[kcj3b]

Originally Posted by DHABHAR.BEHRAM

Hello Sumantra - yes I am still looking for MGQ8174. I hope I find it.

KL05G7629 - my LHD Fiat - Cyrus has changed the exhaust system yesterday. I have not seen it. I will see it tonight. I am waiting for the Mumbai registration, then it goes for complete restoration.

MRY3112 - my 1964 restored Fiat - the car is now in Mumbai, the battery went flat (4 and a half years is OK I guess), so I put in a brand new Scorpio specification battery, it cost me some 5500 odd rupees. The igintion coil worked up so I replaced that and now it's working fine.

BLL4919 my 1988 restored Fiat - is in Pune less battery. I need to buy one more battery (there goes another 5500 rupees) as I will take it out for the 26th January FCCCI rally.

I hope your car is running well.

Best regards,

Behram Dhabhar

Sir,
Hats off for the lovely thread!

did you find MGQ8174 ?

I cried hearing your story of MGQ8174 as i am in the same fix, i had my grand dad's car FIAT 1100 Delight 1966 one of the first in new shapes.It had clocked only 32000 Kms when i got it in 1996 (i was 16), learned to drive on it and finally found that every bit of it was original, it had a very low engine noise and used to beat all those new Premier Padminis which my friends had.Although Fiat where getting extinct parts where a problem always in kashmir!
I went out for studies for a few years, came back to find it GONE (Dad had gifted it to one of his cousins who ahs sold it to someone) , i pray that i find it sooner and same goes for you, if you havent found it yet!

Junaid

[tuchha]

Originally Posted by headers

This thread is really nice and one doesnt mind to read it all over again!. Guys, Please post pictures!

Hi Guys,

I found one more photo of the 1981 Himalayan Car Rally which I participated with my brother in a HONDA CIVIC. Car #7 .

THis one is of the time we were starting from Ahemdabad on way to Jaipur.

What an experience.....

Uday Naik

[tuchha]

Hi,

I posted a note with a photo of our car which was used in the 1981 rally earlier but am not sure if it got uploaded.I am again attaching it here and hope this time it gets loaded.

The momories of this rally are still vivid in my mind after 29 long years and I can share some of them with you guys maybe.

Our car was a HONDA CIVIC and we were flagged off from Mahalaxmi Race course as #7 car.Car was driven by me and navigated by my brother Santosh.

Uday Naik

[tuchha]

Hi,

this thread is really bringing memories of the HIMALAYAN RALLY days.
You have done a great job by bringing out these pages from the past.
I wish you can dig out some old pictures from the rallies of 1981 & 1982 as we participated in them .

I have some HAIR RAISING memories of these rallies and could share them with you guys.All said & done these were adventures which will remain with us for ever.

Cheers !! Keep up the good work

regards,

Uday Naik

[r_nairtvm]

Originally Posted by DHABHAR.BEHRAM

Great to see a separate section for the Himalayan Rally. Today, I am giving complete details of my involvement in the 1983 event.

This was the only event where I took part (our team was Sunil Shanbhag / myself / Farad Bhathena. Our car was a Mahindra CJ4A petrol engined vehicle without 4 wheel drive. We won the second national award. Our start number was 73.

Behramji,

Can you tell us what was the engine on the above vehicle. I recall that there was some discussion in some other thread as to what was the engine on this car (I honestly didn't remember that you were part of Farad's team)

Best Regards & Drive/Ride Safe

Ram

[Rehaan]

Originally Posted by tuchha

...I have some HAIR RAISING memories of these rallies and could share them with you guys.

Ofcourse. Please do share the memories as well as the pictures!

[SamtheLeo]

This is easily one of the best threads i have read in past one year of membership on TBHP. Hats off to you guys, your experience & your will to do the impossible. Someday may be we will be able to achieve a fraction out of it.

Kudoss To Mr Dhabhar for excellent stuff though

[r_nairtvm]

Originally Posted by DHABHAR.BEHRAM

Great to see a separate section for the Himalayan Rally. Today, I am giving complete details of my involvement in the 1983 event.

This was the only event where I took part (our team was Sunil Shanbhag / myself / Farad Bhathena. Our car was a Mahindra CJ4A petrol engined vehicle without 4 wheel drive. We won the second national award. Our start number was 73. We finished 13th overall. 11 cars ahead of us were imported cars.
Behram Dhabhar

Originally Posted by r_nairtvm

Behramji,

Can you tell us what was the engine on the above vehicle. I recall that there was some discussion in some other thread as to what was the engine on this car (I honestly didn't remember that you were part of Farad's team)

Best Regards & Drive/Ride Safe

Ram

Behramji,

Sorry to bother you with this again. Would verymuch appreciate a note from you on this.

There was a roumor that the M CJ4A had an imported Nissan Engine and not the usual Hurricane Variant. But I remember it as Hurricane as per the Rally Repports of Suresh Guptan, Dilip Bam etc from that time.

You are the best person to clear it up.

If your current position with MM will not permit a forum answer, can you please PM me and you have my word that it will saty with me if it is a secret.

Thanks in anticipation

Best Regards & Drive/Ride Safe

Ram

[Hell Kuul]

Originally Posted by r_nairtvm

Behramji,

Sorry to bother you with this again. Would verymuch appreciate a note from you on this.

There was a roumor that the M CJ4A had an imported Nissan Engine and not the usual Hurricane Variant. But I remember it as Hurricane as per the Rally Repports of Suresh Guptan, Dilip Bam etc from that time.

You are the best person to clear it up.

If your current position with MM will not permit a forum answer, can you please PM me and you have my word that it will saty with me if it is a secret.

Thanks in anticipation

Best Regards & Drive/Ride Safe

Ram

dont say that, I drove against these Jeeps.. and dont really want to heasr they ran "Nissan" MOTORS... But go on, lets hear tyhe story any way!!!

[Cyrus43]

Good Morning Niaz. Can we have some of your crazy Him Rally stories too. What was your most memorable time? Dad was telling me about the Nissan 240RS doing the stages in the middle of the night dancing away to glory from turn to turn..back to back!! Any such memories?

[gops1567]

Originally Posted by DHABHAR.BEHRAM

OK guys, I did some typing last night at home, so I am copying and pasting here now (this is company time, you know) !

Many of you wanted to know about the Himalayan Rally, so here goes. Today, I am giving brief introductions about the first 3 events. Tell me how you like them. I will give information about all the subsequent events soon.

Just to whet your appetite further - the second London Sydney Rally came to Mumbai on 24 August 1977 and left Mumbai on 25 August 1977. I was in VJTI. I will tell you something about Mumbai on those 2 days. Hold on !

The first Himalayan Rally was held in 1980 (28th October 1980 start). The last rally was held in 1990.

1980:
The first rally was flagged off from Mumbai. The total distance as per the road book was 5333.3 kms. to be covered in around 7 days. The route was Mumbai to Aurangabad to Agra to Chandigarh to Delhi. There were cars from Kenya besides other countries. Gujarati guys from Kenya (Shekhar Mehta in an Opel Ascona / Ramesh Khoda) and the "Flying Sikh" (Joginder Singh in a Mercedes 450 SLC) were there. There was an old Jeep Station Wagon as well. A Morris Minor belonging to the Archbishop of Canterbury, flown down from England was also there. I was a spectator.

1981:
The rally started from the race course in Mumbai. Ramesh Khoda in a Datsun 160J was the favourite. The first transport sector was Mumbai to Delhi (1475 kms). A particular mention. Car no 2 was my teacher Mr.Adi Malgham's brown coloured Volvo, with co-driver my very good friend Sunil Shanbag. They reached Delhi first and had to remove the transmission there to replace the flywheel bush. I was a spectator at the race course because I could not get leave.

1982:
This was the first time that the rally started from Delhi. I was very lucky. I was a team member in one of the DCOC's cars. There were 5 DCOCs (Deputy clerk of the course). The DCOCs were Justice Sam Variava, Homi Commisariat, Jagdish Thackersey, Aspi Dalal, Ravi Jalan and Vasant Patki. 5 FIATS (MMD6300 - Vasant / MRC7979 - Aspi / MMB141 - Homi / MRJ9863 - Jagdish / Justice Sam Variava was in MMF4478, a CL500D Mahindra vehicle with one of the first Peugeot XDP4.90 engines). The FIATS were painted in yellow colour with "Charminar Challenge" logos on them. This was done in Mr.Nazir Hoosein's garage behind Liberty cinema in Mumbai. I travelled from Mumbai to Delhi, did the complete backup and came back to Mumbai in MMD6300, prepared by Sunil Shanbag. We had a ham operator in our car. Our call sign was VU9HRYmobile5 (India is VU2 but for some reason we had VU9). This car was equipped with a twin carburettor setup and I remember that we used to set the mixture strength by putting a tapered air restrictor on top of the carburettor cover. The car gave us absolutely no problem at all. During our return trip it rained continuously from Udaipur to Mumbai. We had to hold an umbrella over the filler port to fill petrol. We were also told at one of the Dhabas that there was a bhoot on this road and we should not venture further. I can still hear the music of Jayant Shah's Nissan 240RS. We would be standing at a control and we would all keep quiet so that we could make out the gearchanges, hear the melody and see bright lights snaking through the wintry sky in the middle of the night before the car would hurtle down on us at the control (it would take around 15 minutes from the time we heard it to the time it came to the control). Believe me guys - none of your so-called "SUBS" or whatever can ever match that music.

How did you like that ? Let me know. There's much more to come. THAT'S MOTORSPORTS !

Behram Dhabhar

Dear Behram, Thank you for bringing in those old legends like shah, I knew a guy from kerala who drove his stock MM540-Diesel in '86 or '87, i was doing my 9th std. nowadays nobody bileaves this story, it sounds odd.

[sudev]

Aahh good to read this thread all over again.

I was introduced to rallying by this event and ever since look at rallying in terms of test of endurance above all. I hope Desert Storm one day will command similar toughness quotient.

[DHABHAR.BEHRAM]

Dear r nairtvm - sorry for late reply as I did not visit the motorsports section for a long time so I did not see your query on the engine of my 1983 Himalayan Rally vehicle MAR2840. It had the standard specification F4-134 engine / 3 speed transmission / 5.38:1 axle / 2 wheel drive. And, by the way, Farad was a part of my team, not the other way round.

There was no Nissan engine. We had made vehicles with the Mitsubishi 4G54 engine for export to Iran. This was in 1982. One such MM540 vehicle fitted with this Mitsubishi engine won the first Great Desert Himalaya event in 1989 with Farad driving it. There was another MM540 also, driven by Sunil Shanbhag but it had the F4-134 engine, not the Mitsubishi.

Best regards,

Behram Dhabhar

[r_nairtvm]

Originally Posted by DHABHAR.BEHRAM

Dear r nairtvm - sorry for late reply as I did not visit the motorsports section for a long time so I did not see your query on the engine of my 1983 Himalayan Rally vehicle MAR2840. It had the standard specification F4-134 engine / 3 speed transmission / 5.38:1 axle / 2 wheel drive. And, by the way, Farad was a part of my team, not the other way round.

There was no Nissan engine. We had made vehicles with the Mitsubishi 4G54 engine for export to Iran. This was in 1982. One such MM540 vehicle fitted with this Mitsubishi engine won the first Great Desert Himalaya event in 1989 with Farad driving it. There was another MM540 also, driven by Sunil Shanbhag but it had the F4-134 engine, not the Mitsubishi.

Best regards,

Behram Dhabhar

Behramji,

Thanks for clearing this up and reaffirming the hig position I have given for the Hurricanes.

Of course being part of your team would have been a learning curve for Farad!

Any news about Farad these days and about Nikhil Taneja (remember he got penalised for dangerous driving with his Mitsubishi Canter - in the same event, if I remember rightly)

Best Regards

[rallystar]

Hi behram,
You have got an amazing collection of stories about the himalayan.Please visit this topic more often and update.by the way you can see a rare video of the raid winning MM540 of farad.Go to youtube and search for "extreme himalayan".Amazing i must say.
cheers