Friday, November 24, 2006

Pimped 948 progress.



The 'Pimp my Ride' 948 saloon has taken another step forward with the application of some paint. Most of the shut's are now painted in colour, and the rest of the car is in high build primer with guide coats applied to help in the final prep. Some surprising ding's and dent's were found when the car was bare metalled, they had obviously been well repaired in the cars earlier life as they hadn't been apparent pre restoration. I'll have to ask the previous owner John Kipping if he was responsible!

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Auction fever!



I had a day off yesterday, shock, horror! I have been on the trail of the one off Triumph prototype the Zest for some years now. It had been on sale in Classic car specialists Sherwood Classics in Nottingham (where else!) for approaching 5 years with a price tag of about £22,000. I had been up to give the car the once over about 2 or 3 years ago. The car is in fantastic condition allthough it has been customised by it's previous owner with some pretty tacky non original aditions, allthough fortunately nothing that couldn't be put right with a little work. I entered into a little preliminary negotiation and the price quickly fell to £20K, ahh I thought that was easy leave it a couple of months and it's a £17-18K car for cash after some serious haggling. Anyway that couple of months came and went and in the meantine we bought the Spitfire ADU 4B and that blew the car budget for a couple of years! Zoom forward to yesterday, I had found out that the vendor had given up on selling through a showroom and entered it in H & H Classics Auctions http://www.classic-auctions.com/ sale at Buxton in Derbyshire. Permissions were sort from her indoors and off we went to do the deed, or so we thought! The catalogue estimate for the car was £17-20K, right on the nail for what I originally thought it was worth. Only problem was there was a 10% sellers premium, plus VAT, no problem I thought serious buyers will have seen it's previous sale price (nearly five years at about £20K!) and factor that in. We got to the sale room as lot number one went through (the Zest was lot 61), allthough the room was full of punters most lots were struggling, and very few made reserve, allthough a lot were selling a little later at their preliminary bids, some real bargains were being had, how about a decent BMW 633 Coupe for £800! Things were looking good! All to soon it became the Zest's turn to go under the hammer, at first any potential punters showed little interest in raising their hands so the auctioneer started the things rolling with £12K to which someone to my right flicked his hand in the air, I quickly made the auctioneer aware of my interest and got the second bid in on £13K. The guy on the right nodded and it was now £14K, I have always found it best to bid confidently and quickly it shows you mean business so I nodded again and we were at £15K. Only trouble was my rival had the same atitude and he countered so we were now at £16K! My pre auction limit had been £17 1/2 K which would have brought the end price (with commission, and VAT) out to what I could have bought it for easily for when it had been at Sherwood Classics. Only trouble was the bids were going in £1K increments, so I nodded again knowing that this would be my last bid at £17K. Then it went quite, just for a minute or so I thought it was mine, OK it was more than I had wanted to pay but hey ho. It seems my rival had backed out, but then a new bidder came forward, and someone on the phone, and very quickly the car shot up to £21,000 plus commission, and VAT, which I make a grand total of £23467.50, bonkers! So that's nearly a couple of grand more than the car had been advertised for the previous 5 odd years pre negotiation which would have easily made it at least £4K more expensive, so that's why they call it auction fever! No time to sit around licking our wounds or watching any further lots go through as our car park ticket had run out 10 minutes previously and a fine would have really topped the day off nicely. Just time to exchange pleasantries with noted classic car journo Malcom Mckay on the way out (he had thought the car was going to make about £13K pre auction!)and off we went back into the fog and rain back accross the moors. Oh well at least the car fund is growing nicely!

Monday, November 13, 2006

Nice work if you can get it!


I was 'forced' by the owner of this rather nice TR3 to take it home over the weekend to check out a suspected overheating problem, go on then twist my arm! The workshop is currently fit to burst with a nice original Spit 1500 in for some re-commissioning/MOT work, a Spit MKII in for much the same, a TR6 in for long term bodywork, and a Stag in for some diff work, and a check over.

Friday, November 10, 2006

Pimp my ride 948 UK stylee

With no help whatsoever from Westwood and his crew progress on the blinged 948 Herald creeps slowly forward. I had to pop down to my mate Rich's unit in Coventry the other day to do a little last minute bodywork before they got into serious prep for the paint. Previously we had dollied the front arch lips back to allow for the 15" wheels and wide low profiles but completely forgot to do the same at the back. Fortunately Rich noticed before any serious painting had happened so I went down to 'persuade' the arch's out a tad. I didn't bother taking any piccy's as the project is still at that un-photogenic stage whereby the car is bare metalled, and Rich's unit is in a mess whilst they build a 50 foot long by 25 foot tall paint booth, it's a monster! The paint we have settled on for the 948 is 'interesting', originally the car was two tone Alpine Mauve over Spa White. It's still going to be those colours, sort off! The Alpine Mauve is going over a white base coat, and the Spa White is going over a red base with a flip in it. This paint job is costing more than I have ever paid for any Herald!

Thursday, November 9, 2006

I have piles!

I was thinking it was time to do something about my piles. As much as I keep picking at them they never seem to get any smaller? I asked Jason to help yesterday but initially he turned his nose up. He eventually succumbed, slipped on his latex gloves and got stuck in! Having had the luxury of a pile of roughly 800 odd engines has major benefits, but also a downside. When I have been picking at the front of it for the last 5 years for the useful stuff to recondition, it has left the not so useful stuff right at the front and in the way. We must have more FWD 1300/1500 core than there are cars left on the road, and big crank, narrow block 1300 stuff (MKIV Spit/13/60 Herald) who is ever going to want that in any numbers again? Anyway time has come to peel back that first layer of the pile, chuck out the dross, and reveal some useful stuff again. Looks like a visit to the scrapyard coming up, what with the price of scrap as it is at the moment it might be very worthwhile!