‘THE ENGINE WAS COMPLETELY CLAPPED OUT’
It’s the last in the current series of Car SOS – so the show’s makers decided to give Fuzz a mystery project that became a Bond Bug headache
‘For this final episode, the producers of Car SOS decided that it would be a wizard wheeze to keep Tim and I in the dark as to the identity of this, the 90th car of the show’s history.
‘Somewhat contrary to popular belief, I’m not really all that patient and besides I had real concerns that whatever car it was might bite us on the bottom if we weren’t fully prepared for it. So I decided to do a spot of sleuthing and found out that the location of the car’s pick up was to be
Sywell Country Park, in Northamptonshire. A quick look at a map showed a large reservoir and so it was that I came to the conclusion that we must be doing a Dutton Mariner.
‘Well, I was wrong, although I was spookily close in that the Bond Bug was of the same general steel and glass reinforced plastic, minus one wheel.
‘Sending in non-car folks to pre-inspect a restoration project is never a great idea. I’m sure that they managed to kick the two tyres that they could get at, but as for the remainder of the Tamworth triangle, my view is that they probably thought that not much could go wrong with such a small car and if it did, well… small car, small problems, right?
‘Wrong! The only really decent bits of the car were the vinyl seat pads, which had survived remarkably well. The body was all cracks and crazing, underneath the bass-brushed black and gold ‘John Player Special’ paintwork. Crude galvanised steel reinforcements had been inserted around the canopy hinges, which meant that the whole area had been clagged up with filler in order to reinstate a smooth body line.
‘On rubbing the nose cone back, we found another bucketload of filler, this time hiding an irregularly shaped block of wood, which had clearly been inserted to fill a large hole that was probably created as a result of a frontal accident.
‘The story was every bit as bad underneath. The chassis rails had been plated – perhaps better described as ‘dipped’ – into crudely formed ‘U’ section stainless steel channels of unknown strength. The tops of the ‘U’ had then been welded to flat strips of similar material, to form tops onto which body mounting brackets and the like had been bodged. In essence, the original (extremely rotten) chassis rails had been encased to hide the decaying originals, rather than repairing them. Sometimes, it’s hard to see what goes through people’s minds. However, do please note that owner, Ian, was not the perpetrator of these sins. Time constraints followed by illness had prevented him from even getting started on what would have been a huge project anyway.
‘Naturally, given the car’s construction, we opted to remove the body from the chassis, allowing access to entirely replace the chassis rails after first constructing a jig to hold the transverse tubes in place. Much of the chassis repair work was undertaken by SOS Workshop’s Dan Jones, who is now moving on to run a business of his own and the whole SOS team wish him well with his new venture. Add to the mix a completely clapped-out engine, gearbox and most other mechanical items, and it can be seen that the restoration of this car was no “quickie”.
‘Ian’s wife and former aircraft engineer, Kathy, helped us to set up the car’s return to him in a most splendid fashion back at Sywell Park and his delight was clear to see, bringing to a close the ninth series.’