Out of a jam with the Eton rifle
The AsTon MArTin Owners’ Club has an amazing social calendar, with at least a couple of huge events taking place every month. The big one of the summer for Area 10 was a barbecue held at at Eton Dorney Lake in August. The River Thames flows behind the boathouse, which was the base for the 2012 Olympic rowing competition, and the barbecue was held in the Lake View room with amazing views across the lake. It has become a major event in the AMOC calendar as a tribute to one of its much-missed characters, Major Tom May.
Over 150 guests and 75 Aston Martins gathered by the side of the lake on a truly beautiful evening. Thanks to Jeff Sears, who happens to be the neighbour of a good friend and has recently taken over the running of Area 10, I have now become an AMOC member. He and wife Jo, and Graham Maidlow and his wife Sylvia, did a marvellous job of organising the event.
We spent much of the evening with Martin Brewer, who owns the Runnymede Motor Company, and his wife Paula. Martin arrived in his DP214 recreation as featured in Octane 183. It’s such a head-turner, and guests had a great opportunity to get a closer look at it.
The heading of the last report was ‘Reassuringly inexpensive’ and I was hoping that the sub-editor was not tempting fate! The Aston has been quite affordable to run but, really, there wasn’t any need to brag about it…
So when it was time to get it MoT’d again I was a little nervous, as you always are when owning an Aston. But, at the Eton Dorney event, Graham Maidlow – who owns a beautiful DB7 V12 Volante – suggested I took my car to Simon Fenn, a Jaguar specialist in Reading whom he recommends very highly.
My car was booked in for an interim service and MoT, and I gave Simon a list of niggles that I had not had an opportunity to get sorted. I have a thing about noise and can hear all the little sounds that emerge only when travelling at a certain speed and over a certain-size bump. This particular noise was coming from the nearside, was heard only once in a while and only ever with the roof down. I even took Simon out for a test drive so I could point it out to him.
The DB7 sailed through the MoT with no advisories, and I was amazed that he had also cured the annoying noise. It turned out to be coming from the offside driveshaft, which needed tightening. Without being asked, Simon had also checked through the entire car and found a defective cigar lighter socket, which he fixed (I am not a smoker but it’s useful for charging phones and sat-navs). The engine was running slightly hot so he resolved that, and gave my headlight lenses a polish.
Simon says my Aston is in excellent condition and just needs the differental pinion seal to be replaced at the next service. I was amazed; why don’t all companies offer this level of service? And the cost was under £500, so yes – the last report’s heading was correct.
Next up: repainting front and rear bumpers to remove the chips.