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.

Unsung heroes: Matra Rancho

Walk down any street in the UK nowadays and there is one type of car you're pretty much guaranteed to see: the crossover, combining the chunky looks of an off-roader with conventional two-wheel-drive underpinnings and exemplified by the best-selling Nissan Qashqai. You may think crossovers are a 21st century phenomenon, yet there is a car that could lay claim to pioneering this market sector way back in the late seventies, long before the term 'crossover' had even been invented. I'm talking about the Talbot Matra Rancho, a vehicle derided in its day for having the looks of a 4x4 without the off-road ability but arguably just too far ahead of its time, which had it appeared thirty years later could have been a great success.

The first crossover, thirty years before its time?

A fortnight of Maxi-ing

Today marks exactly two weeks since the Maxi arrived in its new home, so this is a good time for a quick progress update. My dad has spent almost all of his spare time since then on the car so a lot of little jobs have been done and it is continually getting better, not that it was at all bad to start with. The postman, himself a classic car enthusiast who took a keen interest in our new purchase, has been kept busy with regular deliveries of Maxi parts, which have so far proved surprisingly easy to obtain as many are shared with the Mini. It has now done more than the previous owner's entire annual mileage in just ten days and is in fine fettle mechanically, so confidence is growing with each journey and it is proving itself to have been an excellent purchase, despite breaking the golden rule of never buying a car in the rain!

The first show, three days after collection

It's a Maxi adventure

As you'll probably know from previous posts, we've been looking to buy a classic car, preferably but not necessarily an Austin Maxi, and had narrowly missed out on a fine example a couple of weeks ago. Since then we've been keeping an eye on various car sales websites, but nothing available locally on eBay jumped out at us and the good stuff all seemed to be overpriced and/or hundreds of miles away. Thus disappointed, just on the off-chance we decided to check the Maxi Owners' Club website again in case anything new had been listed. The reward was a car advertised that very morning, which quickly became the latest addition to the Rusty Old Rubbish fleet and means the Maxi urges have been satisfied and we now have a British Leyland car in the garage again after selling the Triumph Dolomite several years ago.

Second time lucky. There's a BL car on the drive once more.

The Roger Burdett collection

I imagine most bus enthusiasts will know the name of Roger Burdett as he is one of the country's leading preservationists and has a large collection of interesting vehicles that can often be seen at events. Yesterday I had the privilege of visiting his premises in Coventry thanks to my friends in the West Midlands area of the Model Bus Federation and it was a most enjoyable evening surrounded by fascinating vintage buses that was well worth the slightly fraught 50-mile journey through roadworks and rush-hour congestion.

Gentlemen, your carriage awaits. Coventry 244 ready to give enthusiastic MBF members a trip.

Success on a plate?

Getting the right numberplates...

Today I want to vent my feelings about one of my pet hates when it comes to classic cars, a small and fairly trivial thing but one that irritates me far more than it should: so many fine cars are ruined by the wrong style of numberplates. You may think that's not important and as long as it's legal who really cares, but the numberplates are what give the vehicle its unique identity and you can find out so much of its history from the registration displayed on them so to me they are the focal point of the vehicle and can make or break its appearance. After spending thousands on a restoration, why spoil it for the sake of a few extra pounds to buy some correct-looking plates?

Nice car, shame about the plate. It's legal now but wasn't when new and a reflective one would be much better

Shitefest take two

A dirty weekend

Remember the amazing spectacle that was Shitefest about six weeks ago? We descended on Chris and Claire's field from all parts of the country, wreaked havoc and churned up their land, but far from being put off by the experience, within a week he had decided he wanted to do it again once the field had dried out as the poor weather and ground conditions meant we couldn't do a lot of things! So it was that this weekend the now bone-dry field of dreams once again hosted a small gathering of shiters and much mayhem ensued...

The Maxi that got away

I'm sure all car enthusiasts have been through it many times: the excitement of a potential purchase followed by disappointment when things don't work out and you end up leaving the seller's house without the car. Rusty Old Rubbish may be mostly about old cars but there is one important thing missing as we don't actually own one at the moment, although efforts are being made to rectify that situation. With forthcoming changes in circumstances hopefully meaning the loss of a dull modern car and me being able to drive again soon, the time has come to get another classic, but the first attempt to buy one sadly failed despite our best efforts in slightly odd circumstances. Nonetheless it was an interesting experience and not a complete waste of time like some car viewings turn out to be.

The perfect Maxi that narrowly escaped our grasp

Fixing the sharing problem

How to fix Facebook showing the wrong text and image when sharing a Blogger post...

Like most bloggers, I share my blog posts on Facebook to attract more readers, and it used to automatically pick up the right image and description. Since I added the Featured Post widget there on the right, things started to go a bit wrong and no matter what I shared, Facebook always used the text and image from the featured post instead of the one that was shared, which was really confusing for my readers. Having spent quite a bit of time researching the problem, it turns out this is a well-known and long-standing issue with the way Blogger works, and various workarounds have been proposed but the one described here definitely solves the problem. It isn't particularly advanced but does require a little use of the Blogger HTML editor.

Unsung heroes: Austin Maxi

I haven't championed an unsung hero for a very long time so a new entry is well overdue but this one may seem an odd choice: the Austin Maxi. Have I lost my mind? Surely everyone agrees the Maxi was a terrible car that epitomises everything wrong with British Leyland? Well no actually, I think that reputation is rather unfair and the poor old Maxi deserves a lot more credit than it's given. I've been seeing a few Maxis at shows recently and become quite fond of them, so let me justify myself...

The much maligned Maxi. Pile of crap or unsung hero?