Larry at Eastnor Castle, home of Land Rover development.
Click here for more photos.
Larry at Eastnor Castle, home of Land Rover development.
Click here for more photos.
Larry is a 1974 Land Rover Series III 88", but more than that, he is MY Land Rover
Okay, I'll just clarify that a little bit for those that don't know what the heck that all means. He was made in 1974 by Land Rover Limited (then part of the British Leyland concern) in Solihull, England. He is a third generation (Series III) Land Rover, and he has an 88" length chassis. Land Rovers, are without question, the best 4x4 off-road vehicles in the World!
First of all he is MY Land Rover, which means he's kind of a special guy anyway. Larry was bought by me in 1989, and was rather modified in 1992 to be what he is today: A tough, mean, off-roading, sound machine. Sound, in more ways than one.
First of all, I'll give you a bit of a Larry History, for he was not always mine.
Bought in 1974 by a farmer in Grantham, near Lincoln, England. He spent his early years
pottering around farmland in Grantham, never covering more than 5,000 miles per year, and
indeed when I first purchased him, I found the original log book, with dealer stamps for
the first 6 years, covering a total of 25,000 miles. Not much heh? Anyway, after 8 years
of easy farm life, he passed into the hands of a gentleman of the turf, and was used for
the next 7 years as a towing machine for his daughter's horsebox, again covering very few
miles, being used only really at weekends, and playing second fiddle to a 2CV (heaven
forbid!) It was from this gentleman that I purchased him in December 1989, for the
princely sum of 850 UK pounds, looking rather green, and sorry for himself, but in perfect
working order, and having covered an amazing 46,000 miles since new (that's about 3,000
miles per year before you reach for the calculator) Impressive stuff. I bought Larry
originally just to tow a trailer around Leicestershire at weekends, my main vehicle at the
time being a VW Scirocco GL. This job he did without falter, or even a service, for the
next three odd years until mid-1992 when a decision had to be made. My Scirocco was
costing me an awful lot to keep running, as I drove to work along country roads a lot, and
the cost of headlights was getting me down (they kept getting shattered by stone chippings
etc.), so it was either replace both the Scirocco and Larry with a larger car, or replace
Larry with a Japanese 4x4 (Fourtrak was the favourite at the time, or rebuild Larry and
use him. After careful consideration, and cost breakdowns, the decision was made to
rebuild Larry, repaint him (he was starting to peel, bless him) and put the Scirocco away
for weekends, because, although Larry is not the most economical of vehicles, he is
certainly cheap when it comes to parts! Apart from that, I was pretty certain he will last
another 20 odd years, as opposed to some Jap-Crap that will last 2 years, and then I'd
have to do it all over again...
And so, in May 1992 Larry was taken to the local spray shop, put into a low-bake oven and
covered all over in Pearlescent Blue paint. He managed to consume about three tins of the
stuff, at a cost of about 120 UKPounds per tin, he wasn't cheap, but a new set of front
seats from the local scrap dealer put the first stages to him together. It was around this
time that he had his first off-road experiences too, having joined the Series III Owners
Club me and Larry went on a few jolly jaunts to Ironbridge etc. and had a great old time.
If you would like to see these pictures in larger format, click on one of them.
Now, as anybody who has read about any of my other cars could tell you, I like my
music. Well, who doesn't? Anyway, Larry, being Larry is a bit of a noisy bugger, and so it
was decided that a LOUD stereo system was needed, so that I could actually hear some music
in him, as the puny Sharp system that I had put in there originally just could not cope
any more. Any so, after a couple of months planning and designing a system was put
together that can "kick it with the best". Basically, it consists of a JVC
radio-cassette head-unit (no internal amp) connected to a Macrom 4507 amplifier (400
watts) feeding 100 watts left and 100 watts right into Panasonic 5" mid range, and
1" tweeters, and 200 watts into a Celestion 10" Bass unit, in a custom built
speaker unit, which fills about 1/3 of the rear deck. Sound is extremely loud, and
vibrates rather well the back door. You can now actually hear the stereo in the Land
Rover. Well, you could until about two weeks ago, when I blew the amp. I must get around
to disconnecting it and fixing it soon....
Right, that's enough rambling for the moment, at least I've got these pages up and running
now. As usual, if you'd like to comment on any of my pages, or have additional
information, or would like to ask me a question, please feel free to eMail me at jbromley@enterprise.net, I'll try to get back
to you as soon as I can.
