Practically Classics Forum

I'm still here too. Nobody is going to get bored reading about your toy. It is always fun reading about other people's automotive exploits

It is now 2005 and we entered the period of the lean times. 2 reasons for this. First, I decided I’d had enough of my stressful job and changed to my current more local job. We took a big hit in income as we were no longer getting the nice commission cheques every month. However, I could stop looking for tall buildings to jump off and my wife no longer needed to hide the knives and could stop scouring yellow pages for divorce lawyers! And, I actually got to see my family. Secondly, my daughters were growing up and starting to do ever more expensive activities. We had truly frightening bills from singing teachers and dance schools. (and still do). Although I think the singing and dancing teachers may have been ripping us off as I still can’t sing a note or dance a step!

This lack of cash did make things difficult as even the slightest fault would mean her being off the road while we scraped together the cash for the parts/MOT/Insurance/servicing etc. and then just when I thought I had the money, there’d be a school trip or new tap/ballet shoes to buy (For the Girls…honest). On the whole though, Poppy behaved very well and nothing too serious came up.

Being a convertible and driven with the roof down mostly, the manual washer pump was not used from one MOT to the next. It inevitably dried out and split just as the MOT was due. A silly thing to take it off the road I know, but it took time to track down a replacement and come up with the £20 or so required on top of the MOT and insurance that had both run out. She failed that MOT on sticking front brakes and a minor welding requirement but the washer pump was ok!

Another couple of months passed while I saved for the welding. So, in the meantime, I decided that I would look at the brakes myself. How hard could it be??!! Obviously recon callipers were out of the question on my non-existent budget, so I bought the replacement seals and pistons and set about doing it myself. I researched the job on the internet and took advice from the experts on another “popular” classic car forum and then set to. I took the left calliper off the car but left it attached to the hose and put a thin bit of wood between the two pistons. Thin enough that the pistons would come almost all the way out but thick enough that they didn’t pop right out and drop the brake fluid all over the drive…in theory. So, with all this set up, I sat myself in the half padded driving seat and pressed the brake pedal. Nothing happened. I pressed a bit harder and there was a small pop and it had worked! Both pistons almost all the way out ready for easy removal.

I had a celebratory cup of tea and a bacon butty that Mrs Fatbloke had very kindly made me. Still feeling very smug and self-satisfied, I set about repeating this procedure on the right hand calliper. I sat myself in the half padded driving seat and pressed the brake pedal. Nothing happened. I pressed a bit harder. Still nothing happened! I was now pressing so hard that my amply padded posterior had left the poorly padded driver’s seat. Then with a very loud pop, the brake pedal went to the floor.” Yes!” I though “success!” So I proudly got out of the car only to find one piston fully out of the calliper, the piece of wood floating off on the pool of spilt fluid and the other piston still very much in the calliper. I said some very bad words. I then quickly cleaned up the pool of brake fluid before Mrs Fatbloke could see it and say some bad words of her own about staining her brick paved drive. I then stomped into the house, washed up and sulked until a bottle of Merlot had worked its magic.

Some days later, I returned to the task. I split the left calliper removed all the old seals and cleaned the cylinders with wire wool before soaking it in some lovely solvent that I shouldn’t have had in the shed from my days in labs. I then split the right calliper and did the same to the half without the piston. It was now time to turn my attentions to removing the stuck piston. I took a pair of wide jawed grips to the piston and started to twist and pull…it didn’t work. I then tried gripping each side of the piston with pairs of pliers and pulling with all my might whilst standing on the calliper. This resulted in severe bruising in a rather sensitive area but did not remove the piston.

When I could walk straight again, I consulted my father in-law who is a retired engineer with a fully equipped workshop (Fully equipped for his woodworking and wood turning hobby that is!) He came up with the idea of sticking a 3 foot bar to the piston with chemical weld and leaving for a few days to fully cure. We then clamped the calliper in his bench vice and with one of us on each end of the bar we twisted and pulled…and twisted and pulled…and twisted and pulled Eventually, it did come free. I was then able to repeat the cleaning process although the bore in this half of the calliper needed a lot more work with the wire wool.

I left them for a few days to allow all the solvent to fully evaporate and then reassembled them with the new seals and pistons all without further drama…That is until Mrs Fatbloke came home from work and pointed out, rather forcefully I thought, that the coffee table in her lounge wasn’t the best place to be rebuilding brake callipers. I thought this was a little unfair as I had thoroughly cleaned them before I started, and it was my lounge too. With hindsight though, it might have been wiser not to mention this at the time. Anyway, the nurses at A&E were all very nice about the whole thing and even gave me back my calliper once they’d removed it. I soon recovered and was able to refit the callipers and bleed the system through with the help of my youngest daughter who acted as my patient pedal pusher. The welding was done and we were back on the road for another year of happy classic motoring.

It was a particularly bad winter that year, so when the MOT came due In April, she hadn’t been out of the lockup for a couple of months and as you can probably guess, she had a sticking right calliper…and broken washer pump!

My eldest daughter wanted to use Poppy as her Prom transport in May the following year (2011) so if I delayed the MOT to June it would still be in force for her Prom. So Poppy stayed in the lockup for another few weeks. Budget was still non-existent and with the memories of my last adventure with callipers still etched firmly in mind (I now have a slight but permanent bow legged stance) I went in search of a very cheap 2nd hand replacement calliper and pump. These were found locally on the great bay of e so I didn’t even have to pay postage. Parts were fitted and Poppy came through for me with a clean bill of health from the ministry man and we spent a summer of short but frequent drives and a winter of short and less frequent drives.

As the date for the Prom approached, all discussion in the house turned to dresses, shoes, hand bags, hairstyles, make-up, shoes, nails, shoes and everything else that women seem to need for these occasions. After one too many exclamation of “HOW MUCH?” from me, I was banished from the house. So I went to give the gilded carriage a bit of a check over and cleaned her to within an inch of her life. It was during this mammoth cleaning session that 2 things happened. 1. I decided that I would never, ever enter a concourse competition as I didn’t particularly enjoy the cleaning process (who am I kidding? As if we’d stand a chance among those gleaming, pampered beauties anyway!). And 2. The 2nd hand calliper was leaking. I finished cleaning Poppy and nursed her through to the Prom keeping a very close eye on fluid levels and topping up when necessary.

The date of the Prom arrived. And as you can see from the picture of my daughter below, all the preparation and hard were worth it. She looks absolutely stunning! Mind you, my daughter doesn’t scrub up too badly either!

To be continued…

Brilliantly written, entertaining, amusing and informative. You should write for a periodical, your prose is better than a lot of journalists that write in car mags!

Keep it up mate, much appreciated.

Thanks Luxo

Agreed that this is very well written and made me laugh out loud a couple of times - especially about the fun and games with the calliper and your trip to A&E after Mrs FB found you working on the Coffee Table

Very good It is definitely worth your while sending an article about your adventures with poppy in to PC (if you send a PM to admin it will get you through to Neil Campbell). You need to start another thread about the Morgan!

Thanks for the kind comments. I'm very glad you're enjoying it.

I have had "star letter" in PC and Poppy has also shown up in Readers Cars. Secretly, I'm hoping this will act as an audition. DH will see it and offer me a job with a huge salary so I can afford more classics to write about! It would be the dream job though wouldn't it?

As for the Morgan, it belongs to a mate unfortunately.

Well the prom was a huge success and Poppy performed her duties perfectly with many positive comments to both my daughter and my car. I smiled politely at the comments about the car and tried very hard not to give my “Hard Stare of Death” or wave the cricket bat I keep for just such occasions at any boys that made comments to my daughter.

But the MOT ran out 2 weeks later so Poppy was parked up in the lockup with the promise of being sorted out soon. Although it was a pretty hollow promise as we’d spent all our money and all the in-laws money on the Prom.



Time passed. My eldest was studying for A-Levels which seemed to require expensive school trips including one to America. My youngest decided that she wanted to make a career out of dance and got into a national “gifted and talented” program. I thought that the dance school bills had been eye-watering enough before, but now I arranged to have my whole salary paid directly into the dance school account.



All this meant that the best I could do for Poppy was to wander up to the lock up to run my fingers gently along her bonnet and fins and promise that I had not forgotten her.

It was on one of these forlorn visits that I came across and even more forlorn sight. The toneau cover was sagging under the weight of a large pool of water. I know you are supposed to leave the hood up in storage but the frame had now broken on both sides after the prom and I found it impossible to get it up single handed (as the bishop said oooohh Missus!)



Anyway, my powers of deduction were firing on all cylinders and I was able to deduce immediately, that the garage had a leak! I called the council who sent out a man. The man sucked his teeth and pronounced the lock up roof beyond repair. The council then offered me another lock up about ¾ of a mile away from my house and as it was far better than my current lockup had ever been, I took it. The council then gave me just one week to move the car! Poppy hadn’t turned a wheel in 18 months and had no MOT or Insurance. What was I to do?



It was the depths of winter and Poppy refused to help. Even with jump leads to the modern, her starter motor refused to display any more energy than a slightly asthmatic snail with a limp and the leaking calliper had drained all the fluid out of the system. (Not that I was thinking about doing anything illegal you understand.)



I was reduced to trying to beg, borrow or steal some sort of car trailer. So an appeal on social networking was in order and I hit pay dirt immediately. An old school friend came back to say that her husband had a car dolly I could borrow. I picked the trailer up the following day on my way back from work. The trailer was a great big heavy duty thing with deep impressions for the front wheels of the car, two heavy ramps to aid the arrival of the front wheels at the depressions and a winch for the same purpose. School friends Husband then gave me detailed instructions in the use of the trailer.



I collected Mrs Fatbloke and arrived at the lock up. Mrs FB is a beautiful and loving wife (She might read this) but is no shrinking violet and isn't the sort to worry overly about a broken nail. She zwill get stuck in to pretty much anything. Which was just as well!



The plan was to position the trailer in front of the garage and simply winch poppy up onto the trailer. That was when we noticed that there was no handle for the winch. I phoned school friends Husband to see if there was a cunningly hidden storage space on the trailer where the winch handle was kept. His response was " ahh yes...well...you see, the last time I used it, which was quite some time ago, I might have forgotten to put it away properly and I think it fell off somewhere on the M4 between Swansea and Cardiff...Can't you just drive it up?" I didn't use any bad words until after I'd hung up the phone.



Never mind I thought, I was a Prop Forward, Poppy is only a little car I'll push it up the ramps myself. So, after much grunting, heaving, snorting and sweating, I managed to squeeze my ample frame between the car and the garage wall and was in position at the back of the car to push.



After much grunting, heaving, snorting and sweating, I'd managed to get her half way up the ramps but no further. Mrs FB was sat under the tailgate of the Touran, laughing. So I politely asked for assistance, (No, really! Impoliteness can have severe consequences. See caliper incident above.) After another bout of grunting and heaving from the both of us, we'd managed to get her to the top of the ramp but she absolutely refused to go over the lip and into the depressions. We relaxed and of course Poppy rolled back down the ramps and gently pinned us to the back of the garage. I now knew how John Mills must have felt in that scene from "Ice cold in Alex" when the ambulance runs back down the sand dune!! In the end, I came up with the idea of chocking the back wheels of Poppy and reversing the ramps and trailer underneath her. It worked a treat and Poppy's front wheels were soon in the depressions on the trailer and all tied down securely.
We set off for the new garage and, chocked the rear wheels and slowly drove the trailer out from underneath her before pushing her back into the snug, dry new garage.

To be continued...

Thanks Mike - another laugh out loud moment at the thought of you both stuck at the back of the garage - and what a great idea to push the dolly under Poppy by reversing the car - genius

great read!!
can we have pics of the stellar?? i used to own a pony....