A new discovery

The Coromandel Car Club went for a run at the weekend, with a great lunch in Whitianga and ending up at a private, predominantly automotive museum about an hour from home which is relatively new.  I'd never heard of it until a few days ago and it's mind-blowingly good. For Kiwis, it's about 3 km south of Whitianga on SH 25 and the entry fee is $10.  The name of the place is Wheels Within Walls.

Some of the Coromandel Car Club vehicles

Here is a small selection of the photos I took, showing the variety of machinery on display.  There really is something for everyone at this museum.

Museum entranceway

There's a great mix of military and civilian vehicles and weaponry.  Down by a half track troop transporter was a long box with what appeared to be a bazooka in it!

Jennie and the ideal vehicle for cutting through rush hour traffic

Serious gas guzzlers

Seacat ship-based surface to air missile

Moving to civilian vehicles, it was an eclectic collection, including quite a few I'd never previously seen and I'd never heard of a Triumph Gloria, which was manufactured between 1933 and 1938 in various guises.

The Triumph Gloria

The Gloria radiator badge

Triumph Mayflower, two Rolls Royces and a Rover

A nice restoration project

The perfect tasteful Cadillac for Trump

V8-powered trike - ewwwww

One corner was devoted to early Land Rovers which were all in great nick.  The orange/red utility in the picture below had no i/d but was probably a locally made special body on the chassis of something else.

The offroad corner

At first glance, the car below is a stock Ford Anglia undergoing restoration.  A closer inspection reveals a Chevy 305 V8 being shoehorned into it!  I love sleepers and a mate in the UK had a standard looking Anglia with a Cosworth-prepared Cortina motor in it.  The fact that he was a senior engineer at Cosworth explains a lot!

Ford 105E Anglia

There's a sign on the screen of the Anglia which I just loved.  It's enlarged in the photo below.

Loved by mechanics everywhere

The Holden Torana enjoyed considerable success on the race tracks of Australia and NZ and have a cult following. Pristine SLR 5000 V8 models sell for astronomic prices but even the smaller engined models in original condition demand a huge price.  The black model below is allegedly a 1974 2.8 litre model.

Holden Torana and 1960 Ford Zephyr

Unknown vehicle below undergoing restoration.  The tiny engine must be a dream to work on with that great access.

Restoration underway

I don't know if the vehicle below is a commercial or home built item but it's probably a nightmare to steer with the pivot directly above the front wheel and the driver swinging about all over the place!

One of Frankensteins less successful creations

There are quite a few interesting displays devoted to things other than vehicles.  A wall with polished blowlamps and soldering irons caught my eye as an arty photo.  I guess that these early kerosene-powered blowlamps are regarded as a serious hazard these days but I remember my grandfather stripping old paint from woodwork with one.  They needed care to operate as it was possible to send out a jet of burning kerosene like a flamethrower if they weren't hot enough to vaporise the fuel.

Blowlamp and soldering iron display

There was a big area devoted to competition vehicles and here are a few examples.  The first photo is the V8 engine in a Bathurst-type Holden Commodore racing saloon car.

Holden Commodore race engine

The next photo is of a V8 stock car for speedway racing.  Easy to see where the Mad Max movie series got its inspiration from.

Absolutely brutal

This is a speedway sprint car for oval dirt racing. Still very popular in North America and the Southern Hemisphere.

Sprint car with massive wing

The bike below is a normally aspirated drag bike which used to run at the Meremere dragstrip  in NZ.  The museum owner was talking to me about the possibility of mounting it on a stand and demonstrating short engine runs for museum patrons.  Bring your ear plugs!

Kiwi drag bike 

Finally, a photo of the wonderful rustic bar at the museum - just perfect!  I hope you've enjoyed the short tour and can assure you that it's even better in the flesh and hours can be spent there.  A real asset for our region.

The museum bar

A blast from the past

Back in Covid lockdown, I set about digitizing our vast collection of photo prints, slides and negatives.  At best guess,well over 2500 images with a few still waiting to be done.  There are also 2 boxes of slides featuring the 1969 Isle of Man TT and the 1971 Transatlantic Match Race from Mallory Park.  The house elves have hidden these somewhere and I've been unable to find them which is a major irritation.  That aside, a fair number of the motorcycle digital images have appeared in this blog.  As it's a cold winter day in NZ, I thought that it was a good opportunity to showcase the story of my first "big" bike which briefly appeared in the history of bikes I've owned HERE .

Back in 1967 (58 years ago for the mathematically challenged), most readers of this blog weren't even a twinkle in their parent's eyes. I'd just seen an advert for a 1955 Triumph Tiger 100 which had been fully restored by the owner.  He worked for the Reliant car company and had access to professional paint spray facilities, chromium plating baths and so on. Although the bike was 12 years old, I thought it was worth a look.  I'm really glad I did - almost a case of serendipity.

He'd done a flawless job of restoring it but wasn't asking the earth.  I was more interested in sport-oriented bikes at that time but he had gone down the Marlon Brando "Wild One" route with US style raised bars, tall mirrors, crashbars and a white vinyl covered seat to complement the royal blue and white paintwork.  He had also chrome plated the engine mounting plates.  The engine had also received some attention with 10.5:1 pistons, E3134 performance cams, a gas-flowed cylinder head and a tuned exhaust.  I wasn't so keen on the US style treatment but it was such a lovely bike that the deal was done. Incidentally, I still have the Triumph service manual and official Triumph tuning sheet somewhere.  Maybe the house elves are looking after these too. Here we are in 1967, a slimmer and fitter version of me with a full head of hair.

Wearing the approved safety gear of that era

The Tiger was a lot of fun to ride and at that time, was more than a match for most cars on the road, particularly on twisty UK roads.  The major downside was the upright riding position which caused substantial drag at higher speeds and above 70mph or thereabouts, the long stalk mirrors would fold back and trap me between them!  I think that the photo below was taken in early 1968.  The mirrors have clearly been removed and I'm wearing a Belstaff waxed cotton jacket, much favoured today by the chinless horsey set.  Mine was undoubtedly a health hazard thanks to accumulated road dirt, dead insects and god knows what else sticking to the greasy outer layer but it kept the rain out. It didn't smell particularly fragrant either.  It also appears that I'd grown more hair, styled in the "rocker" mode of that era.  A near-neighbour was a "mod" who owned a Lambretta scooter festooned with lights and a fur-trimmed parka for weather protection and a Beatles haircut.  Mickey-taking was good-natured in both directions as we got on really well, unlike the brawls which broke out between the two factions at coastal locations, particularly Brighton.  

The "rocker" image of the 60's (yeah, right....)

I still wasn't happy with the upright riding position and acquired an aftermarket sport fairing. I also fitted dropped "Ace" handlebars to give a forward lean.  These two items made a considerable improvement to rider comfort with the reduced wind blast.  Given that the Tiger 100 only produced about 34 bhp or so, it gave a bit more performance at the top end too.  However, the big drawback was that the fairing was just a fibreglass shell with no infill panels. It magnified engine noise considerably to the point of distraction so it was dispensed with after a few months.  The photo below shows me negotiating a tricky bend near home in Northamptonshire.  There was a humpback stream bridge immediately followed by a 90 degree left-handed corner where it was easy for the incautious motorist or rider to come to grief. Glad to report that I was never a casualty at that spot.

The Tiger with its full fairing

From 1968 onwards, the Tiger was getting less use as I was building a supercharged drag bike and had a Wolseley 6/110 car to tow it when I started competing. However, during a maintenance strip-down of the Tiger, I noticed that one of the cylinder liners had a crack propagating from a conrod cut-out.  I didn't know how long it had been there but decided to replace both liners. Without going into tedious detail, the person who did the job made a hash of fitting them and over a period of a few weeks, they rotated slightly in the alloy barrel.  The first thing I knew about it was on the open road when the engine started misfiring and when I looked behind, there was a wall of white smoke.  The liners have cutouts to provide clearance for the conrods when they are halfway up and down the stroke.  With them rotating, they neatly machined grooves in the conrods as can be seen from the photo below. All that fine aluminium powder has to go somewhere, the "somewhere" in this case being all the oil galleries which starved the engine of oil, wrecking the pistons too. Bugger......

A ruined Triumph engine

Rebuilding the engine was considered very briefly but with all the expensive performance parts, plus the extreme difficulty in getting all the aluminium swarf out of the oil galleries, the decision was made to scrap it.  However, the good luck fairy must have been looking over my shoulder as a chap at work had just written off his Tiger 100 and I was able to buy the engine at a very reasonable price. The engine was in really good nick and ran reliably until I finally sold it to a mate in 1971.  Although it didn't get a lot of use in the 2 years leading up to its sale, I had some great adventures on it with my best mate Rick and his 650 Triumph Trophy. The most memorable one was attending the 1969 Isle of Man TT.  Numerous trips round the 37.73 mile circuit were made, including one at dawn with just Rick and I on the course. I'll leave that ride to your imagination but it will never be forgotten.  The young lady, Anne McGregor whom I met there was from Scotland and arrived on holiday with a mate, not knowing that the TT was being held!  I still have the 80-odd page programme for the princely sum of 3 shillings and sixpence which also helps with the memories. 

At Braddan Bridge on a non-race day, 1969 IOM TT.  Rick's Trophy on the right

I guess this tale goes to show that it's not just the bike, but the memories which go with it which ensures that it's permanently locked inside the skull.

1969 IOM TT race programme

When the cat's away......

With Jennie in the UK visiting her sister and me having made excellent progress on the "honey do" task list, it was time to chill and do some stuff that I've been wanting to do for ages.  One of the jobs was to properly adjust the clearances in the MG differential.  I knew it needed doing as bits of  the shims were visible in the oil when I changed it in late 2021.

Not what you want to see in diff oil!

I only have an automotive trolley jack and axle stands which would make the job difficult in terms of access, compounded by my slowly healing femur, which makes grovelling on the floor somewhat uncomfortable at present.  The decision was made to do an overnighter in Auckland and let MG specialists, Paul Walbran Motors do the job properly on a hoist.  The plan was once the job was done, to do a solo road trip for a few days and catch up with old friends. However, the weather has been pretty dire this winter with another deluge forecast to start late in the day after the repair and last for several days.  The latter part of the plan was wisely abandoned as it's pretty ugly outside right now.

Driving from rural Coromandel to Auckland was straightforward but getting to Walbran Motors in Grey Lynn out west was a real trial because of the volume of traffic on non-arterial roads that hadn't been upgraded in decades. Driving with a manual gearbox in horrendously slow start-stop traffic is a real pain.  Fortunately, the MG engine runs cool which is a blessing.

I was met by Andrew, Paul's son and his team and given an MGF courtesy car until the BGT was ready the following day.  It was actually good fun to drive but a milky plastic rear screen on the soft top meant more than usual reliance on the rearview mirrors, plus masses of shoulder checks!

Paul Walbran Motors in Grey Lynn

My courtesy car at the motel

Diverting from things automotive for a moment, Grey Lynn wasn't an area of Auckland that I was familiar with. However, the ethnic mix of the local population meant that there was an amazing variety of eateries within a 5 minute walk of the motel. I chose a Chinese takeaway where no English was spoken but coped just fine with hand signals and pointing. The lady running the show made the noodles from scratch and the spiced pork dish was divine.  About twice as much as I could actually eat for NZ$14 (USD 8.50 and GBP 6).

All manner of boiling stuff, including my noodles

The size would be fine for 2 people!

The next morning, I got a call saying the car should be ready around 1pm, so that I could make the 3-odd hour drive home in dry weather and daylight before it got too challenging on the twisty Coromandel roads.  I then got another call saying that they'd discovered a leak on the rear brake hydraulic cylinders, plus worn rear shoes so they were fixing those too.  I arrived whilst they were still working on it, so took the opportunity to take a few photos in the workshop.  Outside MG club events, I've never seen so many MG's in one spot.  Here's a selection.

Our GT on the hoist

The grey MGB on the hoist in the photo below is apparently powered by a MX5 Miata motor and the white GT is an automatic.  Pretty rare I think.

MGB Roadster and automatic GT with sunroof

What you call a busy workshop

MGB GT set up for competition

A couple of very nice 50's MG T series cars

Instrument panel of the green T series MG

A corner reserved for Jaguar V12 XJS Cabriolets

There was a photo behind their reception counter of an MG record breaker which I knew nothing about.  A speed of 204 mph in 1939 from an 1100cc engine is phenomenal!

MG's record breaker

I buy parts through Paul Walbran Motors but this is the first time I've used their workshop and was really impressed.  Andrew, Jade and Nick all went out of their way to make me feel welcome and shared information with humour and good grace - sincere thanks to the their team.  I love working on our MG but for some jobs, expert assistance makes perfect sense.  Logistics from Coromandel to their premises takes some planning but their expertise and customer focus was well worth it.  Traffic getting out of Auckland mid-afternoon was terrible but I had a dry run to within half an hour of home when the heavens opened.  Made it just on dark too. The proper diff clearances have made a big difference too.  No more clunks and jerks when I get on and off the throttle.

Just out of interest, the fuel consumption on the return trip was 33 imperial mpg as I could maintain constant progress on the open road, using the overdrive. Overall fuel consumption over 4 years of ownership has been 24 mpg.  It would have been better had I discovered corrosion pinholes in the top of the fuel tank before last year!

Now for something entirely different which pleases me no end.  I'll probably receive eternal damnation though from any computer engineers who may read this. The desktop PC which I normally use for more complex tasks has been crashing not long after boot-up with increasing frequency. My knowledge of computer internals is close to zero but being a retired professional engineer with a decent knowledge of process plant condition monitoring, problem-solving is second nature.  Before it crashed a few days ago, I managed to run a diagnostic program which wasn't a lot of help on the face of it but I noticed that the CPU was running at well over 90 C with a light load, which I thought seemed a bit high.  Further research confirmed my suspicions and led me into the murky world of CPU cooling. This in turn steered me towards thermally transmitting jointing compounds which are used to join the CPU to the cooling fan, giving a uniform heat transfer.  Never heard of them until I found a chatroom discussion on the topic. The discussion might have been in Martian but I understood the gist of it as the laws of thermodynamics are pretty much constant everywhere.  Poking about in the internals, a quick inspection showed that the original jointing compound had partially vanished and the remainder had turned to powder which is hardly surprising as the computer is at least 10 years old.  

Internals of my Win 10 desktop PC - cooling fan attached to CPU

No normal or sane member of the human race has a tube of CPU jointing compound in their cupboard and living in the countryside only exacerbated my problem.  What I do have, however; is copper-based anti-seize compound for maintaining our vehicles etc. It has a high temperature rating and is thermally conductive. There was mention of this in the chatroom with opinions more or less evenly divided as to whether it would be an acceptable substitute - so much for expert opinion!  As the fan heat sink was copper, I figured that bimetallic corrosion was probably not an issue. Besides, my PC isn't upgradeable to Win 11 so its future might be limited anyway. With fingers crossed and sparingly applying the copper paste to the mating surfaces with a cotton bud, I reassembled it onto the motherboard. Hallelujah - the computer doesn't crash and the CPU is running below 70 C even when being driven fairly hard.  I think we can count that as a win for a computer ignoramus. Nice to learn new stuff to keep the grey matter active. 

 

Planes and some good walks

Every year, we try to catch up with old friends for a long weekend.  They live near  Wellington, our capital, some 650 km from our home and what we normally organise is a meet-up at somewhere different in NZ or the Pacific Islands; giving us the opportunity to see and do different things.  This time was at Mount Maunganui in the north island's Bay of Plenty.

Apart from the pleasure of catching up with friends, I was particularly keen to visit the Classic Flyers Aviation Museum at the Mount.  For some reason, it's not particularly well publicised but as a lifelong aircraft enthusiast, I was keen to see what they had on display.  To say that I was well-pleased is an understatement and we were all pretty impressed.

The museum consisted of a display hangar which was packed to the gunwales with aviation-related items, plus a restoration workshop which we didn't have time to visit.  Here are some photos to give a flavour of what they had on display.  

General view of hangar

Additional general view of hangar

Part of a B-17 fuselage mounted on a wall was particularly interesting.  It graphically showed how little protection there was for the crew from anti-aircraft fire or enemy fighters.  Seeing the bomb rack inside the fuselage was a sobering moment, if a stray round or two had penetrated the fuselage at that point.  Also, the lack of insulation and heating made things pretty unpleasant for the aircrew.

Bomb rack with bomb bay directly below

A couple of photos of B-17 anti-aircraft armament below:

Browning  .50 calibre machine gun

Ball turret

Stepping back to the early days of flight, Kiwi Richard Pearse was experimenting around the same time as the Wright brothers.  Here's a replica of his plane and some supporting notes.

The Pearse monoplane

Richard Pearse

Although many WW2 aircraft used the "shark tooth" insignia on the nose, the best known application is on the Curtis P40 - looks quite intimidating.  This version has the V12 Allison motor, not the Rolls Royce Merlin.

Curtis P40

The Catalina flying boat fuselage shown below is an interesting exhibit.  I wasn't aware that it had attachment points for jet-assisted take off (JATO) to reduce drag during take off on water.  There's still a flying Catalina in NZ which I saw landing at Lake Taupo about 20 years ago.

Consolidated PBY Catalina

The Harvard was a trainer used by the air force in many countries as a stepping stone to combat aircraft.  There are quite a few Harvards flying with the NZ Warbirds.

North American Harvard in USN livery

The Avenger was a WW2 torpedo bomber and I was surprised to see just how big it is.  Notably flown by George HW Bush in the Pacific theatre of war.

Grumman Avenger

The Skyhawk was the primary NZ Air Force combat aircraft when we first came to NZ.  My lasting memory of one was sailing in a coastal regatta when one flew fast and low over the fleet.  Loud as heck and we never saw it coming.  Turned out that it was being flown by a pilot who also raced in the same yacht class as us!  This exhibit was equipped with a rocket pod, Paveway guided bomb and canons.

Douglas Skyhawk

The De Havilland Vampire and subsequent Venom were early UK jet fighters. The vampire entered service in 1946 but the Swiss aircraft shown below was in service until 1990!

Swiss DH Vampire

DH Venom cockpit - rudimentary and small by today's standards

There were lots more exhibits inside which I've omitted for brevity but it would be poor form to leave out the pedal-operated models built for kids visiting the museum. A nice touch.

Recruiting future pilots

There were also a number of outside exhibits, some of which I photographed between passing showers.  These are shown below.

F86 Sabre

De Havilland Heron and Vampire

WW2 Dambusters bouncing bomb and Grand Slam penetration bomb

The "Mount" as it's referred to by Kiwis is an extinct volcano at the end of a peninsula.  There's a 3 km walking track round the base and for the adventurous, a track to the 235 metre summit. A brisk walk round the base taking in the sea views was sufficient rehab for my healing femur!

Mt Maunganui (file photo)

Jennie, Georgina and Mike about to start the walk

To the north of Mt Maunganui is the Te Puna Quarry Park, maintained by volunteers.  Covering about 35 hectares, it's a disused quarry with paths of varying elevation through all sorts of different plants, both native and exotic.  Another great venue for strengthening the leg muscles.

A park trail

Just one of the many species of plant in the quarry

About half an hour from where we were staying, there are the McLaren Falls and rapids.  Situated right by the road, no walking was required to enjoy the sight of the rapids which had a good flow thanks to recent rain.

McLaren Falls, Bay of Plenty, NZ

Great company, great food, lots to see and plenty of exercise - what's not to like?