The World is a very small place:
Before the main site crashed last year, we had a page called "Street Shots", where I posted snapshots of interesting vehicles just being used as daily drivers, that I spotted on my travels. Although we altered the site's Main Page, so it only links to pages we knew were virus free, the rest of the site is still accessible if you use an old link or have saved a page deeper in the site. Seems a lot of people are still viewing the old pages that way -with no virus problems.
Anyway, among those Street Shots pics were a couple of small ones of a Ford P100 pick-up, (the now discontinued Ford Sierra based commercial). I took the photos in a housing estate in Basingstoke, Hampshire. The truck had a "dually" conversion -double rear wheels, covered by wide, boxy rear arches.
That was about 3 years ago. 2 days ago I got an email from a guy in Holland. He's a mechanic & also owns a P100. He'd found the pics on the site & loved the look of the dually conversion & wants to build one as his workshop runabout. He asked for more up to date pics or build details. So I went back to the housing estate & after the second trip, found the truck. By pure chance the owner was working nearby on another car. He's swapped the twin wheels for single, super wide American rims & is in the process of stretching the front end to create a 4 door crew cab, using panels from another donor Sierra.
We got chatting & it turned out he'd seen my truck at the Basingstoke Festival of Transport a few weeks ago. He asked what engine I used. Rover V8.
"I found a video on YouTube the other day of 2 blokes firing up a Rover in a lock-up garage -I recognised it as my old engine"
-"That was us!" Loony & me starting the engine before we started work on the truck!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0RTqZDSuDUSo by pure chance, I've found the guy who owned the engine in our Pop before the bloke I bought it from. Weird.