To Angouleme by Alvis 12/50 - Day 3

Tiffauges to Angoulême, 150 miles

Very early on Friday morning I reset the tappets to 6 thou cold rather than 3 thou hot and that made a big difference particularly when I put the hood down as I could barely hear the spitting and f***ing through the carb.

However there was a new distraction. The French equivalent of the Department of Transport came up with more deviations than the Marquis de Sade could have dreamt of; where the British would use traffic lights, the French used deviations which I'm sure were designed to show off their country to us.

The hotels in the centre of Angoulême had been mostly fully booked for months so we finally arrived at our Relais de Silence (which I had booked in April) just south of Angoulême (we had a bit of a shock in store for some of the auto-phobe guests seeking silence); on arrival there were already a couple of vintage Alvises, two Triumph Stags, a Porsche and a Rolls-Royce.

You’ll probably recognise the Alvises as belonging to Adrian Bell (who had given me a lot of advice before we booked) and Tony Leech who had been doing a meander through the Loire valley.

We ate at the hotel from a rather expensive menu but fortunately Jon's brother-in-law is from Paris...it's true what they say about Parisians...and we had impeccable service from then on!

To Angouleme by Alvis 12/50 - Day 2

Saint Malo to Tiffauges, 160 miles

On Thursday we disembarked at about 08.00 local time and headed off on every small side road we could find in the direction of Tiffauges (L on map) which is about 160 miles away from Saint Malo. Our plan was to drive for two hours and then stop for coffee before doing another two hours driving, stopping for lunch and then a similar laid-back schedule in the afternoon.







Our first night stop was at Tiffauges which is a lovely little town with a very old castle which boasted a trebuchet, a very nice hotel and a fabulous but inexpensive restaurant, named Archers - Veal sweetbreads, followed by Coquilles St Jacques and Creme Brulée...

To Angoulême by Alvis 12/50 - Day 1

Brighton to Portsmouth docks

Le Circuit des Remparts d’Angoulême is a series of races for old cars around the castle ramparts of Angoulême, which is a lovely town about two thirds of the way down France on the left hand side. It's 30 miles inland from Cognac and 75 miles north of Bordeaux. 

I’ve heard it said that Le Circuit des Remparts d’Angoulême is similar to what the Goodwood Revival once was before the organisers discovered that the Sussex Downs were paved with gold. 

I was lucky enough to get to both the Festival of Speed and the Revival in the very early days before it became a part of the social scene; it was all pretty relaxed and you could buy your tickets on the gate before it all went online and retro. 

The easiest way of getting the Alvis to Angoulême was to take the Brittany Ferries ship from Portsmouth to Saint Malo and then drive 300 miles over the next two days whilst sampling plenty of petit déjeuners, déjeuners et cafés. 

I did book the Angoulême tickets online as I wanted to ensure we got some seats rather than just wandering around and looking over people's shoulders, besides they'd already sold out of the Cathedral grandstand seats when I started booking in August so it was pretty popular. 

The seats were not expensive; €25 each for entry to the paddock for both days and €10  each for the grandstand seats for both days. If you use my sort of logic, what you save on Goodwood pays for the ferry...sort of.

I'd cobbled the carburettion together on the Alvis but was still without the all important 120 Solex jet which my engine seems to need now to combat the Ethanol in petrol that tends to make the mixture leaner. On the afternoon of Wednesday 12th September we met up with our friends’ Bugatti on the Brighton seafront before we headed off to Portsmouth for the overnight voyage to Saint Malo. 

The traffic through Arundel wasn't kind to us and the Alvis popped and spat back through the carburettor which was ominous...

The not so bad news.

With three days to go before we set off for Angoulême I've called a halt on any more fettling on the Alvis apart from washing it. Mind you when I washed it last week I was in for a surprise; I took the rear offside wheel and the hub off only to be greeted by a pair of brake shoes which should last forever as they were being preserved in 90/140 rear axle oil.

I'd had this problem before (A tale of two halves) but this time I decided to try to find the breather holes in the back axle which I'd never been able to before. After much excavation I found two 1/8 inch holes either side of the diff, well they should have been holes but as they face in the direction of travel it's easy to see why they were blocked up - I wonder why Alvis didn't drill the holes in the back of the axle rather than the front?

Still all that took my mind off the Solex problem of having the correct 115 jet; my trusty Alvis Register supplier had sent me a rather rich boy-racer 120 jet but after a week of it not arriving I tried Plan B. BTW, it's still stuck in the sorting office somewhere.

Plan B was the Carburettor Hospital Ltd. The Chief Surgeon there supplies bits for Solex, Zenith, Stromberg, S.U. and loads of others. When I asked Eric how many Solex jets they had in stock he said they'd had 5,000 made!

After asking what size jet I needed, which model and the length of the jet these were then made for me - he reams them out. Fortunately this package managed to avoid the overtime ban they've got at Brighton sorting office and the car is back on the road. It spits a bit but charges up hill (well, everything is relative)

So after a 10 mile trip this morning along the seafront and watching the beginning of the Ace Cafe Reunion it was time for home and some Marmite sausages - now I'm in the holiday mood!

And lastly a photo from the Rodmell Summer Festival where it apparently never rains and the Alvis always wins the “You don’t see many of these now” category...to which my Humber owning friend will say "...and there's a very good reason for that"

Woe 3

With an hour to go before we were due to leave to meet you all at the forge for the Riley BBQ I climbed into the car, admired the new hood bag and the new woodwork and the newly repaired window and I went through the start up procedure...and I went through the start up procedure...and...but as you know we never got there.

I did all the obvious things like taking the carburettor apart, checking the float level, taking the jets out...

Then I turned my attention to the valve timing...

And then I retimed the magneto... 

And then I went through the start up procedure again...

Anyway after three days of repeating all of the above my friend John Copper (who owns the club which the Multimarquers went to in Peacehaven one Tuesday evening) came over to help. To cut a long story short he said "Have you tried the starting handle?"; well I hadn't, but he did.

WEIRD, there was absolutely no compression AT ALL. So there was no suction for the petrol vapour and so nothing for the spark to ignite.

We poured some petrol into each cylinder went through the start up procedure and it worked...but you wouldn't have still been at the BBQ...

John's theory is that the tappet clearance was too small and that coupled with the Alvis's Mount Ararat moment and possibly the dehumidifier had resulted in carbon forming between the valve seat and the valves thus jamming the valves open

I was mightily relieved as in a few nano seconds my brain had computed the cost of a complete engine rebuild before Angouleme in ten days time.

But I am still stuck with getting a jet for the Solex so if you think you may be able to help, please read on.

Having reset the magneto, the Alvis goes extremely well but it fires back through the carburettor on occasion which I am told is a sign of a weak mixture. Well, the jet is a Solex 110 which is designed for skinflints and people with 9 points on their licence; what I should have is a 115 which is richer.

Somewhere in the Royal Mail infrastructure is a 120, but it's been stuck there for a week. Peter Broom has kindly offered me a 125 which could be far too rich and would obviously make the Alvis significantly faster than any Humber.

Please save Loft from this dreadful experience and see if you have a Solex 115 jet which I could beg, borrow, lease or whatever to get me to and from Angouleme. 

Woe 2

Previously I'd just finished repolishing all the woodwork after the Alvis gave its own interpretation of the Ark on Mount Ararat.

I was just refitting the twenty four pieces of beautifully polished mahogany when I noticed that the cable which winds the window up on the drivers side was frayed.

Now these window winders must be a coachbuilder's optional extra; Jim's Wolseley has them, my Alvis has them and a Gordon England bodied Austin Seven which I was looking at on the Internet the other day also had them. 

These window winders work on the same principle as a roller blind; except that roller blinds aren't really very heavy but a sheet of 4mm glass is ******heavy.

How do I know that? Well I just touched the frayed cable and there was a noise like the Guillotine as the roller spring didn't so much let go but rather did its own interpretation of a space launch in reverse - I was surprised to see that the door was still there as was the running board...and my toes. 

Obviously these "roller blinds" need some fairly significant cabling to raise the windows up; two of the windows appeared to have picture wire, one to have a scaled down version of the Titanic's mooring rope and the fourth to be a bit of waxed cotton!

Perhaps I should explain a little more about the mechanism. 

I have no idea how it works. 

But after a lot of experimentation (eg winding it the wrong way)  I did finally manage (several hours later) to work out what was going  on. 

The cable has to wrap around the roller and also to connect to the window...it's so simple but I don't understand how they did it without special equipment. Although I've put it all back together it really does need a winch to get the correct tension on the spring, but then it might break...

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The cable is held in place by a 4 ba screw so the cable has to be THIN.

Picture wire was a disaster - it just kinked. 

Stainless steel wire from Namrick the Nut and Bolt store of Portslade was promising but too inflexible. 

Green plastic garden twine was just perfect but I just couldn't imagine it lasting. 

The yacht chandlers at Brighton marina never got back to me....

But finally I found Tecni-Cable Ltd on the Internet. If you do nothing else, Save this site!

The wire is amazing; quite strong, very thin and you could tie knots in it...so I did. 

I ordered several metres of 0.75 mm which has a Maximum Breaking Load of 40kgs

Several hours later I'd just about managed to wind up the roller and with the occasional murmur of "Let them eat cake" I finally managed to get the window to go down, fairly slowly and to go up, without too much difficulty.

And that should have been that and I should have been at the Riley BBQ but...time for another Woe 3...

Woe, Woe and Thrice Woe.

If you’re old enough to have a bus pass then you will probably remember Frankie Howerd (Lurcio) speaking these lines on television in “Up Pompeii” through the early ‘70s. I have a certain empathy with that but in my case “Woe” is also known “As if it ain’t broke...parts 1, 2, 3 or 4” so without further ado...

Woe 1

You left me last month with a new hood bag but a soaking wet car having driven over the South Downs through the clouds and the sort of rain us Southerners thought only happened north of Watford. 

Two days later with the help of the dehumidifier, the car was dry but....the woodwork had taken a real hammering. Being a sort of upmarket convertible it has copious bits of wood trim. I'd previousl repolished about ten pieces around the windscreen where the rubber had disintegrated but this job was much more comprehensive; in all there were 24 pieces which I took out and a nice touch was that most of them had the body number from Carbodies who made the bodywork, written on the back in pencil. 

Repolishing them was a production line event.

Each piece needed three coats of stripper to get the old polish off; the drive over the Downs hadn't quite stripped them!

Then I cleaned them with White Spirit.

The next step was to varnish them using a pad which comprised the best soft linen or cotton I could get and in the centre of this I put either cotton wool or some other absorbent material to act as a reservoir for the polish. This ensured that there were no brush strokes.

The varnish I used was an exterior satin finish yacht varnish. 

However it was a bit trial and error as, to begin with I used a cheaper cotton cloth which just left bits of fluff behind so they all had to be redone.
Each of the four coats of varnish was left to dry for 24 hours and then rubbed down using 0000 grade wire wool and again cleaned with White Spirit. 

This was followed up with four coats of Liberon Black Bison wax. This was applied with 0000 wire wool, left for about an hour and then polished with a good quality polishing cloth. 

So with seven or eight coats of varnish and wax this now has a nice honey coloured look in addition to the mahogany itself.

It's tempting to see what happens to it if it gets wet...but I won't!

However that was not the end of it as the windows are all of the wind up variety but they work on the same principal as a roller blind but obviously with a much MUCH stronger spring....see Woe 2