Why I’m not allowed to own “two” of anything anymore......
Discussion
B'stard Child said:
Photos of the Type 104 plate and glovebox plaque were taken this morning so very much yes 
I have nearly sold it a couple of times but every time it hasn't worked out so it remains in my care
Excellent.I have nearly sold it a couple of times but every time it hasn't worked out so it remains in my care
Rember reading the "Car" magazine review when it came out, think it was the first car I can remember that had a 6 speed box.
Was it out of a corvette? Which if I remember went from 1st to 4th under light acceleration.
I was lucky enough to go to Millbrook in about 92/93 to a vauxhall come drive day.
The experience of doing over 120mph on the 'bowl in a 24v Senator was fantastic.
And a couple of laps in a LC as passenger, the difference in speed between the two was hard to believe.
Would still love a 24v Senator in my dream garage collection.
This is my favourite thread on ph for a long while. Really well written, funny, interesting and not even a sniff of the usual ‘London w
k bragging’ that seems so prevalent.
I am (was) a Vauxhall fan but only indulged in Cavaliers, Calibras and 1 24v Senator. Always admired the Lotus Carlton but their values always ended up exceeding my ‘car fund’ and I ended up with the Teutonic equivalent: a B5 RS4. Less rusty, probably better, but not nearly as cool.
Next instalment please. If you’ve told us everything, just make it up!
k bragging’ that seems so prevalent.I am (was) a Vauxhall fan but only indulged in Cavaliers, Calibras and 1 24v Senator. Always admired the Lotus Carlton but their values always ended up exceeding my ‘car fund’ and I ended up with the Teutonic equivalent: a B5 RS4. Less rusty, probably better, but not nearly as cool.
Next instalment please. If you’ve told us everything, just make it up!
Heaveho said:
Can you also regularly post up about how much grief your wife gives you, even if it's just made up? It helps normalise my life if I can make myself believe I'm not the only one always neck deep in car related domestic trauma!
Great thread. You're mad. Good work!
+1. Please.Great thread. You're mad. Good work!
My wife has it in her head that I waste my substance on cars and other riotous living.
This despite my having produced a spreadsheet covering the past five years showing income, expenditure and a breakdown of our overall expenditure and particularly of my car expenditure (which TBF is not trivial - I'm restoring an E-type and run several cars).
What it conclusively demonstrates is that the two biggest single categories of expenditure by some margin are (i) loans to help her expand her company, and (ii) takeaways/eating out i.e. both implicating her fully.
But, notwithstanding this, every time the subject crops up, guess what the story is?
B'stard Child said:
Hahaha I can see exactly where you are going with that.
Incidentally my annual maintenance and running budget for cars and motorcycles is £1,200! per year
That has to cover MOT’s. VED. Insurance, parts, servicing costs, tyres and anything else. I do all my own work on cars so at least my labour costs are minimal (only thing I have to sub out is paintwork) The only thing that is funded from the joint account is petrol.
This is probably why gathering the parts up for the LC took several years (where I had to minimise costs elsewhere - hence several Polo’s as daily drivers)
£1,200 is more than pretty good. I could never get there, except by scaling back the stable radically.Incidentally my annual maintenance and running budget for cars and motorcycles is £1,200! per year
That has to cover MOT’s. VED. Insurance, parts, servicing costs, tyres and anything else. I do all my own work on cars so at least my labour costs are minimal (only thing I have to sub out is paintwork) The only thing that is funded from the joint account is petrol.
This is probably why gathering the parts up for the LC took several years (where I had to minimise costs elsewhere - hence several Polo’s as daily drivers)
I'd view it with relief if I got a quote for that amount when I put either the Panamera or the GTA in for a pre-MOT service.
It's probably a couple of years' worth of keeping my Alfa Spider going (if I forget the bare metal respray a couple of years ago
).Had to laugh earlier in the thread when you mentioned you've got a GPZ600. That was the bike that threw me off on a roundabout just off the A1 near where the Angel of the north is now. It was more or less the end of riding after 8 great years, broke 2 bones in my neck and damaged the main artery to the point where I'm still on 4 tablets a day 26 years later.
I didn't feel a thing at the time, adrenalin's a wonderful drug! When I picked myself up, all the traffic had stopped, people were out of their cars, but they were all looking away from me. I was looking around for the bike, and couldn't see it anywhere. Turned out it had shot across the end of a dual carriageway on the opposite side of the roundabout, and was last seen mid-air, upside down, heading into a field beyond the opposite carriageway.
I was still holding onto the snapped off right hand bar, which was still attached to the throttle cables. Which were still attached to the bank of carbs! This was a worrying development, given that it used to take about 15 mins to get them off with spanners. The bike itself was pretty wrecked, it went down so hard that the end of the crank snapped off, and it took a year for me and it to get fixed to the point where we could be re-united. I had it back on the road for 2 days before a guy in a Transit did a sudden u-turn, wiped me out, and drove right over the side of the bike.............
Happy days.
I didn't feel a thing at the time, adrenalin's a wonderful drug! When I picked myself up, all the traffic had stopped, people were out of their cars, but they were all looking away from me. I was looking around for the bike, and couldn't see it anywhere. Turned out it had shot across the end of a dual carriageway on the opposite side of the roundabout, and was last seen mid-air, upside down, heading into a field beyond the opposite carriageway.
I was still holding onto the snapped off right hand bar, which was still attached to the throttle cables. Which were still attached to the bank of carbs! This was a worrying development, given that it used to take about 15 mins to get them off with spanners. The bike itself was pretty wrecked, it went down so hard that the end of the crank snapped off, and it took a year for me and it to get fixed to the point where we could be re-united. I had it back on the road for 2 days before a guy in a Transit did a sudden u-turn, wiped me out, and drove right over the side of the bike.............
Happy days.
Yeah, same colours as mine at first. I did the white wheels and gold brake calipers thing on mine, never left stuff alone. I got mine after a string of YPVS 350s, and I thought it was a right unstable little sod. It would do proper tankslappers at the drop of a hat. It wasn't bad for wheelying though.
I was still living at my mother's house when I smashed it up. I tore what was left of it to bits when I got the neckbrace off, and started fixing it. In my bedroom!
I had the frame powder coated, got it home, and thought I'd " just put a few bits back on ". I got a 2nd hand GPX600 engine, fitted that, and all of a sudden I had more or less got the whole bike built back up. I waited 'til my mum had gone out, and thought I'd check to see if it was likely to start. I was expecting a bit of faffing about before it actually fired up, but it went first prod on the starter, nearly giving me a heart attack and making me half deaf as I hadn't at this point fitted the exhausts.
It was becoming apparent that I should have maybe taken into account the upstairs layout, as getting it out of the room and down the stairs was going be no small undertaking. I enlisted the help of " big Graham ", another biker mate. After getting it out of the bedroom, we had no choice but to lift it over the bannister rail on the landing as it wouldn't go around the corner where it needed to be to aim it down the stairs. With it finally pointing in the right direction, we decided that I would sit on it and let the brakes off and back on step by step, while he stood in front, bracing it to stop it from just shooting off. Great plan.
We're virtually face to face, he's backing down one step at a time, the front is about halfway down and we've got the back wheel down the first step from the top. At which point, with the brakes fully on, the stair carpet decides to join the party, un-attaching itself, and sending all of us down the stairs at full tilt to the bottom, where there is a storage cupboard. Graham's pinned to the front of the bike, having lifted his feet up to stop them getting trapped, and he cannons his way backwards through the closed door of the cupboard, coming to rest against the inside wall. Just then, my mother gets home......
I was still living at my mother's house when I smashed it up. I tore what was left of it to bits when I got the neckbrace off, and started fixing it. In my bedroom!
I had the frame powder coated, got it home, and thought I'd " just put a few bits back on ". I got a 2nd hand GPX600 engine, fitted that, and all of a sudden I had more or less got the whole bike built back up. I waited 'til my mum had gone out, and thought I'd check to see if it was likely to start. I was expecting a bit of faffing about before it actually fired up, but it went first prod on the starter, nearly giving me a heart attack and making me half deaf as I hadn't at this point fitted the exhausts.
It was becoming apparent that I should have maybe taken into account the upstairs layout, as getting it out of the room and down the stairs was going be no small undertaking. I enlisted the help of " big Graham ", another biker mate. After getting it out of the bedroom, we had no choice but to lift it over the bannister rail on the landing as it wouldn't go around the corner where it needed to be to aim it down the stairs. With it finally pointing in the right direction, we decided that I would sit on it and let the brakes off and back on step by step, while he stood in front, bracing it to stop it from just shooting off. Great plan.
We're virtually face to face, he's backing down one step at a time, the front is about halfway down and we've got the back wheel down the first step from the top. At which point, with the brakes fully on, the stair carpet decides to join the party, un-attaching itself, and sending all of us down the stairs at full tilt to the bottom, where there is a storage cupboard. Graham's pinned to the front of the bike, having lifted his feet up to stop them getting trapped, and he cannons his way backwards through the closed door of the cupboard, coming to rest against the inside wall. Just then, my mother gets home......
Edited by Heaveho on Sunday 8th September 16:34
Please carry on! This is a lot better than the multitude of ‘lease v pcp v cash’, ‘Which options should I select for my new 516d?’, ‘Which Polo shirts are most overpriced?’, Etc etc threads.
Fascinating in all aspects, although it’s a bit like watching a drama series on traditional tv: it’s really interesting and cliff hanger esque; and then you have to wait for the next instalment rather than binge watching
They do rust don’t they!!!
Fascinating in all aspects, although it’s a bit like watching a drama series on traditional tv: it’s really interesting and cliff hanger esque; and then you have to wait for the next instalment rather than binge watching
They do rust don’t they!!!
B'stard Child said:
Yeah really common problem - made even worse if the car was auto as the start circuit went through the autobox loom inhibitor circuit (manuals suffered far less) anyway the solution was a simple relay to provide full batter voltage to the starter solenoid rather than use the std loom arrangement that suffered huge voltage loss leading to the problem in the first place.
It was a manual so a little unlucky maybe. Great car for our family. Thanks for the insight. 
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