Barn Bragging - House of Heaps
Discussion
Cheers, that's the plan. I will hire some chunky blokes to carry the furniture. We may or may not get a Luton van but it seems a faff to load a van and drive it fifty metres then unload it. I aim to spend weekdays in London and weekends in Oxfordshire (where my old and purpled-haired mum lives, cared for by my Metal brother), or in Norfolk where my daughter lives. I will have to put some furniture in the barn or sell it via the local auction house. Low value C18 and C19 stuff mainly.
Business should go mental because of insolvencies and frustrated contracts. I am sorry to profit from the misfortunes of others, but that is part of my job, and life must go on - there are two ends to every deal.
The MR2 can be my brother's runabout. The Beta and the bike and the Landy will be my toys. The Sherpa is for festivals, until my daughter is old enough to borrow if for student trips to France or wherever. She and I went around southern Ireland in it in 2017. It broke down because it needed new points, but that was a quick and cheap fix at a village garage.
Business should go mental because of insolvencies and frustrated contracts. I am sorry to profit from the misfortunes of others, but that is part of my job, and life must go on - there are two ends to every deal.
The MR2 can be my brother's runabout. The Beta and the bike and the Landy will be my toys. The Sherpa is for festivals, until my daughter is old enough to borrow if for student trips to France or wherever. She and I went around southern Ireland in it in 2017. It broke down because it needed new points, but that was a quick and cheap fix at a village garage.
Edited by anonymous-user on Sunday 5th July 07:51
NDA said:
Any small oak tables that would suit sitting in a hall with a lamp on? 
I'm looking for one at the moment without much luck.
Hall tables yes, but not many or any in oak as far as I can recall - will check. I might have one small oak dropleaf that has a printer on it or something. I'm looking for one at the moment without much luck.
Oak table - located! Will email you. Also two oak wardrobes in the Arts and Crafts style, circa 1900, if interested.
The Shed of Shame AKA the Barn of Broken is now piled massively high with furniture and assorted tat.
The cottage I have moved to has a garage, currently occupied by an old Land Rover roof and my 1989 Toyota MR2, which I am about to give to my punkabilly hippy rocker brother. I was going to give it to a young lady who is obsessed with all things Kawaii, but you know how those things go.
Once I have cleared the barn out by fobbing off rickety old tables on unsuspecting PH'ers, the barn will greet a new four wheel occupant. Pics in a minute. Here is its latest two wheeled occupant, a 1982 Moto Guzzi V50 Monza. That's a 500 cc, transverse V twin, shaft driven, five gears, three disc brakes mid sized sports bike from Italy, for those of you who do not speak bikey.
The Shed of Shame AKA the Barn of Broken is now piled massively high with furniture and assorted tat.
The cottage I have moved to has a garage, currently occupied by an old Land Rover roof and my 1989 Toyota MR2, which I am about to give to my punkabilly hippy rocker brother. I was going to give it to a young lady who is obsessed with all things Kawaii, but you know how those things go.
Once I have cleared the barn out by fobbing off rickety old tables on unsuspecting PH'ers, the barn will greet a new four wheel occupant. Pics in a minute. Here is its latest two wheeled occupant, a 1982 Moto Guzzi V50 Monza. That's a 500 cc, transverse V twin, shaft driven, five gears, three disc brakes mid sized sports bike from Italy, for those of you who do not speak bikey.
Edited by anonymous-user on Friday 3rd July 13:36
P5BNij said:
I no speaky bikey, but I have vague idea that Moto-Guzzi were once owned or part owned by Allexandro De Tomaso. Unless I'm talking utter billhooks of course, which is entirely possible.
I have a hunch that you may well be right, but I am only a late-minted and somewhat pretendy biker, so I do not know such shiz .... yet. PS: Bikes are FUN!!
PPS: Bikes are SCAYREE!!!
I dress up like a fat old leather Queen, and ride slooooowly.
I think this was a lucky find. A friend in north Yorkshire pointed me to it after browsing on eBay. He kindly drove up to Tyneside in his white over burgundy striped velour pimp-ass Posche 944 Turbo and gave the car a good checking for me. He hates red cars, but told me that if this car had been blue he would have bought it on the spot. I haggled a few quid off the already fair asking price, did the deal, and got the car Shiplied by a huge Polish guy who is probably the stunt double for The Hulk. The car arrived yesterday. I will do a thread for it in Reader's Cars.
1756 cc Lampredi Twin Cam, Weber 36 downdraught carb, five speed gearbox, Cromodoras. 115,000 miler, not perfect, but pretty nifty. Originalish - patinated interior, no sign of ever having had a radio. Slighlty cheap and cheerful shiny red paintjob. A few bubbles. Terrible WTF are they tyres (they are going ASAP).
It has an Abarth badge and Abarth wheel centres that are FAKE, because there was no Abarth version of this car.
I have no clue whether the boot badge stuck under the dash is an add on or not, but assume that it is. The handbook with the car is for a 1600 (plus 1400 Appendix).
New ish shiny exhaust. Quite noisy.
1756 cc Lampredi Twin Cam, Weber 36 downdraught carb, five speed gearbox, Cromodoras. 115,000 miler, not perfect, but pretty nifty. Originalish - patinated interior, no sign of ever having had a radio. Slighlty cheap and cheerful shiny red paintjob. A few bubbles. Terrible WTF are they tyres (they are going ASAP).
It has an Abarth badge and Abarth wheel centres that are FAKE, because there was no Abarth version of this car.
I have no clue whether the boot badge stuck under the dash is an add on or not, but assume that it is. The handbook with the car is for a 1600 (plus 1400 Appendix).
New ish shiny exhaust. Quite noisy.
The Lancia has better paint than the Fiat but is patinated inside. Its seats in particular have suffered from age and sun-bleaching, and the plastic over the extensive instruments is terminally cloudy. Some bits of its cockpit, for example the toggle switches, look a bit more late 60s than the numerous knobs and buttons and sliders of the Fiat (here in its third and most 70s incarnation). It instruments are copious (nine dials including the clock), but are not as pretty as the Fiat's.
The Fiat has a superficially good but on closer inspection slightly rushed paint job. The interior is mostly patinated but in places would merit the word tired. The five lovely Veglia Borletti instruments have clear covers, but the clock that sits where I would rather have a voltmeter has a cloudy cover, so I assume that someone did the instruments but not the clock.
Fiat, it appears, trusted Marelli but did not trust Agip - so there is an oil pressure gauge but no voltmeter. Contrast Triumph, who took the view, to quote a witty member of this forum (apols, I have forgotten whom) that "Castrol is more reliable than Lucas", and so you got a voltmeter but no oil pressure gauge in yer 1870s non-TR sporty Triumph.
The Fiat has a superficially good but on closer inspection slightly rushed paint job. The interior is mostly patinated but in places would merit the word tired. The five lovely Veglia Borletti instruments have clear covers, but the clock that sits where I would rather have a voltmeter has a cloudy cover, so I assume that someone did the instruments but not the clock.
Fiat, it appears, trusted Marelli but did not trust Agip - so there is an oil pressure gauge but no voltmeter. Contrast Triumph, who took the view, to quote a witty member of this forum (apols, I have forgotten whom) that "Castrol is more reliable than Lucas", and so you got a voltmeter but no oil pressure gauge in yer 1870s non-TR sporty Triumph.
Edited by anonymous-user on Friday 3rd July 22:40
BigMon said:
My lips have slightly receded in envy at your Moto Guzzi and Fiat.
It's funny. Someone can post a picture of a £250000 brand new supercar and I think it looks nice but, for some odd reason, I am much more envious of your fleet.
Cheers! I often think that if I was sensible I could have just one really good car instead of several slightly shonky ones, but I do not think that I could ever do that. I am far from minted, and so I play around in the sub 10K car and bike market. I would of course love a 125K Lamborghini Espada, or some such thing, but I realise that I would not be able to drive it in the way that I drive my old shonkers (ie, as cars).It's funny. Someone can post a picture of a £250000 brand new supercar and I think it looks nice but, for some odd reason, I am much more envious of your fleet.
I think that for me 1970s cars act as time machines, and take me back to the decade in which I went from eight to eighteen, and had a great time. I have just come indoors from sitting in the cabin of the parked up Fiat with its lights on, absorbing the 70s look, feel, and smell of the car. Last night I drove it along lanes with no evidence on them that this is 2020. Yup, time travel.
I add that I have realised that, although I have owned convertible cars and two seaters, and also sporty saloon cars, the cars that I really like are GT cars with two doors and four seats, and the bikes that I like are small to medium sized sporty bikes or sporty tourers.
Edited by anonymous-user on Friday 3rd July 22:38
That is a good point.
The 70s were a great age of design in cars, bikes, aircraft, fashion, furniture, you name it, and also had fab music. I do not discount the severe political and economic upheavals of the decade, or the extent to which the 70s ramped up our efforts to trash the environment, but, still, great and glorious times in many ways, with lots of progress in technology and in social attitudes.
The Fiat now has its own thread -
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
The 70s were a great age of design in cars, bikes, aircraft, fashion, furniture, you name it, and also had fab music. I do not discount the severe political and economic upheavals of the decade, or the extent to which the 70s ramped up our efforts to trash the environment, but, still, great and glorious times in many ways, with lots of progress in technology and in social attitudes.
The Fiat now has its own thread -
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
Che bella macchina!
Talking of barns, the village garagiste says that he has a very early 1600 Capri that was greased up before being stored and now has the dust of years stuck to the grease.
He smokes about in either a blacked out Rangey, or a 1990 E30 325i SE that I had my eye on before the Fiat popped up. It looks to me like it could be well north of 10K. A dark green 1987 one of these was my first grown up car in 1989. E386 KOY, my yuppiemobile (I was 27).
Talking of barns, the village garagiste says that he has a very early 1600 Capri that was greased up before being stored and now has the dust of years stuck to the grease.
He smokes about in either a blacked out Rangey, or a 1990 E30 325i SE that I had my eye on before the Fiat popped up. It looks to me like it could be well north of 10K. A dark green 1987 one of these was my first grown up car in 1989. E386 KOY, my yuppiemobile (I was 27).
Yup. Great cars. Fast, smooth, reliable, comfortable, and also quite lairy in second gear on a wet roundabout. The six month old ex-demonstrator silver E36 325i that I traded my E30 for in 1992 was really quite boring in comparison. I never really liked that car, although I kept it until 1997 and it held its money. I bought a 1997 Fiat Coupe 20 Valve Turbo to replace it. Meanwhile during the 90s I had first a 1970 Triumph Vitesse Mk II, and then a 1977 Alfa Spider 2000 as the toys, and also bought my dad a mid 70s Sunbeam Rapier Fastback (he had done production engineering on that car while he was at Rootes Chrysler before he got headhunted by BL) which I got to borrow quite a lot.
From memory I think I got the barn towards the end of summer 2018. Before that, another bloke had it stuffed full of serious high end motahs - various Ferraris and what not, but I think he either moved out of the area or sold his collection. One of the Ferraris once rolled off a low loader and smashed through the barn doors, but it was not badly damaged, I gather.
I cleared some space in the barn today. I may get some more photos later in the week. I am still not sure whether to keep the somewhat knackered Lotus Eclat as a project or sell it as a project. My mechanic is doing up his house and seems unlikely to be available for a while, so I may need to get the Lancia towed somewhere to get its clutch done by someone else.
I cleared some space in the barn today. I may get some more photos later in the week. I am still not sure whether to keep the somewhat knackered Lotus Eclat as a project or sell it as a project. My mechanic is doing up his house and seems unlikely to be available for a while, so I may need to get the Lancia towed somewhere to get its clutch done by someone else.
Barn update non update - it is still in a right state, and full of old tat that is not car tat. As for car tat, the latest potential barn victim is a 1962 Lancia Appia. It has a thread of its own in Readers' Cars. It is currently feeling sorry for itself, all alone in a tiny garage while it awaits some parts, a visit from a man with a spanner, and the freeing up of some space in the barn so that it can go and hang out with younger machines, including a niece (Lancia Beta), and a cousin by marriage (Fiat 124).
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