· Suzuki TS 125. It was a shocking thing that could only manage about 45mph with a tail wind...
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Transcript of · Suzuki TS 125. It was a shocking thing that could only manage about 45mph with a tail wind...
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Chairman: Michael Osborne Tel: 01463 871473
[email protected] Secretary: Ian Nixon Tel: 01349 866178 [email protected] Treasurer: Ian Thompson
Tel: 01463 790969 [email protected] Committee Roy MacGregor Ranald Smith Alice Brown Miles Vincent
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
www.highlandclassic.org.uk
Callum Beveridge 47 Old Mill Lane, Inverness, Highland
IV2 3XP Tel: 01463 231787 Email: [email protected]
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.
Ranald Smith The club has an extensive archive of information relating to all aspects of classic car ownership including technical advice etc. To access this, please contact the archivist, Ranald Smith, at Hawthorn Cottage, 2 Burn Road, Inverness IV2 3NG Tel: 01463 236459
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 Act of 1988, no part of this magazine may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without the written permission of the Highland Classic Motor Club
3 The Chairman’s Bit 5 Editorial 6 Losing My Motoring Cherry 8 Standing Order Mandate Editor
HCMC Homepage
Copyright
Cover picture
Not just an Aston Martin... this is a Marks & Spencer
Aston Martin...Outside M&S at the Inverness Car Show,
May 2011
Membership
Archivist Office Bearers & Committee
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Normally about this time of year the TVR is parked up for the winter due to the amount of salt on the roads but it feels more like September. I've not got the car out though because I still haven't got around to fixing the lighting from the last outing. My justification for total laziness? Well I won't be using the car for a while due to the weather.... We had a really interesting meeting last month at 'Portal Rover', a small concern just down the road from me in
the Muir of Ord. They specialise in all things Land Rover and other off road vehicles. The owner Hugh talked us through his latest project, a six wheel defender which is being used in a movie featuring Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone amongst others, currently being shot in Bulgaria. It still never ceases to amaze me the amount of small specialist engineering companies that you come across in the Highlands. December's meet is the Secret Santa's piss up (or something like that). See you there. Michael [email protected]
The Chairman’s Bit
This Months Meeting Thursday 1st December. Christmas Pub Night. 8pm at
the Old North Inn (Bogroy), Inchmore
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2011 December 1st Christmas Club Night 2012 January 5th Annual Auction—North Kessock Hotel February 2nd AGM and Quiz Night—North Kessock Hotel March 1st tba April 5th Visit to Moray Motor Museum May 3rd Tour of Kinkell Classics June 7th Road run to the Altguish Inn July 5th Scenic drive to Coul House via Meig Dam August 2nd Scenic drive to Whitebridge via Foyers September 6th Visit to the Glen Ord Distillery (Further details to be published in ‘Classic Scene’ prior to the individual meetings)
HIGHLAND CLASSIC MOTOR CLUB Monthly meetings (1st Thursday of every month)
‘The End of Life Vehicles Regulations 2003 implemented the requirement of the EU End of Life Vehicles Directive (2000/53). The law states that all End of Life Vehicles must be taken to an Authorised Treatment Facility (ATF) to be destroyed and de-polluted in an environmentally friendly way. The ATF will notify DVLA that the vehicle has been destroyed and issue the person presenting the vehicle for scrapping will be issued with a Certificate of Destruction (CoD) which closes down the vehicle record at DVLA and ends the registered keepers' responsibility for the vehicle. Because of this, vehicle keepers cannot "scrap" a vehicle themselves and so DVLA no longer accepts notifications of scrapping made on the V5C. The removal of the scrap box on the new V5C was in accordance to the End of Life Vehicle Directive requirement, in that all vehicles must be taken to an ATF to be destroyed and issued with a CoD. Over recent years the salvage industry has campaigned for the removal of the scrap box on the V5C. DVLA realised that the scrap box should be
removed at the earliest convenience, and was therefore removed during the wider review of other changes needed to the certificate and was incorporated with the re-design of the V5C.’ With regards to the points made in your consultation response regarding the difficulty historic vehicle enthusiasts find in notifying DVLA. I hope you find the following helpful. For vehicles outside the scope of the ELV requirement, such as historic vehicles, the V5C can still be used. If parts are delivered to an Authorised Treatment Facility (ATF) then the V5C/3 ‘selling or transferring your vehicle to a motor trader, insurer or dismantler’ part of the V5C should be filled in with the ATF’s details and sent to DVLA. Alternatively, if the ATF is reluctant to fill in the V5C/3 or a keeper is self scrapping, then the whole V5C can be sent to DVLA with a covering explanation letter, dated and signed . Within 4 weeks DVLA should confirm receipt that the person is no longer the keeper of the vehicle, and this discharges the requirement to tax or SORN each year.’ BRYAN MCILWRAITH
Vehicle Scrapping
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Hello, Last months meeting was a visit to PortalRover in Muir of Ord, and a very interesting evening it was. I was pleasantly surprised at the high number of members that attended, and Hugh held our attention throughout the night. I’m looking forward to seeing his latest creation out on the road some day. Bryan informs me that club regalia can now be bought in Inverness at the Highland Schoolwear shop in Academy Street. They can embroider the HCMC logo onto almost any of the garments they sell, so now you can go in and try things on before you buy.
He also informs me that club subscriptions run from January to Dec, and will be due shortly. The best way to pay is by Standing Order (on the back cover). Please fill in and send direct to your bank or alternatively, subs can be paid at the Jan or Feb meeting. Please bring cheques for £15 payable to H.C.M.C. Please note that we are trying to avoid cash payments (as there is inevitably confusion over at least one every year!) I’ve received a flood (several) articles on you early motoring memories. Please keep them coming, by email preferably. As I’m writing this, the snow and sleet are falling outside and ‘Dyane’ is calling to me from within the garage to come and rub down her primer. Brrrrrrr! This months meeting is the traditional December Pub Night at the Old North Inn, Inchmore. Bring a suitable ‘Secret Santa’ present with you if you want to join the festivities… If you’ve not yet taken the plunge, you can subscribe by clicking the link on the front of the club website. Callum [email protected] www.highlandclassic.org.uk
Editorial
Matt shows us his ‘Hot Rod’
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First car eh? Well that would be in 1986 after having finally managed to pass my driving test, on the third attempt, in the sleepy Highland hamlet of Grantown-on-Spey. In my defence, all my lessons were taking place down in Slough, the home of the roundabout, and I was only used to driving a ropey Peugeot 205 belonging to my “Idiot” of an Instructor. I could quite happily take on artics and mad taxi drivers, while negotiating three lane double roundabouts in my puny Pug, but on returning to the Highlands, where the test waiting list was a tad shorter, things seemed to keep going pear-shaped. It may have had something to do with the fact that my chosen test vehicle had to be my father’s new (in 1986) Austin Montego 1.6 HL. It was about three times the length of my practice 205 and in those days it still was a three point turn, none of your “turning in the road with the use of the forward and reverse gears” nonsense that they seem to get away with nowadays. Why is it that every time I try driving up Laggan road to my house I seem to get stuck behind yet another learner driver, taking twenty three manoeuvres to rotate on the spot, while loosening their instructor’s plastic wheel trims by ramming both kerbs repeatedly, with the use of the forward and reverse gears? At least in my first two tests I managed it with far more finesse; completely mounting the pavement in reverse having totally forgotten that I was now driving an Estate car! That wasn’t my only downfall; Grantown has only got one set of traffic lights for goodness sake and the merest of a slope, up one of its side streets, on which to be tested on a hill start, and I was riding the clutch. Apparently the “Idiot” had never noticed this in between chain-smoking a dozen Marlboro Reds during each lesson! Thankfully my third and successful test attempt was made under the supervision of a more observant and local instructor, an ex-bobby if I remember correctly. He diagnosed my clutch-riding over the phone before we met, so things were looking a
whole lot better to start with, and with a little more practice in the Montego, I even overcame my kerb ramming habit long enough to attain my licence. Now all I needed were my own independent wheels! I had actually been independent for the past six months but on two wheels. In the absence of a full licence I had blown some hard earned cash on a Suzuki TS 125. It was a shocking thing that could only manage about 45mph with a tail wind (unless you started down from the Cairngorm Mountain ski car park, where as, you could muster an alarmingly wobbly 65!) My car hunt began with a trip up the A9 from Carrbridge to the “Big Smoke”; Inversneckie, although, as it happens, most of the smoke was actually coming from my ailing 125, as I later discovered that, when the oil warning light had come on the previous day and I had poured oil into the tube with the word “Oil” on the cap, this had in fact been for the gear box oil. How was I supposed to know that the engine oil filler was under the saddle?! Anyhow, I avoided purchasing a 1978 Datsun 120Y from Macrae and Dicks, predominantly because when the over keen salesman shut the driver’s door the nearside front wing fell off. (I not sure even our Tom would have been able to successfully close that sale!) So I left. And moved on to Ness Motors where I purchased what turned out to be a car that they were selling on behalf of one of the girls that worked in their office. (Well that was their story; I came more to think that this was a way that they wouldn’t actually have had to take responsibility for the condition of the thing once I had bought it!)
Losing My Motoring Cherry!
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Six months MOT my Arse! But I loved my new ’65 Moggy Minor! It came without bumpers but with Vauxhall Cavalier wheels and after a touch up with white Hammerite and the addition of a CB aerial and a “Sports” sticker it was raring to go. The CB radio was necessary because to enable overtaking on the A9 you had to call up the log lorry at the front of the queue that you were in and he would give you the all clear to pull out and then warn you when to pull back in again if a car was coming. People must have wondered what sort on nutter was driving this monstrosity as it randomly started to overtake columns of traffic on blind bends and hills and then miraculously returned to its side of the road when something on coming appeared! Talking of radios, I can still smell the red leatherette interior of EFM 669C whenever I hear music by Del Amitri and Hot House Flowers! This is because that was the C90 tape that was stuck in, and on repeat, in the cassette player that came with it, located under the driver’s seat for some reason. I had great fun in that thing; commuting from Carrbridge to the Coylumbridge Hotel at 6am for the breakfast shift (I had to start out earlier on the motorbike because I needed extra time before work to thaw out during the winter months; all twelve of them!) Only once did I spin the Moggy on black ice and end up in someone’s front garden just outside Aviemore. I used to regularly run up and down to Stirling in it as well and for some reason this is where I chose to book it in for its next MOT.
When I returned to pick up the car it was still on the ramp, so I offered to come back in a little while if he wasn’t finished, but he told me no, it was still on the ramp for a reason and he asked me if I had been driving the thing. He was suitably horrified when I told him that I was just down from Inverness in it as he proceeded to show me how easy it was to push his finger through various points along the floor chassis rails. He told me he wouldn’t drive the car if I paid him so I promptly did (drive the car) for the remaining two weeks of its MOT before selling it for £40 scrap. If only I
had known Hugh Finnie back then; all would have been well and I wouldn’t have had to have owned the list of horrors that followed. • Silver T reg. 1979 Mk2 Escort L – stolen in
Nottingham after 48 hours ownership! • Brown N reg. 1974 Vauxhall Viva – bought
for 50 quid and some speakers, later scrapped.
• Green V reg. 1979 Vauxhall Viva – complete with bright blue Fandango Wheels and black vinyl roof (not the car you would expect to be used in an armed bank robbery in Liverpool after it was sold in Inverness because I got a company car!)
• Orange 1974 VW Beetle Baja Bug – sprayed blue but still lacked inner wings and sills, never saw an MOT and still resides in a shed in Altnaharra.
• Silver 1985 Porsche 924 – relatively successful ownership sold when sills rusted.
• Blue 1992 Mini – still going strong. • Beige 1977 Reliant Scimitar GTE – still
going. • Beige 1973 Fiat 126 – rusty; make me an
offer. • Brown 1979 Automatic VW Passat Estate –
ditto. • Brown 1978 Reliant Scimitar GTE – the
back half only; watch this space! My name is Miles and I am a Crap Car Addict! Please help! Miles.
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