20 years and away it goes !!

I had an unwelcome call this morning, the lady that owns a garage I have my Viva HA stored in wanted it out today. (I admit she asked me a couple of years ago, but I am always busy.)

I towed it out, onto the trailer and back home, cleaned the points, put a battery on, squirted fuel in the carb amd after a few attempts away it went and sounded really nice too !!

I jumped in and the clutch is even free !! what a result.

A lot of welding needed and it will be back on the road, only 45 years young.

Mrcheerful

Reply to
Mrcheerful
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I love seeing these old cars pottering along on a sunny day and admire the people with the enthusiasm and tenacity to keep them running. I saw an old Ford Anglia, 100E Pop shape the other day. It always surprises me how small they were, despite owning a Popular myself. I thought I was the bees-knee when I bought it from a guy at work. It cost £220 in about

1964. Before that I had a 93E, my first car that cost £185.
Reply to
Andy Cap

Old cars always look small :) I saw a lovely '88 911 Carrera at the weekend and it looked tiny compared with 911's from today

Reply to
Abo

I had a Viva - I used to drive that car across the military training areas of Salisbury Plain on weekends.

Reply to
Hiram

We must have grown fatter since the cars are so much bigger. Our first 'family' car was a 750cc 21bhp 4 door Renault 4CV. You had to be really slim to get through the doors, some of your friends didn't manage LOL!

Reply to
johannes

Try telling the kids today, my 100e van back in the sixties, no seatbelts, MoT's or breathalysers back then!

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Reply to
Ivan

On Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:21:53 +0100, Ivan mumbled:

When I was born, my parents had a rotten old Viva van as transport that cost them £20 back in 1972. My gran spent a fortune on a silver cross pram for me. Apparently, my dad used to force the pram down on it's springs with me in it, slide it into the back of the van then release it. It'd spring up, expand and be stuck fast between the van roof and floor. No harness or child seats neccessary

He'd probably get locked up these days :-)

Mike P

Reply to
Mike P

We whine about the boy racers of today, but I bet that if the majority of people of my generation ever got brought to book for half of the naughty things we ever did with motor vehicles back then, then I reckon that we'd probably all still be doing time now!

Mind that 'was' back in the days when we had decent cops who were allowed to use their own discretion and not the robots like we have nowadays.

Reply to
Ivan

On Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:38:58 +0000, Ivan mumbled:

My "uncle" got chased by plod while driving pissed back in the 60s. Left his car, walked back 6 miles over the hills in the dark. Got home to find two plod sat in his living room drinking tea with his mum :-)

Mike P

Reply to
Mike P

What happened, did he get done? It was certainly a very different world back in the early sixties, like the caption says 'not a foreign car in sight' and although they were not as reliable as they are nowadays they were certainly easier and a lot cheaper to keep going, I mean it didn't cost you

80 quid for a computer to tell you what was wrong with it!
Reply to
Ivan

Oh I don't know, there were Beetles, Fiat 500s, Renault Dauphines....and in

1967 Donald Campbell had one of the first Toyotas in the country. He had an account at a garage where I used to work (never met him, but served his wife a couple of times). Apparently he used to come in every two or three of months to complain that he had to replace a light bulb. Those days, if you went 500 miles without getting the spanners out for a British or European car you were doing well.
Reply to
newshound

I prefer to say that modern cars always look bloated!

It never ceases to surprise me how much my Rover P6 is dwarfed by modern stuff. In its day, it was quite a big car, but is now usually at least a foot shorter than whatever's parked next to it. Even my long wheelbase Land Rover is shorter than a Peugeot 406, for example.

Reply to
Willy Eckerslyke

Especially when a mini is wider than a maxi.

Steve

Reply to
shazzbat

I used to have an HA Viva van on L plates. Couldn't kill the engine, it could be started with a crank handle if the battery was weak, but my god could it rust. Most of the drivers footwell area was held together with paint, and I think old MOTs. Brush painted blue, over what looked like GPO/BT yellow.

Reply to
Elder

Yeh, well they don't make cars like they used to!

Reply to
Alf

In message , Alf writes

Amen and thank f**k for that.

>
Reply to
Clint Sharp

Had an M reg one - with the larger engine. 1200 something cc? Very low geared so took off like a rocket from the lights when unladen. Had the sweetest gearchange I think I've ever owned - just like flicking a light switch. Very light steering too - even when parking. Dreadful drum brakes.

It sheared the distributor/oil pump drive a couple of times. And as you said rusted like no tomorrow. But cost me pennies to buy and got used by all my mates for things you need a van for - and failed its final MOT some

7 years later.
Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

I bought one for spares for 15 quid and drove it home (2 miles of country lane). Dunno what was different but it went like the clappers - far quicker than any other similar looking ones we'd owned. It had rusted all around the roof gutter, so that the roof was just resting in place. Most of the decent bits (all three of them) went onto our BT yellow van.

1256. IME, they always died at around an indicated 70,000 miles. But then mine had probably all been clocked umpteen times making that a bit meaningless.

BTDT. Offset slot in the dizzy drive meant the narrow side was prone to snapping off. They'd still run, but the timing would be all over the place. Bodge cure was a steel sleeve glued in place with Araldite - worked for me once.

Our best was an ex water bailiff's one that lasted about as long as that. Strangely, I can still remember the reg number: RFF207L!

Reply to
Willy Eckerslyke

Later engines had the slot central. So you had to take care when replacing the distributor. But to modify an early one meant new oil pump and distributor.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

I think the latest one we had was an R reg, so never learnt that.

Aye, too much hassle. Hence the Araldite bodge which could be done with the engine in place.

Mind you, they were very light engines - I could lift one out by hand, which isn't something I'd try these days!

Reply to
Willy Eckerslyke

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