1973 AC Model 70 Invacar, Visitors & Occasional Distractions

TPA has been out and about again, continuing the theme of being the most unusual car in the carpark wherever she is.



Had the smug satisfaction this afternoon of making use of how narrow the Invacar is when I found two cars both encroaching on the space between them - yet still had plenty of space to be able to slot into the gap. I'd forgotten how satisfying doing that is. It used to be a favourite pastime when I had the Cappuccino.

About thirty seconds after I took that photo (note the foreboding looking clouds) we had one of the most biblical downpours I've seen since moving down here descend on us just as I was leaving that carpark. At this point I learned something: Driving through hail in a tiny fibreglass car is LOUD.

As the rain started coming down heavily enough that it reduced visibility to essentially zero and surface water started to become an issue I decided to just pull over and wait for the worst of it to pass.



Once things died down to a sensible level and the surface water had receeded to the point where I could see the road again we continued.

Despite a few folks having cautioned me on how poor these tyres are I didn't notice any issues today even when dealing with quite heavy surface water. Definitely was using caution though as I knew with so little weight on the front it wouldn't take much at all to cause aquaplaning.

The novelty of looking in the rear view mirror and seeing three rather than two clear bands of road behind you on a wet surface will take a while to wear off.

The weatherproofing is definitely massively improved over when I got the car but still needs work. Some water is still finding a way in around the nearside of the windscreen (though at least far enough over to clear my knees now) and I will obviously need to put some rubber washers under the bolts holding the window runner channel down as it drips into the door cavity along the bolts themselves. Overall though given the absolutely torrential level of the downpour it wasn't bad at all. The windscreen leak is the one which needs the most urgently sorting though as it has the potential to drip into my shoes. If I can get the windscreen leak fully sorted it's probably good enough for the sort of use this car will be getting to be honest.

gearbox in such "light duty" excluding any mechanical leaks, i don't think its out of order to expect the oil to last the lifetime of the car (life time of the vehicle when it was in service i mean) i can see its got slide mesh and forks etc, but why does it actually need a gearbox if its got CVT? is it a gear reduction, like a final drive or something?

thats a real shame about the paint ive had a similar issue on my land rover where you can see large swathes kind of "loose" like onion skin, which pealed off by hand. i fear it just had a blow over at some point and the previous surface was not prepped/keyed properly

I suspect that’s the case. 

Those before and after photos are really good for showing the distance you’ve come. Great work.

Apologies if it’s been covered before but is that seat there to stay or do you have plans to fit an equally comfortable seat in a more period shape / fabric?

I think it would complete the picture even more IMHO

TPA was out and about again today up in Olney. I usually try to avoid parking in spaces like this but I didn't really have any choice today as someone had stuck a market in the middle of the actual car park.



As predicted, yes getting out was a pain in the proverbial backside. Especially lacking reversing lights.

Shortly after that I did the first fuel stop since the carb rebuild and since she's been allowed properly out of town a few times. The maths says 35MPG, which is much more in the ballpark of what I was hoping to see rather than the low to mid 20s I'd seen before. I think that this pretty much confirms that the carb wasn't happy before the second clean.

The new oil in the gearbox/diff has definitely reduced the overall volume of the whine a bit, so I guess the old oil had degraded quite a bit. I did check through what had been drained out and there was zero evidence of any glitter so I'm not worrying about it being a little whiny - I reckon they're just like that.

We then had a run up to Towcester, proper out of town run, which she handled like an absolute champ. I'm absolutely staggered by how well she cruises...She's smoother than a lot of "proper" cars I've had!

About 1/3 of the way home however things went a bit awry. Not badly, but inconveniently. Absolutely out of nowhere while happily cruising along (my pace being dictated by the traffic in front) there was a godawful bang and I suddenly had no drive. Once I'd experimentally revved the engine a couple of times (you honestly can't hear it below about 55) to confirm that the bowels of the engine hadn't just deposited themselves all over the A5 I figured I'd either snapped or thrown the CVT belt. Turns out that a Model 70 without the drag from the CVT will roll for MILES! I must have gone the best part of 3/4 a mile before I got to the gateway I was planning to pull into and I'd lost about 10mph.

So, convenient gateway which let met get a reasonable distance out of traffic.



Shame the cafe wasn't open as actually just parking up in the car park would have been preferable...plus I was thirsty so being able to get a drink would have been nice.

A quick check under the engine cover confirmed a snapped CVT belt. Half hour job to change but I didn't have either a belt nor the tools to change it on me. Nor did I have a clear enough idea in my head of where what I would need brought to me was in the garage to send someone out with it. Plus I didn't particularly want to be twirling spanners at the side of the A5 in rush hour. Time to call for recovery. Last time I called a breakdown service was in 2006 so I've not had a bad run I reckon.

My view for the next couple of hours.



While a bit boring, I couldn't really complain. Breeze was running straight through the car so it was a pleasant temperature, I had a comfy seat, and there was a surprisingly large amount of interesting traffic passing by. Given I was on my own and in a (relatively) safe location I knew I wasn't going to be a priority call...despite the initially wildly optimistic estimates given. Think it was roughly two hours before help arrived which was about what I was expecting.



Then a quick ride on the truck (seriously, about fifteen minutes!)...



Had us back home.



Really surprised at how well that truck rode, though the robotised manual gearbox would have driven me spare.

We were dropped off up the hill from our driveway and I was able to just roll down the hill and onto the drive and push the car back into the safety of the garage.



Didn't take five minutes to retrieve the belt and pretty much confirm my suspicions. I reckon it was a failure waiting to happen down to a degraded old belt. No obvious fraying or anything, it's just gone suddenly at one point when the braiding has given way (the surface damage is just from where it was sitting against the still rotating pulleys I think).





I know that the belts I've used along with a lot of my spares showed evidence of having spent a long time stored in very poor conditions and I reckon that's taken its toll. We've got some NOS belts at a friend's place which have been stored better, so getting one of those fitted will be step one and should get us rolling again.

Ancient belts however I reckon are likely to be a recurring headache, especially if I'm going to be using the car regularly...and it's something I *definitely* don't want to have to worry about if I wind up doing an epic round-country trip at some point in the next year or two. As such I want to see if a modern alternative will work. The nearest equivalent we believe is a Dayco HP2020, which is slightly longer but has a very similar profile...so I've got one ordered on the way to experiment with. It's coming from Rock Auto in the US as even with shipping it was half the price of one ordered from in the UK it turned out.

So don't think her arriving home on the back of a flatbed is going to result in a huge spell in the garage, she should be back up and running by the weekend. Just one of those things which happens with old cars sometimes.

Yeah, now we're starting to venture a bit further from home I'm planning to put together a standard set of tools/spares for more common issues I'm likely to come across. It's one of the reasons that I'd really like to get some form of storage compartment built up front.

Obviously if I didn't have breakdown cover I'd have made sure to have a LOT more stuff on hand.

Well, it's a bit of a moot point really as I'd not consider driving anything possibly aside from the van in my fleet on anything resembling a regular basis without full breakdown cover.

Given where I was today I'd probably still have got the car recovered anyway, especially given that I'd have had to wait for things to cool down to a point that I could carry out the work safely anyhow...Probably 3/4 of the way to the recovery truck arriving by that point.

Progress! And a good reminder of the Super Sausage. Not been there for years, I used the one just north of Towcester, Jacks Hill Cafe more often.

Sorry about the belt snapping but the new one looks in fine fettle so that should sort it for the foreseeable.  

As an aside I use these guys www.bearingboys.co.uk/Fan-Belt-Calculator-22-a to source my belts.

(I've got an american mower - a Toro wheelhorse 523dxi - an absolute beast of a machine but that's an aside).  Sourcing parts, particularly belts for it, is v expensive when buying from the States or from the official parts suppier so I've used these guys to buy alternatives.  

I'm not sure if they will meet the standards you need for your invacar but they've been brilliant for my mower (27hp 3 cylinder diesel) so thought I'd mention it.

I've been with Autoaid since about 2004 I think. With what the AA/RAC charge I'd fully expect them to deliver a brand new Rolls-Royce to my location for me to continue to my destination, then return my car fully restored, repaired and valeted to my driveway within 24 hours. I've only needed to call on them twice, but haven't had any complaints.

We jumped ship from the RAC after I eventually had to get a lift back to my parents house and take them to my car which had broken down because their systems refused to acknowledge that the B9001 even existed. After I'd been standing at the side of the road for about four hours.

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So yesterday despite the car running well we had one small issue in that the grill on the engine cooling air intake fell off. Again.



Given that's the only thing stopping people from sticking their fingers in here, this was something I considered sorting to be a high priority.



Originally it was held in simply by the ends of four small stubby self tapping screws poking through the mesh.



Given this is the third or fourth time it's done this I figured it was time to improve on this arrangement



Problem solved and everything back together.



You can see the edge of the washers in person if you look closely so I'll want to go back to trim those at some point. That's a pretty low priority though. At least the grill isn't going to try to get itself ingested by the cooling fan again now the grill is properly secured.