Table of contents for January 2016 in Classics World

We opened this issue by waving off the Morris Traveller as it trundled off into a new life with its winner at the close of the NEC show. It’s been an awkward journey from the half-completed project I first encountered a year ago to the shiny Traveller sitting confidently on the Charles Ware stand at the show but it was gratifying to hear the positive comments from showgoers which made it all worth the effort. This summer has seen many enjoyable miles spent behind the wheel of the Minor and highlights include persuading my son and nephew that no, really nobody’s going to get cross with you if you clamber into a vinyl-clad Moggy interior with slightly damp swimming shorts... and that no matter how hard you scrabble round looking…

Our project Morris Traveller took pride of place on Charles Ware’s Morris Minor Centre’s stand in hall four at the recent Lancaster Insurance Classic Motor Show and received heaps of praise from thousands of visitors, especially those who have followed the car’s restoration in Classics Monthly. According to Zac Ware, son of Charles Ware, the Minor Centre’s late founder, a lot of admirers told him they were rather envious of the winner of our car which was due to be given away at the end of the show in a competition that had been organised by classic insurance specialists Footman James. The moment to hand over ownership of UMK 307F to its fortunate new owner came at 4pm on Sunday, the last day of the three-day event and a large…

I put an ad in the club magazine for a Mk2 which had to be MoT’d and presentable,” laughs Ian Gibson. “I offered a maximum of 500 quid... suffice to say I wasn’t exactly buried in an avalanche of mail..!” This was back in1987 though, at which time Ian’s £500 offer wasn’t quite as derisory as it would be today and was the result of Ian’s love of the Mk2, which stemmed from his father John’s ownership of a BRG example with red leather back in the ’60s. Back then prices of the Mk2 were already starting to rise and Ian’s thinking was that with he and John both having engineering backgrounds, a rolling restoration would be ideal. As Ian relates, fate then took a hand in the shape of…

If we’re not careful, our wasteful throwaway society will be held to account by future generations of classic fans for creating an enormous black hole when it comes to saving mass-produced cars built in the 1980s and ’90s. Already too many models once considered a common sight on the high street 20 years or so ago have ended their days in the crusher and survivors fortunate enough to escape the clutches of boy racers and various scrappage schemes are currently down to single figures in some cases. Although there may be hopefully scores of interesting cars from this period currently stored away in garages and lockups waiting to be uncovered in years to come, we have to congratulate forward thinking enthusiasts such as Chris Cousins for revitalising a down at…

Eric Richardson Contributor With a passion for historic motorsport, Eric is as comfortable behind the wheel competing in a car as he is behind the lens photographing one. Brought up with rallying in the 1970’s he’s a huge fan of rally cars of the period and has competed in numerous historic road rallies as both as driver and a navigator. The last job I tackled on the A40 last month was to fit the freshly modified radiator. Now as much as there was nothing wrong with the matt finish that it came in, I have to say after a day of looking at it I decided I wanted a satin finish on it. The next day saw the radiator removed ready to receive a few of coats of Hycote’s Satin…

Ivan Ostroff Contributor Just as Ivan was singing the praises of the XJ40 Sovereign, the gremlins struck and the car lost its power steering fluid. Ivan’s now discovered XJ40 steering racks and power steering hoses have joined the list of components that are rapidly becoming scarce. It was time to replace the boots on the Jaguar XJ6 3.6 litre, so I plumbed for a set of Yokohamas once again as I had been so satisfied with the last set. I took the car down to my local Kwik Fit depot early one morning with my nice shiny new Yoko’s and asked Marcel, the reception manager if they could fit me in. Marcel is also into classic motoring, being the proud owner of a concours-winning 1988 BMW E28 535 Turbo and…

Ever since the 1967 Vauxhall Victor and 1970 Ford Cortina Mk3, cam belts rather than chains became an increasingly common feature on classic cars. By 1983, many other makes had belts too: VW/Audi, BMW and Volvo all had cars with cam belts and ten years later, timing chains were becoming the exception to the rule. Changing a cam belt ranges from extremely easy (Ford CVH) to extremely difficult (Rover 800 and 75 V6) but the basics are the same. You must change the belt on time, replace the tensioners (or at least regrease noisy ones) and take extra care to get the timing marks and torque settings correct. Many cars such as the 1980-onwards Vauxhall OHC as fitted to the Astra, Nova and so on also have an extra dimension…

• 1976: The W123 launched in the UK; initially only petrol and diesel powered saloons badged as 200, 200D, 230, 240D, 250 and 280E. • 1977: Launch of the Coupé badged as ‘C’. • 1979: Estates launched, badged as ‘T’ and available as 240TD, 250T and 280TE. • 1980: Revised model range including new engine for the 200, injected 230E and 300TD estate. • 1981: 200T estate launched, five-speed gearbox fitted to the 230E • 1982: Revisions including interior trim,seats and rectangular lamps for all models. • 1984: The W124 range was launched but the W123 carried on for another year. • 1986: The very last W123 estates were produced.…

One of Sir John Egan’s early milestones in resurrecting Jaguar’s fortunes during the 1980s was to adopt the ailing Castle Bromwich plant, resulting in a dramatic improvement in product quality during the 1980s. The plant, first established in 1936 to produce Spitfire planes, is now a state of the art facility. Some time ago it took over from the old Browns Lane plant in Coventry and is now the major centre for production of Jaguar’s XJ and F-Type. The Castle Bromwich plant has operated factory visits in the past on an informal basis but has recently placed them on a more commercial footing with a professionally polished tour and the visitor facilities upgraded too. We took a recent press trip around the plant and it’s a fascinating experience to see…

This year’s NEC show was yet another record-breaker, boasting just under 69,000 visitors to the three-day event showcasing 2500 cars and bikes. As ever, there was a mixture of mainstream and oddball vehicles on show with Alexander Louden from Country Antrim winning the Meguiar’s showcase award with his 1939 MG TB. Best in show in the inaugural Pride of Ownership went to the skiff-bodied 1926 Packard 420 restored by boat builder Steve Mills from Long Eaton. Second place went to Richard Water’s 1962 Austin A40 Farina, while third place was awarded to the Malcolm Dudley’s 1957 Meadow Frisky. Visitors to headline sponsor Lancaster Insurance’s stand would also have seen the Mini restoration scheduled to appear soon in these very pages. Meanwhile, here are just a few of the exhibits which…

Gez Hughes Contributor Gez longs for the simpler life, so his fleet consists of cars that can be run on pennies and fixed with a spoon. A lifelong fascination with motors built in the heyday of the British motor industry means there’s always something that needs fixing. So my big adventure started with a couple of phone calls. The first to put the NSU onto my classic insurance policy, and the second to Whaddon Garage – my classic friendly MoT test centre – to book the car in for its first test since, and I’m guessing here, the early ‘90s. The Prinz was running sweetly, everything had been checked and double checked and on a bright Saturday morning I took to the road in the NSU for the first time…

Mike Taylor Contributor Mike’s Stag Rescue has been a long-term feature in CM for the last few years and the project is now finally nearing completion. Been a busy few days lately as while waiting for the paint on the Stag’s doors to harden, I started fitting the chrome external trim. Although the four horseshoe body mouldings, front bumper bar and four overriders had all been re-chromed, I’d decided to purchase a new rear bumper plus new upper and lower body moulding strips from Rimmer Bros. The reason for shelling out for the new sections is that the Stag’s rear bumper had been accident damaged sometime in the past and the body moulding had numerous small dents. Rimmers also supplied a complete set of clips for retaining the body mouldings…

Last month I commented on how surprisingly reliable our 25-year old Discovery had been after being pressed into daily use. The leaky hub seal we sorted last month was the biggest problem we’d encountered thus far and to the amazement of those well versed in ’80s and ’90s Austin Rover products, it had always got us home – often with a heavy trailer on the back and seven people aboard. Fast forward to a late summer morning and as I passed one of Eddie Stobart’s finest in the outside lane of the M5, the dream was shattered at 6.30am by a whining noise from the general gearshift area, followed by a couple of disturbing screeches. Instinctively starting to pull over to the hard shoulder, I noticed that the charge and…

The ignition timing of an engine is crucial for optimum performance, but is something that often gets overlooked during routine servicing. However, the equipment required to check and adjust the ignition timing on most classic car engines is often very straightforward. In some cases, it can be as simple as a length of wire and a bulb. There are a number of issues concerning ignition timing that need to be tackled to ensure an engine can be correctly timed up and thus ensure it runs efficiently. We’ve outlined many of them, ranging from checking over the ignition components to measuring the points gap. And there are a few dilemmas that can throw a spanner in the works, such as a flat battery, a broken down HT lead or unwanted moisture.…

With the recent launch of the Jaguar XE, there’s a truly British-made contender for the volume prestige fleet sector which is something we haven’t seen since the days of... well, if we’re honest, the Triumph 2000 and its in-house competitor, the Rover P6. Even the SD1 which replaced both models and then the 800 and 75 were increasingly surrounded by the growing popularity of the German brands and it’s BMW’s 3-Series which now dominates that market. Ironically, BMW is now the owner of the Triumph name plate, which disappeared when the Acclaim left production in 1984. The 2000 and 2500 offered the same attributes which attract today’s 3-Series/A4/C-Class owner, with brisk performance, neat styling and a prestige badge. More affordable than the Jaguar of the time, a Triumph was still…

Rob Hope-Jones got his late 1957 Land Rover Series I in 1996. “In boxes,” he laughed. Except you couldn’t get the ladder frame in a box; it had been lying in a hedge with nettles growing up through it. “We brought it all home on a trailer behind a tractor.” Rob paid £450 for the kit-form project (“I think I was a bit ripped off!”), but the sum was historically appropriate, as that had been the price new of the first Series I back in 1948. The low cost was due to it being classified as a commercial/agricultural vehicle, and thus exempt from swingeing British Purchase Tax, though this was sometimes disputed and only settled by a definitive court judgement in 1956. It explains why early versions of the Station…

Will Armston-Sheret Contributor Will has been collecting Classic cars since before he could drive and now has quite a fleet of Morris Minors. He’s currently slowly doing up his dream car, a 1950 Morris Minor Lowlight. It was with some shock that this month that I realised that Lily’s MoT was about to expire. I decided to take it off the road for a check over and a good service. Thankfully I had Dobby to fall back on, but I’d liken a Morris Minor convertible to a tent—lovely in the summer, but wet and draughty and something you’d do well to avoid in winter, so it was important to get Lily back on the road quickly. I did the usual pre-MoT checks, such as checking the rear brake adjustment, and…

Scott Higgins Contributor Scott has always been an engineer at heart: Lego, Meccano and disassembly of anything that stays still for too long being obvious symptoms. After serving an engineering apprenticeship at Land Rover Solihull, he now works in product development. Well I still haven’t got a painted bodyshell back. Most people I speak to have had similar issues, even professional restoration companies that outsource bodywork. I will keep encouraging them along, but in the meantime I am quite enjoying building bits ready for her return. I suppose I’m not losing time really as these bits would have still needed doing and hopefully it will just be a simple assembly job when she returns. Famous last words! So this month I am going to share with you the dizzy rebuild…

Like a lot of classics, our XJS is fitted with the fly-off handbrake system, which means that when the brake is applied the lever returns to what looks like the ‘off’ position and this can confuse anyone not familiar with how the handbrake works on these cars. Fitting a fly-off handbrake to the XJS makes a lot of sense as the handle is mounted on the right-hand side of the cabin next to the driver’s seat. If the lever was to remain in the ‘up’ position every time the handbrake was applied it would be almost impossible to get in and out of the car without doing serious damage to your nether regions. Anyone driving an automatic XJS for the first time and noticing the handbrake lying flat on the…

Audi’s EA827 engine is one of the most successful engine ranges ever produced, and is probably the best-selling unit ever with production in the region of 50 million if you include the revised but almost identical EA113 replacement. The engine first saw the light of day in 1972, powering both the new Audi 80 and its fastback cousin, the Volkswagen Passat. From 1974 it powered both the new 1.5-litre Golf and Scirocco, and remained largely unchanged until the late 1990s, being renamed the EA113 from 1993. Even then, the newer generation 16-valve units were EA827 based, and to this day a close relative of the EA827 engine is still being used in certain Mexican-built cars such as the 2-petrol VW Tiguan. The bones of the unit (bore spacings as well…

Ever since the fabulous 300SL Gullwing rose phoenix-like out of Daimler-Benz AG’s hastily rebuilt factories just nine years after the end of the Second World War, Mercedes-Benz has managed to build up an enviable reputation as a manufacturer of dependable, if rather staid looking four-door saloons. Anyone who can remember watching ’70s and ’80s news reels covering the latest troubled Middle East hot spots will no doubt recall seeing battered W123-series taxis cautiously threading their way through rubble strewn streets and will have to agree these brick-outhouse-built cars really do deserve their ‘Beirut taxi’ nickname. Launched in 1975, the Mercedes-Benz W123 series took over where the so-called W114 series left off and according to company records a wide range of body styles was envisaged for the new model. Although these…