Winter Warmers
The PC team prepare to fail in our annual £750 classic challenge.
What happens when you let the PC team loose with a small budget and some big aspirations? Failure…
Every year we do it and we still can’t quite remember why. Our annual winter challenge has become a real tradition though, a fixture in the annual Practical Classics calendar. The premise is simple. Get a classic (definition: a car that is over 25 years old) on the road for £750 or less and then join with others to partake in a week’s worth of pointless challenges. This year the team has once again bought a variety of tin, and they have all, in their own way, failed even before they have left the workshop. So sit back and enjoy the smell of hopeless defeat as we once again attempt to launch ourselves into the winter traffic – snow chains at the ready.
MATT GEORGE
After sourcing my steed for our challenge and spending some time getting it up to scratch (see my Staff Car Saga on p96), I still had a few niggles to work through. Chief of these was the non-functioning heater – no way was I going to head north, in December, with no means of clearing the screen or most importantly, keeping the occupants warm! Having shivered our way to Wales and back on a November test run, sorting this issue was a priority. Happily, it turned out to be an easy fix… of sorts.
The problem lay with the slider switch in the centre console – slide left for cold, slide right for hot. Or at least that is the theory. In this case the mixture of rods and cables behind the console that attach the switch to the tab on the heater valve had gone awry. Which is a problem as said tab is responsible for opening and closing said valve to allow the flow of hot water into the heater unit. What was happening was that pushing the switch to the left would close the valve and shut off the hot water but returning the switch to the right was not reopening the valve. Still with me? Luckily the valve is reasonably accessible and by folding myself into the driver’s side footwell I was able to locate it (on the side of the central tunnel below the storage shelf) and manually move the tab on the valve, allowing the flow of hot water once more. Result!
With the heater reinstated I felt like the car was ready. Even the forecast of poor conditions, with plenty of snow and ice, couldn’t put me off. Taking winter on in a rear-wheel drive classic fitted with an automatic gearbox – what could possibly go wrong?
THEODORE J GILLAM
It would be all too easy to mock the poor Maestro… so here goes. It’s metallic gold with ferrous-pox scabs bursting out around its nether regions; the brown velour seat material is laid out like graph paper so bored occupants can play noughts and crosses using the Velcro qualities of Monster Munch; and it’s a Maestro. Oh, and a
Vanden Plas Maestro automatic to boot. How we laughed.
When we stopped though, I got back in and drove a comfortable, reliable car with neutral handling that did everything I asked of it and more. Theoretically, the Maestro should be the king of Winter Warmers. It’s a genuinely free car, not once but twice, first when it was gifted to Danny by PC reader David Ozouf from the Channel Islands, only for Customs and Excise to express their sense of humour by slapping a £300 import duty on its perceived gold value; and later when it was languishing in the corner of a rival publication’s car park and risked being scrapped for a second time (Keith Moody – once of this parish – tipped us off). Every new intervening owner has meted out just enough therapy on the thing to keep it functioning, Danny doing the most to elevate it to roadworthiness on two occasions, this time for my benefit when I epically failed to make my Jowett Javelin ready in time. Challenges for MOT this time included cleaning all the earthing points, servicing the thing and fitting new tyres. Then Danny lost the key so Tim from City Locks in Peterborough came out and made a new one! Don’t ask me how, he is obviously a Jedi. Then it was ready for me to test. The Maestro
conducts itself with capable aplomb, and that’s maybe why it should be relegated for being the newest design here. Romping around corners is all too easy for it; but cementing the Maestro’s classic status is the biggest challenge. What it really needs is a starring role in a royal wedding, or a Bond movie…
JAMES WALSHE
You’ll notice I have already failed this challenge in spectacular style. The strict spending plan was in tatters and now it seemed the only way I could get the wheels on this stubborn Saab rolling was to replace the bloody engine. I was prepared to throw the car under a sheet and forget about for a few months but the ever-impenetrable optimism of editor Danny Hopkins rang in my ears. Maybe my stubborn pragmatism read as negativity – but his rousing pep talk led me to launch myself onto numerous Saab forums with renewed ambition and vigour.
The solution arrived quickly, thanks to South Yorkshire enthusiast, Richard Simpson. Characteristically supportive, as most ‘Saabists’ seem to be, he explained that he had rebuilt a V4 some years ago but never used it. ‘It’s got mild porting, higher compression, a Kent mild road cam and V6 springs. Plus a Solex 32/32 carb with a four stud manifold and Solex air filter box. You can have the lot for £600.’ Having picked it up in Stocksbridge, I made the most of my time in the area and snuffled north along the snowy skirts of the Peak District to Saab specialist Malbrad in Huddersfield. There, Stephen Broadhead piled up the required gaskets, a functioning vacuum advance and sent me on my way with some supportive words in his typically deadpan tone: ‘Once your Saab is working, you won’t want your daft old French stuff anymore.’ Within days, the new unit had been dropped in and, following some tinkering and advice by the now ever-present Saab nut John Green, we brought it to life. Matt Tomkins’ skills are also remarkable, especially considering the fact he had never so much as looked at a Saab before this restoration. ‘It’s got a flat floor and you can’t get to
‘I prepared myself to throw the Saab under a sheet and just forget about it’
anything!’ But now, here we were, with months of hard work behind us and a fully powered slab of Swedish steel. A shame then, the car still looks like it has come straight from the set of Mad Max.
DANNY HOPKINS
I’ve completely won this already. My ‘garage find’ Sierra has had extensive works undertaken to bring it up to scratch (see my Staff Car Saga in February issue), but it has arrived at the start line bang on budget. For the first time since 2003, when I turned up in a 1980 Mitsubishi Colt Celeste GT 2.0, I was ‘in budget’ in a car that was in tip-top condition. MOT in hand I celebrated with a proper polish from my good friend Rich March (he polished the car, not me).
Rich cut and waxed the original paint back to its shiny best and made the blue repmobile glow in a way that made sense of its 41,000 mile odometer readout. Serviced, reshod, revived and ready, I had about a month to test the poverty spec Ford out. Into daily use it went then, for the first time since it was shut up in a garage in 1992. So, what exactly do I have to report from the first 1000 miles? Absolutely nothing. And here is the problem. It has the 1600 Pinto engine with the four-speed box, which means it is lively-ish to 70mph and then runs out of revs. It handles reasonably well and has that intuitive, ergonomically efficient and satisfyingly clever, Ford driver-focused thing going on. It is very grey on the inside but it is extremely practical – much like a delivery van. It is comfortable in the same way that semi-expensive kitchen furniture is comfortable and it does exactly what you ask it to do. It is willing and, being a virtually new car, able. So why would I rather drive the Maestro? I think the absence of risk is putting me to sleep. The Sierra is too good. When I jump into the Maestro I love the fact that something might well come off in my hand (rear view mirror, drivers’ side door pocket, passenger side door handle surround so far), or I run the risk of becoming stranded at the roadside in a dangerous position. No danger of that with my trusty Ford. It starts first time, every time. The heater heats. The fan fans at all its speeds. It even returns an impressive 33.5mpg. Where’s the fun in that?
‘Extensive works undertaken but the Sierra is at the start line, bang on budget’
MATT TOMKINS
Planning ahead. Not often achieved in classic enthusiast circles, it seems but something I was committed to for this year’s winter challenge. So thorough was I, in fact, that I’d bought my car a whole 18 months ago. A grotty 1992 Mini Mayfair, that used to belong to Rowan Atkinson, for just £200. I’d begun sourcing cheap secondhand parts as and when they turned up and planned to rattle-can the paint and finish this scruffy little Mini under budget and make it the star of the show.
However, if you’ve been reading PC for the past few months you’ll know that this is the Mini we built in three days at the NEC Classic Motor Show. Shiny and resplendent bodily thanks to CBR Motor Bodies and entirely new mechanically thanks to a huge number of parts supplied by Mini Spares Midlands, part of David Manners Group, I was now massively over budget. Oops! With my bank account empty, the clock ticking and James’ Saab refusing to play ball, my only option was to go with Plan A and use the Mini as originally planned… in true PC style, I’d lost before we started. As you’d expect, there was a fair amount of fettling to do between the show taking to the road. Although the car ran and drove, it was far from road legal. Electrical gremlins were rife, plus we were in the midst of filming another
Skill Shack course – just to make life that little more difficult. Luckily, this meant that PC’S electrical guru Ed Hughes was on hand to assist and soon all the electrics were working bar one; the original fog light wouldn’t have been in keeping with the early ‘look’, so I fitted a twin-pole LED fog and reversing light from bettercarlighting.co.uk into the offside light unit. Seatbelts went in, the all-new suspension was thoroughly greased and it was ready for an MOT. Timing and mixture were both ‘out’, so it was off with the grille in search of better access, and a proper tune-up saw it scrape through the stricter emissions test needed for a car of its age. Attention then turned to getting the Saab ready, but a brief Mini test drive in the snow the day before we were due to leave saw me spluttering to a halt.
Missing was the weather shield that prevents moisture entering the ignition electrics, so an old
Practical Classics sign was sacrificed as we left
‘I’d recommissioned the Wartburg to an anally-retentive standard’
the workshop to act as a primitive splash guard. Fingers crossed it works, as we’re heading north and it is snowing…
SAM GLOVER
My Wartburg 353’s V5C arrived one week before kick-off. Although I’d recommissioned it to an anally-retentive standard and rebuilt its engine twice (see my Staff Car Saga on p100), it hadn’t been on the road since the mid-nineties. I pressed it into intensive daily service to expedite the occurrence of teething troubles.
It blew out a core plug on its first test-thrash. I’d fitted said core plug, so I couldn’t really complain. I fitted it again using less limp-wristed hammer action and a belt-and-braces smear of Araldite.
The next morning, it started happily but stopped when its carburettor float chamber had emptied. The inlet valve of the new but rather cheaply-made fuel pump had disassembled itself. This addressed, it started and ran on a solid two cylinders. I suffered a flashback to campaigning an identically-engined Barkas B1000 van in my youth, which habitually dropped to two cylinders for one reason or another. The fuel pump – which is operated by oscillations in crankcase pressure – was a repeat offender. Another was the ignition system, which has an individual coil and set of points for each cylinder.
I decided to take a blanket-bombing approach. I fitted a svelte electric fuel pump stolen from Matt Tomkins and built an ignition system from scratch. I bought three 12V Lucas motorcycle coils and made new HT and LT leads. I fitted a brand new threesome of points and condensers and reset the ignition timing – a novel procedure that involves setting each piston 3.58mm before top dead centre with a dial gauge, then adjusting the position of the corresponding set of points. Further test-thrashes went swimmingly. I packed a box of spares, a tool kit, some emergency whisky and Practical Classics tech contributor Ed Hughes, and set off to meet the rest of the team in Hull. In the words of Erich Honecker: ‘Always forwards, never backwards!’