Clubjazz - Honda Jazz & HR-V Forums
Other Hondas & General Topics => Off Topic (Non-Honda) => Topic started by: Neil Ives on November 19, 2021, 09:21:46 AM
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In 1973 I bought a 1948 Series E Morris for £40. It had been left in a field for years. I managed to get the engine turning using the starting handle, (ask your grandparents). The car battery was totally dead so I wired up one of those large 6v lantern batteries to power the ignition and got the engine running using the starting handle again. I had to pump the flat tyres up with a foot pump. I got the car home.
The 'high-tech' gadgets on the car included a roller blind in the back window, operated by a cord near the driver and a windscreen that could be opened with a handle on the dashboard.
Picture for reference.
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For some reason the low point in my motoring history comes to mind. I had a mini metro that was a truly awful car. I'd serviced it just before going on holiday to Cornwall but it wasn't running well. We set off very early on the way home and it intermittently played up. All power went just as I was attempting to overtake a milk float. Made his day.
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I think roundabout 1956-7 I brought a rolling chassis of a 1930 Morris Minor, for £5, from a guy some 25 miles away.
I remember my Dad towing me home with a solid bar between the cars, as the cable brakes were not particularly good. I went on to build a two seater body on it, ash frame and aluminium sheet. This was in the days before any MOT or whatever, never did get the brakes to function well, which I guess taught me to keep my distance from the car in front.
Kept it for a couple of years until National Service (RAF) intervened, Sold it to guy on camp, who smashed it up within a week or two.
I worked for Landrover (44 years) so my subsequent vehicles were all Landrover/Rover products, until I retired and then eventually joined the Jazz fraternity.
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I was selling a battery record player (bought it for onboard ship) to a guy at work for £5. He said he had a car to sell so I went to see it. It was a 1956 Ford Prefect 100E. We had to climb over a wooden fence to get at it and it was waste deep in weeds and grass. He had replaced the clutch, taken the hoist back to the garage he had borrowed it from, then discovered he couldn't connect the gearbox to the engine with the engine back in place. He had spent £12 on the new clutch so the record player and £7 was handed over plus £1 for his mate to tow it to my garage. I gave it to my dad for his Christmas and it lay in the garage for a couple of years.
Come 1970 I was going to hire a car for a holiday but the insurance they wanted (I was 22) was exorbitant. My dad suggested we put the Ford on the road and I use that. We put it back together one weekend (my dad was a big man and he lifted the engine out and put it back in with a rope across his back (denting the front wings in the process as he stood on them)). The only thing missing was the distributor drive shaft which we got from a local scrappy.
The car passed an MOT with no problems and we ran it for 7 years before a lorry crossed my path without looking and I wrote it off.
(https://i.imgur.com/VyJpfJT.jpg)
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Is/was that your number plate ?
That would be worth a fortune now.
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Ford Prefect 100E.
A really nice little car. I've worked on a few.
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Is/was that your number plate ?
That would be worth a fortune now.
We sold the number plate for a few quid when it went to the great crusher in the sky.
Last I saw it it was on a purple Porsche. According to the DVLA it is currently on a grey Porsche 911 Carrera S-A.
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'LAG' on a Porsche :)
Back in the 70's a friend had a Lotus Elan Sprint with DUD whilst another had a moped with TNT
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on the subject of number plates . i knew billy smarts daughter the circus owner . she had a white Suzuki jeep with the number plate 5 EXY
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on the subject of number plates . i knew billy smarts daughter the circus owner . she had a white Suzuki jeep with the number plate 5 EXY
:D
When we lived near Worcester I used to see a Range Rover with reg number B1TCH
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There's a Range Rover near me (why is it always Range Rovers?) with N4 DOG. Which is very confusing for young kids learning their spellings.
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There used to be an old taxi in Hillingdon that had 130 LOX
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There used to be an old taxi in Hillingdon that had 130 LOX
Kremmen.
ref your mention of Hillingdon, I lived there during WW2 with my Granny, in Merton Avenue, was very rural then open fields all the way to Northolt Airdrome used to watch the bombers returning every morning, the pilots would lean out and wave they were very low getting ready to land at Northolt.
Went to school there also in my early years.
Never been back to visit though, expect it is built up like every where now.
Many happy memories though.
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I'm about 2 miles from RAF Northolt, as the crow flies.
Yes, very built up now.
Hoping to move to Reading in a couple of years though.
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My father bought a new Ford Consul MK2 in 1958.
When I was 21 in 1971 dad gifted the tired car to me. I was a motor mechanic at the time.
My wife and I set off from west London to camp in the Scottish Highlands. On the way the car developed an engine rattle. We got as far as Shiel Bridge at the southern end of Loch Duich before the radiator sprung a leak. I managed to find a campsite. I removed the radiator and cadged a lift to Kyle Of Lochalsh so that I could put my radiator on a train to be picked up by a radiator repair shop in Inverness. I persuaded my mother to transfer some money to my account to pay for the repair on the radiator. We had to wait a week to get the radiator back. So, radiator overhauled and refitted it was time to set off for home.
The car got as far as Scotch Corner in Yorkshire before the rattle I'd noticed on the way out became more serious and the engine was only firing on three cylinders.
I stopped the car in a layby. The weather was horrible; cold and rainy. First thing I did was take the cylinder head off. I could see right through one piston down to the crankshaft and the sump underneath. The piston crown had completely gone! I had no spare money to get someone else to deal with the problem. I decided that the engine might get us home running on only three pistons. I removed the sump, (trying to retain the oil as I had no money left). I undid the big-end nuts of the duff cylinder and removed the conrod completely from the engine. I started to refit the sump but then realised that if I ran the engine without something to close the vacant oil supply holes in the crankshaft I would have no oil pressure. I found a spare Jubilee hose clip in the boot and fitted it to the crank big-end journal.
During the refitting of the sump I managed to lose the hydraulic fluid from the clutch slave cylinder. No money! What can I use instead? I filled the clutch system with water and all appeared to be working.
I had no choice but to to use all the old engine gaskets.
All back together now, the engine started but was running rather lumpy, as you can imagine.
I set off, driving carefully.
After about 5 miles the clutch stopped working because the water had all escaped. This time I used engine oil and got the clutch working fine.
However, after some time the oil must have attacked the hydraulic rubbers and the clutch action became like slow-motion. Negotiating a roundabout required some skill because the car was low on power and juddery, plus the clutch pedal was taking time to come back up!
When we got back to my parents house later that evening I heaved a massive sigh of relief.
These sort of experiences help me appreciate having a new car.
Picture for reference only.
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Hoping to move to Reading in a couple of years though.
Really!? Watch out for the dreaded, (Dreading) bus lanes!
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Never drive into the centre.
I get the 21 bus :)
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I use to very occasionally see the plate "A1" around Bournemouth in the 1970s
I also saw Jimmy Tarbuck driving a Mercedes with the plate "COM1C".
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Back in 1998 when I was at sixth form college, my mate passed his test and bought a 1982 Mk1 Ford Fiesta 950 for just £50, with the previous owner doing some welding free of charge as part of the deal. I think in those days you had to pay scrapyards to take cars off your hands, and wasn't uncommon to see old cars abandoned in laybys that would then slowly get dismantled over the next week or so.
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A mate of mine at nautical college had a Heinkel Kabine bubble car.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4e/Paris_-_Bonhams_2013_-_Heinkel_kabine_micro_car_-_1957_-_006.jpg/1200px-Paris_-_Bonhams_2013_-_Heinkel_kabine_micro_car_-_1957_-_006.jpg)
One winter's evening (65-66), after college, he gave five of us (six including the driver) a lift from Leith to Princes Street. When we stopped at the top of the Waverley Steps he opened the door we sort of rolled out into the street.
The arrangement was two in the back with a guy lying on their knees and me (being the biggest) sitting in the front with a small one on my lap. Those were the days.
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when i was working in a garage in berkshire in the 70's we was doing cars for a company called willy's wheels. they supplied vehicles to the film and tv industry . i remember throwing a clutch in a renault 4 that had a flat bed on the back for film camera platform . anyway one of there staff had a rear suspension failure on his bright yellow Lotus Elan +2 tried to offer it to us for £200. oh if only we had a time machine Sigh!
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... if only we had a time machine Sigh!
Tell me about it. When I was 16 I was offered a Vincent motorcycle with Steib sidecar for £40. I didn't have the money and anyway it was just an oily old motorbike. Those bikes are currently going for silly money.