Over on The Isle of Wight

Cookie is currently over on the Isle of Wight at the Triumph Camping Weekend, meeting up with lots of old Triumphing friends. A good way to avoid the Royal Wedding as I'm well away from any TV!

Started off the weekend by taking my boy James for a curry, which was good until he ate what he thought was a runner bean but was actually a green chilli. Poor little chap suffered somewhat.

The event proper starts this evening so today I let James decide what he wanted to do and took him to the military museum, he didn't want a tank ride but did enjoy playing with the Bofors Anti Aircraft Gun.

Got Back to the campsite, had a barbecue and then a few more started to turn up so started on the cider and beer!

Nice day out in the Sunshine

What a difference a year makes, today I went along to the Wyke Down Spring classics meet and autojumble in glorious hot sunshine. This nice little show and autojumble takes place in a filed behind the Wyke Down pub near Andover on Easter Monday each year and last year it got cancelled as the weather was so atrocious and the field was totally waterlogged. I like to get along to this as it's one of the first local shows of the season and has a good variety of vehicles and a interesting autojumble. Always a few unusual or desirable cars that carch my eye and this year was no different.

The traditional picnic by the GT6...

Not for the feint hearted, a chopper bicycle fitted with a Honda 125 Engine, even has the original bicycle front brake!

If I had a few bob to blow on a car collection this Atom would be one of the cars in my garage

Believe it or not, this is a car not a boat, Reliant Robin based

The Old and the New Jags, XK8 definitely has some styling cues from the E-type

Apologies if this is your car, but that wooden hard top thingy on the back is sooo ugly, why oh why???

A  Brace of Meschersmits 

Back on the Road and Nice photos!

I've fixed all the mechanical damage from our "incident" on the Round Britain run, tie rod arm replaced with new assembly, handbrake reattached, Exhaust fixed, Bonnet re-aligned (reasonably well anyway), dent in the wheelarch fettled. I also took the car in for a 4 wheel alignment, good news is that nothing is bent or twisted chassis wise and the garage was able to adjust everything to within tolerance. I have found another dent, but this is in the floorpan (just in front of the tie rod mounting) so I won't worry about that too much. Still need to get the rear valence replaced, the small dents in the quarter valences filled and painted.

New Tie Bar fitted

Dent in the Rear Valance, panel to be replaced....

I've still not received the magazine or photo copies promised by the journalist from the practical classics article despite chasing this up. However, the article had the name of the freelance photographer, Mark Fagelson. I googled Mark and sent him an email politely asking if he could send me some photos. Mark duly obliged and sent me a disc with a copy of the photos in the next post, so he's a jolly nice bloke as well as a damn good photographer!

There were quite a few really good pictures that hadn't been published as well. Mark included a letter regarding copyright and I'm allowed to use the photo's for my own personal use including publishing on the interweb as long as it's not for profit so here are 3 of my favourite photos from the shoot.

It's been a strange week!

After the damage from the Stag avoidance off road antics on the round Britain run at the weekend the GT6 is now featured in an article in the November issue of Practical Classics magazine that came out this week. 


Some excellent pictures of the car looking in really fine fettle. The article it's self is pretty generic regarding GT6s rather than specific to may car. In the 3 way road test against the MGA and the Sunbeam Alpine they liked the Alpine best but did admit that the GT6 sounded more "sophisticated" but was the noisiest of the bunch. That'll be the fact that I have a sports exhaust and the others were boring standard ones then!


Probably best that I don't publish the actual article on my blog but the picture below was extracted from Practical Classics website so is already in the public domain.

The article doesn't really say much that I haven't heard before regarding GT6s but I must admit the photos are excellent, especially the action shots, there's one action shot that clearly shows me behind the wheel, my 15 minutes of fame I guess!

An Eventful Round Britain Run for Team 30

Well what an eventful weekend, unlucky but lucky at the same time. Our Round Britain Run came to an abrupt end at John O'Groats yesterday morning following an incident that had happened a few hours previously in the early hours. A Stag ran out in front of us on the A9 in the Highlands (Just South of Aviemore) at about 4am. Mark swerved and avoided the beast but the car spun off the road doing a couple of 360s and came to a halt against a grass bank. Doug  & Katie Foreman and another crew stopped to help. I managed to get the car out of the boggy mud and back to the road and drove it along about ¼ mile to a layby, the car was very unstable at the back end and the rear nearside wheel was at a very funny angle. Jacked it up and found that a rear tie bar was badly bent downwards. Managed to straighten it out a bit with the trolley Jack. Tried the car and it didn’t feel too bad so drove on to the next control point at Skiach Services, refueled and then carried on to John O'Groats. On the way the car started making a knocking sound on left hand bends so  after Breakfast in the John O’Groats Seaview Hotel we jacked the car up investigated more in the daylight. We noticed that the tie rod was still a bit bent but couldn’t see much else wrong (except the handbrake cable had come un attached). I tried to straighten the tie rod properly but it snapped. That meant it was game over for us so we had to be recovered by the AA. It took over 24 hours and 4 relay trucks to get us home but that did include a night in a hotel near Warrington paid for by the AA. The car also has some dents, a dented and split rear valance, a dented front quarter valence and a dent in the return flange of the front wheelarch. We realise we were lucky though, the Stag was darn big and would have written the car off if we'd hit it. Also we saw that stretch of the A9 in the daylight from the breakdown truck on the way back and there are loads of nasty drops and sheer rock faces along the rod side so we were lucky it happened exactly where it did.

I think Mark should have drunk more Lucozade looking at the following advert (which features a GT6 and a Stag or two!)

The GT6 at the Start, the Plough, Enfield

More Cars at the Start

Bodders Changes a Wheel Bearing at the Start

Edinburgh Airport Control

Not Entirely Certain but I think this is where we spun off

We made it to John O'Groats

The offending broken tie rod

The end of our Round Britain Run

Doug and Katie overtake the recovery truck just south of Stirling

All Prepped up and Ready to go

The GT6 is all prepared ready for the round Britain Run.

It's had a good check over, Engine Oil and Filter changed, blockage in the coolant system fixed, flushed and new coolant, door handle fixed, carb float chambers cleaned out (after a leaky float chamber on one earlier in the week) , all fluids checked and topped up, tyre pressures done, extra 12v sockets fitted under the dash, washed and stickers applied.

To be honest I made a bit of a hash of the stickers and may replace them at the start in Enfield if there's time on Friday.

I've also got snacks on order to keep going between the official breakfast, pie and cake stops in the form of pasties, egg & bacon bites and ginger bread men. Plus a few bottles of energy drink.

Sponsorship has started rolling in although the Virgin giving website going down the today is not good. Especially after I got a slot on a weekly directors briefing call at work to talk about the run and the charity to about 500 people. Several spoke to me today saying they would sponsor me on line but I suspect if they try and the site is still down I'll problem miss out....

Anyway, pictures of the car ready to go below.

Team 30 Changes Car

Mark and I have now agreed to change cars for our entry into the round Britain Run and will now be using my GT6.

I have in any case been starting to prepare the car over the last week or two as per my previous blog post so no big deal.

Still have the door handle to fix, the part arrived today so this should be no problem. Then it's an oil and filter change, check the tyre pressures, give it a wash, apply the RBRR stickers and off we go.

Picture below was taken on the 2008 RBRR near Loch Naver up towards the top of Scotlandshire.