ICE victory, tyre shame
1981 Renault 5 Turbo 1 Owned by Ross Alkureishi and Richard Head rossalkureishi@yahoo.com Time owned One year, eight months Miles this month 520 Costs £1650 Previously Alloys refurbed, fuel-injection system rebuilt, doors and bumpers painted
When the were-rabbit in Wallace and Gromit and The Curse Of The
Were-rabbit beats his chest and howls to the moon, all the rabbits in the area do the same – and that’s the feeling experienced when securing a rare and interesting piece of kit.
Richard bought a Panasonic Cockpit RM-610 – top of the range ICE in the early Eighties and OEM on the Lotus Esprit Essex – via Craigslist from a chap near Winnipeg several years ago, but never fitted it.
Our collective chest-beating moment occurred when we found (on the French Renault 5 Turbo website) and purchased a genuine, and ultra rare, R5T1 roof-mounted speaker unit, meaning the Cockpit RM-610 finally had a home.
Using the supplied speakermounting bracket as a template, Richard knocked up a fine piece of technical drawing and Berkshire-based metal fabricator Raykel Fabrications used it to make up a similar one for the Cockpit.
A snippet of roof lining material came free of charge from R5T specialist Selliers du Les Domaine (lesselliersdudomaine. com), in France. Luckily, a colleague on the Junkies forum, Ollie Melliard, posted a picture of a car mid-rebuild with the alloy roof off, and that was invaluable in showing the location of the solid rim we could self-tap into.
Auto-electrician Ralph Higson did the wiring honours, fixing the amp – the RM-610 has an external amp, unlike the lower-spec internal one of the RM-310 – just below the glovebox. And with everything ready we fired in a Billy Idol cassette and there, in glorious tin-tastic 60-watt stereo, came the spiky blonde bombshell’s unmistakable Mony, Mony.
Next up, a trip to Vintage Tyres (vintagetyres.com) at Beaulieu. While the current tyres appeared crack-free and had plenty of tread, with another crosseuropean jaunt looming it made sense to invest in a new set of Michelin TRXS – 190/55VR 340 front, 220/55VR 365 rear.
The removed tyres turned out to be from 1987 – 1980-1999 tyres have a threedigit code, the first two giving week of manufacture and the third the year. This was chastening, given how we’d bombed down the epic Col de L’lseran on our trip back from Brescia two-and-a-bit years ago.
Vintage Tyres’ MD Ben Field recommends owners learn to read tyre date codes and replace them at least every ten years – the older and harder they become, the more grip diminishes, particularly in the wet. The new items, from a fresh 2017 Michelin batch, were efficiently fitted and proved grippy and confidence-inspiring on my return journey – exactly the ticket for our upcoming trip.
With the car now fully fettled and prepped, we assured our wives it’s definitely work and not pleasure. Only one thing left to do before we leave, and that’s beat our chests and go, ‘Road trip, awooo.’