R1152

Errrr... I never open my downstairs curtains. Ever. 
Nor do one or two of my neighbours. 

Throwing the tail out on the 530i when it hit a patch of Devil's Semen on a wet slip road - it could then have meant either facing the direction I came in, hitting a barrier to my left or rolling down an embankment into the path of numerous artics heading for the A1 at 56mph on my right. Somehow I corrected it and then calmly carried on.
When I got to work I shat my ring off.

Ah, that's what those things are!  I've wondered for years...

The chap who owned the garage in the village (it was a family business) told me when I had my R16 that the R16 showed up just how bad the contemporary British offerings were, without being mental like a DS - all-alloy engines, electric cooling fan, five bearing crankshaft, load-compensated braking at the rear and a ride no British car could touch. 

I had a 51-plate one given to me by my sister, in the same way she gave me her G-reg 5 Campus.
It was shockingly built compared to the Renault, but my goodness it was fun to drive. Several happy commutes on the A1 in mid-winter in it, with a kind of cosy warmth from the heater my BMW 5er can't manage. Not that economical on a run (the BMW matches it) but better around town.
It now does sterling service as a shed, because I can't bring myself to scrap it.
Would I have another? Hell yeah I would.

Bloke in a Mk. IV Zephyr at
Can you imagine the exchange now? Some "citizen journalist" filming the harassment on his mobile to put on FaceTwat later?

We do: but should we leave behind a literally toxic legacy for our descendants to deal with just so we can have a bit of fun? I know this seems so old-fashioned to say these days, but isn't it just a bit, y'know... selfish?

Or berks doing a "tunnel blast"...
Rest of your post, @St.Jude - absolutely superb, considerate and thoughtful advice: "I commend this to The House."

At this point I could muddy the waters with "Mk. III or Mk. IV Exec?" but we'll stick with the Mk. IV (which would be my choice too) 

Ooh, thanks for that - I thought it was across the range. Happy to be corrected!
I do remember the odd juxtaposition of the front seat/gearchange option; individual seats plus floor change as an option on the Zephyr, with a bench and column change an option on the Zodiac (or has my mind tricked me again?)
And from the days when big cars came in COLOUR!!

They were rare in the 80s because they rotted so quickly that most had gone for scrap by the time they were ten years old - if the crap "Essex" V-engines hadn't failed already. My father's one was propped up to about 1990 by both his welding skills and it getting a short motor at seven years old.
Sadly, the Mk. IV was revolutionary rather than evolutionary compared to the previous big Fords and suffered badly from Dagenham getting major interference from Dearborn in the shape of one Harley Copp, God rot his socks. Says it all that its replacement came from Cologne.

They were rare in the 80s because they rotted so quickly that most had gone for scrap by the time they were ten years old - if the crap "Essex" V-engines hadn't failed already. My father's one was propped up to about 1990 by both his welding skills and it getting a short motor at seven years old.
Sadly, the Mk. IV was revolutionary rather than evolutionary compared to the previous big Fords and suffered badly from Dagenham getting major interference from Dearborn in the shape of one Harley Copp, God rot his socks. Says it all that its replacement came from Cologne.

"1970 facelift" model - now with a (dummy) grille that matched the Zodiac's.

I wonder if two of my ex-colleagues were on duty at both venues?

thats pretty much what Invalid carriages where before the full bodied machines  

but I assume what you mean is has anyone turned a Model 70 into a harley davidson type tricycle?
sadly yes that has been done

this thing used the driveline/rear end out of a Model 70

There isn't too much wildly exciting going on at the moment because so much time is spent finishing things to the proper finished standard. This rarely results in anything worth photographing. This is the finished brake valve which is tested and ready to bolt on.  You will note that there is very little difference to the one that has been junked despite soaking up many days' of effort.

And these are the mirrors. They don't look much different to the last picture although the poor No1 apprentice has been standing for hours dressing them up. They are now getting close to being buffed. The glass isn't glass because the mirros need to be convex to make them even a tiny bit useful so we were trying some plastic ones. I for one am not impressed.

And there are lots of pipes to insulate. We are good and pure and holy we don't agree with the use of artificial, man-made fibres. We only use wholesome, natural fibres for our work. .

Some pipes already insulated with Whole Earth Natu-String. I need to get some whipping twine to make a nicer job of the ends.

I got the deck finished off, well, screwed down and then spent an age rebating the end of the planks so the piece of angle iron that finishes off the deck and protects the end of the planks sits flush to the top surface. The plug cutter fell to pieces so I need to buy a new one so I can plug the screw holes and make it look pretty.

You can probably spot in that photo that the wings are sort of held in place too. Because these waggons were converted from solids to pneumatics in period there were all sorts of ways to hold the wings on and very few of the period efforts looked very nice at all. We decided that the best thing to so was copy the brackets on the S4 because Sentinel made them so they might have made these the same. Someone who wasn't me stood for a few days TIGging these together so they looked like the ends had been forged. This is the rear one.

And this is the front one. This one needed to be a bits jinkier because you had to dodge around the chain. There needs to be a set of brackets made for the top of the wing to steady it.

The sharp eyed may also notice that in all that black another black thing has appeared. This is the chain oiler. On later ones these were cast aluminium but on the Super they were fabricated from eighth plate. This was handy because they were a doddle to make and gave No1 apprentice more experience gas welding. These are exactly as per the Sentinel design. We are just waiting for the castings of the valve body and the drip rail (which pokes out the bottom of the box)to come back from the foundry to finish them. These bits are often missing because people ran the chains until they were completely buggered and lashing around to they would be whipped off by the chains.

And the offside one. Lift the lid against the springs and swing it to the side, fill the box with oil and then drip it on the road. There will be a needle valve to control the flow of oil and to shut them off. Note also the offside wing brackets are there too.

This is the new front apron which was cut from 16swg rather than the 14 we used for the first effort. This makes it much easier to work with but isn't as fragile as the original spec of 18 gauge. The inside face has just been painted because access it not good once it is on. Now we need to fit this (again) then the work of making the cheek plates can start again. Underneath the apron plate is the 10 sheets of 1mm sheet steel for cladding the sides of the body. Whoopee.

And after probably getting on some sort of watch list because we bought so much gun blue this is the cladding getting somewhere near done. I don't think gun blue is really the way to blacken as much steel as this but there isn't much alternative these days (unless anyone knows better in which case speak up). It is a complete pig to photograph - well, it is if you are as crap as I am with a camera. Please note the tight fit of the cladding around the various fittings which means the shame plates can be quite small and this makes me happier. The brass band on the bottom isn't fitted yet which is why you can see the welding clamps.

Damn tight. Despite the streaky nature of the finish (which looks worse on camera than it does in the flesh) I am pleased with how this has panned out.

Most of the shame plates are back from the cutters so I'll blue these then fit them this weekend. We managed to get some period looking self tappers to fit them but the screw heads will need bluing too. This is one just sitting there to show how tight you can make things if you get someone with a plasma cutter to do the job. It would be a massive pain in the arse doing things like this by hand.

Throttle valve on for the last time and the steam pipe in. There is a bit of tin bashing required now to make a nice looking heat shield to save the skin on your knee.

This is the top piece of cladding which hasn't been blued yet. There is to be a flanged brass band around the top which hides the join between the top ring and the cladding. There is then a funny truncated conical ring that covers up the nuts and also holds the boiler top in place to make everything look real nice and purdy.
The bluing on the cladding looks really horrid in this photo. God knows why. Also I don't know why the perspex template is sittling on top of the boiler.

And that's about it. The only other thing that happened was that the motor in the tyre changer went phut which was annoying because we were changing some tyres at the time. The motor is now repaired and waiting to go back in. Top Chinese quality.

 

Sounds like an episode of Top Gear in the Clarkson/Hammond/May era.

I think that's a superb idea.
I'd watch it.

Every day a schoolday re: the Renault 4s 🙂
@LightBulbFun With regard to this photo, what are the two cars behind the leading car?

I can understand LBF's frustration when myths and errors get perpetuated by people who should really know better though - in my own little field of interest I've had to combat that, even to the extent of being told I'm wrong because the English-speaking bit of the Internet says otherwise.
If @LightBulbFun is doing a book on Invacars and invalid carriages in general, I will certainly put my name down for a copy.

I can understand LBF's frustration when myths and errors get perpetuated by people who should really know better though - in my own little field of interest I've had to combat that, even to the extent of being told I'm wrong because the English-speaking bit of the Internet says otherwise.
If @LightBulbFun is doing a book on Invacars and invalid carriages in general, I will certainly put my name down for a copy.

No. You do not think that. Stop it. Stop it now.
It's as big a commitment as you want it to be. If you want to make millions* like Dollywobbler is quite clearly making then yes, there's a lot of hustling involved. But, if you want it to sit there on the internet as an opus to the Invacar, so that other like minded weirdos aficionados or people who have had their perversion interest tickled by the sight of an Invacar can actually learn about them, then it will be what it is. A reference for the greater good.
You have all of this information, you have all of this knowledge, and it's just stuck inside your head. You have the ability, you have a charisma about you that is different to other people. You're different to me, you're different to Iain, you're different to @Kiltox, you're different to idriveaclassic, you're different to everyone. But there is a lid for every pot, and while you won't be everyone's cup of tea, you should never believe that you should be everyone's cup of tea. You are you because of who you are, and the major thing I think everyone gets told when doing the YouTube is be yourself. Which, when you consider these knobheads who make videos of the same shite going OMG HOW FAST CAN I GO FRU MACCYD'S DRIVE THRU BRO - well I don't know.
Impart your knowledge and wisdom of the subject to YouTube, and see how it goes. You will get arseholes and knobheads taking the piss, but you know what - they haven't put themselves out there. So fuck them. If you have confidence and a belief in what you are doing, then the words of those people you are worried about (which we're all worried about when we put something out in to the public domain) shouldn't matter.
You don't have to ad lib, you can write a script, and you can practice. It'd do wonders for your public speaking, although that said having been introduced to many a light bulb by you on the Tuesday calls you don't seem to struggle with that. Plus, really, you've a lot of people here who would be happy to lend an eye or an ear to anything you want to put out and give you feedback.
I think you could do something really cool and (importantly) really helpful to the wider car community. I'd back you on it.
*based purely on the fact he can manage to drive a car willingly that will only provide 20mpg on a good day

I can understand LBF's frustration when myths and errors get perpetuated by people who should really know better though - in my own little field of interest I've had to combat that, even to the extent of being told I'm wrong because the English-speaking bit of the Internet says otherwise.
If @LightBulbFun is doing a book on Invacars and invalid carriages in general, I will certainly put my name down for a copy.

I can understand LBF's frustration when myths and errors get perpetuated by people who should really know better though - in my own little field of interest I've had to combat that, even to the extent of being told I'm wrong because the English-speaking bit of the Internet says otherwise.
If @LightBulbFun is doing a book on Invacars and invalid carriages in general, I will certainly put my name down for a copy.

@LightBulbFun
 

You have a bag in the same colour as the vehicle.