'Single' 4WD Mokes

[spider]

''Single' here mean one engine, rather than the more well known 'Twini' types.

I felt it best to open / continue this discussion here, rather than further high-jack Dean's thread;-

viewtopic.php?f=45&t=5655

Apologies to Dean.

Roger is correct and the one I was referring to was this one:



Note that it is LHD. Also note the prototype chassis number on the side panel. That's actually unusual, the first photo I have seen of a prototype in which this was done. A final point. Look at the centre of the rear wheel. Proof indeed that it was 4WD!


Graham

Thanks Roger & Graham,

Yes, I do now recall seeing that one somewhere! It's a proper 4WD Moke. I agree Graham, it certainly does appear to have drive in to them rear wheels and they do appear to be 13's for sure, but I question where they'd go on those tyres! No treat for the mud and no width for the sand!

It does have a number of 'interesting features';-

Prisioner style windscreen mounting
Sliders on an unusual driver's seat - it almost suggest someone(s) did quite a few miles in it
Where's the fuel tank? I see a hole for the cap but no neck or cap?
Rear seats but no passanger's seat, I'd guess because the driver's seat does appear proper width
Hard to make out but appears the gear stick comes up from a remote type location?
The body also does appear to be a production one, rather than the usual prototypes normally associated with the experimental vehicles,
It doesn't seem to be road registered at this point.

Any more information photos on it? Apologies, I don't have the 'History Book'.

[Jersey Moke]

Also it does not seem to have any rear radius arm either ?

[4XMOKE]

Spider,
From other pics I've seen of this, the gearstick and mounting are exactly the same as the Ant !
The mounting fits to a bracket on the tunnel, with the linkage inclined up to the bulkhead, where it passes through and meets up with the knuckle on the rear of the gearbox.
I'll post some pics up....

Nick,
The 4WD uses radius arms very similar to, but not quite the same as, the Austin Ant. They pivot on a bracket slightly inboard of the original subframe mounting, but it doesn't use a subframe.
Again, I'll post some pics up....

Roger G

[Tim]

Strange, the post I made here yesterday seems to have disappeared - lucky it wasn't very useful!

I reckon the wheels have a deeper dish than standard Austin A30 wheels. As Spider says they are still pretty narrow, A30s only had 5.20 -13 tyres, so its hard to say whether these rims have been widened, but the front especially seems to be deeper dished. Maybe they needed some negative offset to clear suspension or something.

Tim

[spider]

Was that this post?

What were the two holes for in the A30 wheels, brake adjustment?

Tim

That was in Dean's thread that we were all so rudely hi-jacking!

As for the holes and brake adjustment, I am with your thinking there, and while I haven't looked an an A30 / 35, I'm fair sure the adjusters are on the back, happy to be corrected though. It's probably more likely that the holes are there for a hub / axle puller!

In regards to the dish on the wheel, yes, I agree, they do appear to be dished somewhat from where they look like they sould be. It may have been done so that the front wheel rub less on lock, you know the problem tim, all Big Wheel Mokes do it!

[Tim]

No different post Spider - nevermind.

The rear brakes on A30s were weird, I couldn't remember exactly, so Ilooked it up. They were a combination of hydraulic, to a single slave cylinder, then rod operated from there.



I keep wanting to own an A30, then I go and test drive one and my mind gets quickly changed! The last one I drove had something weird going on at the rear and the brakes were somehow locked on. The handbrake also has some odd arrangement too.

A bit of googling shows that they have a single big hole in their brake drums towards the outer edge, maybe it line sup with an adjuster on the end of the push rod.

Tim

[spider]

Oh My Lordy,,,,,,,,,, Surely they weren't serious???????? And this was what, 1952-ish?

I know that type of system / set up was popular, but that was oh, until about 5 - 10 years before the war!

Looking at that diagram, yes Tim, I do agree that it was likely the holes are so one could carry out brake adjustment.

[4XMOKE]

Oh no...... don't start me off on A30s.......
(Sorry to go off on a tangent here but there's a story)

A friend of mine (Nick) had an A30 as his first "car" in about 1985. This came to him free of charge from his old aunt, bless her, how generous, even if the old A30 was showing it's age and dubious design features meant it probably wasn't the safest thing for a young 17 year old driver to be using in modern traffic, but hey, Nick had four wheeled relatively weather proof transport! The car duly became known as the Grey Bomber.
Now, Nick lived some 200 yards or so up the road from a filling station where another friend, Adrian, worked. Although the garage had reasonably modern pumps, installed around the late '70s the other facilities were a little dated, basically being two wooden sheds nailed together. Inside was a counter with the till, a couple of display stands with newspapers and magazines, and shelves all around with soft drinks, crisps and sweets. Behind the counter, high on the shelves was cigarettes and aspirins etc.
One Saturday we decided an expedition into town was in order, so four of us clambered into the Grey Bomber. Just at the point of launch Nick pipes up with "I've just got to pop into the garage for something" what little did we realise.......
With all 803ccs of snarling A Series power on full song we soon accelerated to about 20mph, Nick then swung a hard right onto the garage forecourt and braked hard... Nothing..... it didn't even attempt to scrub any speed off. we plunged head on into the shed kiosk!
Whilst Nick backed the Bomber up, we bailed out and ran in to check on Ade, only to find him with all the fags and aspirins all over him and the counter with a look of "What the hell just happened?" At that moment Nick walked in as cool as anything and muttered the immortal words "Can I have some brake fluid please?"
Laughter was off the scale.....

Roger G

[4XMOKE]

Back to the Moke and it's wheels.
Yes they do seem to have a lot more offset than an A30 wheel. If they wanted that set up for some reason it wouldn't have been too difficult to reverse the rim on the centre, or to get the wheel manufacturer to make a set of specials using standard parts.
But tyre choice? Deary me, who put those on? Surely they could have found something a bit more fit for purpose!
Unless, these mods were at real short notice to get the thing shipped off to the States for Army evaluation...

One thing that's always struck me though, is that BMC did have a very active photographic department with access to all areas. Why, considering some of the pics available of other projects, does the 4WD Moke seem so devoid of photo history?


Roger G

[Tim]

Great story Roger.

I always imagined that the A30 would be like an evolutionary step toward the mini. Nope! Nothing like a mini. No more sophisticated than a pre-war vintage car really.

Tim

[59Prototype]

This is a good discussion and gets the old brain cells working well!

Although I've had copies of those Jack Daniels photos for a while now it is only with this thread having been started have I gone back to them for another look. I've been looking at the instrument panel in particular and have zoomed in to see what I can spot. Have a look at this:



Look at the two gauges at the bottom of the panel. I think the LH one is oil pressure and the RH one is an ammeter. That would make sense as none of that information is available in detail from the speedo dial area. What I am curious about is the dial to the left of the instrument panel. There's a needle and some figures but what could it have been for? Remember it was just a single engine.

You know you could look upon this vehicle as an Ant in sheep's clothing! Put it another way it was an Ant test bed. I'm sure that the engine and drive train were what would soon go into the Ant. Note too the larger wheels although not the same as would be fitted to the Ant. Were they not Austin 1100 wheels that they used on the Ant?

Spider, in answer to your comments:

Prisoner style windscreen mounting. This would make sense if we are talking about a 1963/1964 bodyshell.

Sliders on an unusual driver's seat - it almost suggest someone(s) did quite a few miles in it. I did try and work out where this seat was sourced. It's certainly a very old style of car (or van?) seat. The nearest I could find was something similar to that as used in an Austin Seven! Could it have been from an Austin sports car seat from the early 1950s I wonder?

Where's the fuel tank? I see a hole for the cap but no neck or cap? I agree and think it goes where we see the hole. They probably hadn't fitted it at the time the photo was taken. In any case if it didn't go there where else could it have gone?

Rear seats but no passanger's seat, I'd guess because the driver's seat does appear proper width Have you noticed where they fitted these two seats? Virtually up against the back panel. Not much room for anything behind them! I'm not sure why they fitted them so far back.

Hard to make out but appears the gear stick comes up from a remote type location? I agree. If the engine was canted as it was for the Ant the gear lever position would have needed to be re-jigged to allow for this.

The body also does appear to be a production one, rather than the usual prototypes normally associated with the experimental vehicles. As I implied earlier this Moke was being put together around the time that the production Moke was about to be or had just been released.

It doesn't seem to be road registered at this point. I can understand it not being registered. If the US Army was evaluating it they are unlikely to have driven it out on the open road. However it did have a US Army number painted on the bonnet

A final question. What were the various switches for on the instrument panel? Choke bottom right?? Lights top right?? Panel light top left?? There is a sticker (unreadable) on the top of the panel on the LH side.

Graham

[4XMOKE]

Graham,
I need a fortnight with you in a lecture theatre to get you up to Ant speed !

As to this Moke and any likeness to Ants, well, few and far between to be honest.
Was it a test rig for Ant parts? No.
The Ant is SO different to this, there's really no likeness, but you can see how some of the Moke failings did go towards some of the successes of the Ant.

The Ant uses a purpose built gearbox. The four speed part is the same as any mini of the time, but in a very different casing.
This casing joins onto another casing that holds a two speed transfer box (Hence eight gears) and provides drive to the rear. This drive comes off the front diff, similar to the Moke, but only similar, certainly not the same.
To make space for this transfer box, the engine is rotated backwards by 25 degrees around the crank position, thus moving the fourspeed forwards and putting the weight of the engine further back in the vehicle. (This is not as stated by previous authors on the subject who state that the engine was tilted back by 45 degrees to lower the bonnet line.) The engine remains the same height overall and as a bonus the distributor becomes very easily accessed!
This transfer box/gearbox/ engine unit is nothing like a Moke unit. It doesn't sit in a subframe for a start, the suspension mounts to the transfer box, the steering rack is integral to the transfer box, and the whole unit mounts to the body on four huge rubber mounts.
Whilst it has been said (by a famous mini historian) that the rear diff for the 4WD Moke came from a MG R type 1935 racing car, this is in fact untrue. The diff casing was made specially for the job and houses standard mini diff components and uses mini drive shafts. The clutch unit on the front of the diff is extremely similar to the Ant and may well be the same components. I'm due to investigate this on the Works ST Clubman 4WD.

The gear lever and mounting on the 4WD Moke look to be the same as the Ant. I've always thought the Ant to have been in development a lot longer than most texts suggest, and here we are back at '63.
The reason for the inclination of the linkage is that on the 4WD Moke gearbox the propshaft comes out of the gearbox where the magic wand normally goes in, hence they deleted the magic wand and the lower part of the original linkage and went above that area and picked up on the knuckles at the back of the box. Which is why the ST Clubman had such an obscure gear linkage on the steering column.

I'm trying to get all this written out for a several part history in the club mag, instead I keep dribbling bits out on here!


Roger G

[4XMOKE]

Graham,
As to the instruments,
All of these have needles that are at zero on a rising scale. I doubt that one of them is an ammeter as most tend to read + and - which these don't, and, why would they worry about battery condition when they were testing a four wheel drive system?
More likely oil temp, water temp and possibly a tacho or instrument to monitor rear diff.

Roger G

[59Prototype]

Roger, I am sure you are right, the two gauges together are oil and water temperature. It's quite logical that the RH one is not an ammeter. My mistake. As for the other one it just doesn't look like a tacho. As you say monitoring the rear diff is a possibility. I've tried a Google search of vintage gauges but can find nothing that looks like the one in the photo. Let's see if anyone else comes up with an answer.

Graham

[Nigel(no top)Sykes]

Could it be a vacuum gauge ?