Thanks for the Pizza Ellis!

OK - so the title of this update to my blog may seem a little strange, for those of you who have been following my recent antics with the Spitfire, you will know that I embarked on CT's 10 Countries Run a week ago today (Thursday 10th September). A lot of preparation was done to the car, including a good secondhand exhaust manifold to replace the existing one. As many of you will know, the 1500 Spitfire manifold is a crap design and I spent hours putting the replacement one on. The good news was, it held together quite well up to the start at The Plough in Enfield, by Dover, it sounded like a Tractor again!

Anyway, my brother Richard and I decided to soldier on with it until the first overnight stop at Beziers on the south coast of France. So we left Calais and motored down to the control stop at Le Manswhere a bit more Gun Gum was plastered on to little effect. It wasn't so bad on the autoroutes when a light throttle was being used, but when we came to the Control Stop at Condom I fear we may have woken up the assembled drivers in their Triumphs as we arrived about an hour later than them having rested near Bordeaux a couple of hours earlier.

A bit more Gun Gum, then we left for the run up into Spain and Andorra. The road into Spain was great, although the car did suffer a bit from low oil pressure and fuel vaporisation during the long hot climb up the mountains. When we got near to Andorra we were turned around by other 10CR participants as it was effectively closed due to the volume of traffic. We sought out a new route to get us to Beziers, taking us down a very windy road to Perpignan where we could join the Autoroute to get us to our hotel at Beziers. I decided to take the carbs off, lose the heatshield as it was getting in the way of fixing the manifold/downpipe joint and join it together using plenty of Firegum (I had come prepared - but forgotten to pack the downpipe gasket!)

After evening dinner and a welcome sleep in a comfortable bed, I put everything back together, we had breakfast and left for the Millau Control Stop about an hour late. The car was running great now, so quiet we could hear the CD Player - what luxury!

After taking the obligatory photo's and video of the bridge we departed on the great journey to Italy and Switzerland, taking in a detour through the Ardeche to Montelimar to avoid some taxing hill climbs and give the exhaust joint an easy time. All was going well until the motorway services on the Auto route near Grenoble. Having fuelled the car, cleaned it's windscreen, we pulled out onto the motorway, when all of a sudden the engine started rattling badly and we lost power, so we limped along to the next exit, got onto the normal roads and called the AA.

To cut a long story short, the car was recovered to a local garage, we were put up in a local hotel - excellent food - to await a hire car the next day (Sunday) Morning came and the AA confirmed that a hire car had been arranged and a very nice young french lady taxi driver drove us at great speed to the outskirts of Grenoble where we collected a Peugeot Partner Teepee diesel. By this time it was 11.00am, so we decided to skip Italy and Switzerland and head straight for the next overnight stop at Kerkrade in the Netherlands - we made it by 8.00pm, went through Luxembourg, Germany and the Netherlands , but missed dinner. However Ellis Stokes, the organiser, kindly got a couple of Pizza's brought in which we eagerly devoured whilst having a great evening talking to fellow participants Paul and David Lonsdale.
The next morning (Monday)we rose early and motored through Belgium back to Calais where we swapped the French car for a British registered Toyota which was duly returned to the Tonbridge depot by 5.00pm that evening.

The latest news from the AA? The french garage has reported that the fuel pump has gone and the car is running on 3 cylinders, and the car is being repatriated some time in the next week or so to my local garage who will give me a quick diagnosis of the problem.

Will we attempt it a third time? Ask me in a few month's time when I've sorted the car, we did enjoy this 10CR, we got a lot further than last time - maybe 3rd time lucky?

Anyway - here is a link to video's that Richard took:

http://www.youtube.com/user/MrRichski

10 Countries Run 2009

It's Tuesday evening - 2 more sleeps before the early morning run on Thursday up to The Plough at Crews Hill for the start. Been monitoring the early morning M25 traffic on the Traffic Cams and it seems as if we shall have an easy run up there, fingers crossed!

Gave the Spitfire a final check over today and a quick blast round the country lanes to sort out any minor niggles. I have even put silicon sealant around the headlight cowls to stop them rattling!

Thought I had a strange burning smell at one point until I remembered that I put some silencer bandage around the pesky manifold to exhaust joint which always conspires to leak after a hard run despite my best efforts with a good secondhand manifold recently.

My co driver (and brother) Rich will be coming down by train from Solihull tomorrow evening as his modern BMW engined Freelander has let him down - time for him to get a Triumph methinks.

Just created a couple of MP3 discs of music to play on the brand spanking new CD Radio from Halfrauds - 45 watts through some ex-midi system speakers behind the seats - should drown out the leaky exhaust manifold, Diff whine, dash rattle etc!

Anyway, thats all for now folks - an update will be given next week - if you want to follow our antics, we will be posting updates to the Club Triumph message board whilst we are away
at http://club.triumph.org.uk/10crnews

We are Car Number 9

Galleria Ferrari, 10 Cr Prep and other things

I haven't updated my blog for a while, so here goes - whats been happening since Drive it Day, well, firstly my wife and I went for a cruise around Italy in July, very nice ship - Azamara Quest - lots of good food and some great sights, not least the Galleria Ferrari at Maranello. Yes I was let off my leash and allowed to go on my own on a ships excursion to see the museum near the Ferrari factory. Strange that most of the people on this trip were men, whilst their ther halves were sunning themselves on board ship!

I was very impressed by the museum which is a homage to a both sports and F1 cars. My favourite was the David Piper Le Mans racer which still had its historic tax disc on!

In all the journeying around Italy, the only soft top cars I saw were Ferrari and Aston Martin - came back to England and they're everywhere! - All the usual classics from our own Triumph stable and the myriad of modern ones, particularly MX5's, and those tin tops that are nopw so common - give me canvas(vinyl) anyday!

A couple of Sundays ago my Father and I set off early to travel down to Goodwood for their Softop Sunday in the Stag - breakfast was a bit pricey - but where else do you get such a good display of cars for free. The Stag performed faultlessly although it does seem to hold pressure in the cooling system for a long time - I think this winter will see some new headgaskets being fitted. We also went out for a picnic in it last Sunday to Ashdown Forest with our Daughter and her husband.

Lastly - the Spitfire is being prepared for the forthcoming 10CR - just finished changing the oil, oiling the trunions, setting the ignition timing and treating her to new plugs.

Roll on the 10th September - lets hope we get further than 2 counties on this attempt.

Drive it Day and other things

Well a lots happened since my last entry, my wife and I have been away on a cruise around the West Indies, The Spitfire passed its MOT with Flying Colours and we've had our Drive it Day run. Before I get onto that, as a Stag owner, I was pleasantly surprised by this sign in St Kitts. And I thought when driving a Stag, any hour was happy hour! Anyway, onto last Sundays excursion, as it was Drive it Day, our local TSSC area, West Kent had a run out in support of it.

Our start point was our regular monthly meeting place at the Cock Horse in Hildenborough, 13 cars in total turned up, a Stag, Hurricane, GT6, Bond Equipe convertible, 4 Vitesses, 3 Spitfires and 2 Herald 13/60’s. A quiz was handed out requiring an element of observation through the day to complete.

We started out at about 10.15, and were videoed leaving the pub by a friend of one of our members – these have now been put on Youtube at :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RAB35N0cjI

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QAxWOvxvOw&feature=related

We proceeded to our first stop at the Yalding Organic Gardens for a brief coffee and comfort break.

After about 30 minutes we left and started on the biggest leg of our journey to the Bodiam Castle Inn where some members had a pub lunch whilst others tucked into their picnics.

The run to Bodiam was along some lovely roads taking in the Kent orchards, currently in full bloom. – we were late arriving there due to traffic, roadworks etc, which meant we would miss meeting the Canterbury Area at our next stop, Chapel Down Vineyard at Smallhythe. The ride to here was great fun with some nice fast sweeping corners for the adventurous ones. A short stop ensued whilst some members bought some of the fine wines and produce for sale here.

A short drive then brought us to Biddenden Vineyard, a well known producer of Cider and wines, and more importantly, free sampling! More purchases were made, and then it was off to Headcorn Airfield for our final stop, where we managed to park up in a nice orderly row of fine examples of Triumph’s best!

Apparently we missed our Canterbury Area colleagues by about 30 minutes – they had gone to a pub half a mile away but we didn’t find out until the following day.

Overall the weather was excellent, all the cars performed faultlessly and everyone enjoyed it, the quiz was a tight finish with Steve and Tina Gordon winning first prize, second was Alan and Carol Beal, and Malcolm Wing and his wife came in Third.

For the technically minded this is what my Sat Nav recorded

65 miles total run
Max Speed 50.4mph
Moving average speed 29.5mph
Moving time 2 hrs 12 mins
Total Journey time 5 hrs 1 min, - this meant before we got to Headcorn, we were stopped for 2 hrs 49 minutes

And now the icing on the cake, I've just booked the ferry for Club Triumphs 10 Countries Run in September!

Such a nice day - shame about the leaky hose!

It was such a lovely day again today that I took the father-in-law out in the Stag for a run at lunchtime - his comment during the drive was ' isn't the car running nicely?' - full of confidence I replied, yes its been running really well since its service last month.

FOOL!!!!!

Got home, parked up to get a few things before going out again when I noticed a pool of coolant under the car - a cursory examination confirmed it wasn't from the expansion bottle overflow - damn - as I was pushed for time, put it in the garage and went out in the Superb.

Just had a better look at the engine and after 5 mins running the water issued forth from a pinhole leak in the angled hose that connects to the water pump - phew - I was imagining all sorts of water pump problems.

New Tyres!

What a difference new tyres make!

As part of the preparation for the 10CR I decided to renew the tyres on the Spitfire, although not old, I had two Goodyears, one India and one Pirelli on the car, all 155/80 X13's on standard rims (although the spare was 145/80!) so putting the best 155/80 in the boot I trawled the internet for a good offer.

I eventually concluded after much research that the Avon CR322 was a good choice (after all they fit them to the Caterham Classic), and the best deal I found was at Tyreshopper.com, £20 cheaper than National Tyres who have a BOGOF offer at the moment - and the price included valves, balancing and fitting at National Tyres.

I had them fitted yesterday, the difference in ride and handling is amazing - much lighter steering as well, and the back no longer kicks out at my favourite roundabout under accelleratation.

They are also a low rolling resistance tyre, so it will be interesting to see what effect this has on fuel consumption on the 10CR


So my recommendation : Use Tyreshopper.com and consider Avon CR322's if you're looking for a standard replacement tyre.

http://www.tyre-shopper.co.uk/article.asp?id=160&title=Avon-CR322

Drive It Day 2009 Preparation

Had an interesting time today, went out in the Stag with Del Holman, the AO for West Kent TSSC to survey the route for this year's Drive It Day Run.

The theme this year will be visit places of interest throughout the Weald of Kent with a short trip into East Sussex, ending up at Headcorn Airfield

We couldn't visit our first port of call, the Yalding Organic Gardens as the village was flooded yesterday, we also had to modify our initial run south today because of ice!

We headed south through Hawkhurst to Bodiam which will be the second stop for either a lunch stop in the Castle Inn, or a visit to Bodiam Castle, whichever people prefer. our route then took us briefly into East Sussex before stopping at the Morgan Motor Museum. See photo's, a private collection of Morgan 3 Wheelers - unfortunately this will not be open on Drive it Day - but it made for a very interesting diversion.

see http://www.morganmuseum.org.uk for more info.


We then drove up through Tenterden to the next planned stop at Tenterden Vineyards, home to Chapel Down Wine where we had to sample the excellent champagne! - Del even bought two bottles.

Our next stop was Biddenden Vineyards where we had some coffee to soak up the champagne! A very nice gentlemen showed us the process of refining apple juice for bottling.

Our final leg took us to Headcorn Airfield which will be our final stop for a picnic and a tour of the wartime Air Museum there.

See http://www.1940.co.uk/activ/visit/lashend/lash.htm

Whilst on this journey an interesting problem arose with the Stag, on occasions the engine would not turn over and the voltage gauge read very low. Subsequent investigation and research when home suggests this may the battery, so guess what I'm doing tomorrow!