Lockdown Blues. Fatbloke and Poppy Pt 61

By Mike Peake

​Hello Chaps! Wow, it’s been a while hasn’t it? You thought lockdown couldn’t get any worse didn’t you? But now I’m inflicting a blog on you so I’m really sorry.
 
It’s been over 6 months since our last little chat and quite a lot has happened. Classic car event after event has been cancelled. Poor Nelson, Gars Minor Triumph, met his Trafalgar in a ball of flame prompting us all to buy the fire extinguishers we’d been meaning to get for years but never quite got around to it (or was that just me?)
 
I can’t imagine how upset Gar must have been losing his pride and joy like that and we all commiserated fully with him. Of course Saint Brian of Enthusiastshire had to show off in his level of sympathy by giving Gar a spare Triumph 2000 he had lying around. Naturally, this level of generosity means that he is officially exiled from his home county of Yorkshire for bringing its name into disrepute - but what a lovely thing to do. He’s a very, very nice man. The story even made it into Classic Car Weekly.
 
Of course Gar is cock-a-hoop and has spent lockdown fettling and polishing to his heart’s content  and winding Brian up with tales of how he is going to deface Errol’s natural beauty with all sorts of hooligan mods. Brian isn’t fooled by this for a minute though. We all know how much Gar has fallen in love with Errol because he’s even dropped his plans to two-tone the car with a different colour roof and he can’t find a rear window louvre kit for the big saloon.

​The Brooks aren’t letting Lockdown  affect them in the slightest and have been churning out stunners like you wouldn’t believe. They’ve even developed a bit of a fibreglass fetish.

​Of course all are for sale at very reasonable rates if you would like to step into Tosh’s office. Although, there has been rumours that Tosh is actually planning on keeping one of them but no one really believes that.
 
His next project has also been announced and we’re all really looking forward to seeing the results.

​Our very own Ninja assassin Liam is really taking current events seriously; he has locked himself away in his Secret Squirrel Survival Bunker and is living like a king on stockpiled MRE’s and Lucozade whilst monitoring his CCTV ready to set off the claymore mines if anyone approaches.

​Nick Arthur is being banished to a caravan in Jo’s garden so he can be closer to his cars. Graham and Sue are panicking about their planned wedding in September and Andy ‘Two Pants’ Perman has discovered the Joys of writing blogs about his VDPs. In fact, go and read them now as they’re far better than this drivel.

Two Pants Perman's Blogs

​Me? What have I done?  You're still here then? Well I grew a beard. Impressive eh?

 
Everyone said I looked like Tosh Brooks though so I immediately shaved it off again.
 
I have been fortunate enough to be working from home full time during the crisis. The new commute has tuned out to be a bit of a problem though as the stairs quickly become gridlocked during rush hour.
 
Poppy? Well she was fine but very, very bored and lonely in her lock up far from home. (Well, not that far really but it sounded better in a literary sense.)
 
Winter was really horrible with not a single day with good enough weather to take her for a spin. Then, just as the weather turned glorious, we were put into lockdown and I couldn’t go and get her. Of course if I’d known at the time that we were allowed out to drive as part of an eye test I’d have been out like a shot.
 
However, lockdown restrictions were eased a bit in early May so I went to get her. She fired up on the 1st turn of the key. I washed off the New Forest dirt, gave her a wax and Emily and I took a grin-laden drive around the green lanes of Wiltshire to get some milk. I did notice that my headlights were no longer working when I pulled her out of the lockup but as it was a bright summers day, I didn’t let this bother me. I then parked her on my drive so I would be able to sort out a few niggles.

​Niggles? Surely not? I hear you say! Well yes. 3 to be precise. Well 3 I planned to look at anyway.
 
My heater hasn’t worked since I’ve had the car. I know that this may seem a bit slovenly to some but it’s only been 19 years and what’s the point of a heater in a car with no roof? Well if I want to go on winter tours with the chaps and want my wife to come with me, it turns out that a working heater IS quite important.
 
Since I’ve rebuilt my Carb I’ve been having trouble getting the tune right and suffering from a very fast tickover. I think I have now narrowed this down to a sticking throttle cable so this needed changing and while I was at it I’d change all the return springs to fix the floppy peddle.
 
Finally, I had to find out where all the electrickery for my headlights had gone. So I ordered all the parts I thought I would need.
 
The following weekend, with a box of shiny new parts to hand I set to work. I thought I’d do the easy job 1st which I deemed to be throttle cable. I removed the cable from the carburettor and immediately, my fast running issue was solved so that’s good. What wasn’t so good was when I went to remove the pedal. Turns out that the bracket was rusted quite badly. I couldn’t even see the old spring or split pin.

​It would have to come out. It’s only two bolts though so will be easy. 3 hours, 1 broken ratchet, a broken hacksaw blade and a shattered grinding wheel later, the pedal bracket was off. The cable and pedal were also now separated and a new shopping list started.

£10 on eBay if anyone wants it?

​As I could proceed no further with my pedal assembly, I turned my attention to the heater. I suspected that the valve was at fault as it was very stiff to operate and I had a shiny new one in my box of shiny new parts. So, the cable and pipes were removed from the old valve and the valve removed from the heater matrix. I then attached my hose pipe to the matrix and flushed it through until clear clean water was flowing out before fitting the shiny new valve, new rubber pipes and shiny new jubilee clips. Just the operating cable to attach now and job done. Well, it would have been if I hadn’t broken the pinch bolt doing it up too tightly.
 
It took a while but amongst all my “parts that will come in useful one day” supply, I found a new one that will do at a pinch (Haha! Get it? A pinch bolt that will do at a pinch! Hahahaha….ahem… sorry). The only trouble was that it was still attached to the brake cable on my daughters bicycle. She won’t miss it. The important thing was that it is now all back together. The heater still doesn’t work and the pipes to it aren’t getting even warm so I suspect an air lock. Anyone know how to cure this?

​Having not yet fixed anything despite hours and hours of work, I thought I’d see if I could relocate my headlamp electrickery. First, I spent an hour looking for the inline fuse that someone said was behind the dash on the passenger side. It wasn’t there. Someone had decided to move it into the engine bay. It wasn’t the inline fuse though. It was fine.

​So I followed the power wire from the fuse through the car dismantling stuff as I went to ease access and checking various connections with my trusty multimeter as I went. I found electrickery everywhere it should be and no holes in anything where it could leak out. I was now suspecting the master switch. Now this is only £20 for a new one (It really is!) so I wasn’t worried. I was worried however if the fire brigade would be able to get me back out from under the dash where I’d need to go to get to said switch.

​When able, I checked the inlet side of the switch and there was electrickery. So I checked the outlet side and found none! Aha!! Then I turned it on and the power flowed. It wasn’t the master switch. I continued to follow the electrickery towards the column switch. I was a little nervous now because the column switch comes in 4 parts and each part is £20. To my vast relief though, I found the problem. There was a blockage preventing the electrickery going through the connector where the rear lights branch out.

​Flushed with the success of my detective skills I went and added more parts to my shopping list. I managed to extricate myself from under the dash without the aid of the fire brigade so it may have been that I was flushed with.
 
Now, you know that picture from the interweb of the wrecked house that someone had painted “Got the Spider “ on?

​I know, made me chuckle for ages. Well I’m not chuckling now!

Found the trickery gremlin!

​I’d spent most of the day working on my car and hadn’t actually finished fixing anything other than a new shopping list of required parts.
 
I did manage to successfully fit the new number plates the girls bought me. After all 23rd of May was Poppy’s 50th birthday, so I had to do something nice for her.

​I shut and locked the car door, tidied up, poured myself a glass of squash, fired up the computer and ordered more parts.
 
The next Friday afternoon with another box of shiny new parts, I set to with real conviction that today would be a productive day on the car!
 
With a lot of help from Emily I soon had the accelerator pedal assembly properly assembled and was finally able to get the carb properly tuned and had Poppy purring like a dream in no time.

​Next I cleared the blockage in the wiring and had electrickery flowing where it should and fully functioning lights.

​As you can see above, I’d made a bit of a mess of the original 50 year old under dash millboard when diagnosing the failure to light, but it was already in very poor condition so it gave me the excuse to buy the new one I’d been promising Poppy for a while. It was an absolute swine to fit and Emily learned lots and lots of new words but we got here in the end. 

​You can’t actually see it unless you are laying in the floor well, but if you do happen to find yourself laying in the floor well it now all looks rather lovely now.
 
Then I had to reassemble the radio and speaker, reconnect and refit the 12v supply/cigarette lighter and the electric washer pump switch. Along with the steering column and steering wheel. Of course, when I drove the car, the steering wheel was 90 degrees out but this was soon corrected. It is also a record for me as I removed the steering wheel twice in a week and didn’t break my nose.
 
I’m now very pleased with my interior.

​We were on a roll so I went ahead and fitted the new horn that has been in my garage for a year. The steering column on the Herald is adjustable and the last time I had it apart, I think I set it too far forward as every time I went round a corner or over a bump the horn used to sound of its own volition which led to acute embarrassment and the odd fight. It kept touching the steering wheel boss and therefore earthing the horn. This time, I made sure I set the column further back.
 
Then, with Emily’s help, I changed the old horn which had gone from sounding when it felt like it to not sounding at all. Who’d have thought, the ability to do an arabesque would come in handy when working on a classic car.

​I then gave her a quick wash to rid her of all the dust that had settled over the last week - Poppy that is, not Emily - and went for a lovely test drive on the country lanes. Poppy was running sweeter than ever and I was enjoying sounding the horn whenever I felt like it. Which was quite often. Just for giggles.

So finally, a productive day. Hopefully, I’ll have something else to write about soon but in the meantime, stay safe everyone and see you on the other side.

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