Aston Martin Rust Oration

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

Now that’s going to be an interesting lyric to work into the title song…

Fantastic! I am delighted that the producers can still draw on original Fleming work for the Bond films - and he’s still driving his DBS.

I am a life long fan of Bond in literature and cheer every time a film is able to follow the original stories. My favourites still remain From Russia With Love and OHMSS - but young Daniel Craig is creeping very close.

Last night I spent the evening researching my flights to Salzburg in Austria for a week skiing next month.

All of the so called ‘cheap flights’ left from Stansted at silly times of day and night - then charged extra for check-in, for luggage, for taxes and for letting you stand in a queue to board the plane! (I bet they have coin slots on the toilet doors on the aircraft). On average the return fare worked out at about £320.

Changing tack I decided to check out flights to Munich and found a Lufthansa return flight from Heathrow (so much easier to get to) at very sensible times of departure for £182 inclusive of everthing. And it will only cost me an extra ten Euro to get to my hotel in the Tyrol than it would from Salzburg. What a bargain!

Some of the scenes in The Living Daylights with James Bond in his Aston Martin V8 were filmed around the Tyrol - and some of the places I visited in Morocco were also used as locations in the film. Cool.

Popped up for a quick weekend on the farm with only one job in mind - one of the handbrake cable brackets was broken while getting it off ROJ and the spare one was pretty badly corroded. I got a quote from Aston for a new one - £98 plus vat. ‘Sod that’ I thought I’ll repair the one I’ve got - only to discover that I’ve actually got two left hand ones! So I spent a cold cramped weekend in the barn cutting a right hand one off the donor car. (After all, what’s the point of having a donor car if I don’t use it for parts?)

I was damned if I was going to lie on a cold wet floor to drill out the bolts on this very rusty old bracket, so I cut through the old handbrake, cable got inside the car and cut away part of the rotten rear panel to expose the bolt ends and captive nuts. Then using a grind stone in a drill I simply ground them away until with a hammer and punch I knocked the complete bracket out.

And this is what the fuss was all about.

So did I get anything ONTO the car? Well, yes I did. This electrical connector thingy.

A small achievement - but significant in it’s own way!

Aged parent’s birthday and skiing in the Tyrol prevents me doing any more for a while. You never know, a wheel or two may appear on the car in 2008!

I went into town to do the last of my Christmas shopping today - what a nightmare!

Fortnum and Mason’s was heaving so I left in a hurry and cut through Burlington Arcade on the way to the Apple store for a hard drive. As I came out of the arcade I spotted a beautiful white 1978 V8. Got chatting to the owner and discovered that we had been close neighbours for over 10 years when we lived behind Madame Tussaurds - and I had never once spotted his car!

All the very bestNigel

Classic car restoration is most definitely not a winter sport - epecially on the frozen steppes of Befordshire!

Thermal underwear, heavy pullover, woolie hat - and that was just for inside the workshop.

Once again I over-estimated what I would be able to get done in three days.  I did achieve quite a bit- but there are still no wheels on ROJ.

My first job was emptying the sludgy old oil from the rear dampers and refilling with EP90 - a very tedious procedure that involved using a syringe to inject the oil while pumping the lever arm back and forth.

Once filled I put them on the car - but the left hand side damper proved problematic as one of the mounting bracket retaining nuts needed cleaning out and retapping - of course it had to be the most inaccesible - sitting on the cold garage floor has probably given me piles.

Malcolm pointed out on the Oscar India that the Watts linkage bolt is obscured by the diff mounting bar metalastic bush - and this shows in this photo of ROJ’s mounting too.

The second job was to fill the diff with LS oil, and I would have fitted the brake calipers - but decided that the mounting bolts were too badly corroded - will order new ones after Christmas.

Instead I fitted the windscreen wiper motor and attached the mechanism.

Next trip up i shall be trying a different approach to fitting the rear running gear. Malcolm attached the axles to the differential then lifted and attached the whole mechanism in one - I shall try to fit the differential first and then attach the axle , Dedion tube and Watts Linkages as a second operation.

The brake pipe I bought via ebay has disappeard into the ether - the seller has a very strange idea of customer service - after having packed the pipe so badly that the accompanying tools bent it, he said - ’we’ve never had any problems before’.  I don’t care, I have a problem, sort it. So last time I buy from them. Annoying because i now need to order more pipe from elsewhere.

My son Angus came home from Glasgow School of Art this weekend, which has brightened the house up considerably - we had been enjoying the extra space and absence of loud music at all hours, but missed his charming smile and very quick wit. Sadly he is still not interested in helping me rebuild ROJ.