Aston Martin Rust Oration

Old two Jags has taken a much publicised swipe at Gordon Brown in his memoires - particularly for being prickly and bad tempered…

Pot - kettle…..

What a great weekend!

The best ones are usually when it’s been a bugger of a week - or month in this case. The impending launch of The State of the Natural Environment report and the London mayoral elections have kept my nose firmly on the grindstone.

So Zen?? Well that’s my new toy - I lost my MP3 player on the way back from skiing (left on a Lufthansa plane) so bought myself this really jazzy 60gb media player a Creative Zen Vision W - the music quality is superb, and the size of the screen means I can watch movies when travelling.

This weekend I worked solidly on the engine, I’ve got two, but I’m planning on rebuilding the original one from ROJ to keep the chassis and engine number consistent.

The engine was pretty filthy, so I took it out into the sunshine and using my Boy’s Own Tool Kit compressor, sprayed it all over with gunk and then jet washed it.

I like this photo - it reminds me of two Star Wars robots having a chat:

Once I’d chased all the spiders out I rigged up the crane and with Gary’s help removed the gearbox:

After taking off the torque converter we attached the engine stand - this was an awkward job which required the help of both Gary and Malcolm - we hoisted the engine up high - then lifted the engine stand up to attach it, then lowered the whole thing down again.

By this time it was getting late and time for Chinese take away - I slept very well that night.

On Sunday I sorted out the workshop, chucked out some scrap and did a few odd jobs - it was such a lovely day that I spent sometime sitting in the garden reading the workshop manual.

My number two engine actually looks in better condition, but it’s untested and we know that the one on the stand actually works - once rebuilt it too will look smart again.

And the cherry on the cake - Malcolm drove me to Bedford station in his MGA - bliss.

Last night the Pie Club of Great Britain held their Spring event - and it was my turn to organise it.

Being the owner of a very upmarket motor car, I thought I would revisit my youth and take my fellow connoisseurs of the pastry casing to one of the pubs around Berkeley square in Mayfair.

Much research went into identifying the perfect venue - including inadvertantly visiting a gay bar… I have never drunk a gin and tonic so quickly in my life…

In my early teens I would haunt the local Aston Martin showroom - drooling over the V8s and plaguing the long suffering salesmen, who probably saw me as an over privileged brat but put up with me just in case my father was a potential client.

In my later teens I discovered the delights of pubs such as the Red Lion in Waverton Street and the Coach and Horses in Bruton Street, both still little changed in fabric - but clientele now very different. In the early seventies Mayfair was still very much a residential area, and these pubs were frequented by the staff from the big houses and the trendy youngsters from the mews cottages. Now the bars are full of braying yuppies.

In the end the final choice was the Windmill in Mill Street three times awarded for the quality of their steak and kidney pies.

Even if I say so myself the evening went very well, the quality of the pies was surpassed only by the quality of the company. Although there was nearly a disaster over the booking, which resulted in us having to have two tables instead of one large one, and a very long wait for the pies, we all had A Very Good Time.

My duty now done for a year or so, I look forward to the Summer Pie event - organised by some-one else!

News of 007s DBS going into Lake Garda is in all the news - our undercover agent for the Aston Martin Owners Club on location will soon be sending us the inside gen on the whole affair.

There are some great YouTube clips at DBS in the pond.

I do sometimes wonder if the poeple who read this blog (if any still do!) are beginning to think that watching paint dry might be a better use of their time.

Still, here goes for another spine tingling installment of greasy fingerprints and skinned knuckles.

This weekend I finished attaching the heat shields in the rear transmission tunnel and fitted the handbrake cable. I had a good look under the wreck in the barn to check where everything went:

And put the new one together:

Had another go at fitting the front shock:

and gave up again because my hydraulic tool wouldn’t fit into the suspension leg, and Malcolm’s spring compressors were too short, so it’s off to Machine Mart again for some longer ones…

(Not so) Veloco-cycle

Found Malcolm finding another excuse not to do any work on his Renault - he’s got himself an old moped to rebuild - I hope he’s not planning a trip to France on that!

The engine

Regular readers will know of my frustrated attempts to find someone to help me rebuild ROJ’s engine - Malcolm and Gary may have both worked at Aston Martin - but on Vanquishes not 30 year old V8s.

Today a gentlemen came to tea who may well be my salvation.. well ROJ’s salvation. Peter Austin Smith is a retired Aston Martin engineer who worked on V8s when they were new… and may even have worked on ROJ. He lives two villages away from the farm and will come over once in a while to supervise me (and friends) as we strip down the engine, inspect it for problems, and then put it all back together again.

We start next month!

Past (and present) loves 3

Even before the orange Fiat went to be recycled as a refridgerator, we had started looking for a larger, more comfortable car - and found it in this 1974 Vanden Plas 1300 Princess. She may be nappy-contents yellow (Harvest Gold) on the outside and swamp green leather inside - but she still won first prize at the Bank Holiday classic car show on Alverstoke beach

With walnut dash and door caps, and picnic tables in the back she’s like a Bentley that inadvertantly got hot-washed. We never had a nick-name for her, but the Princess served us well for several years until the salt air played havoc with her inner wings.

When I did my classic car restoration course I stripped down and rebuilt her front end, and she is now in my mother’s garage on axle stands until I can find time to finish off some work on the sills, poor girl - having to compete for my time with an Aston!

The snow is steadily falling in leafy Dulwich - and the garden is looking lovely, here’s the view from where I’m sitting:

With this weather I’m glad that I’m not working on ROJ on the farm - even though I’m facing another enforced separation due to family commitments.

Angus and his really sweet grilfriend Haz were here over half term - which was great. Angus went back to Glasgow on Friday. We sent him back first class on the Virgin train from Euston - he was thrilled with the cooked breakfast and lunch, and particularly the drinks trolley!

Here in London we are in the run up to Mayoral elections - I went to one of the hustings the other day and found myself swinging from Ken to Boris and back again - the lib-dems send me to sleep and the green party just spout rhetoric.

Ken maybe an unpleasant little man with some crackpot ideas - and he may be vehemently anti-car, but he does get things done. His manifesto tends to be primarily about changing the way people behave to improve life in London.. which is a difficult message to give, but essentially right.

Boris on the other hand has a manifesto full of promises about what he will do for London -suggesting that Londoners don’t have to do anything for themselves - which may suggest why he’s ahead in the polls. He is a self confessed petrol head, however he might just find it difficult to reconcile this with being Mayor.

…I think I’ll flip a coin - Ken as first choice, Boris as second… or vice versa….

Yesterday was a rather painful day for the credit card. In July we are going to Peru for three weeks and while we’re away we are giving the house keys to the builders. They will be stripping the place out: total rewiring, installing state of the art central heating and rebuilding bathroom and bedrooms. It has taken us three months to decide on all the new fittings, colour schemes etc - and yesterday entailed paying the first installment. I had to lie down in a dark room for a while.

But back to the most important thing in life (apart from family of course) - ROJ.

I have been in discussion with a retired Aston Martin engineer about rebuilding the engine. He worked at Newport Pagnell in the seventies - and may have even worked on ROJ. He is coming to the farm next time I am up, and I am hoping that with his help I will be able to speed things up considerably. I can’t see much point in getting the home sorted out if I can’t have the Aston parked outside.

Past loves 2

Our first little Fiat was such a gutsy little machine that when it disintegrated in rust we went for the same model again.

This is where we started to learn about owning classic cars!

Here we are on holiday on the Isle of Wight. Pretty soon we knew most of the AA men in the South of England by their first names… (Note Angus has grown a few inches since the first photo)

This little car lasted about two years, but by this time we were beginning to get the bug for motoring further afield than Hampshire and the IoW - so we moved on to something bigger. (I do wish that I had the skills then that I do now - I would have taken engine and running gear from white car and put them in the orange body and kept it for fun).

Sad day

Angus took Haz on a tour of his childhood last week - Down to Dulwich College, then into town to Hill House in Knightsbridge and then to the Regency block where we lived behind Madam Tussauds - only to find it in the hands of the demolition man… The planned new building will be all steel and glass - which I think will look wrong in that location, no doubt the developers will make a killing.

After a gap of nearly two months I was so happy to see my car again. I do feel that we have really bonded…

When you think about it ROJ is already imbued with my genes - all those scrapings of skin and minor blood spills mean that my DNA is well and truly embedded into this machine! Not to mention every nut, bolt and component will have my finger prints all over it.

This weekend I eased myself gently into it by tackling one of the scariest jobs on the planet - squeezing the shock absorber springs with a compressor. All those tales of high tensile car springs erupting from the tool and ricocheting around the work shop…

In the end it was all a bit of a doddle.

I spent a large amount of money on new rubber suspension bushes - and you can see why I needed them…

Remember a few threads back I was having problems with the handbrake cable brackets?, I cleaned up the one I took off the wreck and dipped it in Hammerite, it took too long to dry so I only managed to get one on the car.

While I was working under the car I decided to stick the heat shields under the rear seats.

And then I put the rear brake calipers together - now that was a fiddly job. Painting them was a complete waste of time, they look horrible. I cleaned out the cylinders and fitted new ring seals - carefully coating everything in red rubber grease, getting the dust seals in with the new stainless steel pistons was a fag.

Offered up to the brake disk - but not yet bolted to the diff, with new pads and reground retaining pins - the calipers didn’t look too bad at all.

Past loves

We’ve had a number of classic cars over the years, I thought it might be fun to show you some of ROJ’s predecesors. Rather than starting with the Bentleys, MGs and Land-Rovers of my youth, how’s  this  - the wife and son with our very first family car - a Fiat 125 (the church in the background is where we were married.)

The weather was perfect. Cobalt skies, diamantine sun, pristine pistes. My heart sang.

A full six days skiing, bliss.

Slightly sobering were the number of accidents on the slopes - why is it that some people just don’t realise what a dangerous sport skiing can be. On the first day, without any warm up or stretching, one of our group rushed up to the top of St Jakob black run and snapped a tendon on the way down! There were also some very nasty head injuries during the week - I’m so glad I did a first aid course. In all the years I’ve been skiing I’ve never seen so many blood spills on the snow.

The best bit, off the slopes, was the evening of ice go-karting. I just have to imagine myself in the race scene from On her Majesty’s Secret Service everytime I get behind that wheel.

Second best bit was chatting up the stunning East German girl in the sauna…. If I ever take ROJ I might just get somewhere.

US President George W Bush said the news should mark the beginning of a transition towards democracy for Cuba.

“And we’re going to help. The United States will help the people of Cuba realise the blessings of liberty.”

God help the Cubans!…

Guido Fawkes with a finger on the pulse, has pointed out that MPs are more likly to commit fraud than benefits claimants..
http://www.order-order.com/2008/02/mps-are-four-times-more-likely-to.html

And check out which MPs have been put forward to investigate! http://www.order-order.com/2008/02/three-mps-to-investigate-mps-expenses.html