For those interested in old cars.

[PhilJ W]

1 minute ago, boxbrownie said:

We went four up with luggage to Scotland from Essex in my mates Californian......it was a real fight to claim the front passenger seat on that trip.......that coupe roofline was a killer in the back 

Where did you put all the luggage?

[boxbrownie]

7 minutes ago, alastairq said:

 

Personally, I cannot equate the Estelle [or the MB or S100] as being a 'more modern' VW beetle at all.....

That accolade has to fall upon the Type 3  VW's [Fastback..a example of which I once owned], notchback, and Variant eeestate.

Sine they shared a very similar chassis/suspension design as the later beetles...only really differing in the flat engine rather than the upright one.

Plus, horrendous engine access in comparison. The flat engine stuck out more as well..

 

Same mate then bought a NSU Prinz......now that had shite engine access as we found out trying to remove the head, tiny little nuts on (what seemed like) three foot studs.......as you put torque on them they just sprung back to the original position 

[boxbrownie]

1 minute ago, PhilJ W said:

Where did you put all the luggage?

Mostly on our laps as the front was full of beer 

[PhilJ W]

I had an Imp van. Great for carrying large items because there was only minimal wheel arches. At least I avoided the pitfall of many Imp van and estate owners and I didn't put water in to the sump. Putting the oil filler in the sill of the tailgate and then making it look like a radiator cap  wasn't a good idea. My cousins wife had an Imp Husky estate and the garage that serviced it put water into the sump by mistaking the oil filler cap for the radiator, it cost them a replacement engine.

[steve1]

I nearly owned a tweaked and tuned Californian, complete with roll cage and Corbeau seats, some years ago. The seller was a mechanic mate and he decided not to sell it me as he was not happy with an oil leak he couldn't fix. He was happy to move it on to some mug though. 

 

steve

 

 

[Oldddudders]

1 hour ago, alastairq said:

Personally I liked the Skoda Octavia..[the proper one, not the VW pass hat version].....

Rather than the Passat, the VW-influence Octavia is actually on the Golf platform, I think. 

[Oldddudders]

39 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

My cousins wife had an Imp Husky estate and the garage that serviced it put water into the sump by mistaking the oil filler cap for the radiator, it cost them a replacement engine.

I recall circa 1964 seeing a filling-station attendant opening a small hatch on a blue car, imagining it to contain the petrol filler-cap. Evidently it didn't, as the owner quickly pointed out the correct one. It was probably the attendant's first time filling a Ferrari 250 Lusso, and equally probably a good thing he hadn't got it wrong, as the car was owned by the garage proprietor, Rob Walker, formerly Stirling Moss's F1 entrant....

[doilum]

17 hours ago, boxbrownie said:

Of all the various kit cars of the day the Crusader was a very nice looking job, and a very good car.

A much better use of government money creating post coal mining jobs in Washington New Town.

[doilum]

Once had the old boy at the petrol station put half a gallon of four star down the wrong orifice of my Lambretta. Having fitted a 30mm Dell'Orto the redundant air scoop under the seat had been left in the spares box. Fortunately there was no fire, I discovered that petrol is the best way of removing Hammerite paint and the scoop was reinstated with a pair of nuts. 

 

[MrWolf]

2 hours ago, boxbrownie said:

Best to remove that picture..........Getty Images can be extremely picky (read litigious) if copyright usage is not sought.

 

Removed. I hadn't noticed their stamp. I've seen what various greedy b@stards want for pictures that they couldn't possibly have taken themselves. 

I think it is a deliberate trap, if you don't want someone to borrow an image, lock it. eBay manage it. 

 

[MrWolf]

2 hours ago, alastairq said:

 

I think the Skoda rear engine designs [which culminated in the Estelle/Rapid models?]..actually owed more to the Renault rear engine concepts.

 

IIRC the MB / Estelle engine is a development of the Renault 10.

 

Quote

Rear engines cannot have been that bad either.

 

They work well enough, I had a Karmann type 34 with the later engine, a pig to access compared to the 1600 twin port in the '59 Ghia I had. 

What has killed the idea for anything other than "personal" cars like Porsches, is the hatchback obsession. One defeats the other.

Despite having owned one, I can't see the point in the VW air-cooled van. Other than for camping / posing / pretending to be a surfer. 

The Bedford CA beats all other 1950s vans of the car based variety hands down. Which is why they used to be everywhere.

[Sidecar Racer]

18 hours ago, MrWolf said:

Machined out and Wells rings fitted the imp engine was a different animal. They also powered a few racing sidecar outfits.

 

They did that . This is the first my as built for hillclimbs from a circuit configuration ,

changed to rear  exit for passenger from the as built front . 875 sport engine .

 

 

 Then later with a 998 motor .

 

 

[MrWolf]

I would be so tempted to get that registered and whack a daylight MOT on it! 

[Sidecar Racer]

9 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

I would be so tempted to get that registered and whack a daylight MOT on it! 

 

I actually did consider that at one time , it had a makers no so a chassis no was possible ,

but sense prevailed in the end , being so low to the ground would make it hard to be seen .

 

At 19-05 it can be seen in action , on the next run we crashed just about where

it comes into view .

 

 

[MrWolf]

Brilliant stuff! There's a lot of roads like that around here, which are perfect for the kind of low slung 40s British relics that the memsahib and I ride.

There was a nut got on the IOM ferry a few years back on a road legal ish A65 powered kneeler outfit a la Chris Vincent. He'd rode up from Nottingham way on it with his camping gear for ballast!

[alastairq]

57 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

I would be so tempted to get that registered and whack a daylight MOT on it! 

 Take a look at the MCC long distance trials? [Classic Reliability Trials] such as the Lands End trial, Exeter Trial, etc.

Over the decades [indeed, well over a century!!], mad folks have been competing using outfits...particularly Wasp outfits?  [Ex grass track machines, road legal now]

Some of those crews were into their 70's as well....and that's not mph!

Would anyone on here be able to get their Missus to hang her backside out an inch from the tarmac  when negotiating roundabouts on the A303?

[PatB]

56 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

I would be so tempted to get that registered and whack a daylight MOT on it! 

One of my everlasting regrets is that I didn't buy the road registered, A10 powered kneeler outfit that once turned up for sale on a postcard in the window of the newsagents on Westgate Hill in Newcastle. It was a bit out of my price range, though, being about 600 quid. Old air-cooled Japanese 2-strokes for the price of the petrol in the tank and the months left on the tax disc were more my league. I regret not buying those either, given what started to happen to prices shortly after. 

 

And to drag myself back to Hillman Imps, I'm pretty sure I remember seeing an Imp engine in a Norton Featherbed frame, which represented quite a lot of engineering effort in order to create possibly the ugliest motorcycle ever. 

[Jol Wilkinson]

The father of a schoolfriend was the Transport Manager for BTH at Rugby. He was loaned an Imp by the Rootes Group which we were lucky to get our hands on (17 and just passed our diving tests. The ability of that small engine to rev was unlike anything we had encountered in our early driving days. Another school friends father was the radiator designer at Ryton and organised a factory trip for us.

 

Our school had also organised a trip to the Standard Triumph works at Canley. The one thing I particularly remember was the wheel fitting station on the assembly line for Heralds. There were two chairs on either side of the line, each occupied by an employee (to describe them as workers would require a major stretch of the imagination).  As each car arrived at the station, one would get up, fit the front and then the rear wheel, then return to his seat and newspaper. The next car would arrive and the other person would do the same to that car before returning to his place of rest. A superb example of overmanning and poor management which helped speed the demise of the BL.

 

Later, when I joined Ford's Service Division, one of my colleagues had been a student at BL and his tales of the goings one could be hilarious. In particular, whenever it rained, the workers would don their bicycle capes and, with a car battery perched on the crossbar and a piece of string though the battery lugs and around their necks, would cycle out through the factory gates with their booty. All went well until one day when a security guard came out of his gatehouse and put his hand up to stop them while a delivery lorry came in. Several cyclists keeled over under the weight and the scam was revealed.

 

Such theft was apparently common at the large plants, Ford being no different (the less said the better). The maintenance department at the Ford Basildon Tractor plant ran a thriving retail business including "goods for gentlemen" from their department and also undertook "foreigners". These included fabrication jobs using their facilities, which enabled me to get some of the parts I needed made up for the Special I was building at the time.

 

 

[MrWolf]

1 hour ago, alastairq said:

 Take a look at the MCC long distance trials? [Classic Reliability Trials] such as the Lands End trial, Exeter Trial, etc.

Over the decades [indeed, well over a century!!], mad folks have been competing using outfits...particularly Wasp outfits?  [Ex grass track machines, road legal now]

Some of those crews were into their 70's as well....and that's not mph!

Would anyone on here be able to get their Missus to hang her backside out an inch from the tarmac  when negotiating roundabouts on the A303?

 

Worryingly, mine probably would.

 

Though she really liked the semi off road sidecar on my mate's BMW R75.

 

But that was mostly for the MG34 machine gun....

[MrWolf]

1 hour ago, PatB said:

One of my everlasting regrets is that I didn't buy the road registered, A10 powered kneeler outfit that once turned up for sale on a postcard in the window of the newsagents on Westgate Hill in Newcastle. It was a bit out of my price range, though, being about 600 quid. Old air-cooled Japanese 2-strokes for the price of the petrol in the tank and the months left on the tax disc were more my league. I regret not buying those either, given what started to happen to prices shortly after. 

 

And to drag myself back to Hillman Imps, I'm pretty sure I remember seeing an Imp engine in a Norton Featherbed frame, which represented quite a lot of engineering effort in order to create possibly the ugliest motorcycle ever. 

 

In my case, a complete Wasp chassis minus engine, £250.

 

As for Imp engined Dommie's, it's kind of the poor man's Münch Mammut. (The actual contender for ugliest bike, along with the Suzuki RE5) I have seen a few over the years, I remember such things from when my dad used to take me to Mallory in the 70s. There's at least one out there that is supercharged, using a kit intended I think for the Herald /Anglia / Sprite.

And people think that you are brave riding something fast, built and tested by a mult billion industry! 

 

[boxbrownie]

42 minutes ago, Jol Wilkinson said:

 

 

Such theft was apparently common at the large plants, Ford being no different (the less said the better). The maintenance department at the Ford Basildon Tractor plant ran a thriving retail business including "goods for gentlemen" from their department and also undertook "foreigners". These included fabrication jobs using their facilities, which enabled me to get some of the parts I needed made up for the Special I was building at the time.

 

 

Our Fiesta XR2 was bought from Frog Island (the employee sales of company vehicles) , we saw the XR2 on the list on the Friday morning at work and turned up Friday night and slept the night until it opened, we were first in the line so got the Fiesta......funny thing was although cheap (and they really were cheap to employees back then)  the XR2 had not yet been released to the public, we had got the press image vehicle.......needless to say it looked perfect.......unfortunately after two weeks (with some very odd looks on the road and in the Ford car park) the radiator went pop.......so it was off to Dunton stores to find a replacement, nothing at all of course being an early vehicle but thankfully I knew SVE very well so popped upstairs and “found” a spare rad under a desk......I went down and fitted it in the car park at lunchtime, no one batted an eyelid......those were the days 

 

But you’re correct there was a thriving trade in spares and unique fabricated parts for all sorts of exotic/kit/weird stuff and all top quality stuff, hand made by craftsman.

 

 

Edited March 1, 2021 by boxbrownie

[Northmoor]

Genuinely interesting though these stories are (really), they do sadly indicate why our car industry took such a nose-dive although thankfully it is a great success a generation later.  While small incidents in themselves, combined and extrapolated across manufacturing industry, they amount to huge cost and waste, which our competitor nations clearly didn't suffer from, to the same extent.

[petethemole]

1 hour ago, Northmoor said:

Genuinely interesting though these stories are (really), they do sadly indicate why our car industry took such a nose-dive although thankfully it is a great success a generation later.  While small incidents in themselves, combined and extrapolated across manufacturing industry, they amount to huge cost and waste, which our competitor nations clearly didn't suffer from, to the same extent.

Maybe not. The USA wasn't much of a competitor in the UK home market, but overseas, yes. 

 

[MrWolf]

I'm not quite sure how "our" car industry is a great success. Last time I looked, we didn't have one. Unless you're counting factories that belong to America, India, Germany or Japan and consequently profiting economies and shareholders in those countries? 

[Erichill16]

2 hours ago, boxbrownie said:

 

But you’re correct there was a thriving trade in spares and unique fabricated parts for all sorts of exotic/kit/weird stuff and all top quality stuff, hand made by craftsman.

 

 

A chap who used to work for me told me his brother was emigrating to the US and was wanting to sell his 911 and I was cautiously interested at first. He told me his brother worked for BAe and some of the engineering  apprentices had supplied and upgraded some  parts for the 911. I decided to give it a miss, I couldn’t afford BAe prices for spares!

Robert