CLUB OFFICIALS

Chairman: Trish Brown Tel: 01862 832337 [email protected] Secretary: Alice Brown Tel: 01862 832337 [email protected] Treasurer: Ian Thompson Tel: 01463 790969 [email protected]

ARCHIVIST

The club has an extensive archive of information relating to all aspects of classic car ownership. To access this please contact Ranald Smith, at Hawthorn Cottage, 2 Burn Road, Inverness IV2 3NG. 01463 236459 [email protected]

MEMBERSHIP

COPYRIGHT

Bryan McIlwraith Renewals should be sent to Bryan at 72 Lochalsh Road, Inverness IV3 6HW Tel: 01463 222839 (Work) 01463 232144 (Home) [email protected] Please let Bryan know if you have an email address.

Neither the Editor nor the Officers of the Highland Classic Motor Club are necessarily in agreement with opinions expressed in this magazine. Such opinions are entirely the views of the author and imply no recommendation by the Highland Classic Motor Club. All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealings as permitted under the terms of the Copyright Design and Patents Act1988, no part of this magazine may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without the written permission of the Highland Classic Motor Club.

HCMC HOMEPAGE www.highlandclassic.org.uk & [email protected] EDITOR Alan Goff 48 The Cairns, Muir of Ord, IV6 7AT. Tel: 01463 871114 Email: [email protected] CLASSIC SCENE The next ‘Classic Scene’ GOES TO THE PRINTER on the Monday of the week preceding the next meeting Please send articles by e-mail or typed.

COVER PICTURE

A Copper Car. No not a Cop Car, a copper car. Photo from Zak of a car that must cost a fortune in Duraglit and elbow grease.

THE EDITORS MONTHLY RANT

Well it seems that Spring is now with us. The weather forecast for tomorrow (Thursday 26th) is for snow. The Lancia has had the benefit of an over winter service, new upper and lower ball joints and new track rod ends on the outer track rods, and an electronic ignition system. And tomorrow I will be taking a chance to try out my new compression test. Now this could be tempting fate because if I don’t know about low compression on a cylinder or two I can’t worry about it, so I can then ignore the (hopefully) feint smoke haze I tend to leave behind me. But if I do have a compression problem, do I fix it or just keep topping up the oil? Callum assures me that I trail an oil mist behind me, so there must be a minor technical issue of some kind. If the compression test is ok the valve stem oil seals will be the first to be rectified. Relatively easy on some cars but a DOHC V4 with only one cylinder head is typical of Lancia over-engineering. Each cam works inlet and exhaust valves on each side of the V, so you can imagine the way in which the inlet and exhaust ports cross over inside the head. But the advanced engineering of Lancia never ceases to amaze me. Janes Mercedes SLK had a rear brake problem. The rear discs had warped and the inner disc surfaces had started to break up. New discs had to be fitted and, Lo and Behold, the hand brake is an internal drum inside the discs. Alexander and Mackey in Muir of Ord did an excellent job at a very good price and while blethering I was told ”Lots of cars are doing that now”. Lancia were doing that over 40 years ago! In my time as a TraffPol I was authorised to examine vehicles that were involved in fatal accidents, this was to discover if there was a mechanical issue that contributed to the accident. I wasn’t to sure if this was something for the newsletter but after a long chat with Trish and Alice on the subject they have encouraged me to include some of them. The first is on a Morris Marina in which a broken ball joint was the cause of the accident. Still getting items for the Newsletter, so keep up the good work everyone. The more I get the easier it is.

CHAIR BITTY APRIL 2015 Not sure what happened to our meet last month. Here we all were, nicely in time for our visit to Portal Rover. And then the owner fails to turn up. I think this must be a first for the club. We did have a good gibber at the side of the road before retiring to the Ord Arms in Muir of Ord. Our Landie has gone to a garage to get the replacement bulkhead fitted that we bought last month. We took the opportunity to send it off to Elgin first to get it galvanised. That should give it some extra protection for the next few decades. All we need to do now is wait for the work to finish, pay the bill and then enjoy many more years on Land Rovering. Before that Alice changed the oil in the diffs and gearbox. That is where she found out that somebody had not bothered with putting a washer on the drain plugs and had overtightened them to compensate. They did eventually come undone after some bad language. The oil was more the consistency of treacle and with the fresh oil, the Landie has become a lot more responsive. Earlier in March we put our Smart back on the road. Last year, with all the trouble we had with the Smart, Alice didn't get much of a chance to clock up many miles. We are planning to change that this year. It has been washed, polished and the roof has received a waterproofing treatment. She's all set for our April meet. March has been a month of various celestial events. There was a very spectacular meteor display over Loch Ness. Most news services carried a picture of this on their sites. A few days later was the Aurora. Unfortunately the weather wasn't in our favour with a lot of mist, but we did manage to get a peek around 10 pm round the back of the village when the mist momentarily lifted a little. The effect was not unlike ripples in a pond, but because of the mist, in a ghostly white.

I got a few glimpses of the solar eclipse on the 20th. One small glimpse right at the start, and then a longer one just after the eclipse itself. Tried to take a few photographs with the digicam, through a quadruple layer of negatives, but still too much glare on the picture. Yet when looking through the layer of negatives directly, you could clearly see the sun, albeit a rather dark red view of the event. I took some photographs too with an older 35mm, but still need to develop this to see if they have worked. We've got new members this month. Welcome to Neil Tye and Jesse Wigman. Neil owns a '66 Austin Healey 3000, a '67 TR4a and a '73 Stag. Jessie is a Citroen buff and owns a '77 and a '81 Dyane 6 and a '83 Citroen Acadia. This months meet is not at Cairngorm brewery as we planned. The response from the brewery was that there has been a licensing change and they are no longer allowed to do tours in the evening. Instead, now that the clocks have just gone forward, this should just give us enough daylight for short run. We will meet up at North Kessock Tourist Information on the A9 North at 7.30 pm, for a circuit over the Black Isle, ending at North Kessock hotel where we can admire vehicles from our recent new members. Cheers,

NEWS FLASH! NEWS FLASH! NEWS FLASH! NEWS FLASH! Did the compression test on the Lancia. Cylinder 1:- 160psi. Cylinder 2:- 150psi. Cylinder 3:_ 160psi Cylinder 4 :- 160psi The slightly lower reading on 2 is within limits and I also had a problem getting the tester into the plug holes because they are set so deep into the cylinder head and the rocker box cover, and I was concerned about cross threading. So it looks like the oil stem oil seals next.

Have you inadvertently let the smoke out of the wires on your classic British car? This, then, is the solution to your problem!

Here is presented for your perusal one Lucas Replacement Wiring Harness Smoke kit, P/N 530433, along with the very rare Churchill Tool 18G548BS adapter tube and metering valve. These kits were supplied surreptitiously to Lucas factory technicians as a troubleshooting and repair aid for the rectification of chronic electrical problems on a plethora of British cars. The smoke is metered, through the fuse box, into the circuit which has released its original smoke until the leak is located and repaired. The affected circuit is then rectified and the replacement smoke re-introduced. An advantage over the cheap repro smoke kits currently available is the exceptionally rare Churchill metering valve and fuse box adapter. It enables the intrepid and highly skilled British Car Technician to meter the precise amount of genuine Lucas smoke required by the circuit. Unlike the cheap, far-eastern replacement DIY smoke offered by the "usual suppliers", this kit includes a filter to ensure that all the smoke is of consistent size, It has been our experience in our shop that the reproduction Taiwanese smoke is often "lumpy", which will cause excessive resistance in our finely-engineered British harnesses and components. This is often the cause of failure in the repro electrical parts currently available, causing much consternation and misplaced cursing of the big three suppliers. These kits have long been the secret weapon of the "Ultimate Authorities" in the trade, and this may be the last one available. Be forewarned, though, that it is not applicable to any British vehicle built after the discontinuing of bullet connectors, so you Range Rover types are still on your own...

This Genuine Factory Authorized kit contains enough smoke to recharge the entire window circuit on a 420 Jaguar, and my dear friend and advisor George Wolf of British Auto Specialty assures me that he can replace ALL the smoke in a W&F Barrett All-Weather Invalid Car (147 CC) with enough left over to test a whole box of Wind-Tone horns for escaped smoke. How much more of an endorsement do you need? More, you say? Well, I once let the smoke out of the overdrive wiring on my friend Roger Hankey's TR3B, and was able to drive over 200 miles home from The Roadster Factory Summer Party by carefully introducing smoke into the failed circuit WITHOUT even properly repairing the leak. Another friend, Richard Stephenson, was able to repair the cooling fan circuit of his Series 1 E-type by merely replacing a fuse and injecting a small quantity of smoke back into the wires. So there! So, if you're troubled by lost smoke, bid early and bid often! Thanks for looking! +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Two policemen call the station on the radio. "Hello. Is that the Station Sergeant?" "Yes?" "We have a case here. A woman has shot her husband for stepping on the floor she had just mopped clean." "Have you arrested the woman?" "No sir. The floor is still wet."

REFLECTIONS in a NUMBER PLATE How nice to hear from Jim Mackay again : I thought he’d dropped off the edge of the planet and OMG he’d done exactly that! Just shows you what great cars Subarus are, eh Bryan?? (In joke, sorry.) Older members... let’s start that again. Longer-serving members will remember that Jim wrote a monthly column without fail for the newsletter for years – and I really mean “wrote” since it was always handwritten and always delivered on time. Real dedication, that was. Anyway, to answer his point about unused JS Registrations, yes they are still slumbering on the DVLA computer and are unlikely to see the light of day unless there is a huge increase in demand for “age related” plates eg for re-registrations or imports etc. If you really want “1001 JS” and it has not already been issued, DVLA will probably think that its such a nice number that they will add it to their next auction whereas something less attractive like “8796 JS” would probably be yours for a few hundred £s without going to auction. Something like “1 JST” will have been bought fairly recently. For years now, DVLA has issued unused series such as AS (Nairn), SU (Kincardineshire), SV (Kinross-shire), SK (Caithness) and FF (Merionethshire) for re-registrations, imports or cars where the age can be proved but original registration cannot be established. If you notice a connection, it’s because these were Counties where there was a very low turnover of registrations and there were plenty left when age-related suffix numbers started in 1963. BS (Orkney) is another one but seems to be retained for the real vintage stuff – the London to Brighton Run is full of veterans which purport to have been registered there but which have never graced the roads of the Islands. Likewise, open any classic magazine and you’ll see many examples of cars across the whole price spectrum with AS, SU, SK etc registrations. The great majority have never been in the Counties concerned. As a teenager growing up in Kincardineshire in the 60s, it would have been like heaven on wheels to see some of the exotics which appear in articles or adverts with SU registrations today. But anything after BSU will be a re-registration.

You may remember the gentleman from the South who last year got quite excited because he has a 1947 Hillman Minx registered “DAS 642” which he was quite convinced was an ex-RAF car from Kinloss. Sadly, he had to be disabused of that notion since Nairn only got to “AS 4097” before starting “suffix” numbers with “AAS 1C” in 1965. All he has, in fact, is a car from which the original number has been pillaged and which, since DVLA do not discriminate in issuing replacement numbers, could come from anywhere in the country. Also, while “suffix” numbers began to be issued in 1963, not all local authorities started then. Inverness-shire, for example, was another County which did not start until “AST 1C” in 1965 but I often see a modern Mercedes with “BST 183B” and there are a few “AST ???A”s running about. These were age-related replacement plates issued by the former local authority and were transferable as is “FST 271E” on my MGB (originally registered as “KUS 359E”, a Glasgow plate). However, DVLA soon put a stop to such nefarious practices and age-related replacement plates are not now transferable. Another naughty habit DVLA has is to issue “reverse” numbers (eg 389 XUU to a 1950 MG TD imported from the USA) when that system did not actually start until 1954! One of the so-called prestigious magazines was caught out recently in its “discovered” section by a Series 1 Humber Sceptre with “5377 R” on its plate which they grandly surmised would be worth ten times the value of the car having been issued in 1905 or thereabouts. Er, well, no. In fact, the number could well be the original and date from 1962 or so when the car was first put on the road.

Hello?...Hello? – is anyone still awake? Well, Jim did ask and I’ve hardly scratched the surface yet... there’ll be questions on this in the Quiz next year (if there is one!) A. N. Orak

FOR THE WANT OF GREASE AND THE WEARING OF SEAT BELTS. Morris Marina 1.3 4 door saloon, manual 4 speed gear change, registered mileage 52081. Vehicle had gone off the road and head on into a very large oak tree. Vehicle fully examined and the following are the relevant points found that were contributory to the accident and its outcome. Seat Belts. Vehicle fitted with static lap and diagonal belts. These belts were in “as new” condition. They were not even adjusted properly to fit around the driver or front passenger. The drivers’ belt was so tight that it was only possible to secure it when it was tight across the seat. The passengers was too loose to fit around anyone. Brakes. Girling drum brakes all round, with a Girling Powerstop Servo. Drums removed and all linings in good condition. Both of the front brakes had wheel cylinders that were “weeping” brake fluid slightly. Due to damage I was unable to test the brakes but the “weeping” was very slight and, at worse, would initially only result in a brake pedal that felt spongy. Suspension. Rear. Live back axle with leaf springs and telescopic shock absorbers. Front. Independent front suspension. Torsion bar springs with the top arm of the suspension also forming the operating arm of the lever type shock absorbers. The lower arm also operated the torsion bar and a torque reaction rod was fitted. The offside suspension was intact. The nearside had been damaged with the neck of the upper ball joint broken. There were deep gouges in the metal around the rebound bump stop, which corresponded with the range of movement allowed by the top of the now broken off hub. The suspension was removed for examination by the Forensic Science Laboratory.

The vehicle had sustained serious damage to the front. This damage was centered mainly on the centre of the grille and to the front offside and penetrated approximately 24 inches into the car. The engine had been forced back through the bulkhead. The front nearside wing had not been damaged by the impact but only distorted. The gouge damage around the bump stop could only have been caused by the broken top of the ball joint and as the nearside of the vehicle had only been distorted, in my opinion this would indicate that the ball joint had broken prior to impact with the tree. There was some damage to the interior of the car that could only have been caused by the unrestrained occupants. Conclusion. After forensic examination it was found that there was a fatigue failure of the ball joint. The joint had been subjected to a repeated bending motion brought on by a lack of lubrication. (The joint had a grease nipple). This repeated bending has started to fracture across the neck of the joint and microscopic examination by the Forensic Science Laboratory showed the characteristic “tide marks” of the crack opening and closing. When this joint broke the immediate effect would be for the nearside wheel to fall inwards and then onto full right lock. The gouges around the bump stop corresponded to the wheel being forced into this full right lock position. If the driver had tried to correct this by applying full left lock, the two steering efforts could cancel each other out and the car plough straight on after initially turning right. When I examined the car at the scene the front nearside wheel was turned fully to the right and the offside wheel fully to the left. The pristine condition of the seat belts, their lack of correct adjustment, and the damage to the interior of the vehicle indicates that the occupants were not wearing seatbelts.

LOCAL EVENTS 26th April

Drive It Day

3rd May

Forres Theme Day

9th May

Inverness Classic Vehicle Day. Start of NC500.

23rd May

Highland Folk Museum Vintage Weekend,

V8 Café Inverness

Road Run at 1100.

Saturday/Sunday Highland Folk Museum, Newtonmore. 20th June

Trucknessie, Dores, Loch Ness. Gates open 10am - 6pm.

21st June

Tain Vintage Rally

4th July

Gairloch Gathering

12th July

Scottish Transport Extravaganza, Glamis

9th August

Historic Wheels Brodie Castle

16th August Dunrobin Castle 6th Sep

Motor Mania. Grantown on Spey

Police Scotland face further cuts to their vehicle budget.

��������������������������������������������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� �����������������������������������������������������