A tale of two lucky VDP's - part 13

by Andy Perman

We find ourselves in part 13 of these blogs and it’s now early 2017. The VDP had been safely stowed away for the winter, but its slumber was about to be cut short; the Enthusiasts of British Motor Vehicles group were planning a day trip in February to see the Vulcan Bomber at Wellesbourne Airport. This was to include a full tour and then a line-up of our cars for a photo in front of the bomber. There was no way I was missing that! So on a cold, squally Saturday (it was winter after all) I headed north to Warwickshire. I was first to arrive but within half an hour several classics and other members started to rock up.

The day has been well covered in another blog by our own Fat Controller Gar in his blog, so I won’t go into details here but the Vulcan was simply awesome and the staff showing us round really took their time and knew their stuff. Several had actually worked with the bombers during the Falklands conflict and their stories were really engaging. We then all arranged our cars in front of the grand old lady for an excellent photo shoot. A brilliant day, I was rather enjoying this new group!

​April through to July I attended quite a few shows, including my last trip to Pride of Longbridge where I picked up 1st Prize at the Allegro National, rather humbling. The VDP was running and driving like clockwork having sorted out all the niggles over the past few years and although great for me to enjoy, as blogs go, vanilla!

In August I attended another event organised by the Enthusiasts of British Motor Vehicles. This one was a steam rally (one of my favourites) and it was at South Cerney Airfield so just a short hour and a half drive for me. The show was on for three days but I could only make the Sunday. The rally was brilliant, a great mix of steam, cars and old ‘stuff’ and was right up my street so I put it in my diary to attend the following year! It has also been covered excellently by Mike Peake AKA ‘Fat bloke’ in his "Fat Bloke & Poppy" chronicles, and a full account of the whole weekend is to be found here along with the relevant photo gallery.

The following weekend was MOT time. Just a couple of advisories came up; one of the CV gaiters was approaching the end of it’s life and one of the ball pin joints had a bit of play in it. Nothing serious. Middle of September on a fine day I jacked up the front of the car, removed the drive shaft and changed the gaiter. The MOT chap was right - it was rather tender in places! I decided to change all four ball pin joints rather than just the one with play in it. All done in a day and just in time as the end of the month was the close of season Milton Keynes show which was excellent.

​Show over and back home I stowed the car for what should have been the winter……… however……

The Enthusiasts of British Motor Vehicles group had organised a whole weekend tour of Snowdonia national park in October, with two full days of driving. I really fancied some of that, so booked a local B&B and packed the car. I met Mike Peake and Poppy at Frankley Services where we could refuel the cars and ourselves then in a convoy of two we headed West into North Wales. The first part was busy with traffic and dual carriageway dullness but half an hour later after a left turn we were transported back to 1969 halfway up a mountainside in Italy on the film set of the Italian job for a most exhilarating drive! Cue the music.

Again the weekend has been fully covered in the ‘Fat bloke and Poppy’ chronicles - click here to read it but I’ll just add a couple of things. The ‘Gar weather’ feature of our tours had undergone a full software upgrade since Coventry and ran a full power sequence Friday evening through to Sunday morning! Funniest moment was Gar hearing the Coleman shelter giving up and collapsing in the storm during the early hours of Saturday morning and just casually unplugging the extension lead before rolling over and going back to sleep! And just the sound of Nick’s Jensen growling around the dry stone walling scaring all the sheep! My first tour with the group, I was hooked and vowed to attend plenty more.

Monday morning, tour over and with another of Wales finest breakfasts inside me I headed back along the Italian Job road and then East to Telford for an appointment with Ian Kennedy to get my Hydrogas displacers re-gassed. This is a complicated and highly specialist job, way beyond my skills.

The suspension system on the VDP is of the Hydrogas type and consists of four displacer units above each wheel then interconnected front to back. There are essentially two parts to this; a gas part - in this case nitrogen - and a fluid part, essentially a type of antifreeze. The gas part provides the springing and is kept separate from the fluid by a rolling diaphragm. The fluid carries the weight of the car and is used to trim the height of the suspension and provide the front to back interconnection.

​There is a semi non-return valve on the rebound side of the fluid and this provides the damping factor. Extremely simple but awesome to drive. Problem is the units were sealed for life, at the time this was set at 15 years at which point they would have been replaced with a new unit. Roll on 45 years there are no new units and the existing ones are all low on gas which results in a harsh choppy ride so Ian has devised a method of drilling and welding in a high pressure injection point on each displacer then re-charging the nitrogen. This also requires the fluid to be evacuated and the displacers disconnected from the car first.

It was humbling to watch a true engineer at work - a highly skilled job all carried out in less than a day. On the test drive afterwards Ian directed me into a road that had speed bumps and said in no uncertain terms ’40 miles an hour’! Well previous to the work that would have been suicidal and the car would have crashed over them probably going into orbit in the process. True to say you couldn’t feel or hear the bumps even at that speed, it felt like a magic carpet! Back at the workshop Ian connected his Sun analyser to the engine and made a few adjustments to the fuel settings which made it run even smoother. Top bloke.

Job all done I made the long journey back home but it was a pleasure, the car glided along soaking up every bump. Anyone who has not experienced a well set up Hydrogas system needs to get a ride in one, it really is something else.

That should have been it for the year but a week before Christmas I got a call from my local garage, it was James the owner. He said ‘remember the blue VDP you saw in here last year?’ Oh yes I said. ‘Just had the owner on the phone, he’s had an accident and rear end crashed it, he’s bringing it in later today for me to remove all the displacers so he can sell them then he’s getting the car scrapped’. Then came the hook, he said ‘I don’t want to kill it and I’m sure you don’t want to either, Just call in around 6 tonight and see if there is anything we can do’. On the spot or what!

Rear end crashed? What could that mean? Could mean it’s a write-off of course but I wanted to be the judge of that so I grabbed a tape measure and took loads of careful measurements around the rear of my car, paying particular attention to the boot opening, rear glass, arches, and some! Allegros have no chassis or sub-frames so any distortion in the body is game over (the windows fall out don’t you know).

​Armed with the figures and cash in my pocket I headed for the garage a little earlier than 6. It paid off because the car was parked up and nobody was about. The damage was fairly significant, but on closer inspection not horrendous. However when I compared the actual measurements with the ones I’d written down you could have knocked me down with a feather. Millimetre perfect. So it was game on.

I marched inside.

To be continued...