First tinkering and first sign of a real problem?

A couple of minor jobs been done so far, reactive mode rather than planned. First planned task today - ignition. Just the dizzy cap, rotor arm and HT leads for now - no tools yet!!

Fairly leisurely stuff to ease myself into things. Everything was LOOKING pretty good anyway, so figured it was as good a place to start as any.

Sure enough, dizz cap off, rotor arm a bit corroded, quick clean up there. Same with the connections in the dzzy, nothing much to cause any concern there. HT leads were just a bit mucky:

 

But nothing untoward, just gave everything a good clean up. Managed to remember to mark the leads BEFORE removal. Obvious, yes, but I remember with my Beetle and probably MG not knowing to do that, and the consequences were obvious. Nice green shade of nail varnish to mark them!! (I think tippex had been used before, and only one previous set of marks was visible.)

Back in place, not looking a lot different to be honest, and of course started up no problem. Just visible botttom right, thermostat housing studs soaked with WD40 in preparation for fitting of thermostat soon-ish. Didn't look TOO corroded, but .. fail to prepare = prepare to fail. So seemed like a a sensible step.

Later on in the day, she threw me a curve ball. Haven't mentioned yet, but the starter pull is a little temperamental. Sometimes first pull turns the starter motor, sometimes 4 or 5. But so far at least, she eventually starts, so not too worried. Today, the same thing happened, except each pull was taking juice from the battery. This implied that the starter pull was doing it's job, but the starter wasn't turning. Oh dear I thought, first problem that I won't be able to fix then and there.

Got the starter handle out, with a view of getting the car started manually. Located the handle and tried to turn her. Nothing, could NOT move it. Oh dear - even worse I'm thinking. Somehow I've seized the engine (yes I am prone to over reacting!!). With a bit more effort she turned, but didn't start. No ignition, I'd switched off .. duh.. But whilst back in the cockpit to turn on the ignition, I figured no harm to try to start normally again. And she just started no trouble. I am stumped at the moment.

If anyone else DOES happen to read this and has any ideas, comments are more than welcome!! (I don't expect anyone to read, or at least stay awake whilst reading! - but I guess there is an off chance of some useful feedback!!)

I have a list of questions to take to the owners club meet!! Hope they're a friendly, patient bunch!!

Motorway - ugh

Made another bad decision today. Friday eve journey to take son to diving lessons in Reading is down M4. Only one junction and a short stretch down the A329M prior to that. Figured it was no a problem to give it a try. Another badly thought out idea. First problem - unpleasurable. Was not nice at all. Amy did 60mph plus, probably comfortably as far as she was concerned, but it did not seem comfortable to me, not being used to the feelings and noises that come with old cars.

To top it off, as we were approaching the M4 turn off, the power just started to fade. Couple of pumps to accelerator did nothing and had to pull to a gradual unceremonious halt on the hard shoulder. Was starting to think it had been a REALLY dumb idea and that I had broken her somehow. And that I was stuck on a motorway with no real means of doing anything about it. Scary, haven't had that feeling for a long long time.

Just before that, whilst still running, water temp was fine, oil pressure also fine. There was no real BAD reason I could think of for her to break down. But at the same time I was bricking it, because I had NO idea what I was going to do!!

You naturally try anything you can to get started and a few pumps of accelerator, turn of the engine, start, fade again, tugs on the choke, start again, fade again, then general panicking, and one last try ..... she started again and ran. Engine ticked over nicely (i'd adjusted the idle screw the day before) all seemed fine again so I pulled away.

And off the motorway at the next junction, Didn't even do the M4!!! Forget motorways. Not happening!

Carried on happily all the way to Reading and back, no trouble at all. Another lesson learned! I have got away with a lot so far. Been very lucky.

Cause.... can't remember my stuff yet, but best guess a bit of crud in the jets?.. That luckily cleared itself? That's my best guess. Car hasn't been used much in 5 years, what do I expect?

Unrelated to the above, but also done today, ordered 88' winter thermostat in preparation for the colder months! (Even before Christmas wrapping paper is in Tescos!!) Apparently she probably hasn't got one at all at the moment, so a job to be done.

Oil and water levels seem fine too. Oil needs a change for sure.

Need to figure out (and likely free up) heater controls in good time for when they are needed.

And up to date - start up a blog about Amy the A40 Somerset

So as of here and now, the decision to diarise and write the experience down is made and this blog created. All points that I am interested in recording over the past week are written up, pictures stored.

As mentioned in the title, this blog is for my interest. So I'm not going to post regularly. I am not going to make sure it is useful or even interesting. I'm just going to write up stuff that I want to remember in years to come.. IF I do settle nicely with Amy then it'll be really interesting to look back on

Yes.. I'll call her Amy.. AMU / AMY ... its close and Emu would just remind me of Rod Hull!!!

If it all goes horribly wrong and I decide to part ways with her sooner than expected, well... That'll be that. We'll see.

Today is another nice sunny day, have driven my daughter to her activities, she's still totally excited about the car and loves the fact that she can just lay across the back seat! The enjoyment and excitement of the kids has been enough for me to know I made the right choice, whether it lasts 10 years or 10 weeks there have already been enough positives to confirm that. (I'm interested myself to see what a post in the middle of a freezing winter might say... wait and see....)

Wife hasn't been out in it yet though.... hmmmm.. i don't think she's so interested - I think she's just happy that it's not a hunk of junk sat on the driveway and also about the thought of me disappearing down the garage lots in months to come!!

Edit .. just went to pick daughter up, wife came with for first trip.. Now can't wait to have a go, says it's more comfortable than my previous car!!! Previous car is / was a 2003 Nissan Terrano 3.0 Turbo diesel, top of the range, leather interior.... Eat my words!!

Panel lights work, and first trip to the pub!

Wednesday night is pub night. It HAD to be my turn to drive of course. One of the guys, older chap, is pretty sure he remembered his father having one of these and it was a nostalgia trip there for him too.

Definitely have the hang of starting her up now, no issues there. The timing of easing out the choke I need to get used to. Maybe some settling in and adjusting needed, as not ticking over as well as before it seems.

But planning to go through the whole ignition system and do some basic servicing in due course. Need to stock up on tools. Feeler gauges, spark plug removal socket, emery cloth, copper-eze etc.!!!

Also getting the hang of gear changing, need to get mindful of not expecting to be able to whack it down into 2nd at 40mph in preparation for letting the clutch up when slowed down!!! It just doesn't work that way!! 20 years of poor driving habits I need to un-learn! Cancelling the indicators I am also remembering more and more.

The panel light mystery solved. They only come on when the headlights are on! So I don't understand why there is even a switch. Why not just come on when the headlights are on like in a normal modern ca...... oh wait.. hold on...! Must remember again, that this is 60 years ago. But anyway perhaps kind of obvious that the dash lights only work when headlights are on, but I just didn't think. So I can see my dashboard at night now.. Especially useful when driving home from the pub, even if a couple of shandies is the limit these days!

Figured out the trip reset too. I have done just over 100miles in her and as of writing this entry, mileage is 35169. I would assume that this is not the vehicle's actual mileage. Maybe 135169? Or just anybody's guess. (I remember putting a new speedo in my Beetle.. original mileage is to be ignored in a car of this age methinks!)

Off to work and second repair!

Perhaps unwisely, and still woefully unprepared, I got up to drive to work on Wednesday. (Tuesday was a train day to Staines, Weds was a drive round the corner to Bracknell)

Had awful trouble starting again, but got it together a bit quicker this time. More choke to start and ease off gradually.

Found lot's of excuses to go to the coffee point to look out of the window that day.

Had a little drive at lunch to make sure starting wasn't really a problem. Realised that if she didn't start I was stuck at work. This brought back memories of the early days at work in unreliable cars and often needing bump starts or jump leads. Hadn't considered that aspect ... hmmmm  not sure I like that!

Need to make sure I maintain this old girl properly.

On that note, that evening had a look under the hood to see if everything was at least looking in order. Mostly all OK, but noticed the the fuel line joint from fixed hose to flexible hose was leaking. The photo is POST-repair, but basically the whole fuel line was wanging about as it was not fixed to the chassis as it should have been.

The bracket was still there and the fixing bolt was nice and free, so it was easy to put back things as they should be. And nip the jubilee clips back up. As this is retrospective, again I can say that this seems to have solved that! All dry since.

Night drive, first starting problem

My son said on Tuesday night "have you driven it in the dark yet?" What a great excuse to go out for a spin! So we went out, three of us, son and daughter, for a little night time cruise.

Could I get it to start...? No... Not to start with at least. The car had sat all day Bank Holiday Monday and all day Tuesday without being touched. So Tuesday night, the damp is starting to rise and it's a bit colder.

Problems I think?.. Well yes... but only my complete lack of knowledge about how to use a manual choke! Huffed and puffed to get it started and it did eventually, but made me realise I need to get a feel for the car. Not the simple start and go that I have been used to for 20 years. I knew it would be a challenge and just a case of re-learning old skills and learning some new ones.

At least I've got reasonable hang of the column shift by now and haven't reversed at anyone since the first journey.

Dashboard lights don't work, need to fix those.. (although as this is still a day or so retrospective, I can say with 100% certainty that was user error also!!!)

Pick up, first drive, new home, first problem!

Sunday was a bit of a comedy of errors to start with, at one point we weren't going to be able to pick the car up after all as the money HADN'T gone through and the car wasn't yet mine after all, won't go into detail but worth the memory! The kids were really miserable and disappointed. If truth be told so was I, but I tried to be all mature and grown up about it.

Anyway cut a long story short all was resolved in time (banks work Sundays!!) and we drove down to pick it up that afternoon.

We hoofed the engine, gearbox and other bit's into our car first and then the owner (previous owner by then I guess?..) suggested I reverse the car out of the garage as my "first try" before then going to do the paper work.

A lesson in how to drive the car then ensued, how many car sales involve free tuition on how to drive?!!! Again .. big thanks to the previous owner. Column shift, pull starter, manual choke, indicator switch located around the horn. Overwhelmed a bit I think. But managed to reverse it out successfully and pointed it down the driveway towards the open road.

We did the paperwork, had a cup of tea in the sun - lovely day. We watched the vintage planes fly over from the local airshow that happened to be on that day (http://www.wingsandwheels.net/) It was a marvelous day for nostalgia, not just because I was buying a 60 year old car! Set the tone nicely (for me anyway!) the most impressive view was actually the old Vulcan bomber that flew right overhead!

Then we were off. My son came with me, my wife drove home in our car with my daughter. Again that mix of anticipation and dread was there. No tools, no one really arranged to come and save us if anything went wrong, we set off on the first journey in the Somerset which was 35 miles to get home, through the middle of Guildford!!!!

Stalled three times, reversed at someone once, but all in all the journey was highly pleasurable first trip, I will always remember, my son said to me on the way "Dad, I didn't think you'd actually do it. I thought you were just talking and looking and that you'd never actually do it. This IS cool."

At this stage, I must point out that if it wasn't for my parents (and my grandfather, god rest his soul) then I WOULDN'T have done it. My Grandfather, HC, died last year, well into his 90's and let's just say that a little bit of financial help was made possible through that sad event. With only the money I had available myself, it would have been exactly as my son had described, I wouldn't have got this car. I could have only afforded a restoration project and would not have been able to follow through. So thanks mum, dad and also grandad C. He would certainly have appreciated this car!

Anyway - first photos at her new home below (did she have a name, do I give her a name?..):

The first problem mentioned in the title was that, because it was such a lovely day, I had driven home with the window wound fully down. When I went to close the car up, the window winder went round but nothing happened!! No problem, memory kicked into gear and the door panel was off, window was re-located into the mechanism and everything right as rain within a few minutes! Happy days!

Family day out!

As arranged, we went to look at the car on Saturday, bit of a boring tale but despite having decided to buy it anyway, we were traveling in that direction and figured that it was OK to go and take another look, despite it being pretty unnecessary!

Bizarrely we drove past an A30/A35 on the way down and all realised that would NOT have been the right choice of vehicle - too small!

The current owner kindly put up with me and the kids drooling over the car for the best part of an hour, whilst the wife had a very nice cup of tea!

I mentioned my daughter's disinterest up to this point. She suddenly started her own love affair with the car then and later that day when we had carried on our journey, she was probably the most excited about getting the car!

Insurance was arranged and the balance paid that afternoon, the car was mine and just had to pick it up. Theoretically the next day!

Just do it..

Friday was a short comment. Decided that I wanted to get the car anyway, and the support I got from the family helped that decision. I was going to get it, so arranged a deposit, just in case!!

Again, for posterity, here are some pictures from the sale adverts that I responded to, and in a big way influenced my decision!

Clinching the REAL deal

Negotiating the actual sale of the car wasn't the real deal. Was I "ALLOWED" to get the car?

Well, my wife was totally supporting, she had known that I wanted to do something like this and I had shown her pictures of the car at least before. And despite the comment that "it's VERY Green isn't it?" !! She was pretty OK that I was planning going to go ahead. On the basis that I painted the wheels Cream :-)

I'll mention now that we have two kids who are 10 and 13 at this time. My 13 year old son has been excited about this from the minute I started looking. My 10 year old daughter pretty disinterested, but that was going to change (later!)

We arranged to go and see the car that Saturday for a final decision.

I then spent that evening relatively obsessed, and coincidentally whilst looking at pictures of Somerset's on the internet I came across a couple of pictures from when the car was with the previous owner in North Wales from around June 2006. Copied here for posterity into this post, acknowledgment to owner of the originals which, at the date of posting, are on this site:

http://www.oldclassiccar.co.uk/photos-wales/austin_a40_somerset_38.htm
http://www.oldclassiccar.co.uk/photos-wales/austin_a40_somerset_39.htm

A40 Somerset

A40 Somerset

 

Reality bites...

The outcome of these next couple of posts is probably as obvious as Gareth Bale's transfer from Tottenham to Real Madrid! But in the interest of diarisation.

I viewed the car for the first time on Thursday afternoon (as mentioned - that was a week ago from this Blog's creation date). From a privacy point of view I won't go into any detail about the seller himself, but the purchase "negotiations" were as pleasant an experience I could think of.

I was confused to start with, because the garage was opened and the car was there, but a different colour. The response was "Oh that's my one, the one you are looking at is over here... " Eye's right and there is ANOTHER A40 Somerset, the one I expected to see! The guy was an enthusiast himself, ran his own A40, he had bought this one for some spares that were with it and was selling the car on. The previous owner's father had also been an enthusiast as I understand, but unfortunately had passed away. Hence the reason the car was eventually sold.

It was still being sold on with it's original engine and gearbox as a spare!  Also a spare bootlid and bonnet and other bits and pieces. Wheels, inner tube, other box of stuff!!


The negotiations then took the form of a beginners lesson about how these old cars work. And the fact that the local members of the owners club meet locally and I was more than welcome if I bought the car and therefore a good support network, because my concern that I was biting off more than I can chew was probably discernible! But to be honest, there was no discussion on price needed. I was already hooked and in no mind to haggle over something that seemed to be bang on the money.

Just needed the wife's rubber stamp, would I be heading for the divorce courts if this car turned up on the driveway...... Went home a mix of anticipation and dread. Although I had kind of cleared that I was doing this, would the reality be as accepting when push came to shove.......

Taking the plunge

More detailed research honed preference into two lists:

Preferred
A50 / A55 Cambridge
Morris Oxford
A40 Somerset

OK
Morris Minor
A30 / A35

Two weeks holiday then got in the way and the purchasing hunt REALLY started upon return in mid-August.

It all happened pretty quick from there. A few adverts were viewed, in the range:

1950's Morris or Austin between 2500 and 5000

And this one jumped out:

It ticked pretty much all of the boxes and also was fairly local to me. Made arrangements to go and see it within the week....... (almost exactly a week ago from the creation of this blog)

The road to the start of the journey

I decided to diarise my progress with my "new" car. A 1954 Austin A40 Somerset. This is about a week retrospective, I have had it for around 4 days now. I don't know how the story will end but at the moment I like the idea that in 10 years time I still have it and can look back over the progress on this blog. Equally I may have decided it was a bad idea within a few months and get rid of it again! Only time will tell. But anyway first some background.

I have always been an old car fan. My first car a VW Beetle, later I had an MGB GT. After that I moved into sensible family car territory for the next 20 years. But older cars were always there in my mind. When others say their favourite cars are Porsches, Ferraris etc... mine have always been E-Types, MG's, Heralds etc....

Over the last 6 months I realised that I probably had an opportunity to get and run old car again, it had to be affordable, almost nothing to run if I didn't use it, and maintainable based on my basic knowledge.

So I started looking, and wondering. An old British built car made sense based on the above criteria. Started looking at Morris, then Austins, Rileys, Wolselys, Triumphs and Standards. Neither Fords nor Vauxhalls appealed, can't say exactly why. Found cars that I never really knew about and started to like the idea of something a little more unusual, but equally maintainable.

I also decided that I needed a fairly good example that would run initially without too much trouble, not a restoration project. Although having skills working on old engines and cars in general from previously, those skills were extremely rusty (pun intended!!)

After a bit more research, pre 1960 became a requirement. Both styling based decision, but the lack of MOT requirement also a factor.

So, the shortlist eventually was Morris Minor, Morris Oxford, Austin A30, A35, A40 Somerset, A50 Cambridge and searching started in earnest in late July......