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+--- Thread: right hand drive conversion (/showthread.php?tid=1238)
- Chris P - 21 Jan 2008
The amaizing thing about these RHD cars is how the information available just keeps increasing almost week by week.
Today I recived detailed photo's of vin 510, kindly supplies by Criag Ashton- Ridley. There definate differnences between it and later RHD cars. Also hiding in the bottom of the glove, box was a buiness card from a "Mr. P J Maldon" at Wooler-Hodec! This is the first proper piece of paper work from Wooler's, I have ever seen!
This afternoon, after ages on the phone, I tracked the very chap down and had an hour long conversation with him. He was able to confirm much of what we know and added some very interesting new bits.
Vin 510 was the first RHD car they did. It took some time and was the engineering prototype. Later Hodec engineering, made all the conversion bits neccesary, pedal boxes etc for the main batch. He cofirms that the "black cars" were of terrible build quality. They arrived with no pannels or doors fitted, just running underbodies. The dimensions of the underbodies varied greatly and they really struggled to get the "crappy", dented and miss-shaped pannels and doors, subsequently supplied by the factory, to fit. Before they were selected for conversion, they had to measure the dimension of the black cars very carefully. The best one's were individually selected and then taken from the chicken shed storage, down to the facory, for conversion.
He said the store-keeping at the factory was very poor, as boxes of essential parts delivered to them, often contained the wrong bits.
On the subject of Gerry Castle, I have no evidance that he changed anything other than, seatbelts, front lights rear lights. Indeed Andy and I were able to buy back, off his a window several sets of each origanal fitments. He was very much a late arrival on the scean and went around the succesfull bidders in the UK auctions, offering his services to get the cars up to "UK standard". He even organised several RHD conversions on vins 752, 752 and 11382 these were also carried out by ex Wooler-Hodec people, but post factory, so are of little historical interest.
Dusty was a proper RHD car and sold at Meashum auctions as such , but the new owner would not pay Gerry Castle his "Fee" to get it legal in the UK. That is why it still had its origanal rear lights and was still in the barn 20 years later when I found it.
Another few pieces of the jigsaw fall into place!
- Guinney1971 - 22 Jan 2008
Fascinating stuff Chris - its amazing what bits of information keep
cropping up - and all credit to you tracking down someone who's
business card has been in the glovebox of a car in Australia for
donkeys years!
So, when are you and Andy putting all this down in your book then? :wink:
- Chris P - 22 Jan 2008
Ah yes Claire, the book.......I knew there was a reason we were doing all this research...........!
As soon as there is nothing more to find out, we can finish the book.
- Phil Peters - 23 Jan 2008
Excellent work Chris!
Any clues as to when (during the conversion process) VIN# 510 was sent back to Dunmurry and why it was not re-VIN'd like the other Wooler-Hodec RHD cars?
- Chris P - 23 Jan 2008
Hi Phil,
I didn't think that the other Black interior RHD's were origanaly vinned as such. However having just re-read the memo dated 15th Oct 81, from R. J Donnell ordering 20 RHD conversions done, it clearly states:-
"Inspect/Select units at Wooler-Hodec to pick the best bodies for conversion, by the 23rd of October 1981. Identify by VIN number- L. Nelson"
It later states, "Provide introduction VIN numbers where not shown on the listing- M Graham" It also talks about upgrading and retro-fitting lists of TSA/ ECR's etc.
I belive that as they were "Black early cars" and many improvments were very soon made to the proper production cars, they were deemed too poor and expensive to progress back into the systemn.They were put on one side, for some time, got in the way, until, they were evetually shipped to Wooler-Hodec .
It was felt that this would be bad for morale to chop them up in Dunmurry. I belive this was all sorted out after Vin 510 had been succesfully converted by Woolers. A relationship was then established and they were asked if they could help out, which they duly did.
From Wooler's point of view the whole thing was a bit of a PR disaster. The Sunday Mirror on Feb 7th 1982 had a front page picture of a car on a trailer going for scrapping and burning underbodies in their back yard! That is why the were later chopped up and taken to the local tip instead. 30 in total were scrapped and 14 converted to RHD.
Someone from the DeLorean factory would come over and witness the distruction, very much like today with proto-types. I suppose they would then be removed from the manifest and cease to exist.