So, this has been my 2015 in cars...
Despite fully intending to make it to some "different" shows this year, I did tend to get stuck with the same ones as every year a bit. With a few exceptions... like the first time in living memory the Worthing Sunny Sunday was... well, anti-sunny. Mind you, Brooklands made up for it by hosting some superb Americana shows this year, and the Goodwood Breakfast Clubs continue go from strength to strength. And of course, as well as shows there were plenty of garage days sometimes with good friends, sometimes with little other than tooth-gritted perseverance. Anyway, let's get on with it, shall we?
January was a high note, as it featured the return to the road of Jo's Ralph the RX-4 for the first time in three years or so. It was NOT an easy re-birth, but then nothing's ever easy with Ralph!
bonus E-Type included for a freebie
But mostly 2015 started with a lot of POR15 and lying under a car in the middle of winter. Hmmm, timing! But then, once you notice your underside is flakier than Claudia Winkelman, you can't ignore it. From
to
And then I felt brave enough to face the weather without fear of my baby dissolving before my eyes!
It wasn't all grime and graft though. Finally plucked up the courage to separate 30-year-old and incredibly brittle plastics to do the LED conversion I'd been planning, like, forever
March brought the chance to meet one of my heroes in the flesh... as it were... the Mazda Cosmo. Seen two before, and they never get old, but this was my first chance to actually spend quality time with one
Sooooooooo pretty! March saw me finally peed off enough with the comedy-sized feeble battery on the FD to get a truck battery to replace it... and then have to make a box to actually fit it in. Hey presto, electrical gremlins solved in a oner and it actually even starts
It'd been a while since she'd seen the light of day...
March also saw a very patient RAC man help de-flood and blowtorch the plugs on the FB four times before we both admitted defeat and conceded they were knackered. It wouldn't have been so embarrassing had it not decided to give up the ghost when I was collecting the Boy from his Beavers/Cubs display on the beach, where they were using a drone to take photos of hundreds of them spelling out 100 years of scouting. So, not too much of an audience then. May, fortunately, brought the first show, the evergreen Breakfast Club and Supercar Sunday. The kids are even tolerant of Goodwood (as long as they get an icecream and bacon sarnie). Weather could have been better...
April brought the first stirrings of the sap rising... Still raining though
May saw a return of the heart to Dave's TwiR FB Rex... although it was one Kiwi-power for a while
May was also the annual pilgrimage to Beaulieu for the autojumble and mooch around the Museum
June brought more time in the garage, and a home-made brake cylinder stopper to firm up pedal response
and a much-needed alternator refurb. Needed both for cosmetic reasons and for fatter sparks. No-one should have an alternator with spiders nesting in it!
And June was (of course) the Bromley Pageant, another one for the kids and marred only by unfeasibly stupid queues getting in. But it had stopped raining at last!
and in those long warm evenings I sat and refurbed the mankiest ever Project Mu pedal set, while watching Match of the Day and As Above So Below and other top timewasters
Unbelievably still in June was the first of many soul-destroying hauls oop t'Pod (it's something I think I'm atoning for foul deeds in a former life) this time for the Retro Show
And to end June off, what better than the onslaught of the Festival of Speed? Nearly two thousand photos over two days makes it hard to narrow it down to a "best of" thread, but my personal favourites obviously tend towards the Rotangs of legend and a certain Falcon that's easily the coolest movie car EVER... oh, and the Doctor finally appearing... and the Beast of Turin, of course... or the incredible le Mans-winning Porsche hybrid... or the Silver Arrows reunited... or the preposterous supercar eye-candy... or the indescribable beauty of the Style et Luxe...
.....nahhhh, it was DEFINITELY the Mazdas!
aaaaaand breathe.
A week later it was July, and Japshow inevitably seemed a bit of a letdown, leaving aside the depressing setting of the Pod... if T.S. Elliot had ever visited, he wouldn't have had to write the Wasteland. Never mind, this is the way the world ends. Not with a whimper but with a turbocharged high-revving J engine. Maybe. And stilts, don't forget the stilts. Another top day out with my lad, if only cos of the Maltese rotary-powered Escort, and a pause by the cathedral on the way home to atone for my sins
July also saw some much-needed lurve towards the little Rex... a burned arm on the way home from Goodwood and having to borrow a coach-drivers toolkit to get to the radiator fuse that kept blowing meant an attempt was made to release some of the excess heat. The old-fashioned way, by drilling holes in stuff...
...no, it didn't work. Also, a new sunroof liner replaced the odd-textured, saggy nasty one. In finest 70s vinyl, mmmmm
and a trip up to Staffs to return with a Focus-full of random Mazda bodyparts. To be continued...
And then a rear seatbelt retro-fit, just so I can inflict the car on all the family!
Then it was back to the Wasteland... errm, I mean Santa Pod... for the Mopar Euronationals. Our yearly pilgrimage to the temple of Might and Power in V8 flavour
We always go to the Mopar Nats on the Saturday because Sunday is always the Worthing Sunny Sunday car show, and it's rude not to go to a show half a mile from your front door. Especially since it's never rained yet. Yeah, that's queered it then...
I got down first thing, and it started raining as I was walking down. Then it got heavier. And then it got Biblical. I sheltered under a gazebo for one of the market stalls with a few diehards, hoping it would clear up. It didn't. Most cars did what this 'Stang did; drive in, and drive straight out again before they got stuck
It never even eased up enough for me to foray out to try and work out what the hell this was;
and though the cars that did turn up were amusing...
... I wimped out and went home. I popped down again around midday. It was still raining and there were about four cars left. Sad times
Fortunately, August, and the next Breakfast Club, brought rather more palatable weather and domestic bliss was attained sitting on the lawn behind the paddocks eating ice creams (Aston sponsoring ice creams, no less) while the cars paraded through the tunnel and the Boy filled in his I-Spy book while the li'l un "helped". Thoroughbred Sunday, oh yes
August also included a brief interlude sitting in A&E for four hours on a Friday night, having discovered why they recommend you never put your fingers into a spinning radiator fan. In my defence, it wasn't spinning at first. Not until I freed it up, anyway. Never mind, the new glue-stitches they use are very effective. Still no nearer to working out why the radiator fan only worked when it felt like it, though.
Oh well; Brooklands. Specifically, an Americana day. Another car ticked off my automotive bucket list, an actual working, driving Amphicar!
Midway through August, which was already proving a busy one, the Cranleigh Classic Car Show had plenty of cool stuff, some of which I'd never seen before. And the most laid-back, informal and friendly marshalling of any venue, anywhere. Top bombing, crazy shapes;
Then came a concerted effort to get to the bottom of my overheating woes. First step was a complete re-design of the wiring, acting on idiot-proof and very patient instructions from the clever souls on FDUK. So the radiator fan system wiring "loom" went from
to
which made a lot more sense and if nothing else featured an MCB rather than a fuse. It'd still blow, but at least I wouldn't have to resort to blocking the road until a coach got stuck and then borrowing the drivers' tool kit to replace the fuse. Did it work? No, of course not. But before I could fix it, a summer holiday intruded, including a trip up to the MIL's with the kids... which featured a very strange interlude where the entire M25 was shut for over an hour in the middle of the night and we had no choice but to watch the very odd spectacle of a completely deserted carriageway of Britain's busiest road being used for strolling about, dog walking, football and chucking Nerf rockets.
back from holiday, and with my library replenished at the country's highest bookshop (apparently) ... yeah, with lots of car books...
...I finally discovered the source of the overheating problems, mostly by having replaced every other part of the system. The fan, despite being brand new and of reputable make, was knackered. Damned thing had nearly cost me a finger, too. So, a monster Spal one was procured and The Boy helped me manufacture the world's biggest compasses to mark up a new shroud
and it only fitted, din't it
...just!
And this was just as well, because August also meant the unarguably awesome Retro Rides Gathering, and if the queues were anything like the previous year, without a reliable rad system I'd be brewing up all over the place. Of course, the queues weren't and the weather was...
...shocking. Still, the cars were as superb, random, eclectic and funky as all hell, which made up for the four-hundred-mile washout. And it was the finest collection of first-gen RX-7s this country's seen in a good long while. If not ever
August STILL wasn't over. The last weekend saw a double-header where we took the kids to the odd-sounding but excellent mix of the Bentley Wildfowl Reserve and Motor Museum in the wilds of Sussex. And yeah, it really is a motor museum (featuring a small but wonderfully eclectic collection of vehicles) in the grounds of a duck sanctuary. And also boasting some adorable and tiny little trains to ride on...
anyway, it's a poor sort of life if a duck that looks like Barbara Cartland doesn't make you laugh
And after a quick dash over to Ada's to blag his ticket, the next day meant Wings and Wheels. Which, really, could easily be a Ronseal product. And yeah, by holy hell did it rain. Again. But awesome cars... and the last time we would be able to see the Vulcan where it belonged. And the Boy got to join the Russian Army, albeit temporarily
Farewell, XJ558
The last day of August was the seafront fair in Worthing, and as if to make up for the awful weather on "Sunny" Sunday, there was another classic car show on at the Steyne all weekend. Since it was on the way to visit the waff's stall selling gunge and unctions, it seemed rude not to stop of en route so me and the kids could take in some cars. Lovely.
That was the Saturday. Needless to say, the Sunday's fair was rained off. *Sigh*. Next weekend it was the Brighton Speed Trials, that epic who-says-we-can't-race-on-public-roads-in-the-backyard-of-the-only-Green-council-in-England in-yer-face oddity that somehow manages to dodge the best efforts of homogenised elf and safe tea culture to crush it underfoot. Hurrah. Took the Boy and Ada and all was good, until it got too crowded to see a damned thing. And rained, of course. After all, it was September now...
The Speed Trials is always held on a Saturday. And that's a Good Thing because this meant that we could head up to Brooklands on the Sunday for another dose of Americana. It was supposed to be the Chevy Tri-Power day, but although there were an unfeasibly large number of Bel Airs, they were anything but the be-all and end-all. It was rammed with super-cool cars and... stuff!
So, October dawned... well, wet really, and since the Waff was away at one of her selling-scunge-and-unctions bashes, it was the perfect opportunity for me to take the kids along to Goodwood for the Vee Power Breakfast Club. They were good, so as promised, they got ice creams and soss sarnies, and it also gave them the opportunity to practice their rockstar poses
(no, no that kind of Rockstar. They're manic enough as it is) and also gave us the chance to see some awesomeness on four wheels. Including a Maserati Meerkat, as the Boy calls it, and a Khamsin which blew the li'l un's mind... like, why does it have a windscreen at the back?
Next weekend was (mercifully) the final pilgrimage to the Pod for the year, for Japshow Finale. Where, unusually, it didn't rain for the first time, like, ever. And for some reason it seemed a better class of J-tin than the previous outing
I left at dawn
...and got home at dusk, which meant two things; one that my overheating problem was finally sorted after more than a year, and two that the days were drawing in
And (for me, anyway) there was one last epic adventure left in the year. November brought the Classic Car Show at the NEC. So that meant a five-hour roundtrip drive, sandwiching about seven straight hours on my feet trying to get round everything. I didn't manage it, but what I did see was more than enough to end the year on a high
Hmmmm... put like that it doesn't seem like such a bad year for automotive goodness after all. Next year I need to get to some different shows, though, as some of the ones we visit year on year could be in danger of getting a tiny bit stale. And getting the FD back on the road in time to commute through winter probably wasn't the most sensible choice, fun though it is at the moment. But overall, I had a blast. So that was my year that was. How was yours?
Despite fully intending to make it to some "different" shows this year, I did tend to get stuck with the same ones as every year a bit. With a few exceptions... like the first time in living memory the Worthing Sunny Sunday was... well, anti-sunny. Mind you, Brooklands made up for it by hosting some superb Americana shows this year, and the Goodwood Breakfast Clubs continue go from strength to strength. And of course, as well as shows there were plenty of garage days sometimes with good friends, sometimes with little other than tooth-gritted perseverance. Anyway, let's get on with it, shall we?
January was a high note, as it featured the return to the road of Jo's Ralph the RX-4 for the first time in three years or so. It was NOT an easy re-birth, but then nothing's ever easy with Ralph!
bonus E-Type included for a freebie
But mostly 2015 started with a lot of POR15 and lying under a car in the middle of winter. Hmmm, timing! But then, once you notice your underside is flakier than Claudia Winkelman, you can't ignore it. From
to
And then I felt brave enough to face the weather without fear of my baby dissolving before my eyes!
It wasn't all grime and graft though. Finally plucked up the courage to separate 30-year-old and incredibly brittle plastics to do the LED conversion I'd been planning, like, forever
March brought the chance to meet one of my heroes in the flesh... as it were... the Mazda Cosmo. Seen two before, and they never get old, but this was my first chance to actually spend quality time with one
Sooooooooo pretty! March saw me finally peed off enough with the comedy-sized feeble battery on the FD to get a truck battery to replace it... and then have to make a box to actually fit it in. Hey presto, electrical gremlins solved in a oner and it actually even starts
It'd been a while since she'd seen the light of day...
March also saw a very patient RAC man help de-flood and blowtorch the plugs on the FB four times before we both admitted defeat and conceded they were knackered. It wouldn't have been so embarrassing had it not decided to give up the ghost when I was collecting the Boy from his Beavers/Cubs display on the beach, where they were using a drone to take photos of hundreds of them spelling out 100 years of scouting. So, not too much of an audience then. May, fortunately, brought the first show, the evergreen Breakfast Club and Supercar Sunday. The kids are even tolerant of Goodwood (as long as they get an icecream and bacon sarnie). Weather could have been better...
April brought the first stirrings of the sap rising... Still raining though
May saw a return of the heart to Dave's TwiR FB Rex... although it was one Kiwi-power for a while
May was also the annual pilgrimage to Beaulieu for the autojumble and mooch around the Museum
June brought more time in the garage, and a home-made brake cylinder stopper to firm up pedal response
and a much-needed alternator refurb. Needed both for cosmetic reasons and for fatter sparks. No-one should have an alternator with spiders nesting in it!
And June was (of course) the Bromley Pageant, another one for the kids and marred only by unfeasibly stupid queues getting in. But it had stopped raining at last!
and in those long warm evenings I sat and refurbed the mankiest ever Project Mu pedal set, while watching Match of the Day and As Above So Below and other top timewasters
Unbelievably still in June was the first of many soul-destroying hauls oop t'Pod (it's something I think I'm atoning for foul deeds in a former life) this time for the Retro Show
And to end June off, what better than the onslaught of the Festival of Speed? Nearly two thousand photos over two days makes it hard to narrow it down to a "best of" thread, but my personal favourites obviously tend towards the Rotangs of legend and a certain Falcon that's easily the coolest movie car EVER... oh, and the Doctor finally appearing... and the Beast of Turin, of course... or the incredible le Mans-winning Porsche hybrid... or the Silver Arrows reunited... or the preposterous supercar eye-candy... or the indescribable beauty of the Style et Luxe...
.....nahhhh, it was DEFINITELY the Mazdas!
aaaaaand breathe.
A week later it was July, and Japshow inevitably seemed a bit of a letdown, leaving aside the depressing setting of the Pod... if T.S. Elliot had ever visited, he wouldn't have had to write the Wasteland. Never mind, this is the way the world ends. Not with a whimper but with a turbocharged high-revving J engine. Maybe. And stilts, don't forget the stilts. Another top day out with my lad, if only cos of the Maltese rotary-powered Escort, and a pause by the cathedral on the way home to atone for my sins
July also saw some much-needed lurve towards the little Rex... a burned arm on the way home from Goodwood and having to borrow a coach-drivers toolkit to get to the radiator fuse that kept blowing meant an attempt was made to release some of the excess heat. The old-fashioned way, by drilling holes in stuff...
...no, it didn't work. Also, a new sunroof liner replaced the odd-textured, saggy nasty one. In finest 70s vinyl, mmmmm
and a trip up to Staffs to return with a Focus-full of random Mazda bodyparts. To be continued...
And then a rear seatbelt retro-fit, just so I can inflict the car on all the family!
Then it was back to the Wasteland... errm, I mean Santa Pod... for the Mopar Euronationals. Our yearly pilgrimage to the temple of Might and Power in V8 flavour
We always go to the Mopar Nats on the Saturday because Sunday is always the Worthing Sunny Sunday car show, and it's rude not to go to a show half a mile from your front door. Especially since it's never rained yet. Yeah, that's queered it then...
I got down first thing, and it started raining as I was walking down. Then it got heavier. And then it got Biblical. I sheltered under a gazebo for one of the market stalls with a few diehards, hoping it would clear up. It didn't. Most cars did what this 'Stang did; drive in, and drive straight out again before they got stuck
It never even eased up enough for me to foray out to try and work out what the hell this was;
and though the cars that did turn up were amusing...
... I wimped out and went home. I popped down again around midday. It was still raining and there were about four cars left. Sad times
Fortunately, August, and the next Breakfast Club, brought rather more palatable weather and domestic bliss was attained sitting on the lawn behind the paddocks eating ice creams (Aston sponsoring ice creams, no less) while the cars paraded through the tunnel and the Boy filled in his I-Spy book while the li'l un "helped". Thoroughbred Sunday, oh yes
August also included a brief interlude sitting in A&E for four hours on a Friday night, having discovered why they recommend you never put your fingers into a spinning radiator fan. In my defence, it wasn't spinning at first. Not until I freed it up, anyway. Never mind, the new glue-stitches they use are very effective. Still no nearer to working out why the radiator fan only worked when it felt like it, though.
Oh well; Brooklands. Specifically, an Americana day. Another car ticked off my automotive bucket list, an actual working, driving Amphicar!
Midway through August, which was already proving a busy one, the Cranleigh Classic Car Show had plenty of cool stuff, some of which I'd never seen before. And the most laid-back, informal and friendly marshalling of any venue, anywhere. Top bombing, crazy shapes;
Then came a concerted effort to get to the bottom of my overheating woes. First step was a complete re-design of the wiring, acting on idiot-proof and very patient instructions from the clever souls on FDUK. So the radiator fan system wiring "loom" went from
to
which made a lot more sense and if nothing else featured an MCB rather than a fuse. It'd still blow, but at least I wouldn't have to resort to blocking the road until a coach got stuck and then borrowing the drivers' tool kit to replace the fuse. Did it work? No, of course not. But before I could fix it, a summer holiday intruded, including a trip up to the MIL's with the kids... which featured a very strange interlude where the entire M25 was shut for over an hour in the middle of the night and we had no choice but to watch the very odd spectacle of a completely deserted carriageway of Britain's busiest road being used for strolling about, dog walking, football and chucking Nerf rockets.
back from holiday, and with my library replenished at the country's highest bookshop (apparently) ... yeah, with lots of car books...
...I finally discovered the source of the overheating problems, mostly by having replaced every other part of the system. The fan, despite being brand new and of reputable make, was knackered. Damned thing had nearly cost me a finger, too. So, a monster Spal one was procured and The Boy helped me manufacture the world's biggest compasses to mark up a new shroud
and it only fitted, din't it
...just!
And this was just as well, because August also meant the unarguably awesome Retro Rides Gathering, and if the queues were anything like the previous year, without a reliable rad system I'd be brewing up all over the place. Of course, the queues weren't and the weather was...
...shocking. Still, the cars were as superb, random, eclectic and funky as all hell, which made up for the four-hundred-mile washout. And it was the finest collection of first-gen RX-7s this country's seen in a good long while. If not ever
August STILL wasn't over. The last weekend saw a double-header where we took the kids to the odd-sounding but excellent mix of the Bentley Wildfowl Reserve and Motor Museum in the wilds of Sussex. And yeah, it really is a motor museum (featuring a small but wonderfully eclectic collection of vehicles) in the grounds of a duck sanctuary. And also boasting some adorable and tiny little trains to ride on...
anyway, it's a poor sort of life if a duck that looks like Barbara Cartland doesn't make you laugh
And after a quick dash over to Ada's to blag his ticket, the next day meant Wings and Wheels. Which, really, could easily be a Ronseal product. And yeah, by holy hell did it rain. Again. But awesome cars... and the last time we would be able to see the Vulcan where it belonged. And the Boy got to join the Russian Army, albeit temporarily
Farewell, XJ558
The last day of August was the seafront fair in Worthing, and as if to make up for the awful weather on "Sunny" Sunday, there was another classic car show on at the Steyne all weekend. Since it was on the way to visit the waff's stall selling gunge and unctions, it seemed rude not to stop of en route so me and the kids could take in some cars. Lovely.
That was the Saturday. Needless to say, the Sunday's fair was rained off. *Sigh*. Next weekend it was the Brighton Speed Trials, that epic who-says-we-can't-race-on-public-roads-in-the-backyard-of-the-only-Green-council-in-England in-yer-face oddity that somehow manages to dodge the best efforts of homogenised elf and safe tea culture to crush it underfoot. Hurrah. Took the Boy and Ada and all was good, until it got too crowded to see a damned thing. And rained, of course. After all, it was September now...
The Speed Trials is always held on a Saturday. And that's a Good Thing because this meant that we could head up to Brooklands on the Sunday for another dose of Americana. It was supposed to be the Chevy Tri-Power day, but although there were an unfeasibly large number of Bel Airs, they were anything but the be-all and end-all. It was rammed with super-cool cars and... stuff!
So, October dawned... well, wet really, and since the Waff was away at one of her selling-scunge-and-unctions bashes, it was the perfect opportunity for me to take the kids along to Goodwood for the Vee Power Breakfast Club. They were good, so as promised, they got ice creams and soss sarnies, and it also gave them the opportunity to practice their rockstar poses
(no, no that kind of Rockstar. They're manic enough as it is) and also gave us the chance to see some awesomeness on four wheels. Including a Maserati Meerkat, as the Boy calls it, and a Khamsin which blew the li'l un's mind... like, why does it have a windscreen at the back?
Next weekend was (mercifully) the final pilgrimage to the Pod for the year, for Japshow Finale. Where, unusually, it didn't rain for the first time, like, ever. And for some reason it seemed a better class of J-tin than the previous outing
I left at dawn
...and got home at dusk, which meant two things; one that my overheating problem was finally sorted after more than a year, and two that the days were drawing in
And (for me, anyway) there was one last epic adventure left in the year. November brought the Classic Car Show at the NEC. So that meant a five-hour roundtrip drive, sandwiching about seven straight hours on my feet trying to get round everything. I didn't manage it, but what I did see was more than enough to end the year on a high
Hmmmm... put like that it doesn't seem like such a bad year for automotive goodness after all. Next year I need to get to some different shows, though, as some of the ones we visit year on year could be in danger of getting a tiny bit stale. And getting the FD back on the road in time to commute through winter probably wasn't the most sensible choice, fun though it is at the moment. But overall, I had a blast. So that was my year that was. How was yours?
