Valve Bounce

24 Hour - Le Mans - 1964

To quote from the sleeve notes...

"Engine noise mingles with raucous music from loudspeakers interspersed with staccato announcements about progress of the race"

Commentary from Sterling Moss and Robin Richards

Result that year:

1. Jean Guichet/Nino Vaccarella

2. Graham Hill/Jo Bonnier

3. John Surtees/Lorenzo Bandini

What great drivers.

Download Sound Stories 1964 24 Hours Le Mans.mp3

Great Drives - Hertfordshire switchback

An occasional series of great drives across the UK and Europe.

First is this route across the Hertfordshire countryside, well known to local bikers. A good selection of fast and open plus some testing hairpins and sharp corners.

Great tarmac, enough passing places. Throughly entertaining.

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Grand Prix d'Europe - Brands Hatch - 1964

I have a number of sound recording LPs from the 50s and 60s that I have been turning into MP3s. These are mainly from the Sound Stories series published in the UK around that time.

The first one I'm putting up here is a recording of Sterling Moss and Robin Richards commentating on the British and European Grand Prix 11th July 1964. These recording really are of their time and are wonderfully evocative. Great car recordings and BBC pronunciation...

The starting grid features Dan Gurney, Graham Hill and Jim Clark.

1964 Grand Prix d'Europe Brands Hatch.mp3

Race Retro 2008

We had a trip out to Stoneleigh Park at the weekend to see Race Retro. It's a very professional show with loads to see. Although it's usually far to cold for my southern limbs to venture outside to see the moving cars. There were not too many people there on Sunday and there were a few complaints from the exhibitors that I spoke to (£25 admission will not have helped)

There was a good selection of exotica A very rare Healey woody, a rally prepared Lancia B20 GT with a great patina (one for the dream garage), and Alfa 6C all went down well. 4VC, the works TR4, was there and I manged to get a couple of decent interior photos.

The aluminum work on the Proteus stand reminded me of the Marc Newson documentary on the BBC recently. Marc is a very successful designer  who uses Bodylines, a specialist aluminum panel beating company, to make some very cute furniture from aluminum. The quality and the workmanship in the Proteus cars was amazing to see. It's good to see this kind of workmanship in the UK, Italy has alway traditionally been the place to get this sort of work done, I wonder what the state of this sort of industry is there.

Also stopped by the Ace Cafe stand for a cup of tea, but to be honest the sausage casserole was a bit disappointing...

One of the highlights was a good chat with Nicky Grist who was manning the stand for his new company stand selling Rally helmets and other rallying goodies plus some Colin McRae branded footware. All a bit modern for HRCR events but good to see him.

Some great auto test action here...

Next stop Essen!

W111 VDO Kienzle Clock Repair

The dash clock stopped working in the Mercedes the other day and I've just managed to fix it. If you're in the same situation and expecting a large bill, as I was, don't worry they are very easy and inexpensive to fix.

There are number of good articles and pictures here and here. Plus if you have a copy of the Mercedes-Benz Technical Companion (Bentley Publishers (2005)) there is a very comprehensive article in there. I used a mixture of advice from different places and the following is what worked for me....

1. Remove clock from car

The clock is held in position by two sprung plates on either side of the clock body. Removing the clock from the car can, in theory, be done by depressing the springs by hand. I found this was impossible. It was much easier to get a screwdriver up under the dash and undo one of the cheese head screws holding the spring in place. The clock can then be easily lifted from the dash.

2. Dismantle clock

The plastic dust cap can be removed by unscrewing the three 5mm nuts on the rear of the clock. One of the nuts is protected by a plastic anti-tamper seal this will need to be broken away with a screwdriver. All the nuts are locked in place with thread lock, be careful I found this had gone hard and needed to be wire brushed away. The threaded stud may break if you use too much force. The dust cap will have a layer of black residue inside from the electrical points this should be cleaned away with a soft cloth.

3. Cleaning the mechanism

This was the most nerve racking bit of the process, I followed the instructions in the MB Technical Companion this involves washing the clock in a warm soapy water solution by suspending the clock in the water and jiggling it to clean it. After a couple of minutes in the cleaning solution I rinsed it in clean water and then gently dried the mechanism with a hair drier.

I came out looking clean and fresh!

Immediately after the clean I oiled the mechanism using a clock oil from R & N Horological. I got the T-S 289 Pen type oiler (refillable) for £3.50 which comes with it's own needle  and enough oil for a few lifetimes. Don't use WD40 or similar (as some suggest) this will clog up the clock and it will eventually stop it working. Oil all the bearings using small droplets of oil. Do not oil the jewelled balance wheel bearings.

I also gently filled the points with a points file to clean them up.

4. Repair

Once you look inside the clock you will probably find that the fuse has gone (good pics here). You're in luck if this is the case, it's an easy fix. The fuse is an electrical connection made with low temperature solder, when the temp rises it melts and springs open. I found some 100 degree solder (Tin/Lead/Bismuth mix) at C+L Finescale intended for model railways at £3.50 plus postage this did the trick nicely.

An alternative is to replace the fuse with a diode and capacitor as described in the MB Technical Companion, this suppresses the points. It is probably a good idea but I preferred having the original fuse in place just in case.

You may find, as in my case, that the points spring is broken I had to find a donor clock on ebay and take use the points from that one.

At this point you can hook up the clock to 12v and watch it working. It should look something like this... You can see the points touch and the winding mechanism fire at 40 seconds in.

Watch the points close at the 40 sec mark and the winder operate, I found it winds down and the points close every 2 minutes or so (apologies for "Just a Minute" in the background!) .

5. Reassemble

Ah the easy bit. Just screw down the dust cover using some loctite. In my case I also needed a need new bulb. This is 2w with a 9BA fitting, but be careful it has to have a small glass enclosure otherwise it won't fit (I've seen Thorn 37R, part no. 0022T4W quoted but I wasn't able to find this part). I found a couple at a local Autojumble.

6. Test

Testing involves hooking the clock up to 12v and letting it run for a few days. During this time you can use the small adjustment screw to get it running accurately (1/8 of a turn equals about 5min/day). I found it took a few days of playing to get in correct.

7. Return to car

Finally carefully push the clock back into position from the front of the dash and reattach the power plug. Now sit back a enjoy the sound of ticking!

Use your local old car specialist

A quick recommendation to Nigel Cooper and his bodywork shop in north west London. He has been involved in restoring the bodywork of many exotic cars in the past including Facel Vega, 1960s Ferraris and (of course) a few Mercedes-Benz 300SLs and 1960s coupes. Nigel did some work on my Mercedes last year; their were some small areas of corrosion starting around the headlamps on the front wings. This just needed a small patch, some sandblasting and a partial repaint of both wings. He did the work and this was fine for a few weeks but over time there was a reaction between the old air dry two-pack paint and the new. It looked like the new paint had sunk and left a ridge between the old and the new. This was obvious and needed fixing.

It was refreshing to see Nigel's attitude to this and the way it was fixed was painless. After unsuccessfully trying a barrier coat they had to resort to striping the wings and repainting from scratch this all took a lot more time than anticipated. I'm glad to say this was all done free of charge and with no quibbles. One of the joys of owing an old car is using the specialists and meeting the people doing the work who are invariably enthusiasts too. Great service and craftsmanship is still out there, it's just a matter of finding it, and it beats going to the local modern dealer any day.

Ally Pally Classic Car Show

We had an enjoyable few hours at the Alexandra Place Classic Car show last week. It's a small show and has been having a bit of an identity crisis recently. This year was enjoyable, not as busy as usual but all the non-car related stuff seems to have gone and there was quite relaxed atmosphere.

A couple of nice Mercedes for sale, a tidy manual 280SE 3.5 Coupe here for £35k  (!) the highest asking price I've seen for one of these. It looks like the market have realised what great cars they are to own and use. Also a very straight looking 230S for £10k a strong price but a very nice looking car.

On the TR front there was a very big TR Register stand and some decent looking cars. Star of the stand was a Blue TR4a modelled on Jack Drew's blue TR4 before he wrote it off. A nice fast road car was the result, some pictures below...

It always leaves me asking when will London get a show to rival Retromobile or Techno Classica??

I also found a completely wonderful LED light socket extension.