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The beast is home!


wuvvum

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Dragged it back yesterday from North Yorkshire, very slowly and using an obscene amount of petrol (16mpg average :shock: ) but we got there in the end.

 

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I'm very glad I didn't attempt to drive it back - It's slow, uncomfortable and very noisy. But in its own way it's great fu to drive, at least over short distances, and it seems to run OK - I just drove it the five or so miles to my garage and it ran faultlessly apart from a slightly sticky clutch cylinder (seems to be a common fault on old BMC stuff). Even the heater works, although the sidelights currently don't so I'm going to have to fiddle with some wiring at some point. It's also going to need some new tyres as it's on (perished) crossplies at the back and mediocre radials at the front, which is an illegal combination even though the tyres do all have plenty of tread.

 

The chap I bought it from is a bit of a dark horse - an unassuming cloth-cap-and-whippet type bloke in his 60s, but he has a collection of over 200 (mostly British) motorcycles in his barn, from a Mobylette and a pair of Ariel 3s to a Vincent Black Prince and a Norton rotary. And he races a Vincent V-twin in a Norton Featherbed frame, beating such beasties as GSXR1100s. He supplies motorbikes to Hearbeat and the like. He also had an absolutely spotless Mk2 Transit panel van, an equally immaculate CF2, an old Morris J-type milkfloat, an HA van and a Jowett Bradford. And round the back he had a collection fo rusting hulks which nearly made me mess my jeans - I'll post a picture as soon as I can find the cable to download it from my phone.

 

So all in all, a grand (if very expensive) day out...

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You are the man! 8) Great save, I love all these BMC J-type vans, I'd love to get a J4 someday, funds and space allowing.A mate of my dad's ran his own business and in the 70s and 80s had a steel JU pick-up but it got a bit rusty so they hacked the back off and put a home made crew cab and dropside on it! I remember lots of trips to collect lawnmowers in it when I was an ickle kid.

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8)8)8) Top purchase, I like - using a spreadsheet, I have calculated scientifically that you are now precisely 1017.6 times cooler than the owner of a VW T2 on "genuine period hard to find £xxxxx from ebay" wheels, in my estimation anyway...

I just drove it the five or so miles to my garage and it ran faultlessly apart from a slightly sticky clutch cylinder (seems to be a common fault on old BMC stuff)

In my experience of BMC shite, if it has a metal pipe from the master cylinder with a union onto a flexible pipe (a la Austin Cambridge) rather than a hardened plastic pipe all the way down (a la Marina) & the symptoms are "release clutch pedal, rev, await take-off", then it tends to be the flexible pipe to the slave cylinder collapsing internally, rather than the cylinder sticking - if so, the problems will soon worsen, and, the pipes are an absolute :evil::evil::evil: bstard to bleed through...
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When did you get that old skool Patrol, is there a thread for it? :)

No thread for it. I bought it the Saturday before last, for the specific purpose of de-Yorkshiring the JU250. It was my intention to sell it after that, even though it had proved itself very useful in towing the Iveco camper van when the starter packed up on that. Unfortunately I lent it to my neighbour on Saturday evening as his car was misbehaving, and he ventured into one of Norwich's less salubrious neighbourhoods and managed to get run off the road by two young chavs racing each other in Corsas, and he hit a set of metal railings. So now the Patrol looks like this:

 

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I reckon the bonnet and the door should straighten out fairly easily, although obviously it'll need a new headlight and grille. It still drives fine and none of its vital organs have been affected - even the nearside sidelight/indicator unit is intact and working. The front corner, valance and inner wing are a bit bent though - we're going to try the old tie a rope from inner wing to tree and then engage reverse trick on Saturday, and with any luck the whole thing will be pulled straight enough to allow a replacement wing to be bolted to it. Because while most of the damage could probably be straightened out using either panel-beating skills or brute force and ignorance, the outer wing probably couldn't.

 

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Sorry to see that wuvvum . It looks to be a solid beast too. I agree the tie it to a tree trick might work with that damage. the inner wing should sraighten out ok. Good luck finding an outer !

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Crikey, sorry to hear about the Patrol - I heard you talking about it at Larling on Weds, but didn't know it had been Corsa'd :(

 

Back to the JU though - cracking find sir. Very silly and impractical vehicle(except the load space, of course).

 

I had a Morris J2 8 or 9 years ago. 6.75:1 ratio back axle meant cruisng speed of 40, and 50mph tops downhill with a prevailing.

 

I used it for three months communting to Uni in Cambridge from Guildford 3 times a week. Apart from the occasion sphincter clenching bumpsteer moment it was quite fun, if a little noisey to drive. Was suprisingly thrifty on fuel with it's 1500cc Gold Top 'B'.

 

Are you gonna bring yours to Larling then?

 

My J2:

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Pity I snapped it really (it sort of bent in the middle), but it was made of dexian anyway, so was always on borrowed time.

 

A friend has the oldest known J2 (actually believed to be a pre-prduction - 1956). It will probably be a little more usable with the Rover installed...

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It's funny, as a child I noticed virtually every kind of vehicle, being the junior enthusiast that I was, but I have no recollection whatsoever of these Austin/Morris medium sized vans like the J2 / JU250 or whatever. They are definitely something that reached my conciousness during my adult enthusiast years. I just don't remeber seeing them around! Did they decline quite rapidly, when did production cease?

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It's funny, as a child I noticed virtually every kind of vehicle, being the junior enthusiast that I was, but I have no recollection whatsoever of these Austin/Morris medium sized vans like the J2 / JU250 or whatever. They are definitely something that reached my conciousness during my adult enthusiast years. I just don't remeber seeing them around! Did they decline quite rapidly, when did production cease?

I think they generally had quite short yet hard lives meaning very few survived very long. I don't remember seeing them in the late '70's / early '80's when I was a youngster!
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My word, that's low!

The Photoshop digital lowerers have been at it again! :lol:
Sadly not, it really did go that low and there really are wheels under there - I was young and stupid! Still stupid, just not so young.Sorry gents, should have introduced myself. Chris here, previously known as ScrapingScrap and UtterPiffle on RR. Been playing with old shite for mumble years, and have owned many montrosities including R4's, a brown Allegro VDP, various 70's/80's Jap dross and a few other less than salubrious German autobahn munchers. I signed up on here a few years ago, but forgot my credentials. Looks like an interesting place to loiter. Hope you don't mind if pull up a chair at the back.Anyway, Austin/Morris vans...
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