I don't remember the engine size. What I do remember, is that the the official BL service garage, were charging for but not doing the services. I caught them out a couple of times, with the old oil still in - which wouldn't have helped.
What did you consider a luxury growing up?
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I don't remember the engine size. What I do remember, is that the the official BL service garage, were charging for but not doing the services. I caught them out a couple of times, with the old oil still in - which wouldn't have helped.
D
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So were 1100s. Must have been an 1800 B-series
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I shudder to admit I had a Marina 1300 for a short while. A Coupé don'cha know. It used a pint of oil every 300 miles, which was inside BL's tolerance.
The other day I checked its registration on the "Is it taxed" site - it kept going many years after I sold it. How come we can remember reg nos of our early cars so well?
The other day I checked its registration on the "Is it taxed" site - it kept going many years after I sold it. How come we can remember reg nos of our early cars so well?
D
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I had a BSA Rocket 3 750 in the 70s - it guzzled oil at 200 to 250 miles/pint, at least some of which stopped my boots going rusty - but at least it went like a bat out of hell (1000cc barrel conversion). You should have got better than 300 miles/pint out of an A-series, though, unless you had worn bores/rings. I reckoned about twice that on the Spridgets I had (both 1275s) and the 1100
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I can remember all my cars' registrations apart from the ones I only kept for a very short time to polish up and sell on.
My first legal car in 1976 was a beige Austin 1100. DSF 725C. First car I had an orgasm in. Unfortunately I was on my own at the time........
A Mercedes
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No doubt the result of close contact with that massive, powerful, throbbing engine
I had a work 1100 for a while (yes, the mad b'stards loaned me a car). It was actually quite nippy and cornered well, with bags of predictable understeer. Complete opposite of the Marina/Ital which was a horrible car to drive IMHO.
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I enjoyed the thrusting virtues of the massive 1275 (1300) engine in my one of those. Bermuda blue, the panda car colour.
It didn't transport me to the same heights of ecstacy that yours did. It wasn't too bad at all, though I have visions returning of CV gaiters, and U/J U bolts rubbing against each other nearly right through, and a supply of cork rocker box gaskets.
DGX 71H, Born 1970, died 1983.
They say your car never existed!
I checked a couple of the Wheeler Dealers' cars on that site. They don't seem to go on for long.
Mine was my mums and was given to me on the day I passed my test. I jumped in and went out for my first legal solo drive and ten minutes into my journey, the front pipe snapped at the manifold! It was a one piece system on them and I remember buying a new exhaust for the total price of.......£3.50. It was a regular thing on that car despite changing the engine mountings.
I remember going with my dad to buy the car for my mum. It was in immaculate condition and low mileage but it had a very noisy gearbox. My dad haggled and ended up paying £37.50 for it. We used to do banger racing at the time so we trailered it home. We took the engine and box out, stripped it and found one knackered bearing on the input shaft. A mate of my dads who raced mini's had an old mini gearbox so we took the bearing out of that and used it in the 1100. We did all that in the street. Again, I can remember what cost us to fix. 19p for a sump gasket!
Here she is with the gearbox out and split from the engine by a very greasy me!
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Nah, that was a neighbour who was always mucking about with cars.
It was the same on my street, somebody was always taking something to pieces.
My house is on a hill and my neighbour had a Bedford CA, we spent our childhoods pushing this thing back up the hill for "one more try" in the hope that he would give us sixpence between us.
I used to always carry a full tool kit in my boot in case of breakdowns, it was used many times over the years. There was always someone servicing or repairing their car in the street, always someone around to give you a lift with a job. Not now so much, I feel a bit of an oddity working on my car in my garage or drive. Most people now just drive them, don't care to know how they work and would rather sit and wait for the AA when it will not go. I don't break down as frequently, but often had to fix them on route to somewhere or other, at the roadside. I've swapped broken cart springs at the side of the A64, extracted ingested carburettor parts from jammed inlet valves at the side of the A1 near London, cleared blocked carburettors in the wilds of Wales at 3am, cleared blocked fuel filters with the caravan on tow, at Tan Hill.
My last breakdowns were 30 years ago, between Scarborough and Whitby, where my then SAAB just stopped. The connection had vibrated off the ignition coil, ten minutes looking at it and I was on my way. Then on Grimsby dock, same car, the oil pressure light would not go out, just the oil pressure switch failing.
So did I - a cantilever one. Many years ago I was driving a MK1 Escort. My non-mechanically minded mate was in the passenger seat. As we came to the end of a road, I indicated to turn right and a cloud of thick acrid smoke came up from the steering wheel shroud - obviously an electrical short. My first action was to disconnect the battery so I popped the bonnet, chucked the keys to my mate and shouted for him to get the tool box out of the boot while I was lifting the bonnet. Unfortunately he thought the car was going to go up in flames and that I just wanted to save anything I could so he opened the boot, took out the tool box and threw it as far away from the car as he could! When the box hit the ground it burst open and there were sockets, spanners and screwdrivers all over the place. I couldn't find the correct spanner so I just worked the battery cables back and forth until the end terminal broke away.
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