And it was all going so well...
Those familiar with Ice Cold In Alex will know the scene where our protagonists laboriously heave their old ambulance up a sand dune with little more than grit and determination. Imagine something similar, albeit relocated to a muddy Yorkshire hillside and with the Chuckle Brothers attempting to prevent a miniature car bouncing out of control through a dry stone wall.
Up to this point the Pocket Classics Army had been all the fun an overgrown child could have wished for. And then my brother and I were stranded with a snapped chain. At the bottom of said hill, Sunday lunch at the top of it.
Obviously our top secret test location was on private land and in no way likely to test the (mainly generous ... you'd speculate) goodwill of ramblers, landowners or any other innocent bystanders. And we'd been invited by Pocket Classics man Ben to give the Army a proper thrashing. But faced with having to manhandle it home my brother and I were rather wishing we'd not been so ambitious, and instead stuck to the disused car park out the back.
The undoing was a rock that flicked the chain off its idler sprocket, it eventually jamming, snapping and dumping itself in the mud. Up to that point we'd been having a whale of a time, the solid rear axle meaning turn-in isn't the sharpest but giving decent traction and mud-flinging drifts on suitably wet surfaces. The centrifugal clutch reaches its limits on steep, boggy inclines but if you're willing to take a run-up and pick the correct choice of the three gears beforehand the Army shows decent tenacity in the rough. And a disturbing turn of pace on harder surfaces. Never has 30-something mph (claimed) felt so exciting.
The gearing is a little odd, first being very low and the leap to second quite big. There's nothing cultured about the huge clunk as the sequential shifter bangs home the next gear, a slight lift smoothing things out a tad. After a dousing in some mud the hydraulic disc brakes - two dinky ones up front, a big one on the rear axle - have bedded in to the extent a combination of engine braking and pedal give sufficient confidence to tackle some serious downslopes. The only real fear is being bounced out, a death grip on the wheel the only thing holding you in place. To wit I'm glad I replaced the chocolate bolts holding it on with more secure stainless items, secured by Nyloc nuts. There are lap belts but, frankly, if it goes that wrong I want to be able to leap clear rather than be pinned underneath. Which could happen if you were stupid enough to attempt doing doughnuts on a grippier surface and discover it'll tip over before the rear tyres let go. But only an idiot would try that...
Fixing the chain involved wheeling the Army up to the
motorbike shop at the top of my mum's road, sharing some amusingly sweary banter with the mechanics and accepting both their advice to visit a local industrial supplier and an invitation to bring it back once running. Y'know, so they could just check it over and all. Their recommendation of
Spen Bearings was bang on, the Keighley branch had a suitable split link and for a couple of quid out of my pocket and some skin off my knuckles the Army was back up and running. If it had been more involved Pocket Classics would have picked up the tab as part of its no quibble mechanical support for the first year of ownership; as the thread following the last story picked up there are apparently similar products in the market for less cash but back-up like this is reassuring. And, no, we aren't getting special treatment in this regard.
A slightly more epic shakedown test than my brother and I had envisaged then. But, as per Ice Cold In Alex, the beer at the end of it was appreciated with suitable solemnity and reverence.
FACT SHEET
Car: Pocket Classics Army
Run by: Dan's inner three-year-old
On fleet since: We located the crate
Mileage: A few, a broken chain, then none
List price new: from £4,995 (£5,995 built)
Last month at a glance: Ice Cold In Alex re-enacted in Yorkshire, in perfect half scale
Previous reports:
Dan clears his old toys out of the garage ... then fills it with a new one
