation has set in: it’s not long now at all. In a few days time it will be christmas, and a few more we will be sitting down having our last dinner at the Brooklands Motor Museum Hotel with the rest of the rally mob – unable to contain our nerves and oncoming excitement.

LONDON TO CAPE TOWN December 12, 2011

Penny is on her way to London

by: julie stephenson

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Penny left the workshop in August (for the second time after a minor hiccup – the head needed replacing! ) drive to Sydney to be loaded into a container to be shopped to London!….

LONDON TO CAPE TOWN, PEKING TO PARIS, PENNY IN SOUTH AMERICA, PENNY TO HELSINKI September 14, 2011

About Penny

by: James Stephenson

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This is the working Penny that we all know and love.

See, it has full climate control!! The climate INSIDE the car, is exactly the climate OUTSIDE the car.

However, at the beginning of the year we rebuilt her engine for more power (of course) but came across a little problem about 500km’s into the new wizz-bang rebuilt one….. blew a head gasket and cracked the block. Just in case you have zero mechanical-know-how, there is NOT suppose to be water in those holes!

In the quest for more power, we put high compression pistons in (ratio WAS 5.0:1, now is around 7.5:1), reduced the flywheel weight in half, a counter-balanced crankshaft and lightweight alluminium conrods to get more revs (of course!)

Everything about her is still laregly original, still leaf springs and hartford shockies, same diff, same gearbox, same engine block (only re-machined and specced for more power). We put the bucket seats in for the extreme long distances we will drive, roll bar for safety and we completly rebuilt the dashboard to suite rally equipment such as trip meters and GPS’s.