Fun in rain!

Yesterday was a lovely day after a day of rain and snow here in Oxfordshire, so not wanting to waste the opportunity myself and my colleague took an extended lunch break and fitted new spark plugs in his Land Rover and took it for a spin to a road which we knew would be flooded after all the heavy rain. The Landy was driving like a dream and very happy with her new plugs and so to the flooded road, out came the camera ready to capture some serious water spray as I headed towards the water, in hindsight it was slightly too fast approach as water flew up over the top of the Landy, great I here you say well yes it was until some crafty water managed to make its way towards the distributor causing a fairly swift halt. Oh dear! Lucky I had wellies on so the pushing of the lump out of the flood was just hard work and not wet foot work. So a swift wipe round with some dry rag and we were back on the road within minutes hooray! as neither of us fancied pushing it a few miles back home.

The Christmas Project

As a Christmas present for my colleague and his girlfriend who both have a penchant for most things vintage I decided to get them a tradesman's bicycle for display and hopefully use around their village. I purchased the bicycle from Beaulieu auto jumble in September and spent the following months up to Christmas making it road worthy and adorning it with a new sign written center board, basket and lamp bracket and lamp. The bicycle was in fairly good nick it has had a hard life and bears the scars of this but I knew the recipients would love it all the more for that so I decided to do a minim amount to the original paint work but concentrate on personalising it and most importantly fitting some brakes and repairing puntures. The bicycle has no makers marks apart from a Phillips stamp on the crank case so at a guess it's probably a Phillips circa Late 1930's to mid 1940's.

Some pics below of the project apologies for missing out some bits, I forgot to take shots of some bits.



Straight from the autojumble.



Lets make a start at making it stop.



Cardboard Template for sign writing practice.



Hooray! found a basket that fits at the local Ironmongers.





First attempt of sign writing, I was fairly pleased however further practices really helped and some invaluable advice from a good friend who is a bit of a dab hand when it comes to sign writing.



Here we go metal board cut painted and final sign writing begining heart in mouth time, boy I was worried about mucking it up however thanks to some white spirit most mistakes were erased and made good.



Both sides finished at last, I was delighted and left a bit dizzy from the white spirit fumes!



Christmas Eve ready for delivery to unknowing recepient.



A happy man zipping around the village on his new bicycle.



At rest at its new home.

Having a Blast!

If you have the space and the spare cash make sure you buy an old Landy they are the most fun ever especially when the snow comes. Myself and friend have been having the time of our lives going where no one else can in his 1965 series 2a. However it has not all been plain sailing, we had a bit of a problem getting the Landy started after its lay up over Christmas and with temperatures recorded at -17c in rural Oxfordshire where the Landy lives it was no surprise that the old battery rolled over and died. So we set to it and replaced it with a brand new battery tried the old girl again and still no luck, she turned over but that was all, so the usual checks followed, check for moisture in distributor, check earths and plugs all fine, head scratching followed when inspiration struck! It turns out that it runs much better if you put petrol in it whoops! how silly did we feel.....Very!!! Anyhoo she's purring well now. We are making lists at the mo of work to do on the old gal when the weather permits cannot wait, time to blow the dust off the overalls!!!!

Well hello there!

Wow here we are another blog set up and ready for no one to read! Firstly if there is someone out there reading this then there are a few points worth noting. I love old stuff, Cars, Bikes, Steam engines and numerous bits of "old junk". I am no vintage expert so there is likely to be many errors with details of cars etc, no expert in mechanics so there will be many other (Prob Better) ways of doing things that I may blog about and I am no Stephen Fry so there will be many many spelling a grammatical errors. So please don't be offended if you read something stupid!

Now onto the fun stuff, I own a 1954 Morris Minor Saloon it's my pride and joy I love driving it at am a bit down about not being able to get out in it at the moment in this terrible weather. I also own and am half way through restoring a 1945 Hercules bicycle, more on that in coming blogs. More recent fun though has been coming in the form of my friends 1965 Land Rover that we have been tinkering with and in recent weeks been trying out its snow driving capabilities, more on that soon too.

Just to wet your appetite some pics of the fore mentioned.



My Morris



The Hercules before work began, it's looking better now.



The Landy what a beast!