1995 Master Mk1 T35D - RACETRANSPORTER - RRG Gathering video

Upsides:

- you look like a baller
- it has the rear on air already
- load bed structure well made, well supported and finished with 5mm aluminium
- relatively non rusty

Downsides:

- weeping gearbox oil out of both the driveshaft to gearbox seals
- the gearbox is superb for low down torque but is revving it's nuts off by 60mph
- the speedo is wildly optimistic reading 10-15mph faster at 50mph
- it is noisy, very noisy, a loud resonance rather than huge mechanical noise
- the non standard drivers seat is so far forwards to the wheel I am driving with legs wedged either side and arms over the top
- missing trim pieces in the cab & broken clock
- washers don't work
- torn floor mat
- no side lockers
- poverty water temp and voltage gauges fitted
- the winch operating cable is only half the length of the bed
- the winch is using fibre instead of wire which is excellent, but there is too much on the drum and it jams when the car is almost all the way onboard
- possible rear deck interference with the shock mounts and exhaust when loading the low 2cv
- doesn't look as fly as it could do if it had streamlined sides under the bed
- no banded steels
- no lows

To clarify, Paul was very honest and I knew about all of these things before I travelled up and handed over the cash.

Awesome project. I was expecting it to be 80's era with that styling. Quite surprised to see a 90's plate on it. Great starting base vehicle though.

Built from 1980 and finished production right up at 1997 amazingly!  I'd like to get the early front grille, amber indicators and then put a plate on it.

And then... mid week... another one came along...

From all the googling on weights I believe it to be - quite madly - around 1300kgs..  I can almost believe that with the thin structure of the 1980s cab design BUT I do need to verify this for myself on a weigh bridge, a task at the top of the to do list.

Love it, as with all your projects. Can't wait to see how it evolves, and hopefully you're back on shore for a while now?

Here is the interior on it.. I think we can all agree that the gauges are out of place (and 50% don't work) and the drivers seat is grim.





Hence the picture of the rotten and ruined Master Mk1 on the ramp at a friends down in deepest darkest Cornwall. He is a big truck mechanic by trade but had picked this one up for the bed it had on the back and then dumped it in one of his salty sea wind swept fields where it had merrily rotted away almost back to it's bare elements. Very fortunately though the interior was all intact, in amazing condition and for salvaging...

An original dash panel and then swapping the aftermarket switches for some factory Renault ones..




You'll see what those switches are for later... but doesn't that look like a party light button... Meanwhile stripping out the cabin before applying a metric butt tonne of Dodomat sound insulation..






A little rust treatment and then I used their hex pattern butyl layer before their top layer which is butyl then a closed cell foam. I also stripped out a floor mat from the rotten Cornish truck that was mint but waterlogged.. then stripped the stinky rats wee foam backing foam off of it so it wouldn't be too tall once fitted over the dodomat, scrubbed down and later installed..









The drivers seat I liberated out of the Cornish truck even had the plastic blanking plate that clips in under the drivers seat, I doubt whether there are many of these left around!  You can see more of the dodomat top layer closed cell foam on the back of the cab wall here too, I still need to do the roof and bonnet.  I left the dehumidifier in the truck with the windows up for three days to remove Cornwall from the drivers seat..





But having removed those gash gauges I still needed something to at least let me know water temp and voltage. The wiring was a bit of a snakes wedding with lots of inline fuses and splices so I pulled it all apart..



And added an extra fuse box for non original Renault bits, these are from Blue Sea Systems and I'm a big fan of the power supply and main earth ins. This is part way through with a 300 Amp Mega Fuse added for the winch power cable as well.. maybe the party button in the cab is making more sense now too...







Yes, those are actual carbon pods.



A little tidier than before and all run through grommets and in convoluted tubing rather than each wire randomly across the engine bay. Still some more work to do here..



Lets get back to that party button though...



Great success.

This buoyed me onto some more electricity upgrades.. +36 frenchness points for yellow headlights.



And I also got the soldering iron out to fix the odd inbuilt fuse that had popped on the original clock.. also some dry joints on the board.



And finally added a Blaupunkt stereo that I had been storing for the best part of a decade in its original box, it had a CD in it still that I must've been in there since I was at uni!  I didn't want to drill into the bodywork to fit an aerial so got one of blaupunkts fun line series windscreen aerials that sticks onto the glass, works really well.  You might just be able to make it out on the yellow headlight photo on the passenger side in the top corner.

FYI the rear loadbed spots are wired into that other dash switch as well as coming on when the truck goes in to reverse.  Useful.

Thanks 75swb.  It will hopefully evolve a little.  Some bits back to standard and others to be more useful.  The main thing is to try and keep it looking like it could have come out of the Renault factory like this but be really useful to me with some upgrades too...  Hopefully back until RR at Shelsley now..

So how about loading the 2cv on flat ground...



Step 1, let all the air out of the rear bags..



Step 2, add sand ladders and crucial blocks of wood to stop shock mounts digging into the bed at the ramp angle change where it goes from ramp to flat.



Step 3, start winching in - this is how close the bumper gets at the front before the tyres start drawing up the ramps..



and the same at the rear...







Step 4, strap down then load car with racing gear and liquimoly swag to give out at Goodwood Retro Rides.



And arriving at Goodwood after it's first long run loaded with the 2cv.



It was a 6 hour drive for me to get there as I drove to Tiverton to pick up Alice then up the A303, we stopped at Winchester at 3pm to pick up a coat she had left at a friends there before getting stuck in school traffic trying to make our way out onto the M23.. at this point in the middle of traffic in the middle of Winchester I realise that A. the radiator fans aren't working and it is the hottest day of the year so far, B. the clutch is going. We whacked up the heater in the cab to maximum heat and maximum on, wound down the windows and melted into a sweaty puddle in our seats as I changed gear matching revs with limited clutch from there until 30 mins the other side of Goodwood where my folks and grandparents are based. The next day checking the clutch I found that the adjuster nuts on the cable had wound themselves right out so that was an easy fix before we headed off to Goodwood! The rad fans though I will have to delve further into the sensors and wiring, there should be two speed settings that they should automatically come on to at certain temps, once moving or with the cab heater on though there was no problem.

The 2.5 NA diesel is a torque monster but again the 'box isn't setup for speed, I do know that changing to a turbo model box would help in this respect and I think I have found one en-route to Shelsley so may look to pick that up on the way to Retro Rides in late August. At the moment I am just topping up the leaky gearbox and putting cardboard under it when I leave it in the warehouse or stopping over anywhere. The great thing about this truck though is that 2.5 NA diesel, it is 10,000 miles old after either a new engine or a complete and very good rebuild (I can't tell) and it is very sweet, uses zero oil and although it would be nice to have more power I don't think I want to pull it all apart.. not right now anyway..

Right now I am trying to find out a little more history on the truck, nothing came with it bar the current V5 and MOT but I am lead to believe it was originally used on Heathrow for 200,000 of it's 223,000 mile life. If it was kept in a hanger etc then this makes sense for its relatively great condition, and how it has been looked after so well mechanically. I think the blue and silver paint scheme may tie in to this theory too.. can I check out the history of where it has been somehow? Also I'd love some original dealer plates to be reproduced for it - so how would I find out who sold it?