PH Service History: On the spanners
With the number of specialists dwindling, is it time to buy a future classic you can fix yourself?
I spent an interesting evening in Battersea Park the other day. Nothing dodgy, you understand - it's just that that was the venue for RM Sotheby's London auction and, the evening before, the Hagerty Classic Question Time, one of those panel events that, in this instance, was convened to discuss the future of the classic car.
What future is that, you might ask? Well, there was a spot of doom and gloom around, the rise of autonomy and electrification prompting fears that even if we are still allowed to drive our old cars on the road in 20 years' time, we might not be able to fuel them. But the panel - consisting of representatives of Hagerty Insurance, RM, the Daily Telegraph's Cars section and Gulf - was largely of the opinion that these problems are more surmountable than one less talked about: the dwindling of the sorts of mechanical skills able to look after our older cars.
Not only are fewer young people training to be mechanics, they point out, but those who are will soon be learning the ins and outs of hybrid and electric tech - rather than how to tune carbs and fix rust. That could mean the constraining factor on classic car usage could in fact, rather than legislation or availability of fuel, be whether we can get them repaired and maintained.
Perhaps, then, it makes sense for those of us who aren't very well acquainted with the oily bits to become more so. And if we're to do that, it makes sense to have a relatively inexpensive - and, crucially, mechanically simple - classic sitting in the garage to tinker with at weekends. Which is what got me poking around in the classifieds for just such a thing today.
After a quick squint at the obvious MGBs, I realised a Triumph Spitfire might be a better shout. Not only does it have an enormous clamshell bonnet, but the carb-fed engine with its origins in the 1960s should be incredibly easy to mess around with. You'll never win any traffic light derbies, but the lightweight body, complete lack of driver aids and skinny tyres should make it a bit of a hoot to drive regardless.
This example looks just the ticket. There's relatively little description on the private ad, but what is there ticks some important boxes: a complete body-off restoration, a full retrim and a whacking great file full of history and photos. The price suggests it's no show queen, but should be a clean, usable example - and I happen to think it looks fab on those slotmags. £5,900, and all the tinkering you care for.
Perhaps something a little more modern is your cup of tea, in which case might I draw your attention to a rear-wheel-drive Ford? Any such thing should be easy to spanner, but I reckon a Capri offers a great blend of mecand everyday usability - not to mention looks that just ooze cool. A 2.8 Injection would be fun, but that K-Jetronic injection system isn't the easiest of things to work with, so perhaps best to go for a Pinto-engined car to make your life under the bonnet that bit easier. There's still enough power on tap to enjoy some silly Professionals-style tail-out moments - on private land, of course.
This one looks like it should be just right. It might seem like heady money if you remember the days of the £1,000 four-pot Capri, but they simply cost this much these days, especially for a clean, usable example. There are a couple of spots of rust with which to hone your bodywork skills, but otherwise it looks tidy enough; the mileage is low, and there are some nice bits of recent work.
Not everyone wants something sporty to play with, though, so how about an off-roader? Specifically this rather natty-looking Land Rover Defender. Perhaps buying a diesel is less wise due to the impending possibility of levies and extra charges on cars so-fuelled, but let's face it - if you're buying a Defender, you're probably not planning to take it into a city centre any time soon. Not when few other cars will plug mud like a Landie can - and if you're going to plug mud, an early-90s short-wheelbase - i.e. one of the least-valuable Defenders - is what you probably want.
This one has done big miles but it's had a tonne of money spent making it a perfect off-road tool. The MOT's short, too, but who cares when you're going to learn to spanner it yourself? £6,500 is relatively little for a Defender with this amount of kit on it, and with lots of preventative work already done. It should be the perfect companion for splashing around off road - and it should be simple enough for you to mess around with when you're not doing so.
But what if all these suggestions are still too complex for you? Well, the simplest car I can think of in our classifieds is here - and it's a Citroen Mehari. Corrugated metal, air-cooled 2CV running gear, the simplest possible suspension and steering set-ups - let's face it, if you want to learn how to fiddle with the oily bits of a car, there's little better.
The trouble is, this one is £10,000. Which, if you look around, is the going rate for one in this sort of condition - but it still feels like a terrifying amount of money for what amounts to an Anderson shelter with an engine. What's more, having been subjected to a whopping restoration, you probably aren't going to actually have to fix something yourself for some time. Which is rather an odd problem to have, but given the parameters of this search, I suppose it is one.
Anyway, there are a few ideas from me. Now, over to you. Which mechanically simple classic would you choose to earn your oily stripes on - or indeed, what have you already owned that you had to learn to fix?
NOTE TO SELF ...never show wife
Oh wait, I wrote this.
Sorry, folks. My mind was elsewhere, clearly. I’ll get it fixed first thing tomorrow when I’m in the office.
Ok I know you can buy tools to test them, but I totally get that the knowledge is disappearing.
Luckily he did pass on some of his expertise and I can balance a pair of Weber dcoe with the best!
It always concerns me that, ahem, older gezzers like me, 40+ years in the trade, man and boy, etc......Will be gone in the next 10 years.
I wish there was an easy way to disseminate my knowledge.... but if I try and offer advice on here or other forums I am told by the like of Too Many Posts, that I am wrong........
Oh wait, I wrote this.
Sorry, folks. My mind was elsewhere, clearly. I’ll get it fixed first thing tomorrow when I’m in the office.
Pre-empt the commentsMuch like there are still stonemasons about, when most houses are built with anything but stone.
Lack of available skill will mean rates will rise and it will be attractive to the next generation. That's if my experience of paying my stonework bill is anything to go by.
Oh wait, I wrote this.
Sorry, folks. My mind was elsewhere, clearly. I’ll get it fixed first thing tomorrow when I’m in the office.
All I'll say is that, as a 2CV owner, their value in learning how to fix 'cars' in general is somewhat limited, because there's very little that's normal about them. Distributor? Doesn't have one. Points and Condenser? In a box behind the cooling fan. Water pump? Nope. Timing chain? Nope. Spark plugs? Change them at the same interval as the oil. Valve clearances? No point learning the Rule of 9 with only four valves. Rubber brake hoses? Nope. Changing brake fluid? Only do it every five years, and then only if you really wanto to, because it's not normal brake fluid. Adjusting or changing anything on the front brakes? Do it in the engine bay, not at the wheels.
Plus you'll spend a lot of effort and time learning jobs that only exist in the world of air-cooled Citroens, like setting up the heater cables just so, squirting vegetable oil into the suspension cans or clipping on the grille blind in cold weather.
Minis are similar but not so bad - the mechanical bits are largely conventional, just arranged differentially and mostly packed into an engine bay that's like sticking your hands into a bucket of razor blades.
Something like a Herald/Spitfire, Morris Minor, Austin A40, Spridget, Land Rover or MGB is much more generally useful because they're absolutely conventional in terms of their mechanical design (give or take some weirdness like the early A40's hydro-mechanical brakes or the Landy's 4WD drivetrain), so all the knowledge and skills are transferable.
It always concerns me that, ahem, older gezzers like me, 40+ years in the trade, man and boy, etc......Will be gone in the next 10 years.
I wish there was an easy way to disseminate my knowledge.... but if I try and offer advice on here or other forums I am told by the like of Too Many Posts, that I am wrong........
Exactly this, I have years of experience on classics and exotics as well as American cars and I am sick to death of trying to help people to be told I am wrong when I can genuinely help so I am not bothering anymore, even though it is not my way to refuse help what is the point if we get an argument?
I am now looking for an exit strategy for the last years of my working life, screw working on cars with all the negative health problems and no thanks!
I did love it for many years though!
There are also people lMark (don't know his second name) who runs an MX5 place in barry that does a kind of open workshop thing on a saturday where you can take your car and work on it using their tools and equipment with them on had to help if you get stuck.
i have realised that I am ok with things that you just unbolt and then bolt back together but if something needs actual skill or finesse then I pay an expert.
also I don't have the patience or skills for wiring,
i think the IC car will go the way of teh horse and will go from being mass transport to an expensive hobby with a community of people with the requisite skills. There are , after all , still blacksmiths working in the UK.
Change is coming and is inevitable, the future will be different , only time and personal opinion will te if it is good or bad.
Facebook old car groups contain some fundamentalists that make ISIS look progressive, I got told last week that one chap was some kind of mechanical god and he could diagnose any fault with a multimeter, well matey, good luck putting a new ECU onto even a 15/20 year old car with a Multimeter when it needs coding to the rest of the cars electronics otherwise it wont talk.
Doesnt mean if you want to do stuff on a car that you have to buy stuff like a Spitfire, what you lose in complexity you probably will gain in rust and wonky traditional electronics.
There are so many folk out there with huge knowledge that seem utterly terrified of an ODB Port and a laptop, you can either go the way of the dinosaur or adapt, a lot of the older cars with electronics are actually pretty simple with regards to diagnosis once you have connected and read the codes, loads of stuff you can do and most of the res tof the car is no more complex than anything else.
Its still pistons, valves, crankshafts and the like under the bonnet, driveshafts, gearboxes, brakes, suspension is generally all the same as it ever was, it just adds in electronic engine control, possibly a turbo, fuel injection, emissions control stuff but not of it is actually that complex in terms of concepts once you read into it and identify the components and functions of each system.
Facebook old car groups contain some fundamentalists that make ISIS look progressive, I got told last week that one chap was some kind of mechanical god and he could diagnose any fault with a multimeter, well matey, good luck putting a new ECU onto even a 15/20 year old car with a Multimeter when it needs coding to the rest of the cars electronics otherwise it wont talk.
Doesnt mean if you want to do stuff on a car that you have to buy stuff like a Spitfire, what you lose in complexity you probably will gain in rust and wonky traditional electronics.
There are so many folk out there with huge knowledge that seem utterly terrified of an ODB Port and a laptop, you can either go the way of the dinosaur or adapt, a lot of the older cars with electronics are actually pretty simple with regards to diagnosis once you have connected and read the codes, loads of stuff you can do and most of the res tof the car is no more complex than anything else.
Its still pistons, valves, crankshafts and the like under the bonnet, driveshafts, gearboxes, brakes, suspension is generally all the same as it ever was, it just adds in electronic engine control, possibly a turbo, fuel injection, emissions control stuff but not of it is actually that complex in terms of concepts once you read into it and identify the components and functions of each system.
Presumably 3D printing may well come into play as it all develops so I don't think the future is quite as bleak as perhaps suggested. Yes, there will "come a time...", so to speak, but I feel it will be more progressive and 'staggered' in the way it happens. I certainly don't feel it will all suddenly fall off a cliff.
From talking to my bodywork guru I get the impression that a bigger, immediate problem is how few of today's youngsters want a job where they have to get their hands dirty - the 'guru' says it's getting extremely difficult to entice youngsters into the bodywork restoration/crash repair side of things because today's 'youth' simply see it as graft and would rather find easier, cleaner, 'cooler' ways to earn money. He takes on apprentices who fail to grasp that 'you start at the bottom and learn/acquire skills and experience' before moving up - with the inevitable result that they quickly become disenchanted and quit.
Don't know if his take is the majority view but he says he'd love to train up an enthusiastic youngster who sticks around and really gets into it and grows with it - but that hardly ever happens apparently.
Where life will get difficult will be the bread and butter stuff, as the proprietary information gets lost or inaccessible. It would be a big help if manufacturers released the trade-only service documents, parts lists, fault tracing manuals and software details once a car became obsolete. As a Defender owner, I can get parts data from online resources or even a real printed book as stuff is officially released or pirated where required. Sorting my son's 2002 Vauxhall Agila is not so easy; there is little published and no big community fighting to keep them on the road.
Cheap ODB scanners make fault testing easy, but the skill to find what is EXACTLY wrong is not so easy to come by. Is it a dirty contact or a duff sensor?
It always concerns me that, ahem, older gezzers like me, 40+ years in the trade, man and boy, etc......Will be gone in the next 10 years.
I wish there was an easy way to disseminate my knowledge.... but if I try and offer advice on here or other forums I am told by the like of Too Many Posts, that I am wrong........
Exactly this, I have years of experience on classics and exotics as well as American cars and I am sick to death of trying to help people to be told I am wrong when I can genuinely help so I am not bothering anymore, even though it is not my way to refuse help what is the point if we get an argument?
...
Or a cheap EEC-IV code reader.
And look at the PH TVR S Series forum: still going strong in spite of Facebook. 25 years of expertise right there!
And a great bunch of (mostly older!) blokes. And ladies.
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