Boys Toys

[Sean Regan]

Someone sent me this link to a tour of a museum in the Czech Republic.

Excalibur City & Terra Technica

 

[zigs]

Wasn't expecting the Game of Thrones pinball machine

 

[Sean Regan]

What amazes me is how diverse is the selexction and how much it's all worth.
The average "silver age" vinyl jukebox in restored condition can be around £10,000.

 

[LouisFerdinand]

How about a classic car?
https://flic.kr/p/dpEvU

 

[Sean Regan]

I haven't got a classic car, but our youngest son has had "Ruby" a 1967 VW "Splitty" for over ten years, which he bought from someone in Utah and had it shipped over here. He restored it with the help of his partner's brother-in-law who had a car body shop.

Coming from a dry state, it had no rust and wasn't in bad condition.

But it was "as new" by the time he'd finished restoring it. Except for the leather seats with memory foam cushions.

His partner made the curtains on her sewing machine.

They've been all over Europe in it, even Switzerland.

 

[Silentrunning]

It

My toy is a little different. It is meant for off road driving. It has a 4” lift to improve body ground clearance. The tires are 33” X 12.5”. It has a 12 ton front winch for when I get stuck. It currently has 212,200 miles and runs perfectly.

 

[Sean Regan]

Very impressive!

When I took early retirement 1998, we'd had one of these for three years, I'd bought it new. A Honda Civic LSI.

We called her "Gloria" as the first three letters of the registration were GLO.

But I decided I deserved a new car and we went to the showrooms to look at one of these. A Honda Prelude.

But my wife with her MS found that she couldn't get in it very easily.

That was a bit disappointing. But she said "I could get in that," indicating the car next to it. I'd never seen one before. It wasn't she said, as she describes saloon cars, a "head banger." As she could bump her head getting into our son's Audi.

So we had a test drive. I liked it, so I ordered one, but I had to wait nearly three months for it, as at the time, they were only made in Japan.

So that's how we ended up with "Brucie" (cos he was "Spruce Green.") a "soft roader," a new Honda CRV.

We kept him for seven years, then traded him in for "Rhonda the Honda" (not a very original name) another new CRV.

It's now fifteen years old, but has only done 58,000 miles (England's a small country and we never drive further than London 200 miles and infrequently, Cornwall 300 miles). These days it's just shopping trips and the golf club. "Off roading" for me is the carpark at Waitrose. I'd get nothing for it if I traded it in, so there's no point in changing it. I don't like the shspe of tjhe new CRVs. I like the spare wheel being accessable on the back. There's plenty of room in the boot for my electric golf trolley and golf bag. The boot floor is a big removeable picnic table. I think we've used it about three times.

Hondas are "bulletproof." Everything on it works. Apart from servicing, it's had just tyres and a set of front brake pads.
As it's mostly short journeys, it only does 23mpg. But it doesn't bother me.

I'm thinking back now, after getting the new CRV , on weekly shopping trips or to a restaurant in Manchester, we always passed the Honda showrooms. "Brucie" was stuck out on the forecourt with a price on its windscreen, for several weeks. I wasn't looking, I was concentrating on driving, but my wife would shout out "Look! Brucie's still there!" each time.

Then one week, suddenly he'd gone. We felt quite sad about that.

Ocassionally, I looked it up on the DVLA registry, it was still passing its MOT until 2018, when it suddenly went from, "everything being OK to everything being all wrong." I have my own views on that. So I guess it was scrapped. I think it was just driven into the ground with little or no maintenance for years. It had only done 114,000 miles.

 

[Sean Regan]

Sometimes I wish I still had my first car I bought when I was seventeen in 1958.

It was a 1937 Austin Seven Ruby AAL

My cousin worked in a garage and a customer had brought it in to be renovated for his wife. So it had the engine and transmission overhauled and had new seat covers and a new hood. But she couldn't manage the Bendix cable brakes, where your stopping ability depended on how hard you could press on the brake pedal. So I bought it. The precedure I found for an emergency stop was to grip the steering wheel hard and pull yourself up on it so your total weight was on your right foot on the pedal.

The only photo I have of it is a grainy old one my ten year old sister took of it with her Box Brownie, of our dad leaning on it. (He couldn't drive).

But I did find some photos of one on-line. Mine was exactly the same down to the colour.

The windcreen was hinged at the top and opened at the bottom, you could raise it up until it was horizontal. I used to go on trips out on a Sunday with my girlfriend at the time. You could sit on the bonnet with your legs dangling inside and use it as a picnic table.

The single windscreen wiper worked on a vacuum tube from the inlet manifold. Going uphill in the rain with your foot on the floor, they would stop. So you had to momentarily lift your foot off the pedal, when it would give a frantic wipe so you could see where you were going and then put your foot hard down again.

I mostly used to start it on the handle.It engaged on that lug in the middle of the radiator cover. It always started first time.


There was no boot, just a spare wheel cover. But if you removed it, a luggage rack folded down and you replaced the cover.

No wind-up windows, four folding side screens which you could fold back or take out completely. The hood folded down completely but reasted on the body behind the back seat.

I replaced the semophore arm indicators (seen behind the door handle) with some of those new fangled flashing lights.

If you look you can see the door handle doesn't have provision for a key so you could never lock it. It was parked all day every week-day in front of the church for several months and was never stolen and anything I left in it (not that there was ever much) was always there when I returned to it of an evening.

There was no syncromesh on the gear box, so you had to master the now lost art of "double de-clutching."
Look how much movement there was on the clutch pedal, about three inches at most.

After I bought it, I drove it around for a couple of months without L plates (naughty) and then took my test and passed first time. Such is the confidence of youth.

I kept it for a year and must have driven a lot of miles in it. I even drove it up from Morden to the top of Regent Street to work every day. I could always find a parking space in front of All Souls Church near the BBC (before the days of parking meters).

I did have to buy a set of tyres (re-treads) for it and spent 5p on a new bearing for the dynamo. Imagine that, walking into a Lucas depot and asking for a bearing for a twenty-one year old dynamo and the assistant finding it straight away.

 

[Sean Regan]

I found a photo of All Souls Church, in front of which I used to park my car. The BBC building is behind it.

I'm remembering the Scottie dog, "Mac," I had at the time. I bought him when I was fifteen, but my parents mostly looked after him.
He liked coming out with me in the car, standing up on the passenger front seat and putting his head out of the window.
I sometimes I took him out with my girlfriend at the time. So he had to stay in the back. But he'd stand on the edge of the back seat and put his paws on the back of my seat so he could still put his head partway out of the window. Sometimes his back feet would slip and he'd become wedged between the side of the top of my seat and the side of the car. He'd tap me on the shoulder to let me know he was stuck. I'd stop and sort him out. But he'd be back looking out the window again as soon as we moved off!