Having decided that I’m going to build a Tomcat, initially I need to know three things to get the process under way:
1 – What is the intended usage? (Mainly road – some off-road, mostly off-road – some road, or purely off-road.)
2 – Which Land Rover will I use as the donor car? (There are many to choose from.)
3 – Budget.
Knowing the first partially informs the second choice, which in turn provides the information for a lot of the rest of the build.
For instance, if I wanted a car purely for off-road trials*, I would use the shortest wheelbase Tomcat chassis as it is the most manoeuvrable. I would also want an automatic gearbox as it provides (almost) constant drive, which up long steep hills is more useful than having to change gear, and a very torquey engine. Therefore the ideal donor car would probably be (if it existed?) an automatic 300Tdi Defender (as it has the shortest chassis from the factory, which means it requires the least amount of modification).
*Trials involve lots of very tight turns with very steep hills which have torturous approach and exit angles on a variety of surfaces.
So with all the above said and done, the choices I made were:
1 – I was meant to be finding a replacement for my poor arthritic BMW, so it will be mainly used on the road with some off-road usage (and possibly a track day or two for the laughs) thrown in. This means contrary to popular belief, I will need to have an Individual Vehicle Assessment (IVA, or SVA not really sure which) and an associated Q number plate before I can use it on the road. This also gives me some freedom as I am not required to use parts from the same donor car, nor am I required to use the same suspension mounting points as the standard car.
2 – I wanted the off-road ability of the P38 Range Rover, minus the air suspension, lack of power, weight, terrible brakes and automatic gearbox, so I decided a manual 3.9l/4.0l V8i Discovery as my donor vehicle would be perfect. The Discovery is essentially identical to the Range Rover underneath, except it has coil springs instead of air-bags and 4-piston brake calipers on the front and 2-piston calipers on the rear as opposed to 2-piston calipers all round a la the Range Rover. The lack of power/ weight will be sorted by using fibre glass body panels and a smaller overall body size.
3 – Low! With this in mind I chose to have a 100inch Tomcat as it requires the least amount of fabrication work and modification to produce, as the Range Rover/Discovery both have 100inch wheelbases from the factory, so is therefore the cheapest.
Anyway, after trawling the internet, I found a likely looking chassis at a company called Leavesley International in Alrewas (near Lichfield). I went down to have a look and bought the chassis there and then. A week later Dad and I went down with the Range Rover and trailer to pick it up. Here are a couple of pictures of it being loaded on to the trailer.
Whilst we were there I spotted the largest piston-conrod assembly I have ever seen. It was definitely worthy of a picture, bear in mind, I am around 6ft 1 tall (we later concluded it was from a tug boat).
We dropped the chassis in with Paul at Tomcat as the workshop was on the way home, he delivered his judgement on the chassis: thumbs up, which was good news. We had a chat about what would go on the chassis, in the end I chose to have a pick-up style body with under load-bed suspension at the rear and turreted front suspension. I decided to go for some budget space-filler dampers with a view to upgrading them at some point to Fox’s remote reservoir dampers (because this will be an evolutionary process). We then agreed a price, I paid him a deposit and went home excited at the prospect of what’s to come.
