Well that‘s the way it feels after Sledmere. The whole three days from Friday to Monday morning are quite hard work but nothing compared to the week running up to it on this occasion.
We left the tale, if I remember rightly, having all but finished the second rear door on the Saturday night. The next morning I just had to fit the rubbers to the glass apertures and we have two rear doors ready to hang. This really is the easy bit since there are two adjustable pegs at each hingeing point, one pointing up and the other down. Hang the door from the upper one and screw up the lower into the sockets in the door and there you are. All that remains is to adjust the height of the two to get the door into the right position. When satisfied, you then fit the locking plated into the C posts and close with a satisfying clunk. I must say the doors are so heavy that the clunk is very satisfying indeed. In fact I‘ll open the door and have another go at that. I said I‘ll open the door!! Oh no you won‘t! You forget that you have just refitted both halves of the lock---- not necessarily where they fitted before. And badly fitted locks may close but they stay closed! This caused some grief for quite a while until I realised that I had not screwed up the hinges tightly and there must be some vertical movement possible. Sure enough the door lifted enough to clear the latch and opened. Much chastened I loosened all locking bits and matched them to each other before tightening again. Result, happiness. So far.
After lunch I set to to fix the front doors. A task which shouldn‘t take long given the experience gained from the rears. Sadly the interior of the fronts is markedly different from the rears and requires a new learning process. Obviously the principle of fitting the opening and locking mechanism still applies but because of the need for a key operated lock the hardware is sufficiently different to take more time than anticipated. In addition the front doors had come just as carcasses with no fittings at all attached. True they came with piles of bits but no indication as to what belonged with which. I started with the driver‘s door which, as it happened, was lucky because I seemed to have most of the bits. The extra section for the keyed lock wasn‘t too hard to fathom. It consisted of a threaded stud running in an extension of the manual ”mushroom" locking mechanism with a hole in the top to make an adjustable connector. Trust me, it‘s simpler than it sounds.
Once this was fitted I offered up the innards to the appropriate aperture. The inner frame fixes by way of four brackets which once fitted allow some adjustment of the frame within the door, thus allowing adjustment of the swage lines on the body and the fit of the window frame and glass to be done separately. These brackets were still attached to the frame which saved the trouble of guessing which was which and allowed me work out which bolts were needed in advance. Full of confidence I angled the frame to insert the first corner and then tilted it back to allow the other side room to go into the door top. Except that I obviously had offered the wrong corner first. So I started again with the other corner and ”lo and behold" that was the wrong corner too. In fact when I offered the job up square it was obvious that wasn‘t right either. Despite the fact that all brackets were firmly attached it soon became clear that the fixings would have to be removed to get the frame in. In fact how on earth the innards came out at all in this fashion was a total mystery solved only by doing what I should have done first, namely look at the door. These selfsame brackets which were preventing insertion were in fact already fitted inside the door. This frame had come from a different door, probably so rusty that it could be wrenched out fixings attached. (Incidentally, how many of you thought I was trying to fit the near side innards to the offside door?)
Brackets removed the mechanism slipped relatively easily into the door and was loosely bolted up. Once again there were several types of quarter inch bolt with no pattern to copy so I left tightening to later. Just to ensure that the door worked I offered up the handle to check for correct function of the latch, at which point it transpired that this mechanism had a round, splined peg whereas all my handles had square holes. No problem, I‘ve got spare actuating arms galore in the pile of spares, sadly all for the rear doors.
And so, bright and early the next morning here I am at the gate of the scrapyard looking for door parts. In fact too early since the place opens an hour later than I thought it did. Still it was a nice wait in the sun. Eventually I got the bit in question and several door and window handles too since for once I had the sense to count before going out and found I was a few short.
By lunchtime the day was by far the hottest of the year and the garage was like an oven. My clothes were soaked and the brain was beginning to boil. With the driver‘s door done and only the passenger one to do it should have been a doddle---but no such luck. Shortage of the pins to fix the lock and breakage of the link with the hole in the top caused a second trip to the scrapyard. He must consider me a good customer by now because when I tried to knock down the price of the bits, which included a near mint rear sidelight cluster‘ he pointed out that the light alone would be a tenner to anyone else! Since it really was near mint and new ones are £95.00 I shut up and ran.
The door then would have gone well had I not found out that the remaining door handle I had was for the drivers door. Never mind, a call to Barry located one in his attic so I went to get it. Suffering by now from heat exhaustion I nevertheless removed the handle swiftly and returned home in triumph.. till I offered it up and found it was yet another drivers one. Back to the scrapyard for the right one and eventually I got four doors in place and gave up for the day.
An enforced day‘s work cost me the next day but thereafter the other panels went on without drama (well I had done them before) and I was able to fit the sidelights just for show in the remaining time. I polished off the fingerprints and took a photo for posterity. It had to be indoors since there was too much between me and the door. Still the lights make it look pretty shiny don‘t you think?
On Friday we went to Sledmere for some serious setting up. First Tony set'em up then I set'em up then It was Clarrie‘s round. You get the picture?
So on Saturday Clarrie and I set off back to York to collect the hired trailer on which the Rover was to travel in style. (Not being road legal and all that. ) Manouvering up our lane and backing past my neighbours car was good for a laugh but once poised we fired her up and attempted to move out. The engine was pretty ragged but at least it ran. The clutch however was as sharp as a needle and stalled the thing frequently. So with a series of bunny hops we exited the garage and headed for the ramp. At which point it became evident we had no brakes. Good job the ramp goes upwards. Giving up on self power we winched the car aboard and took off for Sledmere the easy way, avoiding Garrowby hill and arrived well in time for some more setting up.
The weekend went well and I met many members by the car. In between bouts of work we managed to balance the carbs (who is this ”we". Ed) and I fitted the wipers for show. Then I dismantled the grille and bonnet lock because the wipers pushed the bonnet forward and out of synch with the lock. I discovered that the huge brake reservoir had emptied itself into the evidently faulty servo and that the clutch master cylinder was duff as I suspected since the clutch completely gave up the ghost despite a full reservoir.
We dropped the car onto the grass with all the other York branch cars for the show. Taking the chance I got under and had a go at tightening the self locking nut on the lower ball joint which was giving grief by spinning in the socket rather than tightening. I remember now thinking it would go better with the engine weight to close the joint. Well it wouldn‘t. In fact it was the nylon in the self locking nut that caused the problem, binding on the threads and spinning the joint. Even when, with a jack under the lower arm and Simon Stallard swinging on the wing, the joint closed with a bang, we still couldn‘t get past the problem. And so to the autojumble to find another nut. No chance, but I did find a five eighths UNC tap which threaded the nylon a treat after which it went up as snug as you like. (Don‘t worry! Having got the joint locked tight I will now fit a new, undefiled nut.) The sad part was that the autojumbler wouldn‘t buy the tap back!
On Monday we reloaded onto the trailer and went home. I‘m forever grateful to Clarrie for help on and off at both ends. At least the few failures leave me something else to write about next time, and we have a new editor to insult. Oh joy!
Of course after balancing the carburettors and getting the engine to run like silk ( well OK sacking!) it wouldn‘t go again on Monday. Tony blamed the plugs for want of any other villain so I went to Halfords after dropping off the trailer and bought another set. Result happiness.
So If I met you at the show, ”hello again". If I missed you then I‘m sorry and if you weren‘t there shame on you unless you‘ve got a good excuse.
