You know you are getting old when......

You know you are getting old when every one of the horrible, gutless, poor handling, mechanically inept rotboxes you had as a young man is now considered a classic (I drove BMC for a long time) - and when some little snot at work is bragging about his "classic" Capri with a tweaked Pinto (2-litre 4-cyl) engine. Over the years I had a few V-6 Capris, the fastest being a lunatic mk.1 RS2600... :D
 
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I wouldn't give BMC (Morris/Austin's) house room. I mostly stuck to Ford's, one Triumph Doli I had, I liked though.
 
Oh I don't know, Harry, in the seventies I had a couple of Spridgets (mk.4 Sprite and a mk.III Midget) which were actually fun to drive and respectably fast (mainly because they went round corners better than many other cars of the era). Getting into one was a bit like putting on a glove and the hood looked like something the cat had dragged in, but they were easy to work on and tuned up well; unlike the MGB GT which replaced the second one (effing hairdressers car!). The less said about the A40, Cambridge and Morris Minor I had, the better, whilst my Mini Countryman actually got woodworm (ash timber) :rolleyes:. I had a mate had what must have been the fastest Morry Minor in the world, though - he managed to shoe-horn a Rover V-8 into it. Great in a straight line, however...
 
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Had to put a clutch in a GTE once.....ended up gluing the bell housing bolts to my fingers with Bostik :(
I also had to replace the mechanical fuel pump with an electric one as things got so hot down there - fuel vapourisation etc.
I made a stainless exhaust (silencers, anyway) from an old washing machine drum.....ah the good old days :whistle:
John :)
 
Mine was even hotter - at the end it was over bored to 3100, had three twin choke downdraught Webers on it and suffered tremendously from vapour locking in the fuel line before I went to an electric fuel pump. It was also a "hunt the electrical fault every weekend" type of car as well as regularly having that stupid gasket between the inlet manifold and the block fail about every 4 to 6 weeks. Fast (by the standards of the day, think RS2000 or BMW 320I late 1970s) but hardly reliable. Its' replacement, a Saab 99 Turbo was far more reliable, but ate spare parts, too. But at least it didn't rattle!
 
JobAndKnock said:
Its' replacement, a Saab 99 Turbo was far more reliable, but ate spare parts, too. But at least it didn't rattle!
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I had one of those too. As I remember - the turbo boost was rather peculiar, rather like a switch, on or off - nothing gradual about it.
 
Yep. Gutless to about 4000 rpm (?) then took off like a rocket. Turbo lag was horrendous and if you wanted to go round bends or roundabouts quickly timing it right was an art. At least they didn't have a tendency to go off backwards in the wet like 3-litre Capris did when pushed!
 
JobAndKnock said:
At least they didn't have a tendency to go off backwards in the wet like 3-litre Capris did when pushed!
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I had a Ventura which actually did that on a busy roundabout many years ago. I was lucky, everyone managed to avoid me and I was able exit the roundabout in reverse onto a dual and then a side road to turn around.
 
Mate of mine put his mk.1 3 litre Capri off on a bend in rural Leicestershire one night (he was sober). After he'd had it fixed he took to carrying 2 bags of spuds around in the boot. My dad did the same sort of thing with an R8 Gordini (all of 90HP) he owned from new in the mid-1960s because it didn't go round bends that well without some extra weight at the front (rear engined car)
 
JobAndKnock said:
After he'd had it fixed he took to carrying 2 bags of spuds around in the boot.
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Reminds me of my mum's old Hilman Imp.
The boot was loaded with a good few concrete blocks to stop the front taking off over bumps and humpback bridges! :)
 
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Harry Bloomfield said:
I never had a sports car, I was limited to saloons and sporty saloons because I needed a big boot.
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Neither did I - had a 'sports van' or 2 instead - No.1 a minivan with Cooper 998 engine & gearbox and front subframe for brakes etc. No.2 a Morris 1000 van on Sprigit running gear. Girlfriend at the time had a A30 with sprigit running gear - great fun watching other peoples faces at the traffic light drags (and it would round corners as well!). Both the van and A30 had 1275cc A-series engines.
 
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