A right Charlie
Danny couldn’t say no when a saggy Allegro came calling
There’s no way that I could have walked away. Although I did for about three days. Then my natural sentimentality kicked in and I went for it. A 1982 Allegro HL (October 1981 built, I have since discovered) is not exactly the idea of a dream motor car for most people, but when I saw it in Mel’s shed, listing to port, that was it. I was on a mission.
My classic universe has included three Allegros in the past, an LE and two Vanden Plas models, all of which I thoroughly enjoyed. As I went home with an empty wallet I suddenly realised... as an owner of both an Allegro and a Marina, I was either the least cool car magazine editor in history or, on the other hand, the coolest.
Pump action!
In the vain hope that I could pump up the Hydragas suspension I went and bought a cheap Chinese pump and some fluid. Total cost, under £100, so worth a punt. After establishing that the brakes were seized, the battery dead, the points corroded, the earths ditto and the petrol stale, I figured at least something had to go right.
I attached the pump to the left-hand valve and started to push fluid in. For about five minutes the little fella perked up and was level. Then the angle of the dangle started to change and a massive pool of fluorescent green wee wee reached my work boots. Dead suspension then, too. Good.
Dragging the Allegro out of the garage nearly killed the clutch on Clive’s BMW X5, as the Allegro’s seized rear brakes held on like a cartoon character being pushed towards a cliff edge. We left huge great skidmarks though, all the way up to the trailer. It looked like someone had been having much more fun than we actually were.
Anyway, just into 2021 the little Allegro left its garage nest for the first time in a decade and went to the PC workshop. It sat in the workshop
for about a month looking at me out of the corner of its bonnet. Then I was contacted by the Allegro Club. A former owner wanted to get in touch. Then I got an email from them.
The former owner was Caroline Smith from Lincolnshire. She had owned the Allegro in the Noughties and she informed me that his name was Charlie. This car had history. Then I received pictures of Charlie’s previous lives. He had been a show star at the NEC and had been back to the factory where he was built, Leyland Industries Seneffe plant in Belgium, where the last Allegros were constructed as Maestro production was ramped up in the UK.
At around the same time the decision was made to postpone the PC Resto Show to March 18-20, 2022 meaning that we would need to put on a virtual online show on March 27 – in about three weeks flat. I looked at Charlie, Charlie cheekily winked back at me. Time to get busy.
Back to life!
The rear brakes needed sorting. The offside had freed itself off, but the nearside hadn’t. I soaked everything in Bulldog DX and left it for an hour.
When I came back I managed to tap the drum off with a mallet – Bulldog DX is awesome. After cleaning and unseizing the handbrake mechanism and adjuster, it all went back together. A further rebuild will happen before an MOT test. Next, it was time to get Charlie running starting with an oil and filter change. I wanted new gloop to circulate as we got Charlie started.
Next – fresh battery, clean points, careful scrubbing of all relevant earths and, suddenly, we were good to go. I turned the engine over to see if the oil light would extinguish. It did and about five seconds later Charlie coughed. Full choke and a squirt of Easistart (I know, I know)... within a minute Charlie was running, on stale old fuel, sounding remarkably sweet.
A slight exhaust blow but nothing else. Clutch? Tick. Reverse gear selected? Tick. Moving under its own power for the first time in years? Tick. I spent a happy ten minutes bouncing around the yard watching the temperature rise and then stay at a polite level before returning to the workshop. Time for a clean. If Charlie was going to be cooperative, the least we could do was give him a wash. It’s so true… some cars really
‘We left massive skidmarks thanks to seized brakes…’