Shitefest take three

Back to the field of dreams

By now you should be familiar with our friends Chris and Claire and their field of dreams, location of this year's Shitefest. Having been a bit disappointed with the turnout at the first post-Shitefest get-together and with more vehicles in need of tinkering, they decided to open up the field once more to visiting Autoshite members while the weather was still good, so off we went again, this time in the Maxi with its huge boot filled with tools. Other guests were James (another local chap), Richard from Surrey and Hugh from Hampshire on Saturday, and on Sunday Anthony returned along with new face Julian from Stoke-on-Trent, so people were prepared to travel long distances to attend and were hopefully rewarded with an enjoyable weekend.

Tinkering in progress. Maxi makes an excellent mobile workshop.

More tiddly truck tinkering

Saturday began where we left off last time with another attempt to get the tiddly truck running. A new clutch cable was quickly fitted and it was pulled out of its resting place ready to try tow starting it with the newly-working clutch. Initial attempts using Chris's Citroen C15 van were unsuccessful so the JCB was brought out again, but we were puzzled for some time as whatever gear it was put in, one wheel would spin forwards while the other went backwards. We eventually realised there was nothing wrong and this was caused by the drag in the diff due to a lack of weight over the axle, so the rest of us piled in the back and with a bit more traction the engine soon started turning over freely

Tiddly truck got a bit closer but still wouldn't run

Sadly there was no spark and this was diagnosed as a short-circuit in the magneto, something that requires specialist attention and couldn't be fixed in the field, so once more we failed to get the engine running. Thus thwarted again by the reluctant tiddly truck, we turned our attention to a simpler job and fitted the new cutter bar to the Allen Scythe. This was quickly up and running again and cutting a swathe of destruction through the long grass, but even when not running it is still a menace as the blade is so long it tends to hit things while the machine is being pushed around. It seems to be a thoroughly dangerous thing with no redeeming features whatsoever! 

A day of Triumph

Sunday's main target was a rather unusual Triumph, consisting of a GT6 chassis, Spitfire body and 2.5-litre straight-six from a 2500 TC saloon, a proper 1970s custom car with flared arches, wide slot-mags and four exhausts. This was last on the road over five years ago and had never run in Chris's ownership, but the engine wasn't seized so the challenge was to get it going. Telling my dad something can't be fixed is like a red rag to a bull, so I said it was unlikely this was ever going to run and that gave him the determination to prove me wrong!

Sunday's patient needed hours of surgery but pulled through in the end

My dad is an electronic engineer by trade and watching him logically going through the ignition system with his multimeter and making it all work was an eye-opening experience. A good battery was available but had to be carefully fitted as the battery tray is extremely rotten and at one point he leaned on the battery and almost pushed it right through the bottom of the tray! For some reason the spark plugs were only screwed in finger-tight so it was never going to run like that, and a bit of alteration was needed to bypass some DIY modifications to the ignition wiring that seemed to include some sort of immobiliser. After extensive cleaning up of the heavily-corroded points, a healthy spark was obtained (quite remarkable given the state of the distributor) so the focus shifted to the fuel system.

The fuel pump and filter were fine, but one of the carburettors had a stuck piston and seized float valve that had to be freed off before any fuel could stand a chance of reaching the engine. Despite adding some fresh fuel, the tank was full of a disgusting yellow liquid that looked a lot like piss and had about the same octane rating, and there was too much of this to drain out by cranking the engine with the fuel pipe disconnected. Eventually we decided to feed the fuel pump with fresh fuel directly from a can, and a cacophony of popping and banging showed the plug leads were in the wrong order. With these swapped around, as the sun started to go down the big six finally fired into life and settled down to a steady idle, much to our collective amazement. Sadly the car still won't move as the clutch and brakes are seized, but hopefully with a bit of attention to these it won't be long before it is driveable and we can enjoy some wheelspinning fun.

Citroen and Daimler - very different driving experiences

With the crops having been harvested since our last visit, we now had a much larger field to play in, and Chris and Claire had a small selection from their large car collection available for test drives. First up was Claire's 1972 Daimler Sovereign; with a 4.2-litre straight-six this is the largest-engined car I have ever driven and also the first automatic as my family have always owned manuals. It is such a quiet and effortless cruiser that's so easy to drive, and wafting around the field I could really start to see the appeal of a big powerful luxobarge. It seemed a bit undignified to be driving it across a field rather than cruising along a wide straight road, and I felt like a 1970s gangster trying to evade the police!

1970s gangster waftbarge

One thing I didn't like about the Daimler though was the pedal layout. It has the typically enormous brake pedal found on automatics, which is mounted right in the centre of the footwell with an extremely thin accelerator squeezed in very close to the wheelarch, so I found that I could only press the pedal with the right-hand edge of my foot and the rest was hanging in mid-air. The excellent brakes caught me out when going back to the Daimler after the Visas: what would be a nice gentle stop in a Visa locked the wheels and nearly fired me through the windscreen! The big XK engine is so unstressed that this one didn't seem to be doing any revs at all, but maybe that's because the rev counter is broken. Who needs a rev counter anyway as it's never going to be revving to the limit?

Although he has a diverse collection, Chris's first love is Citroens, especially Visas, and he owns several examples. The Visa had a very wide choice of engines in terms of capacity, number of cylinders, fuel type and cooling method, and the two examples on offer here were from opposite ends of the spectrum. The white car is a bottom-of-the-range Spécial with an air-cooled 652cc petrol flat-twin (basically a bored-out 2CV engine), while the blue one is a 17RD with an engine almost three times the size, the 1769cc version of the Peugeot-Citroen XUD, a conventional four-cylinder water-cooled diesel, and both are completely different from the Daimler.

The Visa Spécial, 652cc and two cylinders of raw power

The white Spécial was up first - this is actually a very rare car, being one of only a handful of survivors from the transitional models that combined the facelifted front end and the wacky original dashboard featuring the crazy control pods. It is far sprightlier than it has any right to be with just 31bhp on tap, no doubt thanks to its light weight of less than 750kg, but the lawnmower-like noise takes a bit of getting used to. Even at low revs it sounds like the valves are trying to make a bid for freedom through the bonnet, so when getting behind the wheel after driving the near-silent Daimler I initially didn't rev it enough and almost stalled, but soon got used to its high-revving nature. The handling is much like a 2CV so it can lean to crazy angles without falling over, and the best way to make progress through the bends is to keep your foot down, hang on to the wheel and let it heel over, which is great fun once you get the hang of it.

Much bigger engine and twice as many cylinders in this one

Despite being essentially the same car, the blue one somehow feels much more substantial, probably because of the bigger and heavier engine and also maybe due to it being a later car with a conventional dashboard that seems more 'grown up'. A 1.8-litre unit is a rather large engine for the size of the car and it develops 59bhp, which may not sound a lot but is almost twice as much as the flat-twin that is quite capable of propelling the same bodyshell. This one has the same roly-poly handling but a lot more torque and was quite happy buzzing around the field in third gear at very low revs, so it's much less frantic but still handles in an amusing way. I have yet to drive a 2CV, but Chris says even the flat-twin Visa is like travelling first-class compared with his 2CV and the diesel is positively luxurious.

Farewell, field of dreams

This was probably the last of these gatherings for this year as the weather is starting to turn, but we have unfinished business with the tiddly truck and are still determined to get it running. Everyone seems to have enjoyed themselves and a lot of useful things have been done so hopefully there will be more to look forward to next year. Thanks yet again to Chris and Claire for their continued hospitality and to James, Richard, Hugh, Anthony and Julian for coming along and mucking in.