Fairmile and More oily stuff

I hadn't been to the Fairmile pub meet for a while, so took a run there on Wednesday, meeting a couple of the Porksters. Very busy (275 cars they said) with a special display of Spyders. Some other nice stuff as well:

Tonight, a quick trek to Cearth to abuse his hospitality and change my oil and filter. Very lazy as I could just do it on the drive but we're in the middle of a heatwave and I sweated buckets as it was - really didn't want to be lying on my back under a hot engine.

Cearth is an ex-aircon engineer, so he also tested my aircon system (he has all the kit) and pronounced it in good condition, which is nice to know.

Sun and Torque

 Father's Day was a scorcher, so I arranged a short run out to Torque Cafe for breakfast with the Porksters. 

Bit of drama recently in the group with ex-boss man throwing his toys out of the pram and leaving in a huff. Seems he hasn't been happy with the level of organisation since he sold his Boxster (and bought a Golf GTi - yawn) and he fell out badly with one of the other members I thought he got on with when that guy suggested he was being unfair - yadda, yadda, handbags at dawn...boss man leaves group in a hissy fit 😊

Anyway, the run was short but fun and the cafe was pretty busy, with some interesting cars:

I've seen that Mini before - supercharged to 160bhp or so and looks greta....sorry, great (see what I did there?).

Only 2.5 weeks until our Alps trip and I need to do an oil change before I go and I'd like to take the front bumper off to clean out the rads and fit grills.

I've also been getting some quotes to respray the rear wings, which have always been horrendous - first one was £2k, which 'aint happening. I'll have to hope the others are better - I did get quoted £700 last year but not sure if prices have gone up?

Another Car Show In The Wall

 I'm no Pink Floyd fan (bit before my time) but the drummer, Nick Mason, is famous for his great car collection and, every year, he opens his house and displays his collection. I've wanted to go for years so today was the day...

I had to get up at stupid o'clock (5.30am) for the 100 mile run to meet up with a few members of the PPCC and BoxaNet forum who were going. Admittedly, it was a lovely bright day and at that time on a Sunday, the roads were empty - satnav said 2.5 hours and I did it in 2.

We met at a surprisingly posh truckers cafe just outside Chippenham for breakfast and then the 15 minute hop to Middlewick House for the event. We were pleasantly surprised to find we were directed to the supercar car park and not the main public car park, with a glorious Ferrari 512 to follow in:

I guess I'm getting old and cranky but I couldn't be bothered with standing round talking to people - I wanted to see the cars, so after 30 minutes of waffle, I slinked off and didn't see anyone else again for the rest of the day 😀

Some wonderful cars just in the car park - an AC Frua (yeah, never heard of or seen one before), with a 7L V8:

A very cute Mini:

When is a GT40 not cool?

Possibly one of the ugliest cars ever but very rare - Alfa Romeo Zagato:

Once in the main event, very busy and nicely laid out, with stupidly expensive cars dotted among the trees; one of 19 Aston DB4s:

The famous 250GTO, worth around £30million:

The 1970s Ferrari 512 raced at LeMans, won at Sebring and used in the Le Mans film with Steve McQueen - what a history:

...and the man himself signing £100 books:

The day was a little tarnished by an accident on a local road which meant it took 45 minutes to get out but I had a pretty good run back as well, although I should have used suncream as I'm a bit lobster-like.

A fun day although I probably won't go again - it's a fairly small show and not worth a 5 hour round trip to get to.

A Day at the Garage

 Did a meet at Mercedes Benz world in Brooklands 2 weeks ago which my son wanted to go to - pretty good, with lots of Ferraris, Lambos, Beemers, Mercs etc, etc. I got parked next to a pink Fiat 124:

This weekend was some garage time at Cearths - coil packs, plugs, rear pads and handbrake adjustment. 

Everything went pretty smoothly - the old coil packs looked fine, apart from one small crack:

I couldn't find any evidence that they had been changed before (nothing in the old receipts the previous owner gave me) so is it possible they still looked this good after 99k miles?

The old spark plugs did look a little worse for wear and they had only been in for 20k miles or so, I think (need to check the invoices). The new ones are a slightly different design so maybe the old ones haven't changed much:

Naturally, they made absolutely no difference to the drive but then there wasn't an obvious problem before, so I wasn't expecting miracles. But one less thing to worry about on my Alps trip. Cearth also used his endoscope to check for any of the infamous bore score and it was all clear and smooth. The 987.1 is not prone to this anyway but nice to have it checked.

The rear pads were worse than I thought and I'd bought a set of EBC yellow pads just in case, so they went on the rear. The fronts were only half-worn, so they can wait a while.

Finally, I adjusted the handbrake properly and it now works as it should,  which is nice.