In Typical British weather fashion it had been the best April weather in living memory the week before the technical day, with temperatures of 21c against the seasonal norm of 11c.

And the day after the technical event was also meant to be beautiful, but the day itself was meant to be a shocker, and so it proved as I was driving to Chris Miller's house.

I called Steve Payne who had already arrived at the event at this stage, and he said the weather was fine, so it was fingers crossed...

I picked up Chris and we loaded my car with tools, electrical parts, and anything else we thought may be useful.

Chris with all the goodies

Our journey there was a little eventful as me and Chris were so wrapped up in conversation we got lost, and then when Chris got on the map he thought the event was at Martin Robey's and not Appleyard's, which are in 2 different counties!

We stopped at a cafe and got some sausage and egg butties and coffee to take to Appleyard's

Sadly for Chris, there was an enormous pothole just before we got to site, and he spilled boiling coffee on his Niagara's*

Chris, with Steve Payne and Steve's son Tommy, eating a sausage butty to take his mind of his scalded Jacob's*

The car park was already filling up with cars

The idea of the day is to tackle jobs that the owners are not confident that they can do, or to use the knowledge available to solve problems that have been difficult to pin down, so a range of jobs were going on.

I apologise in advance if any of the cars, names or combinations are wrong, as there were a lot of people I had not met before, and I gave the task of getting names and registration numbers to Steve's son Tommy, so please forgive me if there are any errors.

Kevin Ainsworth was rebuilding all his brake callipers and master cylinder with new seals, and making use of the 4 post lift in the workshop

Gill Wild and Neil Willmott had a current drain on their CV8 which kept flattening the battery, so I helped to track down the problem

Pete Tules and Brendan Mutagh seemed to spend most of their time find the best place to add the chassis plate!

Lee Marshall rewiring his CV8 rear number plate light

We had a visitor all the way from Australia in the form of professional car restorer Dudley Proudfoot who had brought with him an Aussie classic car mag that featured the his Interceptor which had had recently restored

Dudley getting to know some of the "Pommy Bastard's"

Other than a couple of brief showers which caused everyone to run into the garage, the weather held out and the work carried on.

Mark "Pie Man" Maniatt arrived for some headlight wiring in his super smart MK3

Both Mark and Pete Tules cars were wearing the Cropredy Bridge 17inch wheels

Pete's were early versions of the wheels, and he mentioned they have suffered some quality issues and tarnished badly.

Martin Ritchie had decided to refurbish his brake peddle box and brake servo

Off the car, and being cleaned with some advise from Kevin, the fulltime mechanic at Appleyard's

Andy Brookes the owner of Appleyard's (on the left), meets and greets some of the visitors

 

Steve Payne is going to the Belgian Jensen owners event in Ypres next month, so he asked Chris Miller to give his engine bay wiring an inspection to make sure it was all going to be reliable.

Chris found all sorts of potential wiring problems due to old wires and years of engine bay heat.

Replacement wire have heat shrink sleeving added

 

Paul Strange was bringing his MK2 FF for reasons other than a failed starter motor, but fate thought differently...

Dave Newby's FF was used to tow the stricken car to Appleyard's

Paul's car arrives on the end of a tow rope.

We admired his multi point injection...

While Dave Newby got to work replacing the starter motor.

Lunch arrived, so we downed tools for a while

I took the time to admire Keith Lee's beautiful 541

Kevin Ainsworth's brakes had gone well and had reached the stage where they needed bleeding, so Kevin the mechanic wheeled out his handy dandy automatic reservoir topping up gizmo

It worked a treat!

The only sad part of the of the day was Paul Strange's FF had to go home on a trailer as his new fuel injection pump was pulling very high current (it was only completed yesterday), and so it was thought safer to take it home on a trailer.

All in all an excellent day, with lot's done, new skills learned, and new people met. A big thanks to Andy Brookes of Appleyard's for hosting the day, his wife Christine for the lunch she put on, "Super Kev" the resident mechanic, the weather for being fairly kind to us, and to everyone who came along.

 

* Rhyming slang

Niagara Falls = Balls

Jacobs Crackers = Knackers