Nostalgic moment

Did you get the special right leg upgrade to enable you to get some level of braking?

Ah, yes, the brakes - or rather lack of. Never really got any real braking from them, but just enough to scrape through the MOT. Ironically, I think the poor brakes actually improved my driving . You had to learn to anticipate the road and traffic conditions and have a constantly changing plan to avoid collisions! I remember once, four-up, going to a dance at the Orchid Ballroom in Purley that included a fairly steep decent to a T-junction. I only just managed to stop before the junction, with both my feet on the brake pedal and my front seat passenger hauling on the handbrake lever, whilst I made my way down the gearbox. That was pretty scary, but hey, we were young and immortal in those days!

John

It’s not important, John … but I’m still curious about that date and currency mis-match

MichaelG.

MichaelG,

Did my reply yesterday not cover that? I mistyped - I should have written 1964 not 1984.

John

Very sorry, John

I somehow missed your entirely adequate reply, yesterday

MichaelG.

I am loving this thread having owned several vintage cars in the past including an Austin Seven.

Learnt to drive on a Swift, my first car was a 1929 Lea Francis and I once went to view a Sunbeam Harrington LeMans. I really wanted the Sunbeam but after three visits to view where the owner could not find the key I lost interest. Old pre war bikes are my passion now

The mention of a Ford Pop by Samsarand reminded me of my mother's first car. I can still instantly remember the registration number sixty years later but struggle to remember the whole of the number of the car I was actually driving half an hour ago. Age?

Bazyle, I am glad I am not alone with memory problems. Dave W

Glad to see I'm not the only one on here who has the odd senior moment, Michael!

I'm also pleased that the thread has stirred some happy memories for many. Goodness knows, we need some uplifting times right now.

John

This 1935 Ford Greyhound served me well through my apprenticeship from 1954 to 1959. Cost £85 and sold on for £80. We both survived several bumps, rod brakes and all that. It had several engine refurbishments including a broken crank, but as it was 3 bearing, the front half carried on running, no drive to the clutch and flywheel of course and knocking like crazy,. All good fun though.

Bob D

My first "car" was a Bedford HA van. Bought in 1883 for £50 and did most of my learing in it. As bought it had a habit of going into reverse instead of first. A mate and I dropped the gearbox and found the thin wall tube suporting the gear selector was bent at one end. I forget the exact deatils but a replacement was turned up from a bit of aerospace ggrade structural steel tube at a local company as a favour. Aftter it was all back together the Haynes manual arrived and apparently we should have taken the engine out rather than just unding the mounts and pushing it forward. We didn't hve a engine crane or similar. I drove it from Bristol to Northern Ireland fand back on holiday. Unfortunatly the person I sold too crashed it while under the infuence.
For such a common van at the time they are rare now and fetch relatively high prices. Most rusted away.
SWMBO was watching "antiques road trip" the other week and called out "you are on the TV". Turned out they were shg8owing a clip about Thrust SSC (Which I helped build and run) and I was in the background.

Robert G8RPI.

Hi Robert, I guess you mean 1983 as there weren't many about in 1883. I had to change the clutchplate in mine but didn't take the engine out, it was done with a little bit of struggling, by cocking the front end up, but I did have the use of an overhead hoist and a pit to work in where I worked at the time, but a clutch alignment tool was essential, which of course was made on the lathe at work.

Regards Nick.

I have a funny feeling I remember that coming to Boscombe Down for testing? Or did I make that up?

It's not uncommon for manuals to suggest doing things the long way round. For example, to get the Morris Minor master cylinder out (according to the Morris workshop manual), one was supposed to drop the whole offside suspension to get enough clearance to withdraw the master cylinder fixing bolts from the chassis rail.

We used to undo enough of it to get access to the torsion rod with a crowbar, then gently lever the torsion rod until the bolt could be removed. When re-assembling, the bolt was entered from the other end with the nut behind the torsion rod. Problem solved!

There's something similar on my current car, where one is supposed (according to the Haynes manual) to remove the steering wheel and half the dash to replace bulbs behind it. 'Tain't necessary!

George

Yes it did a couple of times. We spalled the concrete in one of the ground running bays with the re-heat . Though the bay was rated for the Phantom which used the same engines (RR Spey 202) the car was closer to the ground.
I also visited Boscome down to rob parts from ne of their phantoms for the car. We needed the alternators and control unit but as we had to take the enges out to get to the alternators we had the engines too

Yes The HA was 1983.

Robert G8RPI.