When we purchased Hobohome in 2003 she was powered by the original Bedford 466ci engine
This was a great engine for its time. It was slow, heavy and reliable - it never let us down. When it came time to recondition or replace the engine, we sort advice on what was the best course of action. While everyone agreed that the 466 was a triumph of 1940s English engineering - but times and technology have moved on. We were advised not to sink money into a 1940s Bedford engine, but instead to repower the bus with 1980s Isuzu Japanese engineering. You can read about the repowering in a separate article here.
The Isuzu 6BD1-T turbo charged engine develops between 185 and 220hp (depending on how it is setup and who you ask). This pushes the motorhome along very well. She would be quite comfortable cursing at 120k/hr (we would not) and the vehicle handles hills very well. The new engine is much quieter and is considerably more economical. The only thing we missed about the old Bedford engine is the first-gear pulling power. Because the Isuzu is turbo charged, it does not develop much of its power until the turbo charger is working at capacity (about 1500 RPM or more) - this means a lack of power at low revs. In 2009 we fitted a second gearbox (called a joey-box) to compensate for this.
You can read more about how these and other changes have affected our fuel encomony.
We had air-bag rear helpers added to the bus a few years ago. These help carry the load at the back of the bus (the Moke and all the gear stored in the rear). I feel that the air bags fitted are much too small - if they were twice the size, we would be able to take a leaf or two out of each of the rear springs and then use the air bags to (in part) level the bus. We can currently only raise and lower the back of the bus by about 5cm using the airbags.
We have very few problems with the mechanics of the vehicle, we are confident that we can take it almost anywhere.
The only real worry we have is with the brakes - Bedford brakes are notorious for being less than effective (in fact, it is a bit of an insult to real brakes to call them brakes). Over the years we have learned that with near constant adjustment and tuning, it is possible to get the brakes to almost acceptable!
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