Tales of a C3, a Goddess and some BMW's.

[DickieG]

I spent part of the day pulling out the interior of a Morris Minor

That must have taken all of about 5 minutes

It didn't take long but I'm also doing window rubbers, door seals plus all the locks as at present any flat bladed instrument unlocks and starts the car, project now on hold pending the welding.

[CitroJim]

all the locks as at present any flat bladed instrument unlocks and starts the car, project now on hold pending the welding.

Good old FS series keys I guess?

I thought it was Fords of the era that suffered most, there only being about six different key profiles used across all their cars...

[DickieG]

all the locks as at present any flat bladed instrument unlocks and starts the car, project now on hold pending the welding.

Good old FS series keys I guess?

I thought it was Fords of the era that suffered most, there only being about six different key profiles used across all their cars...

Yes FS keys, yet an Austin 1100 I'm also looking after has similar keys that I can't get anything to fit the door lock's including the correct one's it really is a case of all or nothing.

Another car I've taken under my wing is a V8 SD1 that's decided to throw its toy's out of the pram with a very poorly engine that sounds more like a machine gun than a V8, these old cars are a full time job just keeping them in a decent state of repair.

[Northern_Mike]

[Quote=DickieG]

Another car I've taken under my wing is a V8 SD1 that's decided to throw its toy's out of the pram with a very poorly engine that sounds more like a machine gun than a V8.[/quote]

Camshaft? I had this on an old 3.5 Rangie that a friend and I did loads of work on.

[DickieG]

Another car I've taken under my wing is a V8 SD1 that's decided to throw its toy's out of the pram with a very poorly engine that sounds more like a machine gun than a V8.

Camshaft? I had this on an old 3.5 Rangie that a friend and I did loads of work on.

Good suggestion Mike as it sounds like a camshaft problem due to the tone of the sound, it's also suffering from low oil pressure so a new oil pump is being fitted as a starter

[Hell Razor5543]

Good suggestion Mike as it sounds like a camshaft problem due to the tone of the sound, it's also suffering from low oil pressure so a new oil pump is being fitted as a starter

I would fit a starter motor as a starter!

[DickieG]

The Moggy mini restoration is just about completed apart from constructing the front parcel shelf (bit of a Blue Peter affair with glue and rivets etc) then fitting it which believe it or not involves securing from the engine bay side of the bulkhead!

The SD1 is undergoing a complete engine rebuild, once that's done and it has the new headlining fitted (the present one droops onto your head) the car will be in quite a good place.

I Sorned the Mercedes at the end of December as I wouldn't really use it until the weather warms up, I will admit to occasionally sitting in the car in the garage just to take in the smell and feel of the leather

The DS is in hibernation but starts first time without fail, I'm thinking about treating it to a new set of carpets to match the interior I fitted a few years ago, the present carpets are OKish but being light grey are starting to suffer from a degree of fading.

The other three, C5, C3 and BMW just work with nothing to report

[lexi]

The Rover V8 oil pumps had to be assembled with Vaseline to prime and get pressure up on a rebuild.

[DickieG]

The V8 was rebuilt (not by me) but, for some absurd reason the engineering company (if you can call them that) managed to grind the crank in an oval so when it was reassembled and turned over by hand the crank seized so back to the engineering company for another go

My daughters C3 started having intermittent little hissy fit's by way of all manner of error messages popping up on the dash down to what turned out to be a poor earth on the O/S/R light assembly, a quick clean up of the contacts and a bit of a tweak sorted that one out, other than that not much to report car wise.

[myglaren]

My daughters C3 started having intermittent little hissy fit's by way of all manner of error messages popping up on the dash down to what turned out to be a poor earth on the O/S/R light assembly, a quick clean up of the contacts and a bit of a tweak sorted that one out, other than that not much to report car wise.

My eldest daughter has just had the same thing with her C3! All the lights and indicators went haywire.

[DickieG]

Been away for several weeks on a holiday down under, we stopped off at Singapore for a couple of days (very nice) then onto New Zealand for three weeks. We were based just outside Auckland with a very good friend of mine for a couple of days then flew down to South Island where we spent a week touring around in a car hired by my friend from a company called "Rent a Dent" and ended up with a god awful one namely a Nissan Bluebird (not the UK one but much later Japanese import), crikey what a pile of poo that car was in just about every way possible.

Christchurch was quite an eye opener as following the earthquake four years ago it still looks like a WW2 bomb site, once we got down to the lower half of what Kiwi's call "The Mainland" (South island is slightly larger than North Island) the scenery really picked up to be stunning. Wanaka and Queenstown (where the high adrenalin sports take place) are very nice, Dawn and I thoroughly enjoyed a jet boat ride across the rapids on Shotover River. On the way down south we came across quite a number of towns which looked as if they were built in about 1960 and nothing done since making us feel as if we had walked onto the set of Heartbeat. Travelling north along the west coast road really did show how remote some areas in NZ are as you can drive for miles without seeing another vehicle.

Back on North Island we visited Rotorua where the smell of sulphur due to the volcanic activity there is quite strong and rather off putting despite the pleasant scenery alongside the lake. Further south we met up with another friend of mine in a very nice town called Taupo, the view from her house across the huge lake with the smouldering volcano in the distance is truly stunning, Taupo even has a road named after me so it left a very favourable impression indeed . Up in Northland we spent a couple of days in a beautiful place called the Bay of Islands and in particular an idyllic village called Russell.

I found driving around New Zealand to be very interesting, the Police are very active in speed detection (hiding behind bushes etc) the national speed limit is 100 KPH regardless of whether you're on a motorway or passing houses in a small hamlet and rarely do you see many people exceeding the limit by much presumably due to the fear of being caught and the constant reminders by advertising that any speed above the posted limit is inherently dangerous . One oddity about Kiwi driving is that it's extremely rare for them to straighten bends even when the sight lines are perfect in totally remote area's, I had quite a bit of fun straight lining bends whilst watching locals follow every contour of the road.

Whilst we were there a number of fatal collisions involving tourists occurred prompting discussion as to the cause plus on the back of these a few locals decided to take matters into their own hands by seizing car keys from tourists who they considered to be driving dangerously then dropping the keys off at a Police station,,

Other than around Auckland (where there's enough traffic congestion to match London and possibly worse in some cases) traffic is very light and the roads are well laid out with very few double apex bends making driving there generally very pleasant indeed, one thing that did cause me concern though is that solid lines to stop overtaking (white in UK yellow in NZ) are placed quite randomly often ending prior to vision opening up sufficiently to allow safe overtaking whilst at other times sight lines are quite sufficient yet there's a solid yellow line.

Kiwi drivers appeared to be far more disciplined and courteous than you generally see in the UK, at no point did I see anything that could be described as aggressive driving making the whole experience of driving very pleasant indeed.

It's often mentioned that in New Zealand you'll see a large number of classic cars being driven daily, well from my experience I definitely agree, first day there I spotted a DS, Ford Thunderbird and several Triumph 2000's (common as muck in NZ), cars that over here you only ever see on a sunny weekend are driven as daily drivers and are generally in very good condition indeed.

Overall a very pleasant time was had by all

Back home car wise the MOT on the Mercedes had run out upon my return so a new certificate was obtained and I noticed that I did the grand total of 2,500 miles in it last year.

[CitroJim]

Richard, sounds like a wonderful adventure

[davetherave]

Does indeed sound like fun!

[DickieG]

In fact it was so enjoyable we're now planning another visit

[CitroJim]

In fact it was so enjoyable we're now planning another visit

Excellent!