Skut

Amsterdam & SC.

On 20/01/2024 at 11:06, hairnet said:

yes

although saw them weird small things in usa and they had chery badges on them

how miserable??

 

Aspires are just a face lifted Kia Pride.

20 hours ago, eddyramrod said:

That's the last cup of tea you'll get in this house!  I don't even care if you bring biscuits!

Also: just send that Grand Marquis over here please.

Plans afoot to do just that.

I got to drive two USDM cars yesterday. A 1996 Ford Aspire and a 1994 Mercury Grand Marquis. Still buzzing!

The Mercury was the car I really wanted to drive. It rocks when you blip the throttle! Nor does it seem monstrously big but that’s maybe because it’s on a big American driveway. It doesn’t seem particularly fast but it’s hugely characterful.  It wonders quite a bit even at low speeds but corners relatively flat. It seems inconsistent. Sometimes floaty, sometimes not. It rides pretty well but shudders still get through to your bum at times.

The Aspire drives like filth by comparison. Any attempt to go round a corners above parking speeds and the steering goes horribly heavy. A real set in concrete feel.  Something is very wrong in the sensors somewhere as it starts to die the second you put any load on it.  The manual gearbox was fine. About the only good thing about it. It was hard work to drive. It felt as if it had to be manhandled everywhere.
 

Loved every minute of it!

Also the remains of what I think is a 40s Chevrolet upside down in a wood.

Me and  my pal from Crieff came down in our ZR and Polo.   I was somewhat surprised by the You Tubers. I had expected a couple of the big names but not roving bands of the creatures. Old tat channels must be reaching saturation point.

I greatly admired Colin Corkes Princess. Meeting the Allegro bloke off The Cars of the Stars was enough  celebrity for me. 

On 5/3/2023 at 4:18 PM, barrett said:

It'd be great to find out how viable this might be to save. Just looking at that wheel, it looks better than the ones fitted to our one, and I assume there will be plenty of other small bits and pieces which are shared by petrol and electric versions that would be worth salvaging. Did anyone get anywhere with tracking it down?

With regards to the location of the abandoned Electric Harper. All the guy who took the photographs would say, was it was in Harrogate. He didn't give the impression he was going to be more forthcoming than that.  

I was there with my dad. There was a time when Border car shows resembled something from Craggy Island. It's more like a music festival now.   

This Roller is in Kirkton, Dundee. Rough area. The playpark was on fire.

.

What is it with women in their 30s. In my teens ot 20s if you didn't fancy someone you told them, harsh words were sometimes exchanged and you went your separate ways. Now lasses im my demographic ask me to reconsider the decision  and question the validity of my decision making process.  Since when has that been acceptable to pressurise or manipulate people into a relationship.  Maybe I'm not being clear enough, but I thought "I don't fancy you" was pretty damn unambiguous.  What's next? Tell her I don't fancy a sack of spuds.

A Geely on Ukrainian plates. Papped on Dundees Riverside drive.

5 minutes ago, castros_bro said:

Many T60 and B90 and T100 engined ones,  your pic is a B95 or B105.

So what are they like.

19 hours ago, Barry Cade said:

Lancia Y10 turbo, or a Saab 600?

I own a Y10 Turbo in many separate pieces.   Anybody driven or owned a Berkeley.

3 hours ago, LightBulbFun said:

Oh wow! thats a find! as @somewhatfoolish says that makes for 2 know surviving Harper Mk6 Electrics now! or well at least 2 known to be extant, as said its a shame that this one is so badly broken! looks like the entire front roof and front end are just missing!

but very much worth rescuing for parts and patterns if nothing else, especially if your planning to rescue 61HPA, which is the other electric harper, and the one I was referring to with my comment  

its worth noting that 120DPF makes its a pretty early Harper Mk6, first ones to show up where on 123Cxx Surrey plates 

being blue coloured like it is would point to it being a private machine rather then a Ministry machine (all Ministry electric machines where grey, although with regards to 61HPA, Stuart thinks it is also a private machine, I guess one that the buyer never changed the default options on?)

@Skut is it a closed or open Facebook group? are you able to share with me the details? although sadly I think id have a hard time getting this saved given no one wants to save 61HPA, they hear "electric machine" and "travellers camp" and get cold feet for some reason! no love for the electrics eh! maybe I need to tag @Kiltox in on this so he can rescue it for a head to head with his Ami  

61HPA really still makes me sad, as you can really see just how nice a shape it was in, before it was bought as a play thing and dumped, note not only the shiny head lamp trim rings still, and I have pictures of its interior that also similarly show that it was in really good shape before it had started to fall to the elements 

 

 

It's a private FB group called Scrapyards from the Good Old Days. Nothing to stop you joining of course. I've messaged the guy that posted it to ask where it is.  

There may be more of it there than appears in the photographs. The roof and front could be nearby in the undergrowth. 

On 4/15/2023 at 4:29 AM, somewhatfoolish said:

Need to track down that leccy Harper now, complete the set.

Wish granted sort of. This appeared on my FB feed on a Scrapyards from the good old days Group. I'm no expert but it looks like a Harper Mk6. I was intrigued enough by the rakish lines to go digging on the net till I got a match. Only downside is it doesn't say where it is except it's in a field. I guess you could message the guy that posted it.

S-class, sightless Mini and a Discovery. I've uploaded the Discovery before but it's presence is clearly getting unpopular.

16 minutes ago, meggersdog said:

I owned one of those , 1972 on a K.reg just as Labour came to power in '97 and scrapped the rolling 25 year tax exemption. So one of the last to be tax free for a while. Cheap way into a pillarless coupe back then. No overdrive, just two dials on the dash, wood veneered dash the width of the car , the centre console was wood veneered instead of machined aluminium. Like that picture pressed steel not RuberyOwenStyle wheels.

That's why I choose that image. I can't stand Rostyles. 

I really wanted a bubble shaped Mazda 121 when they were new.  The looks caused quite a stir at the time but aren't nearly so striking today.

All Autos in the UK I think.

Dundee again. First shot is a posh area somewhere around Roseangle. The others are on the site of Wellgate Street that had just been cleared for the Wellgate shopping centre that in now largely empty except for the odd Junkie and the library.

The Rootes Arrow based Sunbeam Alpine. I'm sure I remember a book describing it as a stripped austerity Rapier. Not that the Rapier is much better remembered. A great shame as they're nice looking cars. Rootes did badge engineering much better than BMC.

On 3/27/2023 at 9:12 AM, wesacosa said:

Really odd FTP at the weekend. Drove down to the Southern meet up.  About 40 miles mostly motorway. Car drove really well, none of the rough idle/cutting out and happy to sit at 70 and not run out of steam at 50-60 so looking like the vac hose was to blame

When I came to leave a few hours later the car started up but was running really rough under load and misfiring. 

Took the dizzy cap off and the graphite contact for the king lead has snapped off.  I have only done about 100 miles since I replaced the dizzy cap and rotor arm to see if it helped with the rough running I had previously seen. I put it down to a duff eBay part and got a lift back home to pick up the old dizzy cap I had saved .  This is where it goes a bit odd.  I put the old dizzy cap on and the exact same thing happened. The graphite tip snapped clean off. I wasn't rough with fitting it or anything like that. 

My first thought was have I the wrong rotor arm.  I posted on the Panda FB forum and someone noticed there are some gouges in the plastic by some of the HT lead twrmninals.  However this photo is of the original dizzy cap which never ran with the new rotor arm and has been on the car for an unknown amount of time but well before my ownership (and no mention of it being changed in any of the posts by @spartacus).   

So dizzy cap A and rotor arm A ran without issue for potentially a long time (although some gouges seen in the dizzy cap)

Cap B and Rotor arm B ran for about 100 miles before FTP. 

Cap A and rotor arm B , graphite tip snapped off during fitting of cap, never ran

All very odd

oh, and the fixed dashboard illumination lasted about 2 miles before it went out 🤔🤣

 

That happened to me more than once with my old Panda. Always on new distributor caps bought from Halfords after a long run. Once happened on the Isle of Mull which was helpful. Just crap parts I reckon. The Graphite contacts don't seem good enough quality to handle a long run and break off flush with the plastic. 

You can just pull the brush out as it's an interference fit spring underneath it and replace it with one from another cap. It's how I got mine running again on Mull after rooting through a garage scrap pile.

The Fiat 133 was sold here for a bit.  Almost totally forgotten.

Wankers in Fog. Driving home and the worst pea souper I've seen in ages descends. Then someone who must have some marvel comics X-Ray vision emerged from the gloom behind me at astonishing speed and tailgates me for the next 2 miles.  But they don't overtake because like me they can't fucking see.  Who the fuck drives that fast in fog you can't see 30 feet and then tailgates. I can only hope they win the Darwin award they richly deserve.

98-01 Suzuki Alto.  I had one off Mr Shitpeas for quite a bit.  I only saw one other in the entire time we had it.   Quite a likeable little car but rust was getting a hold in a big way. Clutch, CV joint woes and a break in sealed it's fate.  

In a compound near me. The Discovery has an impressive array of aerials. The Snowmobile one of many.

22 hours ago, Pieman said:

Is that spare wheel bent?

I've got a feeling the plastic wheel trim is mounted on an old tyre, minus an actual steel rim.  

They don't normally have wheels mounted on the boot so it would make sense. 

The Effa Ideal is not something I'd ever heard of and was on FB marketplace in South America. Effa is a Uruguayan manufacturer building ckd kits of other peoples cars.

Also apparently sold in Italy as the Martin Motors Ideal 1000.