5th September: Glavon Tulip Run
Noel Jones and his wife Ange had arranged another of their excellent Tulip runs for our TR Register Glavon Group members so it would be a good test for the now repaired ignition on TR7 FHC.
Their run started down at Whitehall Garden Centre near Lacock and covered about 75 miles across Wiltshire and Gloucestershire before finishing at the Royal Oak in Wotton under Edge for a Sunday roast.
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| In the lanes near Cirencester |
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| Glavon cars in the Royal Oak car park |
The car behaved perfectly and had now done over 150 miles since the ignition repair so I considered it fixed and we went off on holiday with no concerns about it.
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23-24th October: Autumn Leaves Classic Tour
Like many other events the Autumn Leaves had been cancelled in 2020 but was re-arranged for 2021 as a two day tour based at the Metropole Hotel in Llandrindod Wells. The Metropole is a famous rally venue, being the start, finish or passage control on hundreds of rallies since the 1960s. It is also an excellent four star hotel. I had never stayed there before but had slept on their floor few times at the finish of all-night navigational rallies. This time it would be a proper two night stay with meals included.
I asked my old navigator Oliver Tomlins along for this one as it would be a tough two days covering over 250 miles. Again being cooler weather the FHC was the car to use and we drove up to the scutineering on Friday afternoon looking forward to some nice roads.
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| Cars arriving at the Metropole Hotel |
We had a nice 100 mile run up to Llandrindod Wells and an excellent hotel meal on Friday afternoon/evening. After a big breakfast Saturday morning started quite wet so we were glad of the FHC roof as we got ready to leave. Weather forecast was for the day to improve.
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| Car no.1 getting ready to start |
The route was defined by a Tulip road book but Oliver is old school and prefers to work from a map so had spent an hour or so transferring the route onto new 50,000 scale OS maps. This gives a better overall view of where you are and the surrounding areas. It also allows you to make any detours if necessary without losing your place on the route.
We headed south and across the Epynt military ranges, the scene of many of our serious rally exploits in the 1980s. On those rallies we had a full set of pace-notes so knew every feature and could attack at maximum speed. Some locations brought back many great memories, like the time in 1985 when it snowed and we borrowed a set of Uniband remould "knobbly" tyres from a marshall to keep going. That turned out to be one of our best results of the year finishing 7th overall. Oliver pointed out a couple of places he remembered taking flat out, so 100mph plus, but which looked pretty scary to us now at 50mph on a sunny day! How times change.
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| 1985 Zenith Virgo Stages Rally. 7th Overall |
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| Epynt Military Ranges - no snow. |
After Epynt they sent us north and across the wonderful Abergwesyn Mountain Road to Tregaron and on to Devils Bridge for a coffee stop at the railway station.
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| Devils Bridge station. |
From Devils Bridge we headed down the Elan Valley passing the reservoirs and up to the viewpoint at the Claerwen Reservoir. Coming down from here we had a sudden left rear puncture just after this picture was taken.
Seems we ran over something because there was no warning, just suddenly flat tyre noises. It's only a narrow single track road here so by the time we were able to pull in at the Dol-y-Mynach waterworks entrance to change it the tyre was wrecked.
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| Oliver is still smiling after changing the tyre. |
Back at the Metropole we had clocked up 167 miles so were looking forward to our evening meal and were not disappointed. It was jolly good again and we retired to bed well stuffed.
Day 2 weather was much nicer and this time we headed off northwards, soon passing many more of our old forest rally locations at Abbeycwmhir and Bwlch-y-Sarnau. Then through Llanidloes, up past the Clywedog Reservoir and over the mountain top at the old Dylife lead mines before dropping down into Machynlleth for a lunch stop. And this is where it all went wrong.
Idling in the queue to check out after lunch the engine suddenly stopped without warning and would not restart. We tried all the usual checks but the ignition was dead. Bit like before but this time nothing worked to get it restarted. We swapped the coil and Lumenition amplifier but no joy. A passer-by even gave me a completely new TR7 ignition switch (!) to try but that didn't help either.
No choice but to call the breakdown again. Turns out Machynlleth is not known to the AA breakdown call centre and even spelling it to them did not help. Finally they accepted the job and an hour or so later the mechanic called us to ask where we were! Even more weird, it was the same young guy who had come out to us before at Lampeter Rugby Club! He arrived in his Transit sized van again and then called for a recovery truck. However no trucks were available on a Sunday evening due to a driver shortage so we were offered a taxi home, with the car to follow next day. I don't know how much the AA paid for the taxi but 150 miles on a Sunday evening would not have been cheap and the car arrived safely on a truck the next afternoon.
Time for a big re-think on the ignition. Two similar failures in less than 500 miles is not accetable.
