It's been a bit quiet here lately hasn't it? That's because I've been busy! Friday through to Tuesday last week I was away at ConFuzzled, and it took a couple of days after returning to the "real world" to get back into anything resembling a functional state. Then I also had to catch up with all the boring household tasks which don't just helpfully stop being needed because I was away for a few days.
The bit of this event most likely to be of any interest to those of you here was our little car show, so let's get the interesting bits of that summarised first. Labelling it at a show is a bit inaccurate I think, I guess, "Car enthusiast gathering" would be more accurate I think as that's the only entry requirement.
Before getting to what was there, we must first acknowledge someone who wasn't. A couple of weeks after last year's event we very suddenly lost one of our number to cancer. It was at this very event last year that I last saw them, when they still seemed to be doing absolutely fine. They were one of those people who were very much larger than life and did a huge amount to put a smile on a huge number of people's faces. A year on, there is still very much a void felt where they were. Seeing the organisers of the event having set this up felt like a nice touch.
Always make the most of the time you have with your friends. You never know what tomorrow brings and when they might be taken from you.
Most of the vehicles there were newer, with my Rover being one of only four sixties or earlier cars I can recall seeing. One being the big Simca 4X4 truck I was parked near to in the car park pictured in the last post (which I apparently forgot to get a photo of in the event itself), another being a mid 60s VW Transporter. Which I also failed to get a photo of.
I did break from tradition however and actually remembered to get a photo or two of my own car at the event - I have a *long* history of failing to remember to do this at shows!
The one other vehicle from the 60s I did remember to photograph was this Land Rover. Which I get the feeling must have quite a story behind it.
Why? This is why.
How on earth did that find its way all the way to England? Sadly didn't have a chance to talk to the owner so that's something we'll need to wait till the future to find out.
The only other car from a vaguely similar chronological ballpark was this 70s American small city on wheels.
This one is sitting on air suspension and can do all sorts of jumping around nonsense that really isn't my thing. Nevertheless it's a lovely car and was great to see there.
My poor brain can't quite wrap itself around the concept of this being knocking on the door of 30 years old.
Though they're definitely getting a rarer sight these days, and as the chronic issues with rear end chassis rust start to bite on more and more of them we're only going to see less.
You don't see one of these every day. Especially not with a V8 crammed under the bonnet and a huge wing on the back.
No idea if there is actually any competition history behind this one or if it's a replica, but definitely looks (and sounds) the part.
The Mercedes W124 really does seem like something of a timeless design to me. This doesn't look even halfway as dated as most cars from the mid eighties to nineties tend to.
One of a relatively small number of cars that I'd actually voluntarily buy in white too.
Mine wasn't the only Rover there either. I still feel that this range deserved more respect than they seemed to get in their time. I've known several people who have owned them and we saw a lot through the doors when I worked at a used car dealership between 2001-5, and those involved with those have always said they were decent motors. Those I drove myself certainly always left a good impression.
While I didn't have a chance to catch up with the owner, we did end up parked next to each other after the event (as usual the main car park filled up while we were away so several of us ended up tucked away at the back of what's usually the staff car park). Getting a photo of the two next to each other did please my internal sense of order at least.
Speaking of things which were just launched two minutes ago and have absolutely no business being old enough to start appearing at shows.
They have every right to though given what an oddball vehicle they are from a technical perspective. If it weren't for the eye-watering road tax bracket that most fall into they're a model that I might have considered as a summer toy at some point. Not something I could see me keeping long term, but they are a lot of fun to drive.
This little MX-5 was lovely. Beautiful colour, perfect interior to complement it, and probably more unusually, not messed with.
Though finding an MX-5 in stock (or at least very, very near to it) condition doesn't feel half as odd as finding one of these that hasn't been modified.
Doubly so when I discovered that it was an automatic.
I'm far more used to seeing that generation of Skyline looking more like its companion one row over.
Not my taste, but if we all liked the same things the world would be a terribly boring place.
I forgot to grab a photo of the next car actually at the event so you'll have to deal with one from the car park taken later on in the day.
Apparently one of three owned by the same person. I'm more than a little jealous - though at the same time not really. Finding parts for the 25 is bad enough, never mind trying to deal with that on something this complex *and* the joys of early 00s Renault electronics - which I very, very clearly remember being an absolute pain when I was at the garage and pretty much any of their range we dealt with was only a couple of years old. The Laguna II wheel bearings made of cheese being another marque specific headache that I can clearly recall. Vauxhall and Renault were definitely both at the top of the tree where cars coming back for warranty work was concerned. Vauxhalls at least were usually easy to sort as there were a handful of common issues - not so much Renault where we regularly had to call in specialist help.
Another French car was there which I'd feel rather less terrified of owning though.
Never likely to happen though given the way prices of them have gone over the last ten years or so though for a good one (and I know well that a "project" from this era is never a wise decision unless you have deep pockets and a lot of patience).
I always love seeing one of these actually out and about rather than just permanently living in a garage or on a driveway.
Yes I know they're about as well made as your average McDonald's burger box, but they've always just felt like what a proper high performance British car should be - utterly mad. I've driven a couple from this era and as a result have always wanted one. No, they are not cars you can take liberties with, but they are incredibly engaging to drive. One of those I'd love the chance to take and hammer round a track for a few laps where you can actually use the power on tap safely.
Then similar but different...
Which I still think was a bit of a masterpiece of making something out of basically nothing. The result was a car which did exactly what it was designed to - to be a fun little roadster - very very well I think. Which makes it all the more sad to me to see what happened to MG/Rover in the end as this was a great example of showing what they could do even with very limited resources to hand. At least the design and engineering teams - less said about management the better I think.
If I owned this there's one change I would immediately have to make.
Sticking a private plate on it which makes the age less obvious. Seeing an 04 plate on a car which looks like that is just so jarring at least to my brain! Would it have stopped me quite happily driving it home? Nope.
I think that's everything interesting that I had time to grab photos of while I was there. It was pretty busy and I was periodically running away into the shade to cool off and try to limit (ultimately unsuccessfully) how fried I got by the sun.
Trying not to get fried was apparently completely futile anyway - I did get *quite* sunburned despite having used sunscreen and tried to take regular breaks in the shade. Oh well, I tried!
Not going to go too crazy with photos from elsewhere at the event as it's pretty wildly off topic for a car forum, but where are going to be a couple.
Under normal circumstances you couldn't pay me enough to go near a night club (heck, I lived next door to a well regarded one for four years in Aberdeen when I was in my early 20s and never set foot in the door). However the dances at these conventions are something that I always look forward to. It's hard to explain why, but somehow a similar formula of (very) loud music, many tens of thousands of pounds worth of lighting equipment and some well curated DJ sets becomes massively more attractive when it's entirely shared with a group of people who you feel comfortable with. Everyone there over the whole weekend was there to enjoy themselves among friends, and that just rubs off on you I find. No, I have no sense of rhythm whatsoever, I can't dance to save my life. Does that stop me (or anyone there) from periodically bouncing around like a complete idiot until 2AM? Nope. Do I pay for it afterwards? Oh yes. My muscles really, really didn't like me for the remainder of last week.
While the influx of LED technology into mainstream lighting maybe doesn't seem to have quite delivered some of the lofty claims promised twenty years ago, one area it has - and I use the word sparingly - revolutionised is stage lighting. The flexibility offered by a lot of the gear these days is incredible - basically everything you see there has the same colour range (and eye-searing intensity) available as the strip (which can also move) you see above the stage. Which was showing a flowing rainbow effect when I snapped this photo. The lasers seem to have the ability to produce a completely smooth spectrum right across the visible range too.
The lasers definitely do add a bit of visual drama too.
It's fair to say that these events were popular, yet despite my usual complete inability to deal with large numbers of people this never really felt crowded.
I didn't actually end up going to all that many other of the items on the program to be honest, the bulk of my weekend was spent simply catching up with a few people I'd not seen in a few years and hanging around the main entrance and lobby areas of the hotel just enjoying the atmosphere, watching our own very special blend of chaos unfolding and snapping a whole bunch of photos. An activity for which I went well prepared - I give you the area that I think is normally intended to be used for hanging coats and such in my hotel room.
Didn't actually end up using ALL of those, but most of them were out at some point over the weekend.
Speaking of the hotel room, I won the "do I have a view" lottery again this year. There's a 50/50 chance when staying at the Moxy whether you get a view of the roof of the NEC itself or this:
Which given I've been on the right side of the hotel two years in a row now I'm sure means I'll get the rubbish view next year.
A lot of the film is still away being developed, but Imagex did surprise me by getting the scans from one back to me before close of play on Friday. Given that I only dropped it off late on Thursday afternoon I wasn't expecting that.
This one had been a bit of an experiment really given that it was in a camera I hadn't really used before, using lenses that I hadn't used before, and was a film type I hadn't used before. The latter was a bit of a forced decision given the state of the supply chain at the moment is making getting hold of film a bit tricky. So I wound up using Lomography's Colour 800 here - basically because that was the only reasonably fast colour film they had on the shelf in 35mm flavour. Have to admit I'm quite impressed. I've used a few of Lomo's more "artsy" films before where they've deliberately tweaked the colour balance, which are fun to play with but are kind of a one trick deal and not great for general use. This seems to be entirely usable as an everyday film though - a bit on the grainy side though at ISO800 I expected that. I'll be interested once it's back in stock to grab some Kodak Portra 800 to do a direct comparison.
I will be curious to see the actual negatives, as I think the scanner may have been somewhat overzealous with the cropping as I'm absolutely sure this was fully in frame when I took the shot.
Not a hotel for you if you have an aversion to the colour magenta.
I might share a couple of the other photos once they're all back if I've got any particular favourites, but don't intend to spam too many in this thread given how far off topic it is unless people are interested. Hopefully should have those back towards the back of this week. Those were on Fuji Superia 100, which I've always been happy with before, but it takes a bit longer to get developed as Imagex can't do it in house.
We know exactly how many attendees we had this year, because we actually had to close registration early - at 2661. An odd number you might say, and I'd tend to agree. However that's the maximum permitted capacity of the Hilton on their fire safety certificate, which is why we couldn't take any more in! This does present the organisers with a bit of a problem as there simply *isn't* a larger convention hotel they can move into - this is literally the biggest one in the country. Not a problem I envy the organisers having to grapple with as there really is no easy solution, and anything they come up with is likely to be unpopular with at least some of their attendees. They could potentially hire in some temporary marquee type buildings - but where do you put them? The only space available is the car park, and that's already well over capacity during our stay. The obvious one is probably running a lottery system for attendees. They've done that for *residential* memberships for a couple of years now (in terms of where folks actually stay over the weekend, we spill over and pretty much fill four surrounding hotels I think) in an effort to give everyone the same chance to get into the main hotel and in an effort to prevent the registration server from melting the moment reg opens and a couple of thousand people all try to win a round of fastest finger first. That used to be pretty much an annual event and there was usually a pool running on how long it would take for the server to fall over. For ConFuzzled I've always figured that I don't *need* to be in the main hotel when the Moxy is only a five minute walk away, so I've always just gone with that as I figure those in suit need close access to facilities far more than I do. Sounded like there were a lot of folks still planning to register when they closed the doors this year though, so I wouldn't be surprised if a similar system gets put in place for everyone next year. Just don't really know how else they can do it, the only other real option would be to look at renting out some space next door in the NEC itself - but there's no way on earth a (relatively!) small event like ours could afford that. Even if they doubled the membership price I doubt we'd come close to being able to afford it as an event.
Will we one day see a move to a venue like the NEC itself? Definitely not impossible, the big US cons have done it, Mid West Fur Fest saw 13,641 people through their doors last year, and Anthrocon was floating around just under the 10K mark when I last checked - though they're artificially constrained by the availability of hotel space in the city rather than the venue or willingness of people to travel to it as I understand.
Some other random stats, which they like setting out for us during the closing ceremony...
[] Average distance the dance floor migrated every night: Just over 1 metre.
[] Total baked beans consumed at the breakfast buffet: 304Kg.
[] Total number of rashers of bacon consumed at the breakfast buffet: 10,062.
[] Time before registration opened the hard back con books were delivered: 30 minutes.
[] Final total raised for the charity: £41,635. Yes we made them cry, twice.
Speaking of the charity, there was a moment from their thanking us during the closing ceremony which really stuck with me. One of their representatives was an older gent, who getting thrown headlong into a weekend of our nonsense you would tend to think would have been in for a bit of a culture shock. However their words were "I wish that the outside world outside could be like it is in here every day." That sort of thing really sticks with you. It also explains in a nutshell why I keep going back to these events - though many outside observers would think that I was utterly off my head for spending roughly a grand to spend five days at a hotel in Birmingham (I refuse to do the math...I'm sure by the time I factor in food and spending money it's well over). Do I care what they think? Nope.
I guess my only gripe is that I've got a long wait until the next one. The main UK conventions used to be fairly evenly spaced, with Scotiacon being traditionally in early November, and ConFuzzled at the end of May. However since the move to the new venue last year that's moved to late February - so got a bit of a wait until the next event now.
Back more on topic for this forum though, a bit of tinkering has been underway since I got back.
The first to get some attention was actually the Caddy. When I had the tyres rotated it was noted that the front brake pads were getting very low, particularly on the nearside. Given that The Garage over in Wolverton were asking less than £90 to change them including the costs of the pads and VAT and that I need that car to Just Work, I just got them to do it. Which I think was money well spent given that they found that one of the sliders on the offside was seized up. With the right tools and experience it took them all of about ten minutes to coerce it into freeing off, clean it up and lubricate it and get everything back together. That probably would have ended up taking me a fair old chunk of the afternoon to sort - plus at least an hour when you combined the time needed to get all the necessary tools etc out and to tidy up.
The pads were definitely pretty well shot though. Don't reckon it would have taken more than another couple of weeks for the one here to have ended up down to the metal given how hard MK is on brakes. Discs at least were still perfectly serviceable though.
Obviously will take a bit of time for the new pads to bed in, but the brakes already feel noticeably more positive.
Saturday afternoon's entertainment was electrical in nature.
There were three targets here:
[] Radio.
[] Clock.
[] Warning light for handbrake/low brake fluid.
Quick disclaimer here. In the interests of preserving my own sanity, I am simply referring to "power" and "ground" with regards to the electrical system in this car. Power is the feed from the battery, ground is the body. I'm well aware that this car is positive earth...so "power" in this case just means -12V rather than positive 12V. Just using these terms just makes it way easier to keep track...If I start using positive, negative etc I'm just going to wind up confusing and second guessing myself.
I won't say it's THE reason that the radio wasn't working, but what was definitely A reason the radio wasn't working quickly became apparent. The power lead not being connected to anything definitely would explain it.
That appears to be the end of an inline fuse holder, the other end of which I am *guessing* used to be attached to this taped up wire which was (very loosely) attached to one of the switched terminals on the ignition switch.
I'll reinstate the fuse holder before returning that to its rightful place. That's a ways down the road though as this will be having its day on the workbench before I even think about feeding it any power.
Unusual looking setup. As far as I can tell from the construction, they've used an entirely solid state power stage to drive the speaker, that's the big block on top with the heatsink and big transistor bolted in the middle of it (looks to be a Mullard OC26 - Oh joy, one of the ones which likes to short itself out by tin whisker growth if I remember rightly). The RF and small signal side of things is mostly valve based, though does use two transistors. Slightly unusual for a valve circuit though is that there's no high voltage present, the HT voltage simply being directly derived from the vehicle's 12V supply. Which is good for me, as it means one less component to fix. I'm hoping that this will be a simple re-cap and go job rather than a replay of the last valve based car radio I tried to get going which turned into a massive headache.
The clock is also going to need to be serviced. I've ascertained that it is indeed getting power and has a solid ground, so the mechanism itself is most likely gummed up with 60 years of gunk. That's a job for another day.
While looking at the clock though I did discover one wire that was just crudely stuffed into one of the butt connectors. Following that lead to a light fitting underneath the lip of the dash which I hadn't even realised was there before. Terminating the wire with a proper terminal to fit the connector and replacement of the missing bulb got us a working courtesy light.
I imagine this originally had a cover at some point, though given the location it would have had to have a very low profile to clear the lid of the glove box...so maybe not. Not as though you can see it unless you're sitting in the footwell anyway, and it works quite well to provide light where you need it.
Investigating the wiring behind the instrument panel it was immediately obvious that I was far from the first person to be digging around in here.
The red wire with a white tracer that's just dangling in mid air is from the output of the dash lighting rheostat which has been mostly bypassed - with the panel lighting being just directly wired in. Except for the clock which is still plugged in correctly. I'm not sure why this is given that the rheostat seems to work perfectly...something I'll investigate at a later date. For now I've properly terminated that wire so it can't short on anything and left that well alone.
I pretty quickly established that I didn't have power getting to the brake warning light. This is where I ended up sending myself on a bit of a merry old dance because I hadn't looked at the circuit diagram first. I'd made the assumption that (as tends to be the case on most newer cars) that the lamp would always be powered and that the switches would provide the ground path. Turns out I was wrong.
Which explains why I couldn't find a likely source of power for it. The following day, armed with the knowledge of how it actually worked and about ten minutes of my time...
Both circuits pick up power from one of the terminals on the brake fluid reservoir, and it turned out that the wire providing the feed wasn't properly captive in the crimp. Once I replaced this with a new crimp terminal the light worked perfectly.
Given this car only has single circuit brakes, I really did want this to be working properly as I'd really rather know about any loss of fluid sooner than later!
It's definitely not a warning light you could miss. The lens is structured such that it really does concentrate the light into the driver's eyeline.
Plenty of cars wouldn't have had any warning for the braking system at all back when this was made, so it's a nice safety feature to have.
Last time I fuelled up I noticed that I had developed a not insubstantial leak from the filler neck area. I initially suspected that the rubber elbow there would have failed, but investigation revealed a far more simple solution. The upper hose clip wasn't in place, it was sitting several inches further down the pipe, presumably forgotten by whoever last had the filler neck apart.
Who knows how long this had been like that - I most likely disturbed it enough to break the seal when I bolted the filler neck back into place a couple of weeks ago. Was a simple matter of wrangling things back into their respective positions and tightening the clamp back up.
I've since filled the tank and noted no issues. You can clearly see both from a drip mark on the paving and witness marks on the exhaust from where it had been leaking before.
Glad that this is no longer an issue. The general smell of fuel both around that corner and in the car is vastly lessened now too. I did note that the rubber elbow is a little perished, not badly by any means but it is showing its age. Given that new ones are cheaply and readily available I'll order one with the next round of parts as that will be solid insurance I'm sure against it degrading any further at all.
I think this brings us mostly up to date now. Apparently the gearshift bush I'd been waiting on for the Renault has turned back up at the seller's place in France because some import paperwork hadn't been filled in correctly...so they've refunded me. I just need to track back down the part number and find another source now.
Odd about the distributor cap... Fingers crossed on that and that there's now no leaks...
She's looking better and better by the day 
