Selling Lily

1958 Ford Prefect
100e

4 door

1172cc Sidevalve engine - 3 gear + reverse

Tax free - historic vehicle. I get comprehensive insurance (including business use) for £68! So she is cheap to insure, if you limit the mileage.

(1 month left on road fund and no MOT)

886 UXR (coincidentally, UXoR is Latin for wife) Period plate non-transferable. Original sold by previous owner.

Comes with spare windscreens, filters, radiator etc

£500 (negotiable)

I have decided to sell my Ford Prefect....and finally I am getting round to putting details online; so far people are already talking about this car online because a friend of a friend mentioned it on a forum, and as there has been some mistaken info doing the rounds, I thought I ought to set things straight.

I have shown all the bad points because I want nobody to be in any doubt about the challenges involved in restoring and keeping Lily, though I do have to admit that all I have ever done was keep her running, mechanically.

Until I took her off the road to work on her underside last year, I had run her continuously for 4 years and she was even more reliable than my Metro in winter. Never had a trouble starting her. Engine is sound.

In 2008: new battery and starter motor, suspension bushes and drive shaft bush and new lockable fuel cap with Ford engraved logo. Previous year I changed the exhaust manifold. This winter I put her on ramps (see below) and comprehensively waxoiled the underside, which has no holes and needs no welding. The chassis is solid. Carpets have been removed because of a tendency to absorb moisture - the windscreens leak because the rubbers are perished. Oil changes done regularly and gearbox oil checked too. I garaged it for the first two or so years I had it but this got expensive.

It looks ropey and work does need doing but structurally she is sound. Doors will need doing and bubbling just starting on offside sill needs to be nipped in the bud. A small hole is developing in the nearside sill, just beneath the rust in the front door.

This winter I went to bleed the brakes and couldn't remove a rear nipple, so brakes will need to be done. Currently she is held on handbrake, which releases fine, but you cannot use the footbrake for towing. You will need a trailer.

My girlfriend has convinced that I am over-stretched when it comes to projects (restoring 3 other vehicles) and that I cannot afford the time Lily really deserves to preserve her. She has only ever been a daily run-about for me.

Lily is huge fun to drive (I love the old fashioned sound the transmission makes and her second gear engine growl ....and her heater makes her warmer in winter than my house!) and she turns heads - everyone remembers a relative having one or having learned to drive in one. Other drivers are courteous and friendly and lots wave, especially other classic car owners. She has taken part in several classic car road runs, including the Felixstowe Run, twice. She will give loads of pleasure.

Here's the deal: if, like the bloke who looked at it earlier this week, you turn up, suck in your breath and shake your head in disgust and start banging on about how much time and money she will cost you to restore (in order to get the price down), it'll be £500 and rising. However, if your first reaction is one which shows that you can see how sweet she really is and you seem like you are going to lavish love on her, can manage a smile for me and feel to me like a fellow-enthusiast (rather than a scrap merchant) ....the price will gently descend. It is up to you.

Lily keeps me warm again

A few years ago my Prefect, with its heater whirring, was the warmest place to be on a wintery day - warmer even than my house...But failing that, the trick, as old folk know, is to keep active.

So, while others doubtless decided that when snow-bound, there was no alternative but to turn up the thermostat and watch TV all day, I was outside, scraping snow off Lily, bolting my newly-charged battery in, pulling out the choke and firing the old girl into life, before driving her up onto the ramps so that I could slide under her and inspect her bottom. I couldn't see the nascent hole which MOT chaps, last year, had said would make welding necessary before the next test (now past due), but I will have a better look when there isn't a stream of freezing snow run-off trickling down my neck.

I am hopeful that no welding will be necessary because the supposedly simple jobs always stretch out much longer than expected, and my time is far better spent. But I WILL have to tackle the rusty guttering above the car doors and the bottoms of the rear doors, as well as other bubbling patches on the bonnet and near the filler cap. No second hand price will compensate for losing the fun I have with Lily, so I might as well start looking after her properly.

I think I should seriously look at replacing the rubbers around the screens,which let in rain, the rust patches and along the trims....so that I can keep enjoying driving her. Quite frankly, she is more reliable than my "proper" car.

Eleven hundred miles by bike in 4 days

So, night three at a campsite near Glasgow on the way back (a site full of chavs and loud drunkards having a cheap holiday), some drunk comes up and says (roughly translated), "Have you put up a tent before, because you are doing that all wrong" to which I replied, "Have you grown a moustache before, because that one looks crap" and we fell about laughing. It broke the tension a bit after a tiring day on the road. We laughed and laughed.

ok, I waited for the drunk to walk off before I said it, to be honest :) but it was a side splitter anyway, though maybe you had to be there.

John had intended to get as far as somewhere or other even further north than Glen Coe and I pissed him off by not wanting to go that far, because, to be honest, we were rushing past some wonderful scenery to get to somewhere which neither of us knew and which was not certain to offer more than we were missing, as it was. I guess my philosophy of riding is just different from his, which is fine but it did make things a bit tense at times.

We covered over 250 miles per day, which I thought was pretty damned impressive, until we came across a cyclist who was doing 130 miles per day, just on a pushbike!

Glen Coe was absolutely fantastic. The campsite was a valley at the end of a long and windy road, and surrounded by 9 (John counted 10, but I didn't want to seem to boast, and anyway some of the peaks were parts of the same thing!) mountains. We discussed whether they were strictly 1000'+ and decided it was academic, as they were more than hills and bloody impressive anyway. Below them all round was forest, and beyond the mountains, an estuary from the sea. Marvellous. We followed the coastal road that night after supper, just for a laugh, and followed the 30 miles or so of the A838 circuit.

I figure we rode 1,150 miles in four days, which is easily the most miles I have done continuously, and certainly on a bike. I got really confident....better at reading other people's driving ; anticipating etc.

On the way back we stopped at Falkirk Wheel, easily one of the most ingenious engineering feats in the world. Have a look on this film on YouTube - speeded up by stop-motion.

The wheel cuts out the need for the 11 locks which were there (until dismantled in the 1930s)...in the space on just one and lifts boats 35metres! Wonderful, practically and aesthetically!

Here's a nice model of it in Meccano. There was a terrific architect's model of it in the exhibition centre, and I plan on making a moving model using some of the ex-school Fischer Technic John gave me this summer.






pics to follow -(they're on non-digital and on mate's camera)

5 days of biking - East Anglia, round Scotland and back

(John and the bikes at a really nice little kiosk at Felixstowe seafront a few weeks ago.)

This time next week I will have completed the first of five days with my mate and fellow-holidaying-teacher, John. We are counting down the days. On Sunday we are doing oil and filter changes, etc, test packing the bikes and planning our routes.

When we get back I am off to Sywell to learn to fly.

All in all, it is going to be a great summer!

Project musings

I got the GT550 repaired for the cost of a half hour's labour, though it will have taken a minute to sort it, at most. But it was money well spent because I was paying for expertise...and the man has saved me trying everything else the manual suggested; it didn't suggest this though! The tube which uses the vacuum created in the engine to draw fuel had somehow come off...and now I come to think of it, I probably knocked it when securing my tank bag. The result was that the bike was starved of fuel...though I think this was in one cylinder only. Anyway, I had a long ride after the repair and my confidence in the bike (recently purchased from the friend of a friend) has been restored.

Receiving a complimentary email from Tom, who came across my Lambretta Lowrider by accident and wrote to say it looks fantastic, makes me feel that I really must get it back on the road soon....when the van is finished. Tom is planning on building his own lowrider using an Li125 as a starting point. Good luck, mate.

I am thinking of selling Lily. She is getting rusty and I worry that I don't have time to deal with her deterioration. I feel ashamed, letting her go to hell like this. Mind you, I said this before, started getting her ready for sale (new battery, etc) and then taking her for a spin changed my mind! The few hundred I'd get for her would never compensate for losing her to some other lucky bugger. What a dilemma.

I also need to do something about putting my Cyclemaster back together. A local expert took the coaster hub apart and machined a replacement part which had sheered and jammed the brake on. I have all the parts of the bike ready to be reassembled, but it has sat cluttering up the box room for a year!

So much to do and so little time!

What next?! Bike breakdown - problem a mystery

After three hours glorious riding yesterday, I broke down on the A12 between Ipswich and Colchester - three times. Each time the bike started to lose power in top gear......and changing down progressively achieved nothing but a temporary reprieve....the bike died. Starting was hard....though leaving it for a while meant that it eventually started, except the last of three break-downs, though by then I think my battery was drained (electric start). Each time I got going I was able to cover only about a mile.

I didn't have a toolkit with me, though even if I had I would not have got further than checking plugs which I have checked and found fine today. I gave up and called the RAC who were diabolically slow and eventually a recovery truck arrived two and a half hours later, even though they'd only had to come from ten minutes away.

Today I checked the plugs, which looked fine, charged the battery, which meant the the bike did start, but it won't start without choke (even on a warm day like today's) and died when the choke was put in. It would not tick over without my hand on the throttle.

Damn, what do I try next? Tried all the simple things.

Air intake blocked, perhaps? Any suggestions?

Get on yer Bike and RIDE!!!

In fairness to the mechanics, they brought the bike in within the quoted price and seem to have done a bloody good job. I loved riding it home. And I am about to go out on it now. Encouragingly, they also said that what I thought was loose tappet noise was pretty normal and that I shouldn't worry.

Got that Queen song running through my head, albeit edited from bi-cy-cle to mo-tor-bike:

I want to ride my mo-tor-bike, I want to ride my bike di-na-di-na, di-na din........I want to ride my mo-tor-biiiiiiike........

GET ON YER BIKE AND RIDE!