MadaboutKitcars

Teething problems are just part of the process Mick , no matter how much you think you have covered everything , any major build can bring up some initial issues ..you deal with them and move on ....

As Towed says and Paul L amongst others have documented here ...being noticed and creating an impact with other road users is something you need to get used too ..... retro race car styling is loved by everybody .....often with retro cars , they are predominantly a male thing ....not always , but mostly a male interest ..the thing with our style of car is EVERYBODY loves them , women , kids , old , young .....eveybody ..

More Sorties & Detailing

I've been out a good few times now, managing to re-fuel without mishap and finding long enough straights to try out the overdrive, which works perfectly . A young lad came over in Aldi car park and asked "Is it a TVR?". I concealed my mirth and gently explained its genesis. Trevor indeed! Still, no worse than the umpteen times I was asked if my Marlin Roadster was a Morgan .

Reversing onto my home parking space my son said it smells rich, pulled a plug, correctamundo. Black! Luckily old style CD Strombergs are a doddle to adjust with a coin and I've leaned it considerably. Runs better than before, I've also retarded the ignition as it was pinking a little when I short shifted and asked too much of the torque, speaking of which, spins the off side wheel on hill starts if I'm not very careful. I'll invest in some grippier tyres sometime, the current ones came off a VW Beetle trials car, authentically 80 ratio and narrow section but hardly sticky.

There's lots of authentic transmission noise through the aluminium tunnel and the six cylinder snarl when I open her up is music. I've now fitted my Europa Spares plastic spinners but not the perspex headlamp covers. The flange they sit on needs building inwards a little in the same place both sides. I'll try and get it done before Stoneleigh. There's still some cockpit detailing to address as well but the lure of my Moss Monaco build is strong!

Regards, Mick

Prescott Speed Hill Climb Saturday

I'm fortunate to have this venue practically on my doorstep, certainly less than 20 miles, and I attended the year's first meeting on Saturday, arriving well before 0800 to catch the atmosphere in the paddock. There I came across a D Type lookalike which turned out to be a RAM from the eighties. I had a long chat with the two drivers before walking to the very top of the hill. I've been there many many times but I'm still enchanted every visit .





I was parked next to a very bright Ginetta but it was my A352 which was attracting a great deal of attention from other punters. All were highly complimentary about my build, as well as being very surprised at its humble underpinnings and modest cost.



I took these photo's of the RAM, both with its beautiful class companions and on the start line. A good day out.





Yesterday evening, as I was about to go for a spin, two children from along my road came and asked if they could have a close look. The lad, who was about 10, said he'd told his classmates that there was a "Space Car" in his road. Now that's an accolade!

Regards, Mick

Mick, your car looks every bit as good as that RAM version if not better.

Yours is clearly a very well finished example in a great colour choice and if you park it alongside the real thing nobody would guess that your car cost about the same to build as you'd pay for a couple of sets of wheels and tyres for the original.

Get used to the compliments, they'll just keep on coming and deservedly so.

Will have to make my way to Prescott btw as it looks beautiful.

Speed Hill Climbing


It certainly is. It was the first hill climb venue I ever attended back in '87. However, [COLOR="blue"]Shelsley Walsh[/COLOR] eclipses it to a degree, partly due to the amazing scenery both there and on the way, and partly how it's frozen in 1905. Easily my favourite motor sport venue

Regards, Mick

Shelsley Walsh 6/7 May

I've just browsed [COLOR="GREEN"]the card[/COLOR] for this event and two D Type evocations are running. One (the 3.8) will be the above pictured, looking forward to seeing the other

Regards, Mick

Shelsley Walsh Speed Hill Climb

Today I took the A352 on its first sortie to this venue. I've been umpteen times going back well over two decades but I still get a thrill as I drive the twisty and undulating last few miles there through glorious Herefordshire countryside.

It was a chilly start and, on arrival, the young lad waved me to the front rank of the visitors' parking area: he'd no doubt been primed to do this with anything old or interesting. I was next to a TR2 or 3 and was almost immediately sandwiched by a very expensive looking (and very bright!) 17 plate Lotus.



I wandered down to the paddock and made a bee line for the two 'D Types' which were competing. Neither was the one from Prescott two weeks ago. I only saw the very young looking driver of the green one and had quite a long conversation with him. He told me he and his father had bought it on a whim the Xmas before last as "something to play with". Can't be bad. It turned out to be an LM and had a very authentic interior and a novel flip back end like a Westfield XI.





The other, in classic US racing colours, failed to impress. It had nasty wheels, was quite severely slammed, and the interior was let down by a thick leather rimmed steering wheel. To be fair, looking at his massive roll over bar, I think the owner was competition rather than authenticity focussed. Next to them, and competing in their class, was a glorious looking and sounding Kougar, very impressive!





The turnout of punters was disappointing but, given the overcast, wind and cold weather, hardly surprising. Nevertheless, a good day out . Apologies for the photo's - shivering didn't help!

Regards, Mick

proportions on the green one look ok, but not really right imo

neither is the registration

JAGUAR 4.2 XJ6 1972

do you see an XJ6 in the pic?
as an XJ6 has not an independant chassis / frame, hence cannot be declared as re-body, the car is incorrectly registered.

might have been built during the old times, b4 SVA came into force. anyway, than he missed the amnesty period for correcting the paperwork.

rochdaleGT - Have you really got nothing better to do?

wrongly registered

spock, quote from star trek ......,"yes it is life jim but not as we know it !!!!"

If he says that to the copper who pulls him- he should be alright then?

Perhaps he trailers it to events.

Mick – First of all, apologies for the thread hijack, please keep posting photos, they are great.

IanA – My apologies to you too, as you might have missed the complete that RochdaleGT keeps posting over on the Sammio forum.

He also quickly disappears when anyone (OK… me) challenges him on his misunderstanding of the “facts”.

So please indulge me as I playfully answer your question...

If he is driving the car on the road and gets pulled and is prosecuted, frankly who cares?

It is his choice and as long as his car is not a danger to himself or others what business is it of ours?

Perhaps he does trailer his car to the track, perhaps he will never sell it with the wrong details on the V5C and is going to be buried in it instead, again who cares?

”Let those without sin cast the first stone.”

Peace & Love, Paul.

No apology needed- I didn't know there was history !!!



Only that anything that increases the suspicion that an "interesting" car may be worth a pull can't be a good thing.

Hmm, I think you'll find...............

To the best of my knowledge, LM recreations are dimensionally correct, and it certainly looked right to me. My stack of source material for my build is about a foot tall, not including the Norman Dewis and XKD504 biographies, so I think I have a reasonable eye for D Types, both real and recreated.

As for the index mark (we coffin-dodgers fondly remember the manuscript records of yore ), it's six counties issue originally. In our imperial pomp we graciously allocated 'I' and 'Z' exclusively to that province (similarly 'S' to Scotland, until Bristol ran out of 'AE' and 'OU' options in the 80s). Transferring such a mark is a common way of disguising the age of the vehicle bearing it, although, IMHO, it simply gives the game away.

As for his getting nicked for the vehicle being incorrectly registered, when I asked how far he'd had to drive to the event, he replied "We brought it on a trailer". I was tempted to retort with my favourite Lord Flasheart line of "What a poof!" but restrained myself.

Still on topic, a guy my sort of age came up and said "Shouldn't the number be MWS 301. It turned out he'd been an AA patrolman and had been called out to this famous car when the then owner immobilised it by removing the rotor arm, but broke same in the process."

Interesting stuff.

Regards, Mick (AKA Nellie-Know-All)

Thanks for that, Mick. You certainly know how to bring history alive.

Castle Combe Today

Today I had my first sortie to this venue in the A352. The occasion was the Club Lotus Day to which the Historic Lotus Register (of which I'm a member) was invited. We've recently amalgamated with the Type 14 Lotus Elite club and, this year being the 60th anniversary of that model's launch, the event's focus was on this milestone.

I set off a little later than usual after the early rain had passed and had a satisfying drive of 30 odd miles down there. At last I've retarded the ignition sufficiently to have had a pinking free journey, very satisfying.

I had to fend off lots off interested queries regarding my car with universal compliments and approval. One HLR colleague related of how, as a 15 year old on holiday with his parents in 1957, he went walkabout in Edinburgh and happened upon Merchison Mews, home of Ecurie Ecosse, where he saw the three works D-Types parked outside, a life changing experience!

There were more Type 14 Elites than you could shake a stick at, with more turning up even as I left at about 1300. Fantastic!.





There was also the first ever Lotus Cortina which Jim Clark was lent for evaluation, apparently he simply misappropriated it!



There were, amongst many other gorgeous historic Lotuses this beautifully restored XI, and its naked sister part way through the same process.





A fabulous day out, with another tomorrow at Prescott .

Regards, Mick

Nice!

Looks doable on a mk2 mx5

Prescott Today

Today I tootled up to Prescott for their annual French and Italian themed event. Expensive at £20 but well worth it for the plethora of fantastic machinery both competing and on display. For a change, mine wasn't the only Flag Metallic Blue 'Jaguar' on show.



This one, from the 1982 reg, was a reconstituted XJ6 or similar.



However this was very much the real thing. Stunning!



The supposed star of the show was this Bugatti which apparently does almost 300MPH and does 0-200 in 14 seconds, all courtesy of its eight litre quad turbo H16 engine. At £2.5 million it didn't do a lot for me, you could get a half-way decent D-Type for that.



Duncan Pittaway's 'Beast of Turin' was impressive: huge and noisy with its aero engine power unit.



This is what had me drooling, Maserati250F. I'd seen it right up close before at Historic Silverstone when I arrived very early and the nice man in the marquee let me over the rope as no other punters were around . Beautiful machine and very successful in its day.

Lots of interest in the A352 once again, with many kind comments. The scheduled fly by of the BoB Flight Spitfire didn't materialise due to technical difficulties. The only tiny blot on another fab day out.

Regards, Mick

Shelsley Walsh? Brrrrr!



As requested

This morning I was supposed to be going to the last Shelsley Walsh meeting of the season. As ever, I was up and about early but, as it was overcast, misty and pretty chilly to boot, I decided to take a miss on the 40 mile drive and wuss out.

Instead, I decided to attend a small local breakfast gathering which is held each month at Staverton Aerodrome, a mere six miles from my home in Gloucester. It originated as an Austin A30/35 meeting but has morphed into general petrol-headism. Turnout was small but enthusiastic - I'd forgotten about my camera until almost everyone had left but managed the shot below .



I've now covered almost 1,000 miles in the A352; it's still as much fun as ever: lots of interest whenever I park, and plenty of photo's and videos being shot whilst I'm in motion.

Regards, Mick

Mick - You car always looks great.

Did you see the Ecurie Ecosse celebration at the Goodwood Revival?

Enjoy, Paul.

Are you going to the Prescott Autumn Classic in a couple of weeks time ?

Definitely Maybe



Weather permitting, as ever, I'll be there on the Sunday. The same caveat applies to the Castle Combe Mini Day on the Saturday. A few years ago I mentioned it to a friend who asked "Were there many there? Shamelessly quoting the young John Connor in Terminator II, I replied "All of them, I think".

Whilst on Castle Combe, I strongly urge anyone who can to go to 'The Classic' on Saturday October 7th. This event is only a few years old but has gone from strength to strength. There is an eye-watering plethora of drool-worthy machinery plus club displays, the most noteworthy for me being the Historic Lotus Register .

Regards, Mick

Apologies!

I don't know how I missed your post, but I did! Sorry!

I've never been to the Revival Meeting but watch the roundups on TV which are sadly pitched at the GBP rather than petrolheads. I went to the Classic in '96 (I think) when you could get in on the Friday by buying a £3 programme! I still have my ticket - No2, as I got there with my mate in his Westfield 11 at stupid o'clock after a fabulous dawn cross country B road blast. The trip home was made in torrential rain - the floor was awash when we got back. Happy Days!

The Castle Combe Classic on 7 October, although vastly smaller, is also vastly less expensive . It's only in about its fifth year but has gone from strength to strength and is now unmissable! Can't recommend it highly enough!

Regards, Mick

It sounds like a great meeting .... last time I went to Castle Combe was a kit car trackday in the early 90's when I was building my Manta Montage kit ...so it's been a while !
Mick ( or anyone else familiar with the meeting ) , Graham , my customer we are building the Formosa 120 GR for is quite keen to get the car to this one ....I'm trying to make that possible but obviously the unknowns in a build are , well unknown!! ...so , if its looking like it might not happen for some reason ...is it the sort of venue that we could transport the car to , unload and put in the Classic parking area without too much aggro ?