2022, May. Bluebell Run

 7th May: Bluebell Run 

 The Bluebell Run takes place in the Forest of Dean so is only a few miles from home and another favourite of ours.  Clerk of the Course is Stuart Harrold, the former works rally navigator, so a good route is always assured and a full entry of 60 cars turned up to the start at Hopewell Colliery near Cannop.  

Hopewell is a museum but also still a working mine where you can take a guided tour with one of the remaining Freeminers.  The Freeminers are a very special group who retain the right to operate in the Forest of Dean but it is very hard work and potentially dangerous so not many are still working these days. To be a Freeminer you also have to be born in the Hundred of St Briavels so not many people qualify. They are also able to mine iron ore and stone, not just coal.

Cars at the Hopewell Colliery start

My navigator for the day was my old rally mate Oliver Tomlins and the weather was perfect so the DHC was the choice.

Leaving the start.  (photo by Chris Huish)

First leg was about 35 miles around the north of the Forest and across the River Wye to our morning coffee stop at The Crown at Pantygelli, just north of Abergavenny.  This is a lovely little country pub that we had never heard of before but recommended if you are in the area.  

From coffee we headed north via Longtown following the eastern side of the Black Mountains with super views all along the route.  Just past Longtown we met an irate motorist in a VW SUV coming the other way in a narrow lane. He seemed to think it was his private road and took exception to other cars using it! By the time the Vauxhall Viva in front of us has discussed the situation with him for some minutes lots more of the Bluebell runners had arrived so we had a reasonable sized traffic jam. Eventually we all managed to get our cars parked in gateways etc to allow the idiot past.  From his accent he obviously wasn't a local so maybe a typical "newcomer" who doesn't understand country roads?

Beware idiot SUV drivers!  I have blanked the number to avoid his embarrassment.

Lunch halt was at The Castlefields, near to Hay on Wye where we had about an hour while they provided us a very generous ploughmans lunch. One of the biggest we ever saw! It was excellent. 

After lunch we journeyed about 60 miles back south again with more lovely scenery, passing close to Ross on Wye to the finish by the River Severn at Symonds Yat. 

An excellent and enjoyable day out and the DHC behaved perfectly.

2022, April. Corinium Run

 24th April:  Corinium Run

Corinium is the old Roman name for Cirencester, so you won't be surprised to read that the Corinium Run is based around Cirencester in the Cotwolds, and local to us.

This year the start was at the Highwayman Inn just outside Cirencester where they served us an excellent bacon roll and coffee to get us all going.

cars at the start. picture by SlipandGrip Automotive

The Clerk of the Course for the Corinium Run is Martin Saunders who is an top rally navigator, so his Tulip road book is always produced to the high standard he would expect himself. Martin has navigated for me on International rallies in Ireland and Belgium so I know him well. There are some nice little touches such as close together instructions being highlighted in red and his excellent junction diagrams. There were also aerial pictures of our refreshment stops so we could understand the parking layout.  See this extract from the roadbook which explains how it works for inexperienced crews.

 

The weather this year was cool and dry so we took the FHC and our drive through the Cotswold countryside was lovely. Trees and hedgerows were sprouting and the Bluebells were starting to come out. On the tops many fields have been planted with oilseed rape and the vibrant yellow flowers were amazing.

Corinium Run typical dashcam view

Lunch halt was at the Fosseway Garden Centre near Moreton in Marsh.  This seemed surprising busy after a couple of years getting used to Covid restrictions, but service was quick and the light snack was just right.

The afternoon run took us via some very picturesque Cotswold villages to a few familiar places like the famous ford at Duntisbourne where the residents always come out to watch us splash through the water and the photographers gather.  It was quite shallow this time after a long dry spell.

Duntisbourne

 Finish was back at the Highwayman Inn for a good curry to sustain us all on the way home and the TR7 had performed perfectly.

2022, April. Golden Fifty Revival Tour

 17th April: Golden Fifty Revival Tour

The orginal RAC Rally way back in 1932 was the start of rallying in the UK.  In 1982 the Lombard Golden Fifty Rally was held to celebrate that first one and was probably the start of historic rallying that has grown so much in popularity since then.  So the Golden Fifty Revival Tour was effectively  to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the 50th anniversary of UK rallying! 

The start of our tour was at the Prescott Speed Hillclimb course which is only about 20 miles from home, so nice and local to us as well.  In honour of the rallying heritage my old navigator since the 1960s, Oliver Tomilns, was along to keep us on the right road. He also organises some historic road runs himself, most recently a two day run around some obscure parts of western Scotland.

  The start location at Prescott

I had given the FHC a quick spanner check since the Daffodil Run and all was in order so good to go.  Unfortunately we didn't get a run up the hillclimb course because a local householder objected. Apparently he has bought a house near the top of the course and objects to the noise, so only a certain number of events can take place there each year.  A bit like buying a house near a farm and then complaining about the smell!  They did however organise a little autotest around cones in the car park which was actually very much in keeping with the early events anyway.

Car No.1 was a huge old 1937 Derby Bently and watching the driver heaving the big car around the cones was quite a sight.  When it came to our turn it proved more difficult than it looked but I managed to avoid hitting anything!

Our route headed up into Worcestershire and Herefordshire south of the Malverns to a lunch halt at the Shelsley Walsh Hillclimb course. They started racing up the hill here in 1906 so it has a long history.  We had never been there before so watched some in-car stuff on YouTube to get an idea of the course. It is just 1000 yards long with a record time of only 22.37 seconds.  Not exactly a marathon then.  Our time was about 49 seconds - so not a record then.

Our afternoon run took us to the former Lombard RAC Rally stage at Burwarton.  It was here that Roger Clark had his famous encounter with a gatepost in 1978 and was forced to retire.  We were actually spectating there that day and I got some pictures of his car afterwards.

Gatepost 1, Roger Clark 0

 Our run through Burwarton was good fun and we managed to avoid all the gateposts!

Burwarton, former RAC Rally stage

 

Heading back south they sent us though a famous ford at Clee St.Margaret. This is not just a crrossing, the road here actually forms part of the stream bed for about 50 yards.

Yes that really is the road!

The finish was at the Talbot Inn, Knightwick, where they did us a decent meal before heading home.

A really excellent day out where we also met some old mates.  There were actually four cars with members of our old 143 Motor Club from the 1960s.  Ourselves, Jos Way in his TR7V8, Jeremy Wells in his Austin Healy 3000 and John Griffiths in a Volvo 144. Great to see the motorsport passion still burns for us all!   

Long may it continue.

 

2022, March. Daffodil Run

 26th March:  HRCR Daffodil Run

The HRCR Daffodil Run is usually our first classic tour event of the year and always runs on a Saturday. This year the weather was perfect with clear blue skies.  Being based in the Forest of Dean its also local to us. In fact, we can almost see the start location from our town - except the River Severn is in the way so we have to drive about 30 miles via Gloucester to get there!

The FHC was running nicely with its new Pertronix ignition so we were hoping for a nice day out. I had given it a once-over during the previous week and didn't find anything wrong. A few suspension bolts tightened a very small amount and I actually had to put some Duckhams Q20w-50 in the engine. After a quick wash it was ready to go.

The start was at the Belfrey Hotel in Littledean who provided an excellent breakfast roll for us all.  The entry is always kept small and was limited to a mximum of 30 cars this year.  There was a good selection from a Volvo Amazon running at no.1, couple of TR4s, couple of Minis and a beautiful rare Austin Healey 300 coupe.  There were also two TR7s because my old 143 Motor Club mate Jos Way was out in his TR7 V8.

Selection of cars at the Daffodil start

The route took us all around the southern Forest of Dean area and this year it really lived up to its name with masses of daffodils on show. 

 

The forest looked great before it gets out into full leaf so there were lots of nice views that get obscured later with all the greenery. The route is generally kept quite short and we had 45 miles in the first half before a coffee and cake stop at Taurus Crafts near Lydney.

Cars at Taurus Crafts coffee stop.

Suitably refreshed we set off for the 40 mile second half and back to the Belfrey Hotel for a nice two course carvery lunch.  Along the way we had to stop at an un-manned level crossing for a train to pass. Not had to do that for ages! The train actually looked and sounded smooth and quiet as well.

Stop when red lights show!

The car had behaved itself perfectly so that was a relief, but I think I will still try and get a session on the rolling road just to check all the settings before our next outings, because there will be one every weekend for four weeks coming soon.

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2022, January. Ignition System Changes

Pertronix Ignition 

After the ignition failures on two previous outings I decided it was time to change to a different system. Just to make life more complicated the Lucas 44D4 distributor on the Sprint engines is unique with its low level side-entry cap to fit under the inlet manifold. It is possible to use a different cap & rotor that allows more types of ignition from the Lucas 45 distributors but I thought I would keep that option for a last resort. 

Looking around at the alternatives some are very cheap and some are very expensive! I decided to go for something in the middle that was recommended by several folks who work on old cars for a living. I chose the Pertronix Ignitor and managed to buy the exact one I needed from Martin Jay who trades as The Distributor Doctor. He can also rebuild a distributor as good as new so is a useful contact as well. 

Pertronix kit and contents

 The Pertronix uses a rotor containing magnets that fits over the distributor spindle and a sensor fixed to the baseplate. It has very simple wiring - only two wires - as you can see from the picture.  Fitting it in the distributor would be easy but the Sprint engine is awkward because of the location and I was being extra carefull not to drop any of the little screws down inside. 

Pertronix Fitted

The red wire is the 12 volt ignition feed and the black one is the switched signal back to the coil. I needed to provide a 12 volt feed to the coil and to the Pertronix and from the previous post you may recall that we had also messed about with the ignition switch trying to get it going.   I had a brand new switch but comparing with the old one I noticed that the multi-pin plug on the end was wired differently.  These are being sold as the correct item under the Lucas part number but is obviously not correct for the TR7.  Luckily this was easily swapped over but would have been a problem if I hadn't spotted it.

Spot the Problem! - Different Wiring

 I also wanted to add the additional 12 volt live ignition feed and an auxiliary feed to the new switch. The 12 volt goes to the Remax coil and Pertronix. The auxiliary feed goes to the dash cam and satnav.

Modified Ignition Switch Wiring

 

I stripped off some insulation and soldered the extra wires on before adding some shrink down insulation over the top for protection.  May not be professional but it is safe and secure.

After fitting the new switch and Pertronix the engine actually fired up. It was a bit lumpy because the ignition timing was out but this was easily corrected with my old Snap-On timing light and it was idling nicely afterwards.  A quick road test and it all felt good so I am hoping that will be the end of ignition troubles.

    

2021, September/October. More Tours and More Ignition Trouble

 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. 

In the lanes near Cirencester

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.

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. 

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.

1985 Zenith Virgo Stages Rally. 7th Overall

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.

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.

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.

2021, August. Taith Cymru and Ignition Trouble

 22nd August:  Taith Cymru, DNF

The Taith Cymru is one of the top classic tours in Wales but had been cancelled in 2020 and delayed by the various fluctuations of the Covid restrictions.  They had finally managed to rearrange a date for 22nd August so we were really looking forward to it. The weather was again changeable so we decided the FHC would be the best choice to use for this one. Starting from the Old Railway Line Garden Centre at Three Cocks just north of Brecon, the 140 mile route used many the classic night rally roads in mid-Wales.

However, after about 40 miles it was on one of these classic roads , the Abergwesyn Mountain Road, that the first hint of a problem began.  The engine would occasionaly mis-fire then clear again.  As the symptoms got worse I noticed that each time it happened the rev-counter dropped to zero, indicating ignition failure.  It would then run normally for a while before doing it again.  We stopped and I checked for anything obvious like loose connections but couldn't find anything wrong.

Approaching the Devils Staircase on Abergwesyn Mountain Road

 By the time we reached the lunch halt at Lampeter Rugby Club the intermittent misfire had got quite bad so I decided to have  more serious look but couldn't find anything.  Best option was to try some of the spares we carry.  First and easiest thing was to try a new coil. The engine started and ran fine so it seemed to have cured the problem, but a few miles down the road the mis-fire came back. This time I changed the Lumenition amplifier module and again it seemed to have cured the problem, only for it to come back again. It was fine for a few more miles and then mis-fired badly only to clear again.

To me this meant the only other possible culprit must be the Lumenition optical switch inside the distributor. This is a fiddly job so I decided to struggle back to the Lampeter Rugby Club car park where we could work on it safely, rather than at the side of the road. Some of the club members were still there and very kindly gave us coffee and cakes while we worked on the car.

I finally decided to call it a day and called the breakdown, so we adjourned to the club until help arrived.  I expected a recovery truck but a young guy in a Transit sized van arrived and it turned out he had never even worked on a car with a distributor!

After I explained how it worked we tried all the connections and various voltage tests and even tried mounting the coil vertically instead of horizontally because his boss told him that was how they should be(!).   The car started ok and appeared to be fine so we set off for home with him following behind just to be safe.  We went about 10 miles and all seemed well so he turned back and we headed on home.

You may have guessed the next part, because it was not long before the problem came back.  By now we had passed Llandovery and were on the A40 nearing Brecon.  A few good miles and then the mis-firing. We struggled past Brecon but it was now getting quite bad and with evening approaching I did not want to be stranded at the side of a busy main road. As we reached Abergavenny it was becoming difficult to maintain any progress so I parked up in the main bus station car park and called the breakdown again. There always used to be a nice cafe here open all hours but in these strange Covid times on a Sunday evening it was closed, but at least the toilets were open! 

When the breakdown truck finally arrived it was nearing 10pm. The driver had already called me and said he could only take one passenger in his cab so could I call anyone for a lift or get a taxi. Unbelievable, but apparently it was due to the Covid regulations in Wales so I called  my old navigator Oliver Tomlins who agreed to turn out and drive the 60 miles to pick us up and we all arrived home just before midnight. Not our best day out.

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Lumenition Repairs

After the tribulations detailed above I went through the ignition system to see if there was anything I had missed but couldn't find anything obvious.  The only item of the system not replaced was the optical switch inside the distributor so I needed to replace that.   I did have one in the car but it requires the wires to be taken out of the connector plug so they can be threaded through the distributor body and the plug re-fitted.  I swapped the optical switch out and adjusted the ignition timing which had moved because the switch was very slightly different.

I drove the car for about 50 miles and the mis-fire was cured.

Brillant!