uk_senator

I`d say we`re starting to see the payback for several years of rocketing theft. down here, there's half a million quids worth of Range Rovers, Lexus`, Mitsi`s, Hyundai`s etc getting nicked within a few miles of me every week, add to that 5 years of catalyst thefts, steering wheel theft, & now relentless tool theft from vans.. Its all starting to bite the rest of us. 

Hi all, been a little while since I posted on here, but with good reason.
I've been after another Rover for quite a while since I owned a 600 a couple of years back. Being Ireland based means old Lonbridge products are rare and don't come up for sale very often.
I love old Rovers. There's just something about them. Whether it be their (often) poor build quality, K-series head gasket issues and OAP image their poor reputation really appeals to me. Motoring oddities also hugely appeal to me, so put the two and two together and the Streetwise is born. 
As far as I can recall there hasn't been a Streetwise for sale in Ireland since the summer of 2021. According to the most recent NCT (Irish MOT) statistics for '21, only 6 were presented for the annual roadworthiness test. 
I first became aware of this particular example when I happened to glance into a driveway whilst passing in the summer of 2022. Two weeks later I stopped, knocked the door and handed over my number. A very polite lady answered and said her daughter will be learning to drive in it and so I assumed that was that.
Fast forward to October this year and my phone rings. Assuming a scam call I was reluctant to answer. But answer I did and thank goodness. The Streetwise was for sale, and I've got first dibs! Before the owner could even utter another word I said "yes!" Apparently someone else had enquired and offered €200, so for that exact price it was mine. A car with four wheels, four doors and an engine for €200 in these times of skyrocketing used car prices. Not bad.

That was until I actually went to pick it up. Myself and my old mucka John made the journey to Dublin to meet the new misery machine. I knew it'd been off the road for a few years but hugely underestimated just how much damage a car can sustain sitting outside all of that time with a leaky sunroof. 
The interior was horrendous. Full of cobwebs, moisture and mold. It housed almost the entire Irish population of house spiders and had even began to develop it's own eco-system. I had a cough for about two days after just sitting in it. The pictures below are screenshots from the collection video because I stupidly neglected to take any photo's...

 


Amazingly she fired up after a battery change and with some fresher oil she ran perfectly. The brakes were a little sticky but with a lead boot it changed gear, moved and stopped. Good enough for me!  We rang for recovery who eventually arrived, loaded it up and headed home. I'd bagged myself a real motoring oddity, and in an Irish context, an extremely rare one.



 
The collection video is here. Keep an eye on the channel and on Instagram and Twitter for regular updates.
Cannot wait to get this back on the road!

17.12.2023 Update.

Mum mostly asleep all the time now. All 3 of my sisters are now with her. GP visited this morning and said for her to start taking morphine, as she had an uncomfortable night. Her breathing is very shallow now and we don’t think she’ll make it to Christmas.

Mum’s on her way home now by ambulance . My sister has sat with her all afternoon waiting for the pharmacy to issue her meds so that they can go. They finally issued the wrong meds and closed. How fucking typical of that, not fit for purpose, shit hole. The last time they released her, over 2 months ago, inappropriately and with no meds, because they got lost between pharmacy and ward.
Both sisters that are there, are extremely anxious and upset at what’s ahead, as are we, with no immediate help available if anything happens.

Hospital bed was delivered today, mattress due tomorrow before 3pm and Mum coming home shortly after. First carers visit tomorrow evening. Still can’t believe this is happening.

Sorry , my heads a mess at the moment, I’m sorry you lost your Dad like that but glad you enjoyed that film together and that you didn’t see him afterwards.
When my Dad died last year, I had no intention of seeing him but Mum wanted to and we went and my sisters couldn’t manage the wheelchair for mum, so I had to. Brother didn’t, neither did one sister. He was still warm. He didn’t want me to see him, worried it would be my lasting memory of him. Of course it isn’t but it’s an image that comes back to haunt me now regularly and really wished I hadn’t.
Just had news from sister number 1, bed being delivered tomorrow, Mum will be brought home Thursday, carers going in 4 times a day. Then we wait I guess.

@Wibble Unfortunately I am stuck in the middle of the North Sea but hope to make it home at the weekend. If it is of any use then, contact me, fly up to Glasgow/Edinburgh/Aberdeen and I will pick you up and loan you a car. I am about 100 miles from where you need to be, but closer than where you are.

@Wibble I could loan you the Skoda for a wee bit if you're needing it.
I'm not too far from your Mum's either.

It seems clear now that mum isn’t going to pull through. The hospital are arranging for a hospital bed to be delivered home and hope to get her back there possibly Wednesday, if she makes it that far. They are trying to organise hospice care at home, we should know more tomorrow.
She’s pretty unresponsive now, eating nothing and asleep most of the time.
We are all still struggling to understand how it has gotten to this and can’t get our heads around the fact that, if she’d been seen 4 months ago, we wouldn’t be here. Sorry, I know I’ve said that before but it’s true and we’re finding it impossible to digest.

Said good bye to mum this morning and we’ve made it back to Basingstoke. Had an overwhelmingly sad feeling that I won’t see her again.

God, that’s awful! 
Years ago (2006) my uncle went into hospital for treatment for cancer. He’d had it before but came through it. Basically they did the usual tests then found it was worse than they thought so had to operate. He ended up losing most of his bowel because of how it’d spread. Obviously he had to have a colostomy bag after that… we had our reservations about the lack of action and slowness off the hospital but what happened next really was bad! One day he was in a lot of pain (at home!) and he’d actually ended up passing surgical staples which had ended up in his colostomy bag! 
He never recovered from the cancer. It had spread so much they told him there was no more they could do. We lost him shortly after but to see that man go from my uncle, a big, healthy, happy guy, to a tiny skinny very clearly terminally ill man he was at the end was utterly heartbreaking. 
Some years later another uncle suffered from a burst stomach ulcer. If you don’t know, these are terrible for bleeding and can be incredibly hard to stop. 
The same hospital as above treated him. They eventually got the bleeding to stop but found other health problems related. In the end he lost a leg because of it!  
A short while later the hospital wanted to move him to another hospital (god only knows why!?) but when they did the ulcer started to bleed again. They couldn’t stop it and he bled out and we lost him.
The state of the healthcare system in this country is dire imho. I don’t blame the majority of the staff as they do an incredibly difficult job in terrible conditions but I do blame the overpaid fat cats running the show and the government (all of them regardless of party!) for allowing this to go on and consistently underfunding the whole thing. 
See also the MoD, but that’s another story…     

I think the worst thing though was to see both my uncle’s at the end. A shadow of how they were, and should be still. 
Both men should still be with us today. 
Although, if I’m honest, if I were them I wouldn’t want to finish my time in this life like they did. I’d gladly have chosen to go before it got like that. Sometimes preserving any life isn’t the best thing to do. Sometimes, I’m sure, quality of life has to come into it, and if there’s no quality of life likely after treatment then I really don’t see the point. Let them go peacefully and with dignity.
It’s a bloody awful subject, and not an easy one to talk about tbh. But that’s just my personal opinion and thoughts! I could be totally wrong. My uncles might have even thought differently and wanted to fight to the end?? Who knows. The only person who can make the call really is the person it actually is.    
I really wish, like everyone in these situations I guess, there was something you could do, or a reset button to push or a magic wand to fix it, but there just isn’t. It’s just how life is.

I hope this all gets resolved for you with a positive outcome. And I really hope nothing I’ve said here is upsetting for you or anyone else… it’s honestly not intended to be, just my thoughts and experiences (and rambling nonsense!)

 

Please don’t apologise for rambling Dan, it’s valid and what I’m doing. We’re just struggling with how we’ve got to this. If she’d had treatment following the camera scan 4 months ago, we don’t believe we’d be at this point but, despite her calling the hospital gastro department for results, nothing happened and she never had a call back and ended up not being able to eat and getting so weak she was admitted for malnutrition. Even then, nothing was done to help her, just fluids. This place seem content to manage death, rather then help recovery. I can’t explain how angry we are with NHS Scotland. It is a total repeat of what Dad went through last year.
Mrs W was ok whilst we were with mum, but burst into tears when we left and our boys are in bits. I’m lucky to have a wife who loves her mother in law so much but this shouldn’t be happening. I’m so angry and upset.
 

It’s a tough situation to deal with. Of course as a child, regardless of your age, you will always want your parents around. That’s not how life is though sadly. My grandma was similar, she had been suffering with dialysis for her final years, which at her age was not easy. She went into hospital one time and briefly did ‘go’. She was brought back around but always said after that, she didn’t want to come back again if she ever went again. 
It is an incredibly brave way to be I think. I’m absolutely convinced people know when it’s their time in these situations though. I think sometimes there is a case for going on your own terms when you’re ready.
It’s not easy, at all, on those around you of course but it’s better to be at peace and not suffering anymore than to just keep slogging on sometimes. I know I’d hate to be in the same situation my grandma was in.
Sorry for the rambling! 
I sincerely hope things improve for you all.

Thanks, we’ve always been proud of her, she is an incredible woman. Fortunately she has strong faith and not scared of death and would be with dad. Of course,  we are selfish and would rather she recovered.

We saw mum today and she was very pleased to see us all. Unfortunately, she wants to tell the consultant tomorrow to withdraw all treatment. She says she’s had enough and after almost 2 months in there, just wants to go.
I'm going to the hospital first thing tomorrow with my sisters, so we can hear what the consultant says but, if there’s no chance of a full recovery, which we don’t feel there is, who can blame her?
It’s her choice of course but if the consultant can see any chance of recovery, we hope to change her mind. Not a good day😞
 

Well, we made it. Mrs W & junior didn’t get back from A&E until 2am so was a later start than planned. We got through the blizzards in Cumbria before it got serious and arrived just before 6pm. £30 to park at the hotel, robbing bastards!
Good news though, mum’s CRP count down to 22. Beginning to really feel there is hope. Too late to see her today, so we’ll go after mass tomorrow.

A fine collection of chod. I like the Yugo, I think I`d be tempted to put an X1/9 1500 lump in it for the LOLz, or maybe even an Uno turbo one, for ultimate sleeper status. Anyway, I thought I recognised BX number.. Um..  4 was it? And sure enough, I did, here it is when I saw it in the wild in 2017:

I loved this show together with the A Team and Knight Rider. I would have been between about 4 and 6 when the shows were aired. I remember pretending to be one of the Duke Boys or sometimes Rossco on my wee Bullet bike 😂
My own 1:25 General Lee took a jump too many in my back garden and fell to bits. Thankfully my dad glued all the pieces back together and about 20 years ago I gave it a full restoration. That was in the days before ebay so I made my own decals in Paint on Windows 95!

Yeah that Lee 1 "resto" was a travesty, should have preserved it as found.
I wonder how much ERTL made producing 1:64 models of them?
I well remember jumping my General Lee from one school desk too another, snapping one of the wheels in the process. YEEE-HAW!
Most of mine look like they've been used in an episode or two

I do have a few nice ones though

I also have Cooter's truck

Various Pontiac Bonneville police cars

And the Boss's Caddy - two different interiors are fitted for some reason

I think they made Daisy's Jeep too but not tracked that down

One of the best known scenes, the train jump.

Here’s the car that did it.

This car first appeared in the episode GHOST OF GENERAL LEE and that this photo was taken during the filming of that episode. During the scenes where Rosco is chasing the ghost General around the town square, you can see this car with the same missing side marker lens. Only a few episodes later, this car was wrecked in train jump.
One way to recognize this car is this bent trim. Something happened to this car off screen that damaged the driver side. A piece of trim is now missing. It is never replaced.

 
They have also done a mirror swap on the door. You can tell only the mirror was swapped and not the whole door because you can still see a small nick in the 1 decal.

They never replaced the side marker lens, they just painted over the white. You get a nice close up during the jump.

As the car approaches the ramp and during the jump itself, you see the same missing trim.

Zoom in as the car goes up the ramp and you can see the same replacement side mirror.


 

 
 

This General Lee was labelled as WGL 01. It was one of the longest lasting cars on the show. It went through several different changes and makeovers during the series. After the show was over, this car was sold along with the other remaining Generals.

 


 
It was used for 1st unit and soundstage shots in season 3.


 
All the early cars had some shade of brown or tan interior then when WB took over building them they went to the light tan.
There's a few things to look for to identify this car. The end of the bumper on the driver side is turned downwards. If you look closely, you can see the chromed tray under the hood. And from the end of season 5 until the end of the series, this was the only car with a moved up side mirror and fat 01s on the driver side door.

This car was used in the first 16 episodes filmed for season 3. It was not used in the last 6 episodes filmed for the season. It would appear again at the beginning of season 4, but the car had gone through some changes.
 
Looks like it was repainted, as the decals were now in slightly different positions. The roof text was now lower and closer to the windshield. Roll bar padding was changed.

 
The 01 decals were now a little lower than before.

This car had the dressed up engine bay for under the hood shots. We get a few good looks during season 4.  It’s a 383 engine.

This car was only used in the first 10 episodes filmed for season 4. We wouldn't see this car again until the beginning of season 5, at which point it went through more changes. Wheel well trim was removed, interior was dyed light tan, roll bar padding changed again, and the General Lee letters on the roof were more spaced out.

In the season 5 episode COMRADE DUKE, this car went through more changes. The fat style of 01 decals were put on and this was one of 4 cars that they moved the side mirror up on.

It appeared in about half of the season 7 episodes.

 

Boss’ nephew, Hughie Hogg, owned what appears to be a 1971 Super Beetle (1302 in Europe). It was obviously styled after his uncle's white Cadillac convertible, complete with steer horn hood ornament. In reality, this Beetle was not a Karmann convertible, they just took a hard top car and cut the roof off. How many Beetles were used on the show as Hughie's car and what happened to them?

 

 


It made its first appearance in UNCLE BOSS and was a standard model with torsion bar front suspension, you can tell by the different shaped front.

 
It was used on the sound stage shots.

 
And was used for the second unit driving scenes.

 

The standard Beetle only appeared in one other episode, THE RETURN OF HUGHIE HOGG in season 3. What happened to it after that is unknown.

The Super Beetle also made it's 1st appearance in UNCLE BOSS.

It was mainly used in the junkyard scenes.


 
Like all Hollywood “magnets”, you can see the car was actually being held by a cable that ran through a hole in the bonnet.

 
The Super Beetle returns briefly at the beginning of ARREST JESSE DUKE.

The Super Beetle last appeared in the season 5 episode THE REVENGE OF HUGHIE HOGG.

There were 8 different Uncle Jesse trucks, 3 were F100s. The rest were F250s.
The first one was only used in Georgia. It is said to have been crushed in 1998. Fate - DESTROYED.

The 2nd Jesse truck was the close up truck for the first couple of seasons.

It was heavily damaged in a collision with a General Lee. They scrapped the body and used the chassis of this truck to build the Mean Green Machine. The Mean Green Machine was later blown up in a Fall Guy episode. Fate - DESTROYED.

The 3rd Jesse truck first appeared in season 1 and made it all the way to the final episode.

It was painted brown in the final episode and used as a bad guy truck. This truck is still around today and still has the brown paint job. Fate - SURVIVED.

The 4th Jesse truck was used in season 2 and early season 3. You can spot it by it's yellow interior.

This was the truck that rolled over in ENOS STRATE TO THE TOP. Fate - DESTROYED.

The 5th Jesse truck was the close up truck for seasons 3-7. It was also painted brown in the Dukes last episode.

This truck existed at least up until 1987. It was last seen in an episode of Scarecrow and Mrs. King. It has the same dents, same twisted front bumper and the interior is kept white.  Fate - UNKNOWN.

 
The 6th Jesse truck was used in seasons 4-7. It was also painted brown in the last episode.

This truck was last seen near the end of the final episode. Fate - UNKNOWN.

The 7th Jesse truck appears in seasons 4-6. After the first few episodes of season 6, it is never seen again. Fate - UNKNOWN.

The 8th and final Jesse truck was only used as a Jesse truck in 1 episode, COMRADE DUKE. It’s thought WB only rented this truck because other studios used it as well.

 
Thanks to General Lee Junkyard on Facebook for all this, his geek-levels on this are far beyond my own.