1973 AC Model 70 Invacar, Visitors & Occasional Distractions

Car carpet would be a better bet than domestic. It doesn’t come on a 4m roll and if you get the right stuff, it’s mouldable.

I seem to recall that the consequences of having a plate that was obviously doctored to render it unreadable to automated systems was actually pretty substantial. Far more so than that for having a silly typeface or silver on black plates on too new a car... pretty sure it was treated as a separate offence.

Don't quote me on that though, it's a long time since I had that conversation with the police officer I used to work alongside with for road design safety issues. I'm not a policeman, I just used to spend a lot of time talking to them as road design was one of the many hats I had to wear from time to time when I worked for local government.

Things today started out in a frustrating way.

The throttle cable kit I had been waiting for since the sixth of August finally arrived today. However it immediately became apparent that it did not contain the parts I needed.

What I thought were the small barrel shaped cable ends in the tiny blurry images on the listing actually turned out to be ferrules (left on the image below), and the actual cable ends were the larger type. Shown to the right.



By this point I was thoroughly irked given how long I had waited for it. This quite quickly turned into me refusing to be beaten given that I was holding a new length of decent cable in my hand.

The issue I had was that the barrel type cable ends supplied while correct in their length were roughly twice the required diameter. So they wouldn't fit into the proper retainer in the twist grip. I couldn't even wedge one in behind the holder because the clamshell sections which cover it wouldn't close with the cable end sitting so much prouder than the original.

That was until I gave it some thought and brandished an angle grinder at it. I cut a new slot just to one side of the original cable retainer like so...



Which allows the larger cable end to sit like this...



This drops the height of things to a point where the covers can be correctly reassembled. Having left the original retainer untouched means I will have the option to revert to the other type of cable end in the future if needed.

With the new end soldered onto the cable everything was put together and it worked. Action still isn't great so I may well change the cable outer as well at some point, but it is actually working now. The twist grip itself isn't the nicest thing ever anyway, so that too might be replaced in the future.

Which meant I could finally get the car out of the garage for the first time in several weeks.





Answers on a postcard for the best way to shift overspray from tyres?

Before heading out though I made a point of properly setting the CVT belt tension - spacing the pulley centres 10.25" apart as per the manual (I'll probably find I've remembered the value wrong now) as I was pretty certain the belt was too loose when I was last out. It was very snatchy moving off from a standstill and sounded like it was flapping around a lot at speed.

Still a bit juddery moving off from a standstill, but definitely better. I suspect the engine/gearbox mounts I have are a bit last their best so may look to replace those at some point. It does to some extent seem to be something they are a bit prone to though from what I remember seeing.

Drive is definitely happier though, *far* quieter and especially so at cruising speed. Much less of a noticeable shunt when coming off the power too. Several points while out today I was having to back off the throttle due to the 60mph speed limit rather than due to running out of road or other traffic.

Fuelling up has shown us nearly touching 30mpg on that last tank - half of which was prior to fitting the new pulleys, so it's definitely heading the right way. Not expecting to ever see particularly great figures locally as MK is murderous on fuel economy because of there being a roundabout every 0.9 miles. Would be nice to see over 30mpg though, which hopefully we will on the next tank.

Obviously had to snap a few photos while out and about.

The heavens did open at one point, which revealed that I owe an apology to this windscreen wiper blade.



I had expected it to be nothing but a pointless shiny bit of tat...but it actually works just fine, better than the Bosch one which was on there before anyway.

Even when the surface is horribly rough, you still get water beading on new paint which is always satisfying to see.



At least I now have a few reasonable "stock" images of TPA I can throw at people when they ask what a Model 70 is now. Obviously I'll need to re-take these once the new number plates arrive though.









...And back home after all the excitement of an actual run.



The sliding doors still amuse me and seem to utterly confuse passers by.

I'll need to find an excuse to head out of town shortly so I can properly assess how the drive is behaving. Definitely seems far happier now though and there wasn't anything which felt like it gave me cause for concern during the drive. Never mind nothing actually falling off, it didn't feel like anything was even in danger of falling off this time.

Looking at those photos now it is slightly hard to believe that's the same car that arrived wedged in the back of a Transit van about a year ago...



She's undergone a bit of a transformation I think it's fair to say!

Celly thinners will get it off usually, follow with some tyre dressing or black boot polish to give a nice black look.

Proper brush on tyre paint - black - not the clear shiney stuff, will cover the overspray nicely as it wears off like Glen said. really enjoy reading your progress with this. I like quirky stuff! Thanks for posting!

I figure that by far the best thing for TPA at the moment is to cover miles given how long she's sat dormant. To this end I took the very long way round both to and from the shops this afternoon, covering roughly another 40 miles.



Nothing I've ever owned does quite such a good job of making conventional parking spaces look absolutely massive.

She didn't miss a beat. The only gremlin I have discovered is that the heater control flaps aren't closing fully in the control box...so the heater doesn't switch off quite fully. The efficacy of the heat exchanger definitely isn't in doubt...The air coming out of the vents is *painfully* hot...so it would be nice to be able to switch it off properly. Especially as the outlet for the main cabin heater is under the seat. Gets a bit toasty after half an hour or so.

I assume you'll be up at the Rail Track car park or over at Kingston shopping centre with the Lowdown UK posse on Sundays now then

When I was a kid there used to be one near us that belonged to a chap who’d been left wheelchair bound after a bike accident. He was a legendary nutcase, and used to drive it around like a lunatic.

So far all I've had time to due is remove the leaking RTC battery and clean the board of the gunk it has leaked everywhere. The actual non-booting condition I've not had time to investigate yet. The damage to the board doesn't look too bad compared to some I've repaired so hoping it won't be too difficult to sort. Not like the Amiga A500+ I've got which has had half the memory bus rotted away.

Had a spare hour this afternoon so figured it would be a good time to start tackling the snagging list on the Invacar.

The repainted engine cowl was reunited with the engine.



Being such a visible thing in the engine bay this immediately makes it look far less decrepit.

I then turned my attention to the slow puncture on the nearside rear wheel. This has lost roughly 5psi per day ever since the tyres were fitted. As such my suspicion was always that there was a leak from the rim rather than in the tyre itself.

Five minutes with the leak detector spray later, we have a winner.



Bubbling merrily from the bead right behind the larger balance weight. There's another smaller leak I spotted just after taking this photo just out of frame.

I've faffed around fitting tyres at home before and have deemed it to be considerably more trouble than it's worth (until such time as I inevitably pick up a tyre fitting machine) so decided to entrust sorting this to Formula 1 over in Newport Pagnell. My usual go-to for tyre stuff, only reason they didn't get the job of fitting these originally was that they literally wanted double the price for what were inferior tyres.

Suffice to say this being in the workshop caused a few scratched heads.





The gent who was working on the car for me couldn't have been more than 18 and was really enthusiastic which was nice to see.

Once the tyre was off it was obvious that no effort had been made to clean the rim up beforehand...bit disappointing given the tyres were fitted by a specialist not Kwik-Fit. Five minutes with the wire wheel had things looking far healthier, and we flipped the tyre around (they're not sided) to hide my horrible overspray. Was all going great...right up until this happened.



Gent doing the work was being careful and was doing everything by hand - that stud just decided it had had enough. They're happy to cover the cost of sourcing replacement and fitting no questions asked. So I'll have a dig later today (I still have the parts manual here waiting to be scanned because I'm bloody disorganised) to ascertain exactly what spec the studs are and will then get replacements ordered. Hopefully they're straight from the Mini as those will be plentifully and inexpensively available.

I'll plan on replacing all of them as a matter of course now. If one has failed without being abused in my time with the car there's no reason to believe the rest are in any better shape. I had one fail on a car before (can't recall which one) and the very next time I had the wheel off I recall a second stud snapping...so they're all getting done.

Once they're done they're done...one less thing to worry about.

Just hope access to the back of the hub isn't a problem.