Wow, I am stunned.
I have just put the photo of me at wheel of 007′s db5 (taken about 15 years ago)
 into this funky face recognition site
http://www.myheritage.com/FP/Company/tryFaceRecognition.php
and it came with Magic Johnson… huh! we’re not even the same racial background… Second choice was Vin Deisel. Excuse me! I do have hair…
OK chaps. Points for the most bizarre match.
This weekend I had plans to strip and paint the front door at home – so no work on ROJ. Trouble was, I have a friend called David who owns a Lotus Elan, and this weekend is the the annual gathering of Lotus owners at Donington race circuit.
So at 6:30 this morning I hauled myself out of bed and set off with David to Donington….
It was a great day out. We got to do four laps of the track as passengers in a couple of Elises – serious fun. I took my cheque book just in case, and was very tempted by this Elan shooting brake conversion:
But then saw this – and had to be bodily dragged away by David – with the counsel that IÂ already had one major basket case to play with:
David and I have know each other since school days at KGV in Hong Kong. Even then we used to hang around the car showrooms and dream of the day when we would be old enough to cruise round HK Island in a DB6 volante or e-type.
I have proven to myself that I can go a whole week without thinking about the work I have to do on ROJ. This feat however, requires me travelling to Austria and repeatedly sliding down snowy slopes on Salomon skis. Unfortunately the weather was foul – rained nearly every day, but as I was skiing with a contingent of the British Army we didn’t stop for anything!
It didn’t take me long on return to start planning the next set of jobs on ROJ – rebuilding differential and rear axle – which I did this last weekend.
Firstly fixing the three mounting brackets to the chassis – note that the two rear ones are different shapes – this is to accomodate the Watts linkage on the Dedion tube.
and attached;
front bracket (I needed to tap out the captive nuts, which was very fiddly):
The hypoid unit and diff carrier in pieces:
Put together and painted with Hammerite – looks rather spooky:
Like this:
I must remember to fill it with differential oil before fitting it to the car!
More blogs and websites
Every now and then I type Aston Martin into Google images to see what comes up. This week I found a great website called “The Splendid Whizzer Association”
And being a pedantic ex-journalist I also like websites with a quirky look at the English language as in Wordmall.
Next steps
Once we’ve got a rolling chassis – engine rebuild…
..before i am back wielding spanners…
 In the meantime – here are a few pertinent smiles..
http://www.boicey.com/comics.html
Take a look at his junk-yard pics – fab collections.