£3000 Daimler sputters into a new life
Online auction sites have a lot to answer for. There I was clicking away last December, when up popped a Daimler V8 250 listed for what seemed like a very reasonable £5000. My father had a Jaguar Mk2 from the year I was born until I was 16, so I’ve always loved them. A closer look revealed a part- completed restoration. The body was finished but the paint needed redoing. I clicked ‘ Watch’ and soon after saw that the auction had ended and the car had been relisted. It was at £1000, reserve not met, with a couple of days to go. I logged on at the last minute and saw that it was up to £2500, so I bid £3000 – which turned out to be the reserve. I’d won it. Oops.
Helena and I hired a trailer and went to see what we’d bought. Vendor Keith had paid £1200 for it. It had been sitting outside for several years but was previously supposed to have been in good condition. Originally opalescent Golden Sand, it had long ago been resprayed red, a colour Keith had decided to keep. After major reconstruction work to the underbody – of which he had plenty of gruesome photographic evidence – he gave it a quick coat of paint to protect it. At least the car was structurally sound.
We had a horrendous journey home from Wales in pouring rain. With no glass in the bonnetless car, we desperately tried to keep it dry. Our sons helped guide the brakeless, automatic Daimler down my steep driveway into the garage – and there it stayed until my good friend Tony recently agreed to help start work on it.
He had to remove a host of extra wires that had been tacked on to the wiring loom for no apparent reason, and reinstated the original connections to the fuse box and relays. He reconnected the ignition system and we started the engine, which ran remarkably smoothly – if rather smokily.
With the fuel pump replaced, we could run it for longer; he then had to rebuild all four Dunlop brake calipers before I could drive it out of the garage, sitting on a box!
It’s now booked in for a respray at Spot- On Colours – back to the original gold – but there’s still a lot to do.