New addition enjoys a trip in Amy!

Yesterday was another one of those weird warm days - two days before December! Lovely sunny day, a perfect Amy Saturday.

Reggie and Robbie (not Ronnie!!) on the back seat, en route to some garden center or another to buy dog treats, dog toys etc.. etc..!

Nice to have ordinary driving days and not just show days and club nights.

And they're in!! Brilliant

Slid the seats back in over lunch today, and had a drive around of course! They look absolutely great and just as comfortable as they were. Of course paranoid about rivets on jeans now etc etc..! But very happy indeed!! Just to compare easily the previous situation, the difference is clear!!:

 

 

Now, jobs that NEED doing?... None really. If Amy stayed exactly as - is and ran the same, then I don't think I'd touch anything at all. Thermostat? Yeah suppose I should after all of the research. Electric Ignition? Again suppose I should, since I bought the damn thing! Exhaust Manifold? The repair is fine.

 

 

Started relatively easily after over a week under cover from constant rain. Soaked in dew and pretty cold. She runs pretty nice once warm, not confident of long journeys, but do I really care?

 

 

I may get around to these things, but as I mentioned before, she's a fairweather occasional car now, so happy! And a good build up of memories, my son recalled breaking down at the end of the road in the early days today as we tootled off to Tescos this evening!

 

New Seats - ready to go in

Oh looky looky.... Too much rain to rush and fit them back in today, just admiring them in the lounge:

Weather slated to be sunny tomorrow, so a lunch hour job to just remove the Nissan seat, put the driver's side runners back in and then slide in the re-covered seats.

Seats are ready!!

Just got the call. I can go and pick them up!

I checked the dates when this all started, and I'll have just about managed to get this done within a year of when I first got the covers delivered from the US. OK so they weren't a complete set after all and this has ended up costing me £800 in total instead of around £450 which is what I had expected.

That wasn't the plan. But now done, very will be very happy. Pictures will ensue!!

On a side note, over the last week either the weather has been bad or I haven't really had the time to get her "out of bed" due to puppy duties with Reggie. Wet weather seems set to continue. Bottom line is not much driving time and haven't pulled finger out on other jobs yet. But was still glad that I had the temporary Nissan Skyline seat, if only for the White Lion Austin Day. And I was planning to cut back on Winter driving anyway. I have garage space available to me  now, so I might just put the "new" seats back in, admire her for a bit and then put her away. Not too long, maybe just over Christmas. Still very much weather forecast dependent.

We'll see, but in the meantime ... SEATS... can't wait..!!

White Lion Austin Day - and TOO MUCH CARDBOARD!!

November the 9th - Austin day as planned. Fair few Austins, was cool to arrive and be directed to park up in a Marque reserved space rather than just finding any old spot. Arrived earlier than normal for exactly that reason

Bright sunshine, dry, brilliant!

Got in a nice Counties line up, the 16 on the left is owned by an acquaintance from the club, the Devon pickup has been there before. My Somerset as usual, on the right. The Cambridge next would have been nice to see some sort of evolution. I think it was a departure from previous would have been interesting to see side by side.




Arrived in a small flourish of steam coming from the radiator cap!! Over did it by covering the whole rad, thought there would be enough draft around the sides but clearly not, ripped off half for the journey home and no problems.



Starter motor bendix got stuck when trying to start up to leave, but it's handy that I know exactly what I'm doing when that happens nowadays. Starting handle out of boot, turned over engine once, calmy put the handle away got back in and started up no problem - away she went! (That's my favoured method of freeing it up I know there's the "rocking it in gear" method and also taking a spanner to the starter motor but I just find the starter handle is the easiest and most consistent approach) Some onlookers also knew exactly what I was doing, some however must have expected I had problems. Nope.. no worries!

Both the kids came with me, partly as a ruse to keep them out of the way whilst the wife picked up our new puppy!! Isabelle started to get bored, but it was about right. We were there for a couple of hours. Rest of today is going to be spent playing with "Reggie".

A classic car is for life, not just for Christmas - that is what I said last year, this year it was the wife's turn - and a dog it was!!

Covering radiator for now

Tomorrow morning is going to be a chilly one. Don't want to fit the latest thermostat fix just yet, so covering up the radiator for the day. Pretty normal practice as I understand, and without the thermostat probably a good idea to avoid the engine running dead cold!

Only a bit of cardboard wired in place to the rad cap.

No need to over engineer things.

Hopefully tomorrow morning will be what it says it is - cold but dry and maybe bright.

Austin day at the White Lion Classic Car Meets

Thermostat and Blanking Sleeve

OK, so ready to go. Just have to drill a couple of flow holes in the Thermostat flange to allow SOME flow to happen before the stat opens. Also position the small holes in the sleeve so that there is a small amount through the bypass port. But the depth of the sleeve and positioning of the stat means that when it opens then the path of least resistance is CLEARLY up through the rad.

Partly still not totally sure I should bother to do this, despite a lot of information pointing to this as a fix!! A cold running car is inefficient and probably getting coked up more than necessary, but it WORKS. If it ain't broke, don't fix it!? But I'd like to think this is a good thing, plus having a heater that works was nice in the few weeks when I did have a thermostat fitted and working!

I am fitting the 75°C stat first at least. I tested it thoroughly in a saucepan. It opens across the range of about 70° - 77° to fully open. This should be fine (I also have an 88°C one but one step at a time).

Not doing it until AFTER the weekend though, I want to test it out on fairly short runs to start with and the White Lion is a medium run.. (10 miles is still a medium run?..!! I guess it still highlights a relatively low confidence level, despite all the progress...!)

REAL Ice!

Last year was mild. Wet, windy, horrible... but mild. I was happy to drive Amy on frosty days like here, obviously I had a number of challenges to overcome with blowing headgaskets etc!! But despite the post mentioning ice, it was in reality only a frost.

This morning was an eye opener. A nice sunny day was slated. At the same time temperatures have suddenly dipped after a lovely Indian summer and this morning the tarpaulin was FROZEN solid to the roof!

I am struggling to shake that bloody minded-ness and partly I wanted to drive Amy IN SPITE of te cold weather just to see how she would behave. With hindsight I didn't think about the paintwork, but cover came off and she started up pretty easily as usual and have had another nice day of driving to / from work and around at lunchtime.

Very pleased that Amy is running niceley- even when it's starting to get REALLY cold. I will not be driving her in really harsh conditions, but nice to have no misbehavior even when there was REAL ice around. And I haven't done any basic maintenance for a little while!... Lazy, need to roll sleeves up over winter whilst I do the thermostat thing need to do all those basics on the engine like Plugs, points, cables etc...