My Motley Meanderings

I bit the bullet and sent off my entry form for this year's Barnsley JOGLE (the John O' Groats to Land's End in 24 hours Morris Minor endurance run), but the organisers called today to say that they've decided to cancel it due to lack of interest :(

However, some guys on the Morris Minor Owner's Club forum are organising an alternative trip called LEO. No, not Low Earth Orbit, but Land's End to Orkney. It's a more sedate run than the JOGLE, taking three days to drive from Land's End to John O' Groats, with the arrival on Orkney timed to coincide with the Orkney Vintage Club Rally on Sunday the 12th of August. Splitting the journey up into a few sections means I probably wouldn't need a co-driver. I'd be looking at doing about 400 miles on the Wednesday, 300 on Thursday, 300 on Friday, 230 on Saturday, a ferry trip and however far it is from the terminal to the rally field on Sunday, and 480 on Monday.

After hearing that I'd lost my co-driver for the JOGLE (apparently his wife said "no"), my Dad offered to be his replacement. Now I just need to get Fenchurch ready in time.

I've managed to obtain some larger front brakes from a Riley 1.5 - they're pretty much a straight replacement for the original brakes, but much less prone to fading when driven hard. Considering I'm going to slightly improve the engine power, I thought it would be a good idea to improve the brakes too. The shoes and drums on the Riley brakes are enormous - they're wider even than those on the (much heavier) Land Rover, and I never managed to fade those. One slight drawback to them is that they have smaller cylinders than the standard brakes, which means you have to press the pedal harder to get the same amount of braking effort. I'm probably going to just fit them as-is and see how bad it is (I know somebody who's already done it and he says they're heavy but tolerable). If I have to I can always add a servo unit.

The other possibility is to fit Wolseley 1500 brakes instead. The shoes aren't quite as big as those on the Riley 1.5s, but they have bigger cylinders so they don't make the pedal heavier than the standard brakes. I've been looking for a set for months without any luck, and now the day after receiving a set of Rileys in the post I think I might have located a set of Wolseleys. They're described as being off a Riley 1.5, but now I have a set in front of me I can see they look quite different - I've fired off a query to somebody who has Wolseleys on his car asking if he can identify them for me. At least if I decided to go down this route instead, I got the Rileys for a good enough price that I'm sure I could just clean them up a bit and sell them on at a profit.

I just saw this video from the 2005 JOGLE (John O'Groats to Land's End in a Moggy in less than 24 hours), and it's got me thinking seriously about doing next year's run in Fenchurch.


One slight problem: I would have to find a co-driver, as the rules require two qualified and insured drivers per car for safety reasons. It doesn't take place until next June so I've got plenty of time to think about it. I'm sure I'll be posting on the subject again if I do decide I want to do it.

Note that the full trip is actually twice as far as the JOGLE itself because you have to drive up to John O'Groats first and then back from Land's End afterwards.

Edit: and I've already had my first volunteer co-driver: RogerRust from the Morris Minor Owner's Club forum. Don't let that stop you volunteering though; maybe I can run some kind of contest to choose the best candidate ;). Roger has the benefit of experience in that he's already done a previous JOGLE in 22 hours.

Some quick back of the envelope calculations suggest I'm likely to use about £160 worth of petrol over the whole run (at today's prices) if Fenchurch is as economical as I think she will be.