I cannt believe another Christmas is almost upon us and ROJ is still in lots of little bits.
I honestly thought that working for myself would give me the time to spend more time on the car – instead it’s been quite the opposite.
Last week I was at the United Nations in Geneva with the UK delegation to the Ottawa treaty meeting absolutely fascinating.
Looks like I’ve got a buyer for the Princess, so I really msut get up to the farm in january.
This car has a long pedigree, and was a show winner in its time.
With leather upholstery and deep pile carpets it combines a certain elegance with comfort., and a quite nifty turn of speed.
A real head turner!
No – not the Aston. I’m never going to finish both ROJ and Stephanie’s little Vanden Plas 1300 Princess – so after much deliberation, the poor thing’s got to go.
Rather annoyingly, there is not much more that needs to be done on it.
It’s complete with new hubcaps, rechromed over-riders, three spare doors, a box load of spare parts and a recenly rebuilt engine..
I think the best thing is for anyone interested to contact me at astonbits@hotmail.co.uk and then make an offer once you’ve seen the car in the flesh.
On the one hand – work is really satisfying, exciting and fulfilling.
I am organising a debate at the Royal Commonwealth Society on the 20th Anniversary of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. I’m flying over speakers from New York and Sir Bobby Charlton, the founder of landmines charity ‘Find a Better Way’ will be our special guest.
Here’s the link http://www.thercs.org/society/252 if you’d like to come.
On the other hand it is so frustrating not to have the time to get up to the farm and play with ROJ…!
If this is October…
Well it’s not, but it was. And that meant our half term excursion to more archaeological sites in Turkey.
We went to Bodrum – site of the ancient city of Halicarnasus, and of one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Mausoleum of Halicarnasus (Most of which is in the British Museum)
Here’s Stephanie sitting among what’s left.
I also did a little diving – one of the best dives ever in fact – on a sunken Turkish Airforce C47, the military version of the DC3 Dakota.
Unfortunately I don’t have an underwater camera – so I’m hoping my Danish dive buddy will send me a copy of the ones he took. Meanwhile, here’s a link to someone else’s site: http://www.f1online.de/premid/005332000/5332303.jpg
Here I am prepring to dive the C47.
Bodrum also has the most amazing underwater archaeological .museum. I took masses of photos – this is how they stacked amphorae in ancient ships:
And of course there were the inevitable rusty hulks that I wanted to adopt and bring home…
Screwdriver – damn, head’s ripped.
Socket & ratchet – damn, rusted nuts.
Drill – damn, hard work.
Angle grinder - Oh yes!!! Sparks galour.
I have an imperative to strip the wreck in the barn. I need more parts off it, I have a number of people waiting for parts off it, and I need to clear the space.
But by God it’s hard work, it’s messy and it’s frustrating – and it takes an age. I would far rather be spending my time creating than destroying.
New Arrivals
Two new arrivals on the farm are Phil’s very sharp BMW, I did enjoy being collected from the station in it.
No photos as the blog software seems to be malfunctioning!
The other is a cat called Harry – so called because he’s ginger and a bit of a tom! I was not impressed by finding him at the foot of the bed one morning licking the bits that his namesake so famously flaunted at the billards table!
August has been been a good month so far.
A couple of weeks ago we went to visit some friends in the West Country. Martin is a fellow petrol head with a serious collection of metal and a shed that makes the barn look positively uncluttered!
His Series 2 LandRover made me go quite weak at the knees.
Even Stephanie was impressed.
It made me think that if I’d picked a Land Rover to restore instead of the Aston, I might have finished years ago!
On the farm
I took last week off work to have a real blitz on getting the final few parts off the scrap Aston that i need for ROJ – it was damn hard work as nuts and bolts were so rusted in that i had to use the angle grinder a lot – and where i could get to places with the grinder – the dremel had to do… I was knackered by the time I got home.
I did get a couple of things onto ROJ though.
The electric horns. Beep Beep!
The horns on the scrap car came off,
I cleaned them up and painted them,
and fitted them to ROJ.
I also spent a sticky few days unravelling the wiring loom and splicing in new wiring – it’s not quite finished, I need to get some new ignition wiring, and a whole box full of new connectors.
On Saturday Phil suggested popping over to Newport Pagnell to see the new Aston Martin showroom. I was rather keen on trying the Rapide for size, but the salesman thought he had something more suitable….
The AM sales team were all very jolly, and it’s great to see the company keep a Newport Pagnell presence. I shall pop ROJ along when it’s finished for a photo outside its birthplace.
Well dear reader I have just spent a whole 5 days on the farm, plenty of time to make a complete cock-up and then rectify it.
And to top it off I’m giving you a treat.
In the past i have given you words and pictures – well, at the end of this post will be something extra – Moving pictures with narration!
Work is very quiet over summer, so it’s a chance to get some big jobs done on ROJ. I’ve just spent last week fitting the aircon system. The beautiful ABS repairs all had to come off and be re-done. To get the box into the car I had to drop the steering column, and then battled to get it back up with the aircon in place. But after plenty of hefty swearing, it all slipped nicely into place.
I fabricated a steel bracket to support the vacuum pump and rivetted that on, then my cheapie Machine Mart rivetter jammed, so I had to take that apart and fix it.
Because they had cut out the roof for the ejector seat scene in the Barclaycard advert, they had also cut through the light brackets, so I made some new ones and fitted those
.
So is that it? I hear you cry. Well almost.
The tangled horror that is the wiring loom has been leering at me for some time now, so I decided to tackle it.
I’ve actually got three looms – one from ABW the original that became racing car, one from ROJ and one from my donor car. Each one had some thing different – and the donor car had a large section burnt out.
I took the best one (which was off ABW and laid it out on the floor of the barn and after undoing all the knots, compared it to the wiring chart in the manual I was able to label most of the branches, and work out where to splice in the additional wires for sunroof, repeaters etc.
It sort of reminded me of first year zoology when i had to remove and display the nervous system of Rattus Norvegicus.
The loom comes in two parts, with the rear loom connecting up within the driver’s footwell. So as that was the easiest bit, I cleaned it up and put it onto ROJ – next time I will take a photo.
It was quite quiet on the farm with Phil and Gary being away, but Malcolm’s delightful French girlfriend Kay was there for most of the time – and her cooking is far better than either Malcolm’s or mine…!
I shall be up again in a couple of weeks to finish the wiring – and then the body goes on! At this rate I may have a usable car before i become incapable of using it!
And now, may I present my theatrical masterpiece.
It is certainly worth taking a three day weekend, I can get far more done.
I finished refurbing the blower plenum chambers. I used a bit of filler and plenty of paint to disguise my rather shoddy welding.
According to the workshop manual ROJ was the very first V8 to be fitted with the Coolaire Mk11 – and it’s a complicated old system – with the vent flaps in the boxes being controlled by vacuum pipes..
The electrics also look like a nightmare to figure out – hopefully someone on the AMOC forum might tell me where the wiring goes.
It also looks as if something on the circuit board has burnt out – I’ve got two other earlier Coolaire systems so I ma be able to swap over the board.
Where the plenum chambers fit onto the condensor box the plastic is fragile and broken, so I used a piece of ABS plastic and with a heat gun, folded the plastic into a box shape, which i will then cut and splice into the main box.
I also used pieces of ABS to make the replacement flanges that had broken off the plenum covers.
I both glued and rivetted the tabs in place.
At the end of today this is how far I had got – not much to do before fitting it into the car.
…. cool outside
When the Datsun 240 went off to the undertaker, he left his pyjamas behind, so ROJ looks much cooler in them that he did under a plastic sheet…
And the others?
There are no new arrivals in the barn museum – but young Phil has sold his Figaro and is proceeding to spend the profits on his Pulsar – here he is looking particularly pleased with his performance enhanced cylinder head.
I’m up on the farm, wet and windy and waiting for paint to dry…
This weekend I’m working on the aircon – it all needs to go in before the dashboard and wiring and anything more in the engine bay..
I’ll post some photos later this weekend.
Travelling the world as we do, we meet a great number of fascinating and wonderful people, and we see and learn about equally fascinating places. However that doesn’t mean that there are not beautiful places to visit here in the UK – or that the people are not interesting and friendly too.
This half term we took ourselves off for a real rest in a little cottage in the Shropshire Hills. No internet and no mobile phone signal – perfect!
Shropshire is really one of the most attractive and charming of counties. Years ago when I worked for the PM’s Rural Advocate I aways enjoyed our trips to the West Midlands.
In the space of a week (despite the rain…) Stephanie and I walked through some stunning scenery, saw some historic and archaelogical sites, drunk in some lovely old pubs, and had cream teas with some very welcoming locals.
We stayed in a small cottage in Ditton Priors that was decorated in a style that immediately made us feel at home.
Indonesian masks, african spears and a bommerang!
Even Stephanie’s little car felt at home…
The Jubilee celebration crowds outside our bedroom window were pretty well behaved.
The weather made for very disappointing classic car spotting – just a three-wheeler Lomax in the local village.
On the last day I went for a nice long ride overlooking Ludlow Castle and began contemplating spending a lot more time up there – we would certainly recommend the cotage we stayed in – called the Granary, http://www.shropshiretourism.co.uk/accommodationdetails.php?estid=202
Tomorrow it’s back to work to build up some stress to take out on ROJ…
My weekend on the farm didn’t happen, but I’ve discovered an added bonus to living in Dulwich http://motorsportatthepalace.co.uk/ just 15 mins walk up the hill.
It was a lovely sunny Sunday so we packed a picnic and went to watch some superb machines burble around the park. Including an AM DBS V8, so I had to go and have a chat.
As spartan as ROJ
Such good fun, I think we should enter a team for next year (Malcolm, Gary???)
