trigger

Randomly we got a message of a lady down my road who got our details from the antique centre because she had her departed husbands old Escort to sell and asked if we knew anyone interested in it, me obviously being a sucker for a old Ford and having just sold the Mondeo agreed to take a look.
I was surprised when she opened the container where it had been stored since 2010!

So the story is her husband used to work for Tescos and cashed in his shares in 1989 to buy this XR3i Cabriolet from Dagenham Motors, It was his pride and joy and he used to go cruising on Southend seafront and around Romford and Dagenham in it during the 90s before getting a company van in 2000 and parked it, his plan was to recommission it when he retired but he sadly passed away in 2021 aged 59 after laying down for a hour as he felt rough and passed away in his sleep, very sad indeed.

For a car which hasn't seen the road for 24 years it seems VERY good, there no rust on the body or arches or behind the kit that i can see, the rear floor has a lot of surface rust but I'm hoping that will clean up ok.

I agreed to buy it so yesterday my mate came over so we could collect it, it was a bit of a faff as the rear brakes had locked on but we managed to drag it onto the trailer, eventually!



The first time it had seen light for 14 years! as you can see it's very of it's period! I personally think it's a Dagenham Motors demonstrator as its shows two previous owners, not one, i know his wife registered after he died but I'm thinking the garage owned it for a bit too, especially as it's all skirted up, shame that the paperwork hasn't turned up yet and carbaba doesn't give keeper change dates anymore as I'd be really interested to know if it had a keeper change in 1989.




What's peoples thought's on the wheels? they are 15" Oscam Windy alloys which have been on it since new, I'm quite tempted to get them refurbished again.

Half leather Recaros! very posh! and check out the hifi!


big Alpine speakers in the car too, just a shame the stereo isn't in it, the lady thinks it's in the loft and will let me know when she finds it. i think it's a special edition model as they only made a few in Aquafoam blue and with the high spec of leather and electric roof back in 1989.

we managed to push it into the garage, tomorrow I'll make a start on seeing what parts i need and the condition of the belt before turning it over.
and here it is in it's glory days when it was brand new

Randomly we got a message of a lady down my road who got our details from the antique centre because she had her departed husbands old Escort to sell and asked if we knew anyone interested in it, me obviously being a sucker for a old Ford and having just sold the Mondeo agreed to take a look.
I was surprised when she opened the container where it had been stored since 2010!

So the story is her husband used to work for Tescos and cashed in his shares in 1989 to buy this XR3i Cabriolet from Dagenham Motors, It was his pride and joy and he used to go cruising on Southend seafront and around Romford and Dagenham in it during the 90s before getting a company van in 2000 and parked it, his plan was to recommission it when he retired but he sadly passed away in 2021 aged 59 after laying down for a hour as he felt rough and passed away in his sleep, very sad indeed.

For a car which hasn't seen the road for 24 years it seems VERY good, there no rust on the body or arches or behind the kit that i can see, the rear floor has a lot of surface rust but I'm hoping that will clean up ok.

I agreed to buy it so yesterday my mate came over so we could collect it, it was a bit of a faff as the rear brakes had locked on but we managed to drag it onto the trailer, eventually!



The first time it had seen light for 14 years! as you can see it's very of it's period! I personally think it's a Dagenham Motors demonstrator as its shows two previous owners, not one, i know his wife registered after he died but I'm thinking the garage owned it for a bit too, especially as it's all skirted up, shame that the paperwork hasn't turned up yet and carbaba doesn't give keeper change dates anymore as I'd be really interested to know if it had a keeper change in 1989.




What's peoples thought's on the wheels? they are 15" Oscam Windy alloys which have been on it since new, I'm quite tempted to get them refurbished again.

Half leather Recaros! very posh! and check out the hifi!


big Alpine speakers in the car too, just a shame the stereo isn't in it, the lady thinks it's in the loft and will let me know when she finds it. i think it's a special edition model as they only made a few in Aquafoam blue and with the high spec of leather and electric roof back in 1989.

we managed to push it into the garage, tomorrow I'll make a start on seeing what parts i need and the condition of the belt before turning it over.
and here it is in it's glory days when it was brand new

Randomly we got a message of a lady down my road who got our details from the antique centre because she had her departed husbands old Escort to sell and asked if we knew anyone interested in it, me obviously being a sucker for a old Ford and having just sold the Mondeo agreed to take a look.
I was surprised when she opened the container where it had been stored since 2010!

So the story is her husband used to work for Tescos and cashed in his shares in 1989 to buy this XR3i Cabriolet from Dagenham Motors, It was his pride and joy and he used to go cruising on Southend seafront and around Romford and Dagenham in it during the 90s before getting a company van in 2000 and parked it, his plan was to recommission it when he retired but he sadly passed away in 2021 aged 59 after laying down for a hour as he felt rough and passed away in his sleep, very sad indeed.

For a car which hasn't seen the road for 24 years it seems VERY good, there no rust on the body or arches or behind the kit that i can see, the rear floor has a lot of surface rust but I'm hoping that will clean up ok.

I agreed to buy it so yesterday my mate came over so we could collect it, it was a bit of a faff as the rear brakes had locked on but we managed to drag it onto the trailer, eventually!



The first time it had seen light for 14 years! as you can see it's very of it's period! I personally think it's a Dagenham Motors demonstrator as its shows two previous owners, not one, i know his wife registered after he died but I'm thinking the garage owned it for a bit too, especially as it's all skirted up, shame that the paperwork hasn't turned up yet and carbaba doesn't give keeper change dates anymore as I'd be really interested to know if it had a keeper change in 1989.




What's peoples thought's on the wheels? they are 15" Oscam Windy alloys which have been on it since new, I'm quite tempted to get them refurbished again.

Half leather Recaros! very posh! and check out the hifi!


big Alpine speakers in the car too, just a shame the stereo isn't in it, the lady thinks it's in the loft and will let me know when she finds it. i think it's a special edition model as they only made a few in Aquafoam blue and with the high spec of leather and electric roof back in 1989.

we managed to push it into the garage, tomorrow I'll make a start on seeing what parts i need and the condition of the belt before turning it over.
and here it is in it's glory days when it was brand new

and lastly the current two, my 1976 Triumph Dolomite 1850, it was owned by a member in our car club who's father had had it new, it was looking very faded and needed 'lifting' back up again but with only 33000 miles and the most original and rust free body i'd seen i had to buy it, I paid proper money for it but i still feel it was cheap as it drives like new and doesn't even rattle or squeak.
 



I'd love to fit a set of Sprint alloys to it but they are really expensive to buy now, especially once you factor in for tyres and wheel nuts.
and last September i bought this Capri 2.0 Laser which i won't go into much detail on as it's all here.
but it's now back on the road and being enjoyed until i get bored and fancy a change again!

Car number 65 was the Volvo 240 2.0 Torslanda, i bought this of a friend for £1000 which won it in a Facebook raffle off some banger racers, thankfully he could see it was worth saving so parked it up until i was chatting to him and he asked if i'd be interested in it.


It only had 48000 miles on the clock but no service history so no idea if that was correct, and even though it had a current mot the brakes were all shot and rear of the sills rotten, 
a LOT of work and time went into it, i felt like i had bit off far too much and regretted buying it more than few times.



I managed to find most the parts at a scrap yard in Norfolk and a couple of months later it looked like this.



with all new brakes, tyres, a service and welding done it went straight through the mot and sold the next day for £3300 to someone in Dorset who promptly put it straight up for sale on Facebook for £6000, it's still not sold. The money from it paid to take the family to Disneyworld Paris which I've just come back from which was far more interesting than this car ever was.

Late 2021 i picked this up from my next door neighbour for £600 as a little project, it had been of the road in his garden for a few years and been used to collect wood in his garden



It was proper minging, i cleaned the crap out of it, fitted a pair of tyres, a new battery, fixed the turbo that had seized and fitted a new screen, moted it, used fit for a few weeks and sold it for £2100 to some random of Fcaebook who wanted it for free...



He sold it straight back on but to someone local to me as i still see it about.
Next was the 1982 Vauxhall Astra 1200 E Mk1, a friend was chatting to a elderly couple in Morrisons who said that had a old car in the garage that needed to go, he gave me their number and i went to see them, the full story is here.
but basically they won it in a competition whilst on holiday in Scarbrough and kept it ever since.

It had been off the road 7 years but look fairly solid so I handed over £2000 and took a gamble.

again i went right though the car and replaced everything that needed doing, it drove really nicely but didn't really engage me, i was just happy to get it back on the road and move it back onto a enthusiast to enjoy, I wasn't very happy about the colour match on the wings and couldn't justify doing it professionally which also bugged me a bit.



I ended up selling it to a lad in our car club who loves it.

I then sold my blue 2014 Grand Cmax 1.6TDCi as i found the car too heavy for a 1.6 115bhp and was gutless and replaced it with a newer shape 2.0 TDCi version which is miles better, yes it's still a modern Ford etc but it's much more of a joy to drive, it's basically a Kuga with 7 seats and not as good looking, especially from the rear, but as a family car that the wife uses it's ideal, I'll add the photos but appreciate they aren't really any interest to the forum.


The next old car was this 1983 VW Golf 1.8 GLi Cabriolet which i bought 18 months ago, It was advertised locally again on my East Coast Retros group for £3000 and i thought it was worth a look for Mrs Trigger to replace the Victor.



It had been 'scened' up a bit with coilovers, bonnet struts and stickers but this was all reversable and the boned of it were good, I've done quite a lot to it now since I've owned it, replaced all the suspension, replaced the interior with a much nicer one from a Clipper and numerous other bits and bobs. It goes tax exempt in April but I might sell it in the summer as I've got more cars than room at the moment, we'll see.




 

A lad i know was selling his Dolomite Sprint, I've wanted one for years and his was my favourite spec and having sold the Marina and Granada i had a bit of cash so a price was agreed and we drove to Potters Bar to take a look, again i bought it.


I removed all the stickers, started replacing missing bit and went right though the car and really enjoyed it, i still say a good Sprint is a wonderful car, unfortunately a good Sprint is hard to find and although mine was far from bad it wasn't quite as nice as i hoped either.


I felt that i was working on it more than driving it, every weekend involved me having to try and fix or replace something and by the time the rear main oil seal started leaking for a 3rd time my patience started to get to it's end, i turned up late for a friends funerial as i lost power to the starter and i just got a bit pissed off with it.
I did get to take it to Cowley where it started it's life

and i had it on display outside the doors of the Gaydon Motor Museum (with thanks to the Marina club again)

and once all finished it looked beauiful.


 
I ended up selling it last year for a lot of money which helped the burden and the new owner absolutely loves it and has the money to sort the oil leaks so all ends well

It was early lockdown and i needed something to cheer me up and when i saw this 1962 Vauxhall Victor come up for sale in our group for £2200 locally and i knew the owner i thought it be something to play with for a bit.

I had it delivered as technically i shouldn't have been driving about at the time, seems ridiculous looking back now doesn't it but such was life at the time.
Again i messed about with it, sorted some bodywork, new tyres and a few mechanical issue and got it looking and running nice and we took it to a few shows and a few local trips out once lockdown eased off a bit





and whilst it looked very pretty i didn't like driving it, the 3 speed box was annoying either being too high a gear or too low, the panel fitment was a bit crappy and the steering box and all the bushes under the car were worn out so it was a bit to drive in a straight line, the novelty wore out quickly, especially as technically i bought it for Mrs Trigger and she couldn't get on with the column shift

so that got sold to a local mechanic for £3300, this photo brings me to the next car.

Next along in 2018 was my Skoda, as previously said the Focus turned out to be shite so i binned that for a loss and found this 2008 Fabia 1.9TDi Sport locally on Autotrader, 1 owner from new and 44000 miles, I paid £2600 for it and have been using this as my daily to and from work since, other than normal wear and tear It's been faultless, it's now on about 78000 miles so not that high still, i really rate these cars and would have another one.

Meanwhile a lady in our East Coast Retros group asked if anyone would be interested in her Fathers old Granada that had sat in the garage 10 years after he died and as her mother was going into a home they needed to sell it on, a few banger racers were circling so i got asked if I'd like to take a look at it, i think this most be some kind of code word for "buy it" !

so £400 later i owned a 1989 Granada Scorpio 2.9i...
I threw just over a grand at it, replaced lots of stuff and a lot of hours and it turned out looking pretty smart



It was a lovely thing to drive, very smooth and felt much newer than it was and had a good sound to it but i never found it particularly exciting or engaging to drive so once lockdown started i didn't see the point on hanging onto it or paying road tax on something i couldn't use so i stuck it on ebay and got £2600 for it, the last heard was that someone paid £5500 for it earlier last year from a dealer.

Next up was one of my biggest projects, this 1984 Morris Ital 575 Van, my same friend who i got the Sierra off rang me to say the barn the van was in was being sold and it needed to go, did i want to buy it?. I'd known the van since 1994 when i used to work with my friend and it been of the road since 1993 and in the barn since around 1999...

I went down and we got it started quite easily and i agreed on £800 and he delivered it on the same day as the Dolomite went.


what followed was two months of working in the garage getting favours of friends and my dad in getting it back on the road again.






I won't bore you too much as there be a thread on here with more info on it



I took it to Devon for the Morris Marina Nationals in 2018, over 700 miles and the van was faultless, me on the other hand was a broken man, sitting in a traffic jam on the A303 outside Stonehenge on a hot summers day was worse than torture! and the low ratio rear diff where it screamed it bollocks out at 60 mph was the tipping point, so i ended up selling it to a Marina club member

Next up in 2015 was this 1991 Sierra 1.8 LX, I wasn't planning on buying it (Yeah that happens alot!) but a old friend of mine needed to sell it after it had sat in his barn about 7 years, i gave £250  for it and he delivered it for me.
 

A lot of work was done sorting out the fuel system and carb, genuine cossie alloys were bought for £25 so i refurbished them all and fitted new tyres and a wheel arch wa spainted and it looked quite smart



I used it for work for a while but i had a few issues with the carb that i couldn't get to the bottom off and sold it on here to a serial shitter for £900 i believe
Now i can't remember what happened here but i went from a nice pair of Cortinas to a knackered Dolomite 1500 SE...


A lady asked on Facebook if any would be interested in it and i was there the next morning! £800 was handed over and i drove it home and promptly broke down with a cooked wheel bearing and needed a tow from my dad


I spend ages doing this up, loads of welding on the front valance, loads of paintwork and went right through it mechanically, it was a real transformation once finished.











Here is the car in 1986 with the original owner

That car looked so nice once finished, I ended up selling to a enthusiast in 2017 who still takes it to shows, a week after selling it i saw it on display at the NEC classic car show on one of the main entrances 

 

in late 2012 I got offered this 1985 Suzuki Alto FX on Flickr, the owner, at the time saw a photo I'd took of it outside his house and said that the head gasket had gone and wondered if i wanted it for £120, obviously i said yes and he bought it round mine with a trail of smoke behind and i set about replacing the head gasket and skimming the head.
 



but once all finished at turned out pretty well, I'm not sure why but i sold the Golf and Mrs Trigger then took the Alto as her daily driver, i think she liked it as she only worked a few miles away from home and it was easy to park at her work.



I didn't really like it though, it was woefully slow and felt like a stone was enough to write the car off and when a lorry pulled out in front of her one day i decided it was probably time to sell it so i think i got about £600 to it, i ended up selling it to a friend who broke the oil pump and it spend years sitting behind a local garage until recently when i saw it on ebay for about £3000

Meanwhile early 2012 i decided i need a old Ford in my life and whilst trawling Ebay i came across this 1974 Cortina 2000 XL in Evesham, the photos we are shite as you'd expect

but i decided to bid anyway and won it for £2100, the next weekend we drove down and collected it.




It made it home fine apart from one seized caliper that made me pull into oncoming traffic traffic whenever i braked!
I had this car for 4 years and done a LOT of work on it, It's been to a Shitefest in Wales too which was brilliant.

the interior was a mess, the front seats had been replaced with Alfa 156 seats and the rear seats painted with sticky cream paint, i had the original front seats repaired and cleaned all the paint of the rears.


I also bite the bullet and had the car resprayed too and a pair of front wings fitted 


and when all finished it looked like this.



What a nice car! When my wife got pregnant in 2015 i got a wobble on and decided that i had to sell all my cars so my dad bought it off me and still owns it, but there's still a lot of cars before that happened!

It's now in paint, the colour looks amazing! 






They've gone above and beyond my expectations, especially for the price quoted, I'm so happy with it! The colour match is bang on too. 

Once all fitted back up and with the new graphics on it will look mega! 

I've not done much with this recently but I have booked it into a local bodyshop who done the paintwork my old Sprint a couple of years ago to get both the sides of the car painted and rear valance.
A lot of expense but it's still less than the cars worth seeing the crazy prices Fords sell for now so it seemed like a good investment, the car was dropped off last week and I've had a few updates so far.






the couple of rusty bits cut and out replaced and then the whole side sanded back and the dents and scrapes repaired.






Above and beyond what i was expecting! i was just expecting the side mouldings to be taped off and the rust filled so fair play to them, i can't wait to see the finished result!

I'm not very good at keeping up to date on this but there's not much to say really, I've done about 250 miles now and apart from that condenser FTP incident back in December it's been perfect, today a garage i use set the tracking up for me and it was miles out, both front wheels were massively towing out which would explain why it felt shite to drive
 
the transformation is unbelievable, the wheel is now straight and it just feels so much more planted.
Anyway i haven't took any nice photos since i finished it so it felt a good opportunity to take some as the sun was out.
  

I've been a bit crap at updating this but stuff has been going on with it, a dropped the car off with the welder i use who kindly patched in a new strut top plate i bought from the Capri club, my dad took the photos with his potato cam.





It's hard to tell from the photos but he done a really neat job of it and charged me £50 which i thought was very fair, I didn't take many photos of the finishing but i needed the smallest bit of filler on the welds and with a lick of paint it looks much more presentable, and stronger!

Compare before and after and it's much better!


Unfortunately the drive home from the garage didn't go without fault, it was missing and spluttering all the way down the A12 until i got to a slight incline and struggled to get above 50mph up it so i pulled into a garage about 2 minutes from my house where it just died and wouldn't start. 😒

I just couldn't get it to idle without dying straight away again, so good old dad got a call for a tow home, we was certain it was fuel related so checked all the obvious things like pump, flow, pipes and then stripped the new carb down finding a load of brass filings inside thinking they had blocked it.

but it was to no avail, the guy who welded it said to try the condenser as that can give the same symptoms and though i'd already replaced it with a brand new one i ordered another intermotor one for £7 and would you believe it, it only fixed it straight away! 2nd times this year i've broken down on the A12 with a cheap ignition part!
It was also featured in this months Retro Ford magazine, although they got the colour wrong!

 

I've still been pretty busy on this, last weekend dad came over and helped me change the valve stem seals, they were absolutely shot, it took most the day using the compressor route with the head on but it worked and now there's no smoke at all. 


I also fitted a new electric aerial which was a faff as a fuse had blown behind the ignition column that I didn't know about, eventually sussed it out and now works, the rear orginial speakers were rotted out too so swapped them out for some new ones. 


Then today it was MOT day! I won't lie, I was proper anxious about this as I hadn't even driven it before! I need not have worried though. 


It was a new garage about 10 miles away down the A12 but they were a great pair of lads who own old Fords and were very understandable with the old cars which is what I like, it flew threw though, just a verbal to sort the welding probably on the strut top.
The only fatality was the rear axle cover sprung a big leak which is apparent common with them, £65 for a new one with a gasket and bolts so not the end of the world. 



So all in all a pretty good result I'd say! 
 

More progress on this, lots of jobs have been getting done over the last week, mostly painting the alloys and getting new Nexen tyres fitted

And I had a new front plate from Retro Plates arrive to match the rear.


Yesterday dad came round for the day and we really cracked on with the brakes, they've all been replaced now, had to replace some of the lines but that's to be expected, the oil pump seal then decided to pour out so we quickly swapped that out with a new one I'd bought

Also finished setting the carb back up and it's now running really nicely!









unsurprisingly i think the valve stem seals are toast as it's chucking out blue smoke on start up and when you rev it after idling for a few minutes which is a pain, i doubt it will pass the mot like that so that will be the next job to do.

As i posted on the News 24 thread I've just repaired both front and rear bumpers, they had been bashed a bit and have come out surprisingly well, I'm waiting on a new bracket for the rear as that was a bit managed.


That dent is very annoying too as that wing be perfect if it wasn't for that!


chrome tailpipe will make it go quicker


A friend messaged me to say he found a pair of Laser headrests in his mums shed if i wanted them for £20! I was over the moon!


So much better, and the rocker cover, rad panel and timing cover as come back from being powder coated and now mostly fitted back on

That strut top is a job for another day, I might have to farm that job out once it has a mot, It now runs straight of the key too although it's not set up quite yet so only ran it for about a minute so far. and that's pretty much up to date now!

after the interior, it was exterior time, the best part of any project!










I couldn't believe how much better a bath made it look!

and i gave it a touch up and ran a mop over it.


I've spent so much time on ebay and Facebook just souring the broken or missing bit, side repeater lamp, boot spoiler plug, head rests, fog light switch, just silly bits like that.

I also fitted a brand new 32/36 DGAV Weber carb, for the sake of £280 it wasn't worth messing about with the completely seized and gummed up one, same as the radiator 

So my mate in his excitement wanted to check if the engine was seized or not, so we pulled the plugs out, poured some WD40 down the pours got my big breaker bar on the crank and gently rocked it, it was tight at first which was a worry but then it started to move, result! my mate said the pistons were going up and down freely so that was good news, unfortunately though what i hadn't realised is that whilst the bottom was turning, the belt had stripped its teeth and the top wasn't! Thank god these are non-interreference engines!

What i hadn't noticed was that the alloy water pump and thermostat housing had badly corroded and all fallen inside the pulleys jamming them up! so it all got striped down, completely cleaned up, everything replaced and new belt fitted



Whilst i waited for parts to arrive i made a start cleaning the interior which was quite mouldy and musty



Shame about the seat wear, the head rests are a later story but i never did find the originals!

I wasn't going to bother but as a few of seem interested i thought I'd start a thread on the Capri that i bought last month.
It all started when a lady in the village who knows my wife asked her if I'd be interested in her husbands relatives old Capri they have in a garage, both him and his wife have died of old age and they have inherited the property and this old Capri had been in the garage for 20 years since he gave up driving at 83 and it was now being a 'burden', her words, not mind.
The car was over a hour away near Harlow so i shot down there to visit the ladies mother in law who was at the bungalow sorting it out, she gave me the key to the garage and told me to take a look whilst she made me a cup of coffee.
This is was i viewed when i opened the up n over door.






I admit i got a bit excited at this point! the story is what he bought the car new in 1986, used it up until 2003 where he got Parkinson's and was too ill to drive anymore racking up 95000 miles, whilst he maintained the car well he probably would have benefitted from parking sensors these days!
The lady said she'd been offered £900 by a neighbour but thought it was a bit low, i offered £2000 and she was more than happy! a few days later by mate helped me collect it.

Access wasn't great as it was at the rear garden with a short drive with no room for pulling the car out easily and onto a road that was rat run and blind pulling out on, nothings easy!


fortunately my mates truck managed to drag it out with locked brakes and big hammers!

we then dragged it backwards down the roads, swapped ends and pulled it into a nearby school entrance and onto the trailer


on the way back we got lost and managed to go past the original dealers, Gates in Harlow so we pulled in a got a photo!


eventually we managed to drag it into my garage, phew! that was hard work!

Thanks Dave! 😀
So yes, this afternoon it went on the ramp of truth...

this was also the first time i had actually driven the car! I need not to have worried, it drove really really nicely, smooth and quiet, unlike a OHV Ford of that period! It's not very quick but it is only a 1196cc after all but it's not awful either.
The MOT was also a success! the emissions was a little high but the tester managed to get it though and remarked how solid the car was all round, phew! I celebrated by taking the long  way home to get some photos, apart from the poor paint match it's really smart, get ready for the photo dump... 3, 2, 1, GO!