Friday December 16th. Fleet reduction programme-Stage 1.

Due to my recent penchant for Mk1 Cortina's, my fleet of classic cars has grown considerably over the past year. This would be ok if I had plenty of car storage, or even a workshop that I could rent for a reasonable sum, but unfortunately renting costs are ridiculous at the moment so that's not an option for me.

With this in mind, I've decided to cut down on my current collection and the first one to go is the Mk1 Triumph estate.

The car was being stored at Colin Wake's and I was going to bring it home in February, do the work required for MOT and then advertise it on Ebay. However, a friend of mine just happened to find someone that was in desperate need of a Mk1 estate, so a deal was struck and delivery was arranged. 

So, I left my house around 6.20am to head to Colin's. The temperature was -4 when I left mine and the drive up the A12 wasn't a pleasant one. My windscreen washers had frozen and visibility was poor.

I arrived at Colin's where we had to load the car onto the trailer. The first obstacle was that the battery had gone flat and the bonnet had frozen shut and we couldn't open it to jump start it! 

We then tried pushing the car to where the trailer was but kept slipping over on the frozen grass, so we ended up reversing the Land Rover and trailer down the track to nearer the car. Eventually we got it loaded and then went back inside for a warm up and a coffee before setting off. 

We had planned to leave about 8am, but the flat battery saga had cost us time and we ended up leaving at 8.40. We headed north up the A12 and then onto the A14 where we met out first delay caused by an accident near the Great Blakenham turn off. Once past this we carried on through Bury St Edmunds and Newmarket where the temperature had dropped to -5. The Land Rover's windscreen washers had frozen up as well at this point!

There was another long delay just before the junction we wanted to turn off at Lutterworth, so we opted to come off the junction before. We then put our faith in Colin's up to date and mega expensive sat nav to find us an alternative route, only for it to send us down a farm track that was only really fit for tractors!

We eventually got to our destination some time after 12pm and unloaded the car. By this time the bonnet had thawed out and we were able to jump start the car and drive it into a parking spot. The new owner was there and he was pleased with his purchase. 

We then headed back to the A14 and even managed to find a truck stop where I had steak pie chips and peas and Colin had an all day breakfast. By 13.30 we were on our way again where we encountered traffic jams at Wellingborough and Huntingdon, both which held us up considerably!

Some hours later we turned off the A14 onto the A12 and drove straight into another hold up, again caused by an accident! It seems a lot of people just cant handle these icy conditions!

Our hopes of getting home in daylight were now dashed and by the time we got back to Colin's it was fully dark. In fact by the time I got home it was 17.50 and this trip had taken the same time as the trip a few weeks previous when we went from Colin's to West Sussex, then to Norfolk, then back to Colin's. This trip was a 100 miles less! 

It was a good day out though and we had a good laugh. Plus the bonus was that my fleet is now reduced by one and I no longer have to worry about storing the car or carrying out any work on it. The Cortina estate will probably be the next one to go, but not just yet. 

Sunday December 4th - Abortive Mission!

After speaking to Dave Maton on the Saturday we decided to meet up at the Breakfast meet at North Weald on Sunday morning. Dave wanted to give his car a run after his recent engine replacement and he also has some bits that I need for my Triumph estate, so I could get these off of him while I was there. 

I decided to take the Cortina estate as it hasn't been out for a run for some time. So, after playing musical cars so I could get the estate out I set off around 9.15am. The Cortina was running well and the heater was lovely and warm. I was just about to turn onto the A130 to head across to Chelmsford and then then the A414 to North Weald when I got a phone call from Dave. We had already spoken this morning and arranged to meet at 10am, so if he was ringing me, I was guessing there was a problem. 

Sure enough, he was ringing me to tell me his engine had blown a core plug and that he had broken down. He was also sitting in a lay-by awaiting recovery. Not a good day for him. Well, I could have carried on, but I didn't know anyone else going and I suspect the cold weather would have kept quite a few people away anyway, so I turned round and headed home. Pity, as I was enjoying the drive. Oh well, maybe another time. 

Saturday 3rd December. Inlet manifold works....

 I'd been trying to find a fitting that I needed to screw onto one of the existing fittings that's on the inlet manifold for the twin 40 carburettors. I'd been really struggling with this, so the other alternative was to try and get the original fitting undone and replace it. The problem was though that this fitting looks like its been on there for many, many years and the alloy manifold and metal fitting had probably fused together. 

After speaking to our metal work expert at work, he advised soaking it overnight in GT85 and then heating it with a blowlamp before attempting to undo it. So, Friday night I left it soaking and Saturday morning I got some heat on it. Unfortunately, the gas in my blowlamp ran out but luckily, I had managed to get a fair bit of heat on it before it did. My ratchet still couldn't get it undone, so decided to risk it and put my extra-long bar on it and hope that the alloy didn't crack. I was relieved to feel it turn a fraction and then just kept putting light pressure on it until it relented and released its grip. Good result! New manifolds are over £200, so I really didn't want that kind of expenditure at this time of year. Or at any time come to that!

With this now removed I could now fit the replacement that I had picked up from Keith Halstead. I was pleased I managed to get this done as this was something that had been nagging at me since I bought the carbs. All I need now is for the new throttle pedal to arrive and then I have everything I need to make the conversion. 

Thursday 1st December - finishing off

 With the temperatures dropping, work on the cars has dropped off a bit recently, but today was quite mild, so I got to finish off some of the jobs on the green Cortina. I had put the engine back in after changing the sump gasket, but it still needed the new oil pump and filter fitting plus other jobs.

I was also looking to fit the twin 40 carbs that I have on stand-by but discovered that I will need to move the starter solenoid as this will be in the way, fit a longer clutch cable because this will also be in way and also change the throttle pedal as this isn't suitable for the twin throttle cables that I'll be using. So, with all this needing doing, I decided to leave the twin 40's and put the original twin choke weber back on for now.

I did get it all finished though and it's all now back on the road and driveable. A massive bonus is that the new sump gasket has done its job and I no longer have an oil leak. Great result! 

Sunday 27th November - A very long day!

 My alarm was set for 6.30am again this Sunday (Two weeks running! What's that all about!) as I had another long Journey to make. My first port of call was to get to Colin Wake's house in Frating (Or Farting as I call it) just North of Colchester. My Triumph estate was finally ready for collection from Norfolk and we were using Colin's Landrover discovery and trailer to collect it, but we had another journey to make first. 

So, I arrived at Colin's around 07.30 and with no fannying around, we got on the road straightaway. It was a dark morning and peeing down with rain, so the conditions weren't pleasant. Our journey took us down the A12, M25, M23 and A272 to our destination at Billingshurst in West Sussex. We were here to collect a Triumph Mk1 Pi from here and take it to where my Triumph estate was near East Dereham in Norfolk. Bit of a treck then!

After a quick cup of coffee and a bacon sandwich courtesy of our host, Richard Brake, we were on the road again. We had a choice of going either way around the M25, but a quick look at google maps showed that both ways were filled with solid traffic anyway! We opted for going clockwise, but met crawling traffic between the A3 and the M4 junctions. Undeterred we carried on in the rain and didn't stop until we turned off the M11 at junction nine. Here we had a quick coffee from the flasks we had brought with us and then I took over the driving for the remaining drive up to East Dereham. 

The Christmas traffic had obviously already started, and the normally quiet Norfolk roads were quite busy. We didn't get held up though and we arrived at our destination around 3pm. The car we were delivering had no engine or gearbox so that had to be rolled off of the trailer and pushed into the workshop, but my estate was a 'driver', so that could be driven out of the workshop and up onto the trailer which made life easier. 

With everything strapped down and secured Colin nominated me as driver again, so we set off as it was now getting dark. We had been blessed in the sense that the only times it had stopped raining so far, was when we were loading or unloading cars on or off of the trailer, but it started in earnest again now that we were leaving and it also got very dark, very quick. The route from East Dereham was the A47 to Norwich, around the Norwich ring road to take the A140 to Ipswich, and then the A14 and A12 back to Frating. The rain hammered down all the time and the visibility was a nightmare.  It was still raining when we arrived at Colin's so he decided that the estate could stay on the trailer for the time being. I couldn't blame him! I still had to make the journey back to my place, so I didn't hang around. I had left my home at 6.45am that morning and by the time I got home it was 7.30 pm. It had been a good day though and I enjoyed spending time in Colin's company. All I've got to do now is clear some space at my place so that I can get the work done that's needed on the estate. 

Sunday November 20th - Essex Winter Rally.

 So, the reason that Richard Warr had come down to mine for the weekend was also because we were booked in for the Club Triumph Essex Winter Rally. Both of my Triumphs are currently in storage, so we were using my former car 'Rusty Custard' with Richard driving and me navigating.

The alarm was set for 6.30am Sunday morning, (Hence the obligatory Saturday night drinking was somewhat subdued) and by 7.15am we were on our way up the A12 to the meeting point at the Marks Tey diner near Colchester. 

By the time the diner was open there were a good collection of Triumphs there and also some friendly faces that I'd not seen for a while. 

With coffee and breakfast consumed, we were handed our packs and clues and started trying to figure out the route. (Which was across four separate maps!) We managed ok with most sections, but the last section was proving difficult, so we decided to just get on with and worry about that bit when it came to it.

We set out and headed East into the Essex countryside and gradually picked our way through the pre-planned route. We did go wrong at one point but got back on track after about five minutes. 

It was a long route (about 80 miles) and by lunch time we felt that we were started to fall behind as we had to be at the finish by no later than 2.30pm and we still had a lot of ground to cover. We managed another couple of sections, but with time now getting on we decided to cut the last section and just head for the finish. (Better to miss a section, than be disqualified for being OTL-outside time limit)

After a fabulous Sunday roast at the finish location, the results were announced, and we found that we had finished in a dismal 4th place out of 6. We both felt that we had done better than that, but it is what it is, and we accepted that we had must have just been shit! We did feel that the route was too long for the time allowed though and this was backed up by the fact that three other crews had cut the route to make the finish as well. 

However, it was a good, fun day out and it had been a great weekend as well, so no complaints.