MOTOR-BLOG from Coventry

As you’ve probably all heard by now, our wonderful Festival of Motoring has been cancelled due to bad weather. This is especially bad as I was entered in it again this year and it also puts pay to the saying - ‘it never rains on the Shakespeare run’, because up until this year, it hasn’t.

I’m sure some smart alec will pipe up now with a ‘I think you’ll find it did rain last year, we had 0.00001mm of precipitation that day…’ (there’s always one) but genuinely, I’ve never known it to rain in all my years of attending this event. It’s usually suncream and Pimms all the way.

So this leaves me with a spare weekend. This is fine, but I can’t help feeling a little disappointed, what with another fairly lousy summer behind us. So I’m sitting here, typing this drinking tea and watching One of our Dinosaurs is missing. I have chocolate and crisps in the flat, and may just crack open that bottle of cider in the fridge. Twenty to five on a Saturday afternoon seems like a reasonable time to get started on the sherbert.

I’m due to attempt a rescue on my 1958 Austin A55 Cambridge tommorrow, but this will be a premliminary attempt - I’m going to free up the brakes so it will roll come towing time. To that end, i’m going to have to buy a trolley jack tommorrow morning, plus copious amounts of Duck oil…

I’m also going to take my spare from the Vitesse to see if it will fit. My plan is thus: to put the wheels and tyres from the Vitesse onto the Austin so it will roll easily (the Austin’s tyres are withered and flat, and I don’t want to go buying new ones if I don’t have to!). Basically, I’m feeling pretty excited about it, and am looking forward to having a Coventry based winter project to play with.

Things have been moving forward with the 2000 estate (known as the mighty estate). A new rad recore from the ever-helpful and classic friendly J and J radiators Coventry means that it doesn’t leak anymore, and a new Pacet fan and thermostat kit from SVC (Staffordshire Vehicle Components - www.s-v-c.co.uk) means that overheating shouldn’t ever be a problem. I’ve also got some NPG waterless coolant from Rustbuster (www.rust.co.uk) so the new rad shouldn’t get rusted up again.

So things have been going well - except - with my unexpected extra time this weekend, I’ve been looking at the dreaded eBay. There is a rather nice Avon Acclaim with tax and MoT for just £495 buy it now, or best offers. This is very tempting… Also there is a TR7 with long MoT and tax for buy it now £795. Bloody hell. Ok, so it’s a FHC (which I prefer) but it’s still no money when you think about it.

Plus it has had a five speed box conversion, and an uprated rear axle and appears to be as rust free as a good TR7 should be. If that isn’t a TR8 conversion in the making, then I don’t know what is. As I happen to own a 3.5 Range Rover with LPG, alarm bells are ringing…

I’m not saying I’m technically savvy enough to attempt such a conversion myself, but in reality it shouldn’t be that hard, and it has certainly been done many times before and I’d give anything a bash. This is all crazy talk though - I must get the Saab fixed first and recover the Cambridge. I’ll be welding up the 2000 next week too…

The fun continues…

Yep, I’ve seen another one. This one was parked up at my local shops as I was driving past on Friday. Usually when I see these cars they are on the move, so this one was too good an opportunity to pass up. I parked the car, grabbed my camera and bounded over to the car to get some close up pics.

This kinda worked. Rear three quarters - check. Rear shot - check. Then I made my mistake - I went for an interior shot before grabbing a front picture - big mistake. The test driver inside spotted me as I made my move to grab a pic of the interior architecture and promptly drove off.

So there we are - I’ll be doing it differently next time and make sure I get a frontal pic (although it was pretty heavily disguised anyway). So what is it? Well having recently had a Hyundai test car myself, I’d say that it was one of this ever-improving breed - perhaps an i-30. But it also sort of looked like a Mitsubishi.

I’d be interested to know what you think and I am already preparing to stand corrected!

It would seem that a battle is going on for supremecy of Henley Road in Coventry - the two opposing forces? The Police armed with hand held speed guns on one side, unwitting motorists who have creeped a few miles an hour over the speed limit on the other…

I myself went through a speed trap there a couple of days ago. I was quite angry about it at the time, as the policeman in question was tucked away behind a telegraph pole and was not  visable - I thought that they had to be seen easily?

Anyhow, nothing came of it as it was just him. I found out today that they have to physically stop you to give you a ticket if they have clocked you using a hand held speed gun - it is not a camera as far as I’m aware, just a speed indication device.

Well anyhow, tonight I went through the same spot and it was like a war zone - police were everywhere, which made the guy with the speed gun pretty obvious I can tell you. I drove through at 23mph, much to the chagrin of the BMW 1 series driver behind me who couldn’t see what was going on in front - partly because he was about four inches off my back bumper…

The Beemer driver was darting to the right at every opportunity trying to pass me, but luckily for him and his driving licence there was a steady stream of traffic coming towards us. There is a part of me that thinks I should have pulled over to let him through though…

My work Colleague Keith Adams, spotted this in Coventry by the Ricoh arena last Friday. It appears to be a LHD Vauxhall Corsa so why the secrecy? Had it been undisguised no one would probably given it a second glance.

All I can think of is that these are cars being roadtested at MIRA. The brother of a friend of mine is a test driver up at MIRA, so I’ll have to pop around for a chat… I know that they were recently intensively testing the new MGTF and Rover 75 models there too.

Thanks to Keith for the picture, go to his website at  http://www.aronline.co.uk for more excellent car related joy. 

Corsa or not? Those wheels look more Renault than Vauxhall to me - what do you think it is?