Six Cylinders Motoring Notes - Progress with the Mini Mayfair, if a little slow.

[wuvvum]

7 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

the Merc T1 Luton we hired from Budget back in 1993 to move house

And in what year did you arrive at the new house? 

[/Cavcraft] 

[Zelandeth]

1 minute ago, wuvvum said:

And in what year did you arrive at the new house? 

[/Cavcraft] 

Judging from the surroundings, about 1870.

Better than the Renault Traffic from the next house move...which we eventually figured out on the third or fourth trip out simply didn't *have* a second gear any more...we just didn't repeatedly fail to find it!  Using back street van hire places is always a gamble...That was a C plate van...Still being hired out in 1999.

[Tadhg Tiogar]

7 hours ago, wuvvum said:

REV was smoking a lot less today, and Dolly doesn't seem to smoke at all.

I'm sure that can be "rectified"....

[Six-cylinder]

8 hours ago, wuvvum said:

REV was smoking a lot less today, and Dolly doesn't seem to smoke at all.

Rev only smoked because we used up the recovered fuel from the leaking Peugeot 50cc and it must have added two stroke oil from its tank before petrol fell out of the carb. 

[LightBulbFun]

another awesome weekend had  

many thanks to @Mrs6C and @Six-cylinder for hosting us, and it was awesome to meet with other shitters once more  

and many thanks to Mrs6c for fitting the new fuel line and temporary fuel tank to REV one more thing checked off the list, slowly but surely getting there  

it was very awesome to be able to pootle about in REV once more  

and then on the 2nd day we got finally Dolly to idle! and so we where able to put here into drive and take her for a spin around the field for the first time since Mrs6c got her  

and on Saturday night/Sunday morning we spotted this Bond equip  

it was also good to have REV going as it meant other shitters could experience an invacar  which is almost half the fun of owning one LOL

and by the end of the weekend she had clocked up a good few more miles! so she has done over 25 miles just ambling around the FoD since I got her  

[Six-cylinder]

14 hours ago, Six-cylinder said:

The Astravan proved popular especially after the PAS self cured!

Over the weekend how many miles do you think it drove around our 10 acre field with different people trying it.

If you had asked me I would have guessed at 10 miles but alerted by somebody driving the van I checked the mileage at the end of the day. 57.9 miles seems a lot to me going round a field!

[beko1987]

4 minutes ago, Six-cylinder said:

If you had asked me I would have guessed at 10 miles but alerted by somebody driving the van I checked the mileage at the end of the day. 57.9 miles seems a lot to me going round a field!

You'll have to test it by counting how many laps it takes you to do 57.9 in another vehicle, then do the same on the van to confirm... 

[Talbot]

A very quick google earth measure would seem to indicate that a lap of the field is approx. 0.4 miles, with a "sunday" lap being about 0.3.

That would mean it did 144 full laps.  Or an awful lot of wheelspin.  Doesn't sound right...  If you'd asked me how many laps it had done I would have guessed at 50-60 perhaps.

[quicksilver]

3 minutes ago, Talbot said:

A very quick google earth measure would seem to indicate that a lap of the field is approx. 0.4 miles, with a "sunday" lap being about 0.3.

That would mean it did 144 full laps.  Or an awful lot of wheelspin.  Doesn't sound right...  If you'd asked me how many laps it had done I would have guessed at 50-60 perhaps.

144 laps seems plausible when you consider how many hours we were there and how much of that time it spent on the move. If you said 8 hours of action each day, that's fewer than ten laps an hour on average. It's a decent van really and ideal for ragging round the field.

Another fantastic and very successful weekend and it was great to see the new faces joining in and enjoying it so much. The highlight had to be when Dolly moved under her own power for the first time and we had multiple Invacars buzzing around together. I had a proper 'Double-take Brothers' moment, looking out of the windscreen and seeing an Invacar, then looking down and remembering I was also driving an Invacar! It was really weird experiencing one with a steering wheel after getting used to handlebars. Also good to prove that I can physically fit in and drive an MX5 (cheers @hairnet) even though I can't see where I'm going

[beko1987]

I was in the van for maybe 20/30 laps just on Saturday either driving or as a passenger. Wheels pin is a good shout though, that would skew the figures. Don't think there was that much wheelslip though?... 

@Ghostywas in the back of the van for some of them too

[Inspector Morose]

Random photos in no particular order.

Good weekend out. Will do again. 13.7/10

 

[LightBulbFun]

4 minutes ago, Inspector Morose said:

Random photos in no particular order.

Good weekend out. Will do again. 13.7/10

 

some awesome well taken photographs there  

"(C) mundanefoto" gave me a good chuckle  (as did @Talbot IIRC?'s "Triumph slag I mean stag"  )

[paulplom]

Great photos. The next fod is my next aim with the mx5.

[Slowsilver]

1 hour ago, beko1987 said:

I was in the van for maybe 20/30 laps just on Saturday either driving or as a passenger. Wheels pin is a good shout though, that would skew the figures. Don't think there was that much wheelslip though?... 

@Ghostywas in the back of the van for some of them too

The van would certainly spin its front wheels fairly easily, particularly on the long grass in the field, and judging by the amount of enthusiastic* driving it suffered it wouldn't surprise me if a fair percentage of that mileage didn't equate to forward motion.
 

[chaseracer]

Fairly typical for an Ashtray commercial, then ?

[Dick Cheeseburger]

Looks like lots of fun and great to see six wheels rolling together finally. Rev is rocking the increasing rat look - get the old girl scrubbed LBF!

[beko1987]

1 hour ago, Slowsilver said:

The van would certainly spin its front wheels fairly easily, particularly on the long grass in the field, and judging by the amount of enthusiastic* driving it suffered it wouldn't surprise me if a fair percentage of that mileage didn't equate to forward motion.
 

I did it a fair bit just pulling away! On my car the bite point is right at the top of the pedal! On le van it's about halfway out of the pile of the carpet

[LightBulbFun]

38 minutes ago, Dick Longbridge said:

Looks like lots of fun and great to see six wheels rolling together finally. Rev is rocking the increasing rat look - get the old girl scrubbed LBF!

yeah I dont like how dirty she has gotten, If I had known she would be standing for a year, I would have not parked her horizontally to the hedgerow! (which is why I think she got so grubby, as Dolly was parked perpendicular to the hedge row and has clearly not got anywhere near as grubby!) 

thankfully fibreglass does not rust!

there was a plan hatched late Saturday night to on sunday throw some not so sad looking head lights on her, give her a good scrub and then someone with any car insurance to take her for a quick spin on some actual tarmac, for a better assessment of things, but it never came to fruition sadly (but understandably so since REV got all the attention on Saturday, it took a surprisingly long time to fit what is a simple fuel line! and Sunday was Dolly's time to shine   )

 

who is it here that really likes to clean cars?  

 

but speaking of when REV was clean, did have an amusing moment when seeing what photos I took at the FoD, and how my phone automatically categorised them and other photos on my phone

 

"Sports car"

[Ghosty]

I'll vouch it was rather easy to spin the wheels in first in the van before you got used to the clutch. You'd barely be moving and the speedo would be reading 20. 

[richardmorris]

The Gaffer.

[richardmorris]

Wacky races .

[Dick Cheeseburger]

10 minutes ago, LightBulbFun said:

yeah I dont like how dirty she has gotten, If I had known she would be standing for a year, I would have not parked her horizontally to the hedgerow! (which is why I think she got so grubby, as Dolly was parked perpendicular to the hedge row and has clearly not got anywhere near as grubby!) 

thankfully fibreglass does not rust!

there was a plan hatched late Saturday night to on sunday throw some not so sad looking head lights on her, give her a good scrub and then someone with any car insurance to take her for a quick spin on some actual tarmac, for a better assessment of things, but it never came to fruition sadly (but understandably so since REV got all the attention on Saturday, it took a surprisingly long time to fit what is a simple fuel line! and Sunday was Dolly's time to shine   )

 

who is it here that really likes to clean cars?  

 

but speaking of when REV was clean, did have an amusing moment when seeing what photos I took at the FoD, and how my phone automatically categorised them and other photos on my phone

 

"Sports car"

Well the number plate shouts sports car... ?

When's Dolly getting her plates? 

[richardmorris]

Yes madam, it’s a nice little runner, no rust issues.

[richardmorris]

Bamford called, he’s disowning this one.

[richardmorris]

Autoshite Wurzels- I’ve got a brand new working dumper truck.

[wuvvum]

The only issue with that dumper truck is that there is only one person (Talbot) who is able to get the bloody thing to start.  Much like the tractor will only fire up with Mrs6C in the driver's seat.  'Tis strange.

[High Jetter]

Maybe it's a key issue? Sounds like a loada fun, wish I could have been there.

[beko1987]

Ha, I did an asm quote on the van at the weekend, seems @Six-cylinder has some profit in the old tub even when broken.

Seems they've seen my enquiry, I must have let it auto fill my real email address

[Six-cylinder]

Today started with the Collection of Andyrew’s Suzuki SJ to my place so he can take our VP1500 into his workshop. First try of Mrs6C’s “Timmy” trailer made for cars of this size. It tows very well but notes for the future, ramp arrangement needs sorting out, winch needs adding and tie down points need adding.

[Six-cylinder]

First run in my Peugeot 504 Cabriolet – It did not go well

The Peugeot 504 Cabriolet started easily, jacking and checking the brakes there was some minor binding but we decided to give it a run up the road with @Andyrew following me in my CLK and see which brakes got warm. The car gathers pace nicely showing 37 mph, then I remembered it has been converted to a 5 speed gearbox and the speedo under reads badly so I was guessing at 50 mph. We reached the turn round point 1 mile away and the car was running well and the only thing I had noticed was a bit of wheel shake that I put down to old tyres that had been sitting around in one spot.

Wheel shake eased on the way back that I thought was the tyres getting used to being round again. ¼ mile from home and all hell let loose, violet shudder followed by n-s front hitting the deck and me fighting to keep control with only one wheel steering! Andyrew reports the CLK speedo was saying 60 mph when it all went horribly wrong.

n-s front wheel had come off so a quick trip home for a jack we and borrowed some wheel nuts off other wheels and we were away again realising we should have check the wheel nuts before driving it. I decided that for ease of working on the car it was better to reverse into my garage so drove past my house to turn round as it is safer to reverse in from the same side of the road, that’s when the engine cut out!

A brief try to work out what was wrong and we decided to tow it with the CLK. We turned into the junction I planned as I know most cars will U turn in that junction, that’s when the wheel pinged off for the second time!

We refitted the wheel and carefully did up the wheel nuts but 1/8 mile later they were loose again so tighten and we were home.

Well sort of home, the 504 was sideway across our drive entrance at the bottom of quite a slope to the garage. Best bet was to get out my Triumph Vitesse out which had been resting for a year, a bit of churning but it started ok. It was parked behind the Peugeot so if I pulled the Peugeot into the garage backwards the cars would both be away and safe.  

There was some doubt from some, that a Vitesse could pull a car much heavier than it with binding brakes up a slope on loose gravel! I have been driving Vitesses for 43 years I knew it could do it.

Both cars are now away safely and diagnosing the Peugeot 504 problems is for another day.

Funny thing, Andyrew was due to go home in the VP 1500 but expressed concerns as to how the day was going and side steps another disaster by going home in the CLK.