Dave Mundy
In my car I have a windscreen mounted SatNav with traffic module, and a Pure Highway Dab RBR radio all requiring 5v. I was using a double cigar lighter to power two of them and had to forego the DAB radio. I have just bought a 4 x USB-A cigar lighter adapter from 7Dayshop and enough USB A-to-mini-USB cables and the problem is solved – and I have a spare USB outlet to connect my phone charger. Isn’t science wonderful?
When I worked at TC I couldn’t afford a car of any sort.
Pat Heigham
I drive a BMW 3-series Coupe, with built in SatNav and DAB radio. The vehicle was paid for by my tax-free cash sum from the pension funds.
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I’d like to say, in my defence of excessive spending, that my old car was 18 years old! I did get the Government scrappage £2K that was on offer at the time, probably double what the old one was worth, plus a discount from the dealer of a further £2,250, which made the ‘super-car’ affordable!
However, these cars are expensive to maintain, although the service interval is now 2 years, and the mpg is around 40-45 on a long run, where I was lucky to get 28 with the ol’ gal.
For what it’s worth, below is a BMW Newsletter item! It’s a 2009 car, the 07 is my birthday! The number plate cost but £225 from DVLA.
I did wonder about a Mercedes, just to be able to say that I once owned one, but stayed with BMW – think the latest one was my ninth.
Gotta have dese toys!
An E30 bought from Snows 18 years ago,
returns through the scrappage scheme!
25/09/2009
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“… Snows customer, Patrick Heigham, recently picked up his new BMW 325i Coupe from Snows Isle of Wight, part exchanging his 18 year old E30 through the Government Scrappage Scheme.
Patrick was born on the Isle of Wight in 1942, but moved to Surrey with his parents in 1956. Despite having lived on the main land ever since, Patrick’s parents moved back to the Isle of Wight when they retired, so Patrick would make regular trips across to the Island to visit his parents. It was during one of his trips that Patrick ended up buying the E30 from us, which he has kept and maintained for the last 18 years.
Despite living in Surrey, when Patrick decided that he wanted to replace his old E30 with a new Ultimate Driving Machine, he came back to us!
We were blown away when Patrick arrived at Snows in the old E30 that we hadn’t seen for so many years. We felt it was such a charming story, it simply had to go up on our website for all to see!…”
Nick Ware
Most of us have families, houses to pay for and maintain, crippling Council tax to pay, offspring to fund through University (my youngest is currently studying for her second Masters), and to pay for all that, now have to carry on working well beyond retirement age.
The only reason my wife and I can afford to run half-way decent cars is because her father died leaving a modest sum to each of his three daughters. We couldn’t afford BMW’s even if we wanted to – which we don’t.
But I don’t regret any of that for one second, and would not exchange my lifestyle for his.
Dave Plowman
My most expensive car ever was sort of helped to be paid for by the tax man when I went freelance. I had a very good accountant: and to be fair, I did do quite a bit of travelling to OBs and different sites, etc, so why not?
Pat Heigham
Anyway, now we are onto SatNav equipment – I am well pleased with the in-car installation on my BMW, which downloads traffic information about problems, and suggests diversionary routes.
But I am more impressed with a friend’s portable Garmin which displays the current speed limits on roads. It’s damned accurate as it changes a second or two after passing the limit sign!
Again, an earlier BMW model, 320, I think it was, suddenly started a funny ticking sound, which was not unlike the fan touching the inside surface of the radiator. Arriving at my cameraman’s house, I arranged for the Guildford dealership to collect the car and investigate. Later that day, I got a call to say that a valve spring had failed, and the valve stem had punched a hole in the top of the piston. When I went to the workshop, you could see right down to the con shaft!
They collected up all the broken bits and sent them back to Munich. It was eventually fixed by installing a reconditioned engine of roughly the same age, and the cost was split between myself and the dealer.
Later, when I traded the car in for another new model, the value was enhanced by the replacement engine, so I wasn’t really out of pocket.
An earlier car was a Triumph Herald, my father also having one, so we used to service our cars side by side, with the whole bonnet lifting up, one could sit on the front wheel with legs inside and work on the engine. Dad being a REME engineer, taught me to regrind the valve seatings.
Alasdair Lawrance
My Audi S3 has a built in SatNav. B*gg*r*d if I can work it.
John Nottage
The sat-nav in my Golf does all the stuff with traffic too and is not too difficult to set up. The problem is that it gets home-sick occasionally & while you’re driving down the A12 or something, will suddenly show you a map of Wolfsburg instead! VW have agreed there is a software problem, but haven’t fixed it yet. There’s a symbol on the screen that, if you touch it, will centre the map to the car’s actual location, so it’s not too hard to get things back to normal – once you know how. Mine also shows speed limits, but only those stored with the maps. It doesn’t recognise temporary limits or limit changes. Some cars have speed limit recognition via cameras, so can cope with temporary ones.
I had a Triumph Herald 12/50 and a Vitesse 6 in my youth, both rust-buckets. Sitting on the front wheel to service the engine was one of the few good things about them.
I had 2 Sciroccos following a Triumph Dolomite I bought from Keith Harlow. That was my last Triumph: good design, rubbish build, so I moved to VW. I followed the Sciroccos with 2 BMW Compacts – those were all “Dinky” toys of course (Dual income, no kids). I’ve now gone back to VW – the BMW 3 series is too big for us.
Alasdair Lawrance
Curiously, I also had a Herald (997cc?) and Vitesse convertible, the 1600 cc. You’re correct in calling them rust buckets!
I lived then in a flat in Greenford, and the Service Manager at Standard-Triumph Park Royal, who lived above me, helped rebuild the gearbox of the Vitesse when it wouldn’t engage reverse – a widget somewhere in the bowels of the thing, made of porridge-metal, had to be replaced with something more durable.
It was also something of what I believe is now called a ‘babe-magnet’, whatever that may be.
That block of flats was also home to Mike Spooner, a BBC film cameraman, who I believe had a nasty accident abroad – Egypt? It was a new block of flats, and we jointly installed decent TV & FM aerials for those who were interested – happy days.
Peter Cook
I remember particularly the nylon trunions on the front suspension of my Vitesses. They had a very short life and I got so used to changing them that on one occasion I did the job between races at Goodwood. Race, dismantle, race, refit, race, dismantle other side etc. A lot of trips up and down the rostrum ladder. Probably got a bit of muck on the panning handles! Don’t have that problem with my MX5.
Bernie Newnham
On the Herald it was the Hooke joints on the rear suspension. Did those a few times, both on the Herald and the Spitfire. I never do anything on the Avensis.
John Nottage
I remember changing various Hooke joints in the prop and drive shafts of the Herald and Vitesse on a frequent basis. I also put a new clutch in the Herald, I think. My favourite mod to the Vitesse was to turn the transverse spring rear suspension into a more or less solid bar. I had to buy a long bolt and an extra leaf as fitted to the Herald Estate, take old spring apart, reverse leaves 4 and 5 (I think) then squeeze it all back together with the extra bits. The result squatted on the road with good negative camber at the rear. Went round corners like it was on rails, but it was a very firm ride!
I gave up doing repairs to my cars when I found an electric wire coming from the carburettor of some car – might have been the Dolomite? After that I always got the garage to do any repairs. Having said that, I do recall paying the huge sum of £60 for a complete engine overhaul in my first car, an Austin A30, to some chap called Dave Plowman! Must have been 1966 or 1967? I seem to remember I’d paid £60 for the car which took me to and from Evesham for TO25, and then I finally sold it for – £60!
I have no intention of getting my hands dirty on my Golf – far too complicated with computers, cameras and radar, etc.. Besides, it’s so crowded under the bonnet, it’s impossible to do anything beyond check the oil level without having the right qualifications. The once-a-year service seems to keep it running happily anyway.
Dave Plowman
Yes – I remember that well. In those days a small engine might only last 50,000 miles without major attention.
I fairly recently looked for a local workshop that could do such major machining work on a car engine. All the ones I once knew are now closed. One which does advertise such works sends it off somewhere.
All this brings back memories of how so many did quite complex repairs on our cars back then.
Quite the reverse from today. Many seem to think just because a car has a computer, absolutely everything can be fixed in software. Or the software tells you about any possible fault. So leave absolutely everything to a garage.
My last car had only two breakdowns to the point where it wouldn’t ‘proceed’. One, a failed water pump which disintegrated on the M1, throwing off the serpentine belt which also drove the alternator and power steering pump.
Second one was a collapsed front strut.
Neither anything to do with electronics.
What was remarkable was coolant hoses and exhaust lasting the life of the car – or rather the 15 years I owned it. And it only ever needing new plugs once in some 150,000 miles.
Talking of the Triumph Vitesse, a sort of paying hobby I have involves building and repairing Megasquirt. This is a programmable aftermarket fuel injection ECU. And the one I had in for repair/modification was fitted to a Vitesse. I’m told he’d used the basics from a Triumph 2500 pi for much of the hardware needed for this conversion from carbs. But I’ve yet to see the actual car.
My Rover SD1 is now running a MegaSquirt and wasted spark ignition, so no distributor. With a wideband O2 sensor in the exhaust, tuning is now largely automatic. But any tweaks can be done from inside the car on a laptop. Great fun.
John Nottage
What?!?
Surely the SD1 was the big old Rover dating from when “laptop” probably referred to some scantily clad dancer in a dodgy nightclub! And as for “no distributor”…
This was my Vitesse in all her rusty glory, sometime in the early 1970s I guess!
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Peter Cook
Here is a picture of Steve Chilver on his (2nd ) wedding day: his black and my two tone 1.6 Vitesses outside our flat.
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(The flat where incidentally we, with Keith Gibson, installed a communal TV aerial distribution system). Steve and I had just one night at the flat where we each had MGBs outside. The next day he wrote his car and nearly himself off near Newmarket. We had just struggled to put a new windscreen in his; doh! I rebuilt my MGB and Vitesse gearboxes in the kitchen at Byron Way (Northolt). (My Vitesse had Hardy Spicer universal joints on the drive shafts.) Years before that, when Steve was still at Prestwood with wife no.1, he rebuilt my Morris Minor engine, whilst I was on holiday. Sprite springs etc. He even gave me chauffeur service from Heathrow. Cost a few pints at Henley Regatta the following week.
In those days one could pop down to Dordrecht Road from Kendal Avenue (base) at lunch time and buy spare cogs and brushes for Lucas wiper motors. In Willesden you could buy ‘cord’ piston rings, fractionally oversized for barrel shape cylinders, and much much more. Not now, even with Google and YouTube you need a special computer / program to read and fix fault codes.
Recently our X-Trail was getting breathless and completely stopped a couple of times. The village garage asked when the diesel filter was last changed.. “Last service I suspect,” said I. I was wrong, when I rang and asked the dealership who did the last 5 services they said their records showed 2011! “It is optional,” they said. “Additional charge, maybe, but not optional,” I replied. Try that one when you fail to notify a customer of a cam belt change requirement! A new filter and I was reminded what a 2 litre TD can offer in grunt, and the tach has renewed its acquaintance with the red line. I also noticed a bright shiny tin can near where the screenwash reservoir is topped up. I had no idea where the fuel filter lived until then.
Mustn’t go on down memory lane! Or was it Memorex?
Alasdair Lawrance
I’m surprised at the number of Herald and Vitesse cars that are described here – Dave Ballantyne (Wales and the Mill) had a Herald 12/50 too, I think.
I once read that the chassis was added very late in development, because the Michelotti-designed body was supposed to be monocoque, but couldn’t cope with the transverse rear spring. I can’t find any confirmation or otherwise of this.
Nick Ware
Another Triumph Herald. A lasting memory, shortly after hearing a broken piston ring tinkling down the exhaust pipe, was sitting on one front wheel, Dickie Chamberlain the other side, as we re-bored the cylinders with a hired tool in order to fit oversize (+2mm, I seem to recall) pistons and up the engine capacity. It worked a treat.
Later, I had a red Spitfire with a bulge on its bonnet to accommodate the twin SU carbs. Had endless fun tuning them of course, but its snag was the SU fuel pump which had a naughty little habit of stopping ticking at the most awkward moments, viz: hareing down the A3 at 80mph in the fast lane. That gave you about ten seconds to get to the hard shoulder before the engine died. The solution: a piece of string tied round the pump and fed through a hole in the bulkhead. At the crucial moment, a gentle tug on the string got it ticking again. Fab car, but it literally rusted away.
Dave Mundy
My V4 Corsair had a column change gear lever and my beloved wife put it into reverse while doing about 20 mph forwards! There was a bang but then carried on as normal. The next day I was working at Kempton Park races (R.I.P.!) and I couldn’t reverse into a parking spot. One of the OB camera-persons was Paul Grahame who told me I could fix the Borg-Warner 35 auto gear box for about £20 over the week-end (an exchange box was about £170!) and told me where to get the bits etc. I did and it only cost me £30 as I renewed lots of the o-rings as well as the broken clutch plates. It was just like a large Sturmey-Archer bicycle hub gear!
Bernie Newnham
Not surprisingly, this, on the Cobra, gives me old style problems:
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I couldn’t get the timing right, so in the end I took it to some proper professionals, Wey Classic – a clearing in the Surrey forests covered with old MGs and stuff, with ancient mechanics tending them. A man with a battered old boiler suit and a fag hanging out of his mouth sorted it.
Another problem is that it fails the MOT on emissions, but the only way to check is to have an MOT. Last time, the senior techie said “Bring it back tomorrow. I’ll do the test and it will pass”. Say no more! The time before the tester and I ran the engine with the test probe in each exhaust in turn whilst I twiddled with the Edelbrock mixture screws till the numbers went green. I haven’t touched the tuning between MOTs, it’s just old machinery.
Bernie Newnham
Does a Rover V8 with Megasquirt and wasted spark have a lot more power than the standard – or mine with Edelbrock and uprated cam?
Dave Plowman
If anything, the big difference with my SD1 which already had the EFI engine (Vitesse) was towards the bottom end. Pulls far more like a V8 should. But this could have been down to Lucas trying for very best economy – it ran rather weak apart from at very wide throttle opening.
I can’t really say maximum power is different either way. Other real plus is it no longer has good and bad days.
Tuning for maximum power is never the difficult bit. It’s getting it running well over the rest of the range – without sacrificing economy –
that takes more time. If your Eidelbrock/cam combination is spot on over the entire rev range, I’d leave well alone. Many aren’t due to the effort of jetting them correctly.
However, you can have mapped ignition and carbs. Getting rid of distributor problems – and having a much more accurate timing signal from the crank – can make sense. Especially since the formulation of petrol is rather different now than from when the engine was designed.
Bernie Newnham
Who knows whether mine is anything near spot on? It passes the MOT in the end…
I don’t drive it much – it was a big retirement build project. It doesn’t have a roof, but does have an always on Mini heater, so it can be quite pleasant on a cold sunny day if well wrapped up. I used to take it to the Woking Hospice Car show at Brooklands, where it was always popular, but they’ve stopped now, so I just swan around now and then, and sometime go to Gary Critchley’s Shepperton meets.
I think a Cobra has to have a V8 with that big pancake air filter, so I’ll not worry about trying for exotic power. I bought a £30 RV8 instead of a 5L Chevy crate engine (£5000) and that seems good enough in a car that weighs 1200 kilos.
Dave Plowman
Re: It passes the MOT in the end….
That shouldn’t be much of a problem if it passes the appropriate age related regs with carbs. I think you’re allowed something like 5% CO – and carbs can do 2% or better.
Re: can be quite pleasant on a cold sunny day if well wrapped up.
I cheated and bought a used Boxster. Once the heater is up and running, it’s great hood down in any weather – apart from rain.
You’ll not get vast peak power out of an RV8 anyway – even after spending a fortune on bits. But it should have a very respectable torque curve. And sound lovely.
Bill Jenkin
I wonder if anyone uses the cigar lighter socket for lighting cigars any longer?
Dave Mundy
Some years ago when Saabs were Saabs (ie. not General Motors!) they removed the cigar socket from their cars as being very unhealthy!
I think that cigar lighter sockets are probably the worst connection device in our industry (I won’t mention SCART at this point!). Our Sports Unit Granada had a DC socket provided behind the passenger seat so that we could re-charge the VPR-5 batteries on the way to the next shoot. Why can’t car makers provide a good quality DC socket for all of us to use for all the multiplicity of electronic devices the family bring into the cars nowadays?
Ian Dow
I used my car cigar lighter quite recently to light a tight roll of newspaper, run up the outside stairs of my very remote Signal Box on the Kent and East Sussex Railway, trying to keep the wind from blowing it out, then light the Box’s gas heater on a bl**dy cold day when I had run out of matches – made it on the 4th attempt!
So don’t confine them to the dustbin yet…
Tony Crake
I hope you filled in a risk assessment form!
Vernon Dyer
It was the risk assessment form he used to light the heater!
Alasdair Lawrance
That was a trick used by Jason Bourne, except he opened a gas main first and used a toaster, in ‘Bourne Supremacy” (?) Caused a quite spectacular explosion…
Geoff Fletcher
Memory test re car accessories! Anyone else remember those round black car heaters with the two flaps on top? And those windscreen wipers with black boxes and a chrome knob to hand operate them in snow? And conversion kits to go from arm indicators to flashing type? And Mangoletski carb tweak kits and tuning twin carbs with the aid of a polythene tube and a good ear?
John Nottage
Handy hint: if you want nice new cars and global holidays, try to avoid having children. I understand they can be very costly.
Nick Ware
It can’t be denied that having children doesn’t make a lot sense as a business model, and if we’re honest the World has more than enough people on it already. And yet, once you have them, nothing is ever the same again.
Dave Mundy
The problem is that if all the clever perceptive people stopped having children and all the thickos kept breeding like mad where would the planet end up?
Dave Plowman, Peter Cook
The USA and the result is the planet ends up with Trump.
Mike Giles
And when it comes to grandchildren ~ no contest ~ we take ours on holidays with us and have all the more fun for that!
