invacar LightBulbFun's Invacar & general ramble thread, index on page 1, survivors lists on Pages 24/134 & AdgeCutler's Invacar Mk12 Restoration from Page 186 onwards, still harping on...

[egg]

yes, as I think we have mentioned before the 95 Mondeo last taxed in 2004. 9 years!

[LightBulbFun]

woo!, looks like the governments page on driving tests and CV19 has been updated today with this new bit of info

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-driving-tests-and-theory-tests

which means starting tomorrow  if im reading it correctly means I think I should be able to book a new test  

I will obviously scope it out tomorrow and if tests are available once more talk with my instructor about it

I found it a bit surprising since the 21st is tomorrow! so I did check the update log just to make sure I had not missed something that had been there for 3 weeks now!

and indeed it was only added today, a bit last minute eh some heads up would have been nice!

but im happy to know when I might be able to book another test now  

[egg]

Good news, this government does everything last minute, a reflection of our Prime Minister's personality....

[N19]

The "no invalid carriages" sign - is that the A12 at Leyton?

(As a child I would often wonder what was invalid about the carriage?)

[LightBulbFun]

3 hours ago, N19 said:

The "no invalid carriages" sign - is that the A12 at Leyton?

(As a child I would often wonder what was invalid about the carriage?)

I think so? but my geography is horrible!

its on the roundabout that goes over the greenman tunnel 

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5717782,0.0160769,3a,75y,331.47h,82.56t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sfk1XYu-1-gi5vmv_5MLppg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

heres the specific sign I pass when going back home via the A12 (memorable because that cattle grid fucked me up when I was still nervous from from navigating the roundabout, all nervous still when suddenly BRRR LOL, but these days it aint bad as im used to it and a lot more confident overall, but it will always be memorable for those early times LOL)

(we drive from hackney, to wanstead and then back home, major dual carriage way roads I drive on fairly regularly in no particular order are off the top of my, A12 A406 and A102 IIRC)

[N19]

3 minutes ago, LightBulbFun said:

I think so? but my geography is horrible!

its on the roundabout that goes over the greenman tunnel 

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5717782,0.0160769,3a,75y,331.47h,82.56t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sfk1XYu-1-gi5vmv_5MLppg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

heres the specific sign I pass when going back home via the A12 (memorable because that cattle grid fucked me up when I was still nervous from from navigating the roundabout, all nervous still when suddenly BRRR LOL, but these days it aint bad as im used to it and a lot more confident overall, but it will always be memorable for those early times LOL)

(we drive from hackney, to wanstead and then back home, major dual carriage way roads on I drive on fairly regularly in no particular order are off the top of my, A12 A406 and A102 IIRC)

Yes, that's the one! I actually learnt to drive properly after I'd moved down to London, and would take this route out towards Chingford.

[LightBulbFun]

well done they cant even host a simple booking service properly! but the book test button is back now

(thats what I get for waking up at 12:30PM LOL)

[LightBulbFun]

oh its getting there, but can I make it through all 9 steps without it dying? given its still loading after I clicked on "car (manual and automatic)" hedge your bets accordingly LOL

[LightBulbFun]

nope! ah well ill just keep throwing myself at it until I finally get through LOL

[LightBulbFun]

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/264838968910

found this mildly amusing for some reason  

only one? Model 70 brochure was produced and its in the Greeves collection so good luck with that!

easy enough to find a copy of it online tho... (although this copy/scan was sent to the virtual gaz website from someone in the US IIRC, so maybe more then one copy exists, one to check with stuart  )

[keef]

 

[LightBulbFun]

19 minutes ago, keef said:

 

ah yeah came across that one last year  I appreciate the heads up tho

 

On 16/04/2019 at 18:35, LightBulbFun said:

a Tippen Delta also made it to NZ at some point also painted bright red interestingly enough (did NZ have their own invalid carriage service, and painted them bright red?)

 

for some reason every known surviving full bodied invalid vehicle in NZ is bright red, theres this Tippen Delta (which is listed as a Delta 4 but has a Delta 5 chassis number go figure), a Tippen Delta 8, and a Harper Mk 6B all the same bright red, sadly apart from the Delta 8 (which is in a museum @dollywobbler visited during his trip), I dont know who they are with currently

(there is supposedly a Harper Mk 6 convertible that went up for sale at an auction in NZ a while back and this one was blue and wearing a very old NZ plate 22-189, but details on that one are scarce sadly)

On 18/07/2019 at 11:59, LightBulbFun said:

also for @Jon it looks like all invalid vehicles in NZ where privately bought examples, but that NZ did get quite a few Tippen deltas etc

also the hard top tippen delta from that 40 year old BW photo actually survived  im still not sure why all the Invalid cars in NZ are red tho! (iv had this picture saved for a while, I only noticed when talking to stuart that its the same one as the BW photo )

 

stuart didn't have a proper picture of the Red Harper Mk6 so he was happy to get the 2 pictures you posted  and he was also happy to find out the Chassis no details of the other Red Tippen Delta and of the Red haprer

we are also wondering if the reg 22-189 means anything in NZ? it was on a blue Harper that sold a few years ago over there, sadly does not show up on that Car jam website

 

[Eyersey1234]

How are you getting on booking your test @LightBulbFun? 

[LightBulbFun]

9 minutes ago, Eyersey1234 said:

How are you getting on booking your test @LightBulbFun? 

the website is still totally fucking fucked m8, assuming I could even get to the first page it would just time out on the next step, sometimes I even got as far as to feeding it my card details, but it would then give me this BS when I had blitzed through it under 5 minutes

 im surprised I have not been blocked for refreshing the page so many times LOL, then again I guess they are used to me from smashing a few thousand Invacar registration numbers through the vehicle enquiry service LOL

ill keep throwing myself at it until it closes 

(because of course somehow the government has a website that only operate from 6AM to 11:40PM...)

 

[Mrs6C]

7 hours ago, LightBulbFun said:

nope! ah well ill just keep throwing myself at it until I finally get through LOL

You're not the only one...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53865145

 

 

[LightBulbFun]

4 minutes ago, Mrs6C said:

You're not the only one...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53865145

yeah im not surprised, anyone should have seen this from a million miles away and at least given that part of the website some more resources on whatever virtual machine it lives on

although knowing the DVLA etc, there probably still hosting it on a bare metal server from 2004...

[Eyersey1234]

Did you manage to get your test sorted @LightBulbFun? Apparently there were 7 million people trying to book tests at the same time, no wonder the system couldn't cope. 

[martc]

This may be of interest. (shamelessly stolen from the eye-catching b&w thread).

[quicksilver]

A friend of mine on Facebook just made an interesting observation that I don't think has been mentioned before. He lives in Surrey and all the invalid carriages he remembers were locally registered, which means they must have been ACs. Could there have been any sort of loyalty to local manufacturers in DHSS allocations so users in Surrey were always given ACs in preference to Invacars, and vice versa in Essex? Something else to ponder maybe, but in the meantime I'll leave you with this shot of the magic moment when the unholy trinity came together yesterday.

[LightBulbFun]

59 minutes ago, quicksilver said:

A friend of mine on Facebook just made an interesting observation that I don't think has been mentioned before. He lives in Surrey and all the invalid carriages he remembers were locally registered, which means they must have been ACs. Could there have been any sort of loyalty to local manufacturers in DHSS allocations so users in Surrey were always given ACs in preference to Invacars, and vice versa in Essex? Something else to ponder maybe, but in the meantime I'll leave you with this shot of the magic moment when the unholy trinity came together yesterday.

i dont think so, well there may have been some logistics behind it, like it makes sense transport wise to supply the ALAC's with AC Model 70's if there right next to the AC factory and same for Essex and Invacar

but otherwise they where scatter gunned across everywhere, the only notable exception is there are a lot more NI AC Model 70's then there are NI Invacar Model 70's

I suspect he just remembers the AC ones more because every single Surrey registration has a P in it, P PA PB PC PD PE PF PG PH PJ PK PL and post Oct 74 PM

where as essex was F EV HK NO PU TW VW VX , OO WC (1961/1962) and AR HJ JN Post Oct 1974 (I list em like this rather then alphabetically because thats how they where issued, even post 1974 they where still issued as the main block then the 2 1960's ones and then the extra 3 from 1974, took me a while to figure that one out!)

so the AC vehicles would stand out a lot more in terms of a memorable pattern etc , iv noticed this before with someone on this forum asking me something along the lines of "I noticed a lot of them are xPx registered" 

 

certainly I know of a few AC Model 70's ending their days at elmsleigh invacar the then Approved repairer that inhabited part of the Invacar factory LOL

(but NOT where Model 70's where made contrary to popular belief, they where manufactured in a larger building somewhere else on the estate, production moved there in the Mid 1960's I think)

 

it is a shame TWC is not there because then it really would be the Unholy trinity since its 4 instead of 3

[Eyersey1234]

@LightBulbFun where was the Invacar factory? 

[somewhatfoolish]

41 minutes ago, Eyersey1234 said:

@LightBulbFun where was the Invacar factory? 

Thundersley in Essex I think?

[LightBulbFun]

2 hours ago, Eyersey1234 said:

@LightBulbFun where was the Invacar factory? 

 

 

1 hour ago, somewhatfoolish said:

Thundersley in Essex I think?

 

sort of! much like the rest of the Invacar story its not quite that simple   Invacar was setup and invacars where first built in southend on sea, but with the first government contract they suddenly needed a much larger factory so moved to Thundersley in essex.  but production then moved again to benfleet, note the location change on these chassis plates throughout Invacar production

 

 

by the time Model 70 came to production, they where made in this building here (the one with the grey marker on it), 

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5730456,0.5615323,109m/data=!3m1!1e3

which I think is right next to Thundersley but not quite in it, but someone who knows the area better then me can correct me if im wrong!

but they must have changed the chassis plates for a reason!

I THINK the building was built in 1959 specifically to produce the Invacar Mk12 going into production at the time, however It is interesting to note the first 2 chassis plates are both Mk12's but have different locations on them, so I do wonder a little, but certainly by the mid to late 1960's Mk12's where produced there and then obviously Model 70's starting in October 1971

(I know in this thread someone dug up the old planning permissions from the 1950's for this area, I should see if I can dig those back up and have a look and see if there is anything around 1959 titled to Invacar Ltd, I know I found the original 1950 one in there  )

 

the oldest known surviving Thundersley made Invacar is funnily enough REV731  from about May 1950 (dont know why it was declared manufactured 1949!)

(its also a shame they got the "vehicle make" bit wrong, a lot of the time for some reason on vehicles registered by an individual, they put the Model info in with the vehicle make, so for example if you search for "INVACAR" you wont find REV731 because as far as the DVLA is concerned the make is "INVACAR 19DL2" not INVACAR LOL, but 19DL2 is actually the model number!, I see this quite a lot sadly, I suspect its from people not quite knowing how to fill out a V55)

[busmansholiday]

You may have already seen this pjc, but in case not stick the following in google;

Henley in Arden Class 46 down freight April 71 J2626.

[busmansholiday]

https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/sropenmerch/hB80C048#hb80c048

And this

[dollywobbler]

Yeah, I don't think the factory moved after 1959. Did Invacar badges always have Thundersley on them? TWC's certainly does. I wonder if a boundary change occurred during the 1970s?

[somewhatfoolish]

36 minutes ago, dollywobbler said:

Yeah, I don't think the factory moved after 1959. Did Invacar badges always have Thundersley on them? TWC's certainly does. I wonder if a boundary change occurred during the 1970s?

Like Landrover badges which used to say Birmingham, then changed to Solihull Warwickshire despite the factory remaining where Rolls Royce built it.

[Christine]

All  Invacar badges nave AC  on them...

[LightBulbFun]

4 hours ago, busmansholiday said:

You may have already seen this pjc, but in case not stick the following in google;

Henley in Arden Class 46 down freight April 71 J2626.

 

4 hours ago, busmansholiday said:

https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/sropenmerch/hB80C048#hb80c048

And this

ah cool, yeah I have seen and posted those before, but I appreciate the heads up tho

at the time you mentioned somewhere in the archives would be a set of instructions on exactly how to strap an invalid vehicle down to a lowfit  

[LightBulbFun]

4 hours ago, dollywobbler said:

Yeah, I don't think the factory moved after 1959. Did Invacar badges always have Thundersley on them? TWC's certainly does. I wonder if a boundary change occurred during the 1970s?

I do believe the nose badges still said "Thundersley essex" right until the end

but as I understand it the building you visited with TWC is where production of the earlier cars took place the Model 12 and 19, Mk6 Mk8 Mk10 and Mk11

as seen in this picture of a Mk10 from the greeves archives  

and then production moved to a purpose built building, and I think its that building that caught fire a couple times, but the whole fire thing is something im still researching, I still dont actually know when It happened, and weather or not this is why/if the mould lines changed, what I really need is some detailed photos of an all original early Invacar Model 70, but thats easier said then done!

and weirdly looking at all the Invacar Model 70's ever made, production does not look to have been effected by it, it all rolls smoothly from one month to the next, you would think if the production line burnt down, there would suddenly be a gap while they got things back up and running

but again I dont know the exact date of the fire, if I did then I could more closely look at the blocks from that time and see if I can spot anything

perhaps the fire never damaged the production line, with only other parts of the building being damaged by it?

supposedly a temporary production line was setup in the original building for a month or 2 but again details are scant