Tips, tricks and nostalgia from a lifetime immersed in old cars
Weld or well done
Welding is like playing a mouth organ (a stupid thing to say, actually – it’s nothing like it, but bear with me). Anybody can do it to a certain extent, but not everybody can do it properly. I’ve larked around with MIG and arc-welders over the years and managed to join bits of metal together, but I wouldn’t claim to weld to any sort of decent standard and I certainly wouldn’t trust myself with structural repairs.
I have also attempted to weld using gas bottles and a torch and, believe me, that really is an acquired art, not only to get a good join, but also from a safety point of view. In fact, I decided to hang up my torch (if you’ll excuse the rather sloppy expression) after carrying out a job on a Viva HB.
It belonged to the daughter of a colleague and it had failed its MoT on a number of things, including a bit of rust on the bulkhead. Why the examiner pulled it up on that, I don’t know, but he did. Anyhow, I decided it could be patched and got to work with the torch. The patch was going on quite well and then, I noticed smoke coming from inside the car. The heat was so great that I had caught the padding underneath the dash alight. It was a real moment of panic and I rushed to get my fire extinguisher.
Honestly, my cat could have produced more fire-calming substances after drinking a pint of milk. In the event, I flung a bucket of water into the cab and that sorted it out. It took me a day to clean the car so that the water damage didn’t notice. I got away with it and the car passed its test.
Blowing in the wind
Nobody seemed to bother about aerodynamics in what I would term the old days until, around 1980, manufacturers started talking in terms of CD factors. The CD – coefficient of drag rather than compact disc – just didn’t exist when I was tanking around in Rapiers, old Minxes, an S-Type Jag, 105E Anglia etc and I still reckon that manufacturers use the figure purely as a selling point because, come on, does it make that much difference in the real world?
Aerodynamics can be a misunderstood subject. If, for example, you’re talking about efficiency then a double-decker bus wins every time because it shifts more air than anything else on the road. Ah, you say, but good aerodynamics mean that a vehicle slices through the air with the least amount of resistance and that, of course, is the point. What isn’t generally appreciated is that the tail end is just as important as the front. Think of it this way – if you ran through a crowd and scattered lots of people, those left in your wake would be trying to drag you back. So, unless a vehicle has an aerodynamically-shaped tail, strong forces at the rear will hamper its progress. That’s one of the reasons that a Mini – even the pukka racers – can barely get much over the ton. Another misunderstood subject is power-to-weight ratio. The experts will tell you that the more power and the less weight, the quicker a car will be. Well, that’s OK. But how far can you throw a feather?
As one door opens
Do you remember the Volkswagen Type 3 Fastback? They are rare, now, partly because not that many were made (at least, in Beetle terms) and they had an amazing talent to disintegrate before your very eyes. Rust aside, they weren’t a bad tool and with the 1600 motor, had a fair bit of go.
I learnt a great deal about these machines as the result of a friendship with a young lady who owned one. It was always difficult to start when cold and my confident prediction that I could sort it out proved false. It got the works – plugs, points, HT leads, carb stripdown, tappets, timing, in fact, just about everything I could think of – and still, it was a complete monkey to get going although, by now, a strong puller as the result of being in perfect tune.
I kind of guessed that the end was in sight when I drove it for its annual test and the passenger door flew open on a bend, because the lock was so worn. That would have been an immediate failure point, so I popped back home, picked up a mate and got him hold the door shut while I drove back to the testing station.
I hoped the tester wouldn’t pick up on it and he didn’t. It got through, but the bloke must have been wearing darkened welder’s goggles, because two weeks later, the lady friend tried to flog it and a potential buyer crawled underneath and pronounced that it was as rotten as a pear. Which it was. Oh well, another relationship ruined. I sure did miss that car for a while.
Tunnel of love
Even the word Ferrari does it for most motoring enthusiasts. The cars are exclusive, exceedingly fast, as flash as a firework display and, in most cases, incredibly expensive. The really exotic stuff – Daytona, GTO etc – fetches big bucks. You’d need to sell your soul to the devil and then take out a second mortgage on it to afford one. But some people do have that sort of dough kicking around and a friend is related to a fella who runs a computer company and can afford Italian glitz.
He ordered a new Ferrari (I don’t know the model, sorry) and had to wait 15 months for it to be delivered. To keep him interested, the concessionaire gave him a Ferrari to play with for a day, so he did the obvious thing and picked up his mate for some serious showing-off. However, they didn’t travel more than 10 miles from his home. He lives close to a large tunnel, which was almost designed to enhance acoustics. They spent several hours driving to and fro, foot hard down and then off so that they could savour the symphony from the exhaust. Childish? Maybe. Am I jealous? Put it this way, I used to drive through the old Dartford Tunnel, doing the same thing in my Anglia with Peco tailbox. Perhaps just a little envious.