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Originally Posted by Gustav
What? Stumbo, please tell us about the Java. We know it was prototypes, but never materialized. How was your job description for this etc? Interesting!
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Christ, where do I start !!!
Ok, I dont know if this is what your after - this is ramble brain dump... sorry
for those that dont know, this was the original Java concept:
http://www.rrab.com/java.htm
If was greatly improved in styling from this.
Fresh outa university. Met a tiny company that had just won the contract to supply Instrument Clusters on this project to Muliner Park Ward (MPW), the bespoke vehicle division of Rolls Royce Bentley Motor Cars. They had seriously bitten off more than they could chew - well you gota get in there some how no ?
I picked it up from a very early prototype (seriously bad injection moulding - we were stuck with, hardly any sub-assemblies) and spent 2-3 years of my life on pretty well nothing esle - on my own on this project.
They ended up throwing more and more my way - like I wasn't busy enough
. I remember some company doing the Air Con control units turned up with a box of PCBs.
>>MPW >> so where are the control units ?
>>Comp X>> you only old us to make the PCB !!
>>MPW >> DDDAAANNN help !!!!
Turned it around from zero design in 3 weeks, mouldings, graphics, back lighting, cool violin keys, rewired PCB etc etc.
Ok enough of that....
Heres the weird bit considering I've now got a 5 series and am posting this here.
The donnor cars were E34 540i's
- Seriously stripped down.
- The engines went to Cosworth who bored and twin turbo charged them.
- Bespoke body
- Floor pan modified
- Bespoke running gear, transmission etc
- Bespoke wiring loom by a mate from Chelmsford
- 6 convertables
- 6 Shooting Brakes (one aparenly is kept in London??)
- 6 Coupes - with BLING wheels
- Cars built by MGA in Warwick under instruction/management of MPW, there was too much fear of press finding out if they were built at Royce.
Mad times.
I recived the classic BMW Intrument Cluster and reverse engineered it to run mechanical odometer (Bentley insited) total new gages and layout basically bespoke from the PCB forward and a bespoke FCB I had to manually intergrate with the PCB.
Engineering the kit car way, hard work bull **** way. We had massively underquoted.
Memories ? - too manyyy
- Me wiring in the back of the shooting brake, I notice the leather roof linging has a seem across from door to door, 3/4 of the way back from the windsreen. "Why is that seem there ?" Answer > "Because that is the maximum length of hide we can get off a cow"
- I turned up at the factory in Crewe to work on a car in finishing. I had a Frequency Generator and tool box under one arm, and an Osciliscope under the other. Across the factory came the bloke to pick me up, in an Arnage - this was way before they were released - told me to chuck my stuff in the back. Osciliscope, Frequ Gen. sharp sharp metal corners hh
m leather seats - NO WAY - I sat with them on my knees all the way back.
- Asking for an early P700 mule because we had to test the speedo across its full speed range. Got it at Bruntingthorpe, but at 3am !!! BUT when it turned up (driven down - looked like a Mad Max 540i), along came a truck with one of the 1st Production cars. The big wigs went off in that, and I stayed and did donuts in the mule with the MGA engineers
- I had to file off all BMW logos from anywhere. BMW knew though, we were getting the BMW software that even BMW uk dont have, you could do everything, but before you ask we sat and watched as all computers that had ever had the software on was crushed along with everything else off the cars that wasn't used.
I'll post some more stories on the Java sometime - tired - laters
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