Sri Lankan made Mokes.

[MiniCord]

Browsing the Internet i found this:

Seems there's a guy in Sri Lanka building Moke bodies from scratch and by hand. At first I tought he was using Chinese bodies, but there are subtle differences, like the windshield.

http://minimokeperera.blogspot.ca/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz9_xO ... ff-hrj-Agw

Am I bringing old news?

Miguel

[MiniCord]

How come no one is even commenting on these?

[spider]

It certainly is a very interesting set up and his work does look really first class.

It does appear that the panels are pressed and while the blurb suggests he is making the panels, I'm a little curious to know where - not to take anything away from what he's doing. Certain appears he's putting together new cars and not just repairing old ones, given the photo of the white one with all the Rover Mini running gear. I do like his roll cages and what little I can see of his windscreen frame.

I did once see (somewhere on the web) an old guy in India (?) somewhere re-make most of a Mini from nothing more than sheet metal, while he did have oxy welding skills, he only had a hand full of hammers, no workshop, not even a bench.

But man oh man, his craftsmanship was incredible. I think it was on a forum (not even a car one) where I saw all these photos, I think it ran over something like 90 pages, and I do recall seeing him step by step make a new boot lid, including the internal frame. He 'mearly' beat it all out of flat sheet and then I think to finish it, he didn't use any filled to 'hide' his hammer marks but file finished it. I think it was only that the numberplate depressing was quite a different size and shape (to better suit their number plates) that you could pick it wasn't original. I think they also repaired a broken trailing arm in the same thread? Can't quite recall, but I know I spent a few days looking through it.

I wonder if Mr. Perera is considering competing with the Chinese on the export market?

[Wally2]

Hi Miguel,
Looking at the Blogspot in your post I sort of recognised one of the photos. Having hunted through past editions of 'Moking' magazine, I came across an article in issue 141 Feb 2013 on page 29 and there is a very similar photo of the workshop with the six wheeler! Not sure but I think the piece was done by the editor Roy Scott.
Cheers
Chris

[Tim]

If you get on to the Sri Lankan Mini club website and look at the pictures you'll see that they have quite a lot of Mokes in their club.

http://www.mightymini.lk/gallery.html

The thing that I notice is that they are all beautifully maintained, and many of them have panels that are almost original, but aren't quite right. I'm sure that in Sri Lanka there's a strong culture of make-do-and-mend. If a panel needs repairing, a skilled craftsman makes a new one from scratch. It only works in a place where labour is cheap, you'd have to be a multi-millionaire over here to afford to have a panel hand beaten out of a piece of steel.

Tim