Valve Bounce

A very cute rear end

Spotted parked up in Southwold this week a very nice looking Lancia Aurelia B20 GT. One for the dream garage I think...

17th Monaco Grand Prix 1959

The Monaco Grand Prix is almost upon us again and these recording remind you what it was like 'back in the day'.

This is another in the series of Sound Stories and features Nevil Lloyd interviewing: Juan Manual Fangio, Sterling Moss, Tony Brooks, Jack Brabham, Phil Hill, Harry Schell and John Cooper.

What a line up.

A truly great list of drivers. Moss, Behra and Brabham on the front row.

Download - 1959 Monaco Grand Prix - The Build Up.mp3

Download - 1959 Monaco Grand Prix - The Race.mp3

Spring Cleaning and the £500 ignition leads

I had a bit of a spring clean this weekend and gave the coupe a thorough service (oil, coolant, brake fluid, plus greasing and oiling everything in sight) and gave it a good clean and polish. I also managed to change all the wheel arch trim self tappers, which were gently rusting, with shiny stainless ones. It took a long time to remove the old screws but I managed it without having to do any drilling and it was strangely satisfying putting lots of shiny new screws in place…

I’ve had a few minor ignition niggles recently;

• one of the spark plug caps came lose during a motorway run this caused a misfire which took a bit of time to find.

• I also had trouble starting the car and traced this down to a bad connection on one of the ignition ballast resistors.

With both these problems sorted I went trough all the ignition wiring connections cleaning them up and making sure the wiring was in good condition.

That’s when I made a list of parts that I would like to replace to be safe rather than sorry. The list included a set of ignition leads and I asked the price from my Classic Mercedes parts place and got the answer that a full set would be a total of an eye watering £500!! (Leads are sold without plug caps which need to be bought separately). I’m pretty certain that I can find a cheaper price direct from Bosch or anywhere else for that matter.

It brings back memories of the £700 fuel pump that I had to buy the day after I bought the car. Having said that we’ve now done around 15k miles and the fuel pump has been the only significant part that I’ve had to buy (thank goodness).