JULY 2005
“Scene from This Year’s International”
JULY 2005
“Scene from This Year’s International”
MEMBERS PRESENT: Paul Bowler White Van!
Reg Bowler
John & Chris Day TR6
Martin & Sue Faulkner & James
Alan & Susan Fuller TR6
Phil & Rachael Gunn & Sam & Hannah ?
Roger Guy TR6
Andy & Jennie Holyoak TR6
Tim Jeffery Triton
John & Margaret Martin TR4
Andy & Claire Moltu TR6
Terry Pruce Petal (driven hard!)
Nigel Rees TR6
Tony Richards TR6
Tim Sharp & Kathryn TR6
Ben & Lisa Ward TR6
Martin Ward TR6
Allan Westbury & Gail
GUESTS: Scott Blakey TR7
MEETING NOTES
The
main business of the evening was to load Paul’s van with all the stuff that
wouldn’t fit in a TR, so he could take to the International the next day.
Having completed this (which was a bit like trying to get a quart into a pint
pot) the rest of the evening was a doddle.
Highlights
of the evening were along the following lines:
·
Derby Dales weekend: A good weekend by all accounts – except from Tony
that is, who couldn’t remember much of his Saturday night, or the bucket of
water and Reg… it must have been a good night.
·
Camb Followers trip – Wed 6th July did anyone go? Dick was the only
one likely to have gone but he was not at the meeting to ask. Martin W had tried to phoned him with no
reply, in Martin’s opinion “running silent and deep” or “uses the same mobile
company as you”- Paul B.
·
·
Northern meeting: suggestion of Sunday lunch at Papplewick followed by a
visit to the pumping engine. Phil is
still organising this with Terry so watch this space.
·
There was also a reminder to those at the meeting about the Wine tasting
and BBQ on Saturday August 13. For those
not at the meeting, this was last weekend.
And the moral of this story is –
go to the meetings!
·
Treasure Hunt, the date for this is set for 18 September.
·
The club still has some tinted and clear door glass for the TR4–6. See
Phil if interested.
TR International w/e, Malvern 22
– 24 July
Once again the Leics Group descended on Malvern
for a weekend of camping, socialising and car spotting, as has been our
tradition now for many years. Lots of
familiar faces were there, with a few new ones, although some regular visitors
were absent. The TR6s were well
represented by Andy & Jennie, Tony, Andy M, Martin & Sue, Martin W,
Ben, Graham, Roger, Nigel and Tim & Kathryn (although they did cheat by
staying in a nearby B&B). Other TR
drivers were Allan in his 4A and Tim in his 2.
The group was completed by James & Katie in a GT6, Will in an MGBGT,
John & Sandra in a Lagonda, and ?? in a Mazda, with keys safely kept in
pocket this year ! [lucky man – Ed]
Paul “White Van Man”
Bowler did a fantastic job loading all the big stuff (gazebos, bits of car to sell,
camping gear that wouldn’t fit in TRs etc) in on Thursday night at the group
meeting and took it all down to Malvern on the Friday. Reg & Irene also joined us and the rest
of the
The Gunn’s didn’t make it this time as they had
to shoot off somewhere else in their Alvis to do a wedding on the Saturday, Terry
& Sue didn’t appear either as their TR is still a bit legless (or should
that be Wheel-less) after its recent mishap, and Ruth was off a-wandering with
a group of girls in the hills of Derbyshire doing their Duke of Edinburgh
Award. Dick didn’t go either, but a
clone of his car was spotted on the Saturday, complete with red wheels. Has he started a trend?
Most of us arrived at
various times on Friday afternoon, to find Paul & Graham and Ben (referred
to as “Maternity” Ward all weekend) had done a brilliant job of setting out the
site with a parking area and camping area, and gazebos in the middle next to
the barbeques. Paul had not only taken
responsibility for feeding the hungry hoards all weekend, but he had also taken
a generator and fridge to make sure all the food and beer was kept cold in
anticipation of the heat wave we hoped for (well it was nice on Friday and
Saturday). The Friday BBQ set the tone
for the weekend – good food and lots of it, ably cooked by Paul and his band of
helpers with plenty of friendly banter.
It was also Maternity Ward’s birthday, so
lots of singing and birthday cakes followed, most memorably a lovely blow-up
one that Irene produced for him.
Background music was provided by Will’s guitar, James on tambourine and
Katie singing – very nice too!
After a reasonable night’s sleep – Martin W must have won the prize for the world’s smallest tent – everyone hit the show with enthusiasm on Saturday after the communal cooked breakfast.
Reg went off early to man his stall, whilst various people had little trips out to Malvern. Allan had sent some wire wheels down in Paul’s van to sell, and Tim decided to buy them, so the deal was done (wouldn’t it have been easier to do it at home rather than go all the way to Malvern?).
Several cars took part in the morning parade in the arena again, adding to the general ambience of the meeting. The usual bus trip to Malvern was run again, and three of us took advantage of it. Jennie, Katie and Sue went in the afternoon and were dropped off at a different place this time, which had the advantage of a pleasant riverside walk to an area of shops we hadn’t been to before. For the benefit of the ladies reading this, we found some lovely clothes and craft shops, but as far as the men are concerned we didn’t spend anything at all. (Just for the record, the atrocious weather on Sunday had nothing to do with the shorts I bought on Saturday – Sue).
Saturday evening started off again very sociable
with a group of German visitors inviting us all over for a drink of Schnapps
with them. After a very pleasant hour,
we wandered back to our camp to relight the BBQ, which had gone out!
This year the after-dinner cabaret took the form of another game – hunt the car keys. A certain TRipe editor, who shall remain nameless, realised his TR6 keys had disappeared. By now it was dark so the search involved going back to the German camp with a torch, looking all around our camp, looking in, under, round, through and over anything that didn’t move, especially in a yellow TR6, a GT6 and an MGB. There was no sign of them. Whenever this happens at home, as it frequently does, the missing keys usually turn up in whichever pair of trousers he was last wearing, but as he was still wearing the same trousers he had on all day, this didn’t really help matters. He then started thinking of possible solutions if they didn’t appear. Could James take him home on Sunday to fetch the spares? Could he hot-wire the car without doing any real damage? With a field full of TR6s, could he find another set to fit? Would any of the stallholders have a set to fit?
The only thing to do was wait until it got light and start looking again. At 5:00am. In the rain. They still weren’t anywhere to be seen. We then started to go through the bags etc in the tent, piece by piece, when eventually at 11:00am there they were, underneath the toothpaste in his toilet bag. Where else could they be? a very relived TRipe editor suddenly smiled for the first time in many hours, and promptly gave them to his wife to look after (sensible man).
The rain started early on Sunday, then got worse as the day wore on. Some intrepid day visitors, Derek & Dani and John & Margaret braved the rain, but those of us who had been camping got extremely soggy as we started to pack up. However in true Leics spirit, we all pulled together and got the jobs done quickly so we could enjoy coffee and gingerbread men in the gazebos before loading the van.
There were a few incidents on the way home, with Andy H overheating, James losing a wiper blade on the M5, and Will’s wiper motor seizing up, but generally we all made it ok with varying degrees of water logging.
Overall it was another successful weekend for the group, and even the rain on Sunday didn’t dampen our spirits too much. Thanks again to Paul for organising all of the food (not an easy job!), to everyone who helped cook it, and to everyone else who helped make the weekend the success it was. Here’s to next year!
Picture from Bucket and Spade run out!!!!, Sunday, 26 June
Reg: “Listen Tony, I don’t
care what you say, this don’t look like Wells-next-the-Sea to me” Ruth: “Smell that sea air”. Tony: “Err, are you sure
that’s the sea?” Brief rest halt for
convoy run.
REBUILD OF BLACK TR 4 CT14790 LO – 3 MONTHS AT ONE
TELLING
Sorry it’s been so long. Holidays in May, visitors in June.
When I re-read the last script from April I realize just how busy you can be without making progress. Briefly, this is it. Body fixed, bolts sealed, windscreen assembly in (with very deep regrets that I did not go to the body shop before I asked him to replace the glass, as the fabric element of the window is a mess – one to sort later), wiring laid in and all labeled, windscreen wipers mainly in (bad thread holding the job up), lights mainly in, and so on.
That doesn’t seem a great deal, but I really have been busy on the car. Thanks heavens I haven’t got the engine components back from the machine shop yet. One thing I have fallen foul of is coming to a halt on one aspect, for instance for lack of parts, so switching to something else while waiting for them. You actually end up with about four jobs on the go at any one time and risk completing nothing. I had one of those days yesterday, when I was unable to complete the windscreen wiper installation. I put the parts on my Sunday-night parts order list for my weekly shopping on the Moss website and moved to installing the headlights. Just let us say that I walked away from the job before losing my temper with it late Saturday afternoon. I picked it up again today, and this time used my brains. One of my golden rules has been not to throw away any parts or assemblies until I have the new parts or have successfully completed installation, whichever is the later. The result is that I have in the corner of my garage what is literally a pile of parts that I have removed from the car – springs, light units, assorted fixtures, etc. I dug out the headlights, looked at how they had come off (using a little imagination to fill in the missing bits) and worked out how the replacement units fitted together. The workshop manual was useless as it makes no reference to sealed beam units, so it really was a Sherlock job. Job done, eventually. I then moved to the front indicators and discovered that there were no bullet connectors on the end of the extension pieces of the loom. Guess what. The bullets I have are too small, so that’s another item on the shopping list.
I sourced my wiring not from Moss, who do not have the extensions for
lights, but from a company called
British Wiring, who source their stuff direct from the UK to order if it is for
something like a full wiring loom. They have lots of stuff in stock themselves,
but not looms that deviate from standard. When I told them that I was changing
from positive to negative earth, and fitting an alternator instead of a dynamo,
they had the loom built with all that taken into account. The only problem is
that now I must work out how to cut out the use of the ammeter and replace with
a volt meter. Not an urgent priority unless it buggers up the wiring routing.
They really are very good and are prepared to spend time on the phone going over
questions. We saw their stand at a show in
I have painted the dashboard and glove-box matt black and can’t wait to get it on when I’ve completed the under-dash stuff. Two things I am waiting for are one side of the windscreen vent outlet which has a stud broken off, and the A-frame from the floor to the dash. There are no vent outlets anywhere, and A frames are hen’s teeth with a very high ransom price. My neighbour has a young work-colleague who is a Mr Fixit, and currently has both parts. The foot of the A frame has corroded, and somebody has tried to mend it with epoxy, so he’s trying to put it right with some proper aluminium welding. I wonder why Triumph put together dissimilar metals at a point that attracted corrosion. Very strange. This isn’t hindsight, as a non-engineer such as me has at least a basic understanding of that problem.
I was preparing to re-install the fuel tank, shook the thing and heard all sorts of rattling. I opened all orifices and eventually shook out what appears to be gobs of solder. What? Oh no! I put some petrol in, swilled it around and brought out some other interesting but smaller bits. Watch fuel filter for a while, methinks.
One regret I have is that while I was waiting for the car from the body shop I could have been looking at a lot of the things I am currently dealing with – a pedal assembly that would not come apart with either violence or penetrating oil, but eventually succumbed to heat – seized brake and clutch master cylinders – windscreen wiper wheel boxes that were seized, etc. Never mind, a lesson for next time, or for one of you if you end up doing what I’m doing.
Andy spent a bit of time at International Weekend looking for some
parts I cannot readily or economically source here – rear light assembly, light
switch knob and washer unit. He scored two out of three, which cannot be bad.
And the light assembly has the
So, there we are. I hope to put some pics on the website when I have a moment to take some.
Hope you’ve all recovered from the International. Andy tells me that a pig voluntarily gave up its life for your pleasure – hope you didn’t waste the sacrifice.
Go safe and enjoy the summer
The summer weather is continuing and
the all around the garden the weeds are growing well. Can someone tell me why they grow faster than
the plants that I’ve put in?
Have any of you been to
Although it was mum’s first time,
I’d been to the Grand Canyon before but flying to it on a dinky De Havilland
was quite an experience; turbulence caused us to leave our seats several
times. We had a short tour of the South
Rim and then checked into our room at the Lodge prior to a trip to watch the
sunset. There are a couple of forest
fires on the North Rim of the Canyon, started by lightening but there is no
danger to life or private property. Some
seeds need intense heat to germinate so the fires are not being extinguished
although they are being closely monitored.
Normality has now returned to our
home and I’ve returned to my work routine.
Last weekend there was a “Ride for the Red” event – a motorcycle rally
to raise money for the Red Cross. We had
about 200 bikes which rode the route to a park where we had food and
entertainment laid on. Some of the bikes
were gorgeous and the t-shirts and helmet stickers very amusing. Peter photographed this helmet which was
rested on the seat of a Harley (what else?).
There was another further along which obviously belonged to a female as
the reference was to “a dick” instead but I couldn’t persuade him to photograph
that.
Our kettle ceased to work this
morning so no cuppaL.
On my way to work I must go to the shop to replace it. Better get moving.
Until next time, take care
Heather
CALENDAR FOR THE NEXT FEW MONTHS:
|
August |
|
|
9 Tues |
Ashby Folville |
|
13 Sat |
Wine Tasting |
|
13 Sat & 14 Sun |
TR race day, Pembrey |
|
18 Thurs |
Group Mtr |
|
27 Sat & 28 Sun |
|
|
September |
|
|
6 Tues |
Raid: Staffs & Warws |
|
11 Sun |
TR race day, |
|
13 Tues |
Ashby Folville |
|
15 Thurs |
Group Mtr |
|
18 Sun |
TReasure Hunt |
|
24 Sat – 25 Sun |
TR race day, Brands Hatch |
AND FINALLY: Rum and Coke
A Priest was seated next to an Irishman on a flight to
plane was airborne, drink orders were taken. The Irishman asked for a rum
and coke, which was brought and placed before him.
The flight attendant then asked the priest if he would like a drink. He
replied in disgust "I'd rather be savagely raped by a dozen whores than
let
liquor touch my lips."
The Irishman then handed his drink back to the attendant and said "Me too.
I didn't know we had a choice."
Next meeting Thursday 18th August 2005, the Rose & Crown, Tilton on the Hill.
See you there,
Martin & Sue.