Mini Marcos, Reliant Robin, Chevy van and Bentley Beast
The Mini Marcos hasn’t had much use since its inaugural hoon up the A1 and the A87 to Glasgow and beyond. I need to change the oil after its first 500 miles, but I haven’t found my ramps or funnel, or for that matter the Mini engine oil filters. They’re in one of the 250 as yet unpacked boxes.
The throttle was getting sticky as well, which turned out to be a strand of the cable broken and jamming at the carb end. There was in any case a smoother route option for the cable to take. I was trying to use one of the several new Mini throttle cable options that Mini Spares sent me with their usual snappy response, but the standard Mini options are all an inch too short for a Mini
Marcos with a Weber. Then I realised that the original outer cable was fine, and I really only needed to change the inner. Okay, off to the local pushbike shop, which sold me a very long inner cable in stainless steel for a fiver, and helpfully with the same sized nipple. Reroute the outer cable a bit better for a smoother throttle action and success.
I also bought a little pop-up gazebo for the Marcos. Exiled out in the rain by the 250 boxes, it fills up with water and gets smelly. If it’s not directly getting rained on, it should be OK. It was all wrapped up in an outdoor cover, but then you can’t just jump in and charge off. The missing roof drip rail is the main source of the internal waterfall, and the windscreen
seal is also not 100%. If the doors were closer in shape to the door apertures, that would be a fine thing, but it would involve major work and I have two Bentleys to create and my final book to finish off.
Final book, I hear you gasp in horror? Yes, final book. Probably. I’ve written about 20, and honestly I would have earned more money asking people if they would like fries with that. It’s going to be tricky to get it published anyway, as it’s a definitive book about Specials, and like Beast 1 it’s a monster. With 140,000 words and 1400 pics, it could be in
two volumes. Veloce have already backed off, muttering darkly. I haven’t talked to Crowood yet, and I might have a chat with Porter.
I left my Chevy van with Cobretti Bob the Cobra man near Gatwick, and he’s been converting it to UK lighting and so on, with the reversing lights repurposed as signal lights with yellow bulbs and some wiring changes, and a set of Auto- Meter gauges so I know exactly what’s going on under the stubby bonnet. The spec of the rebuilt Chevy 350 engine was that it should be able to tow my 3500lb boat up an