midnightblue
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Post by midnightblue on May 1, 2016 20:06:48 GMT
Well, well - still for sale two years later - HERE. Small world sometimes, eh? Chris. 3.500 € seems a lot. I quite like the idea of having an LHD crab, but not at that price. Michael Sánchez sold me MDM 146G for £1000, he made it very clear to me that it was a non-runner and pointed out to me all the problems. If he has a LHD car to sell, I would definitely buy from him again. I have spent about £ 400 on MDM 146G, and it's a perfectly serviceable vehicle. I would love a LHD autocrab, but only if the price is right. 3.500 € is not the right price. It doesn't look that good either. I joke about my twins being my co-drivers, but as a parent I am concerned that they have to make driving decisions; they've never passed a test, and they are only 5. They shouldn't have to do this. They err on the side of caution, and we've never even come close to an accident, but still an 18/85 is a tonne of steel and it's a five-year-old in charge. MidnightBlue
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midnightblue
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Post by midnightblue on May 1, 2016 20:04:05 GMT
Here you go - have an Italian 'Crab. On sale about a year back. Chris.
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midnightblue
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Post by midnightblue on May 1, 2016 19:24:47 GMT
Oh my fecking christ. That belonged to my dad's boss. MI means Milan, G means 1968 or 1969, it must have been one of the really early ones.
I think it was about 1970 they moved the prefix to the front, so that would have been a pre-1970 car. An Italian can advise better.
My father's was MI N5 4807, an Austin 1800S MK II. N5 means 1971.
This Morris 1800, it's still going?
MidnightBlue
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midnightblue
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May 1, 2016 18:37:50 GMT
Post by midnightblue on May 1, 2016 18:37:50 GMT
Can you give me some more details of this Hagerty you mention?
£ 89.75 is fully comp, full European cover, 2500 miles limit. I don't even get close to 2500 miles a year.
If I could splash out £ 90 or so including postage on dual carbs and still not get unduly stung on insurance, this is something I definitely would go for. I have a full clean licence.
MidnightBlue
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midnightblue
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Post by midnightblue on May 1, 2016 17:49:54 GMT
My father's Austin 1800S Mk II went from Milan to London on a regular basis, I don't see any reason why my Wolesley 18/85 Automatic shouldn't do the same. These are essentially very dependable cars.
My father hadn't a clue about cars. I do. I adjust the carb with every 1000m of altitude. And I rarely go over 100 km/h.
There is one difference. In 1973 it was me hanging out of the window saying ' Si si si possa passare!' and now it's a twin. Vroom. Kickdown the BW35 autobox and overtake on the advice of a five year old who isn't wearing a safety belt? Totally safe!
MidnightBlue
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midnightblue
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Post by midnightblue on May 1, 2016 16:08:11 GMT
The mini and 1100/1300 were made under licence in Italy, under the name Innocenti. The 1800 never was. The 1800 has an obvious family resemblance to the Innocenti, and therefore gets a lot of attention. The usual comment is 'how spacious it is!'
Innocenti is quite a common surname in Italy (it usually means 'orphan', though the literal meaning is 'those who are innocent'). The importers of BMC cars were the Innocenti family, and later they built them under licence. The build standard of Innocenti compares very favourably with Longbridge and Cowley-built minis and 1100/1300s. They are all left-hand-drive. The i3 and i5 (1100 and 1300) can be bought for pennies, and they are good sturdy little vehicles, especially the automatics.
Italian winters are colder than English winters, especially in the Alps and Apennines. Innocenti have an uprated heating system.
You'd be surprised how many i3s and i5s are still going. The BMC autobox is just about indestructible, and thus ideally suited to twisty mountain roads with ice and snow. It just couldn't handle the power of the B-series 1800, which is why my motor car has a Borg-Warner 35 autobox. The BMC autobox resembles jewellery. Mate it to a 1300 cm^3 engine and it'll give you reliable motoring. Mate it to a B-series and it'll break.
I think the decision not to licence the 1800 in Italy was wrong, it mostly had to do with the horsepower rating, which would have tipped the 1800 series into a higher tax category. Not only for car tax, but also for fees on the autostrada.
MidnightBlue
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midnightblue
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Post by midnightblue on May 1, 2016 15:18:01 GMT
Love it - more "on the road" tales when you have a mo please! Thanks for the reply. I was a bit hesitant about putting the post up, some might consider it irrelevant and frivolous. If anyone had complained, I'd have taken it down. What's the context of your icon, with the Routemaster in the background? And why does your crab still have French yellow headlights? MidnightBlue
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midnightblue
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Post by midnightblue on Apr 30, 2016 12:48:07 GMT
I was bowling along a Route Nationale but stopped to pick up a hitcher. I'm on the right, I have a twin with half her body out of the left mostly saying 'No no no Papa. Viene un'auto' and occasionally saying 'Si Si Si! Possa passare! The twins are conservative in their judgement, they won't let me overtake unless the road is totally clear for at least a km.
The twins speak Italian to me. They speak Colombian Spanish to each other. Our hitcher was Serb, so the twins spoke French to her, until I realised she was Serb and then I chatted with her in Srps-Hrvacki. She was initially a bit concerned about the lack of seatbelts, and that we were driving by committee, the chairman of which is five, but hey the car is nearly 50 and it hasn't had an accident yet.
A cyclist wobbled into the public right of way and, because I'm on the right, immediately next to him, I let him know what I thought of his road skills. In Irish. He didn't understand a word I was saying, but it was good to get it off my chest. It's 20-odd years since priorité a droit ceased.
At this point my hitcher, having failed to find the button to wind down the electric windows, located the winder, and gave him a blast of the verbals. Serbian is a very expressive language. How could he endanger the lives of these so beautiful twins etc. Then she said it in French. She didn't say everything in French she'd said in Srps-Hrvacki, but I will always treasure 'the rotted entrails of a pig are as roses to me compared with the stench of your breath'. He was a bit whiff, but I might not have expressed it that way.
An 1800 always gets attention in France and even more in Italy. The twins have been photographed a lot in seductive poses in their swimsuits against a backdrop of an Alpine lake and the 18/85.
The twins are 5. They are also comedians. They have the Marilyn Monroe hand-behind-head and smoochy-face (with lipstick) down to a T.
On a five-year-old, with a backdrop of a beige 1969 Wolseley, it's hilarious.
MidnightBlue
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midnightblue
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Apr 30, 2016 11:38:38 GMT
Post by midnightblue on Apr 30, 2016 11:38:38 GMT
I've seen an advert in print for twin 1 &3/4" carbs and manifold for Austin Morris 1800S for £80. Happy to pass on details, drop me a PM Nick My 18/85 Mk I Auto could definitely do with a bit more oomph, it's noticeably more sluggish than my late father's Austin 1800S Mk II manual, which was actually quite nippy. Does anyone have experience of doing this conversion? What does it do to the insurance? I've just renewed, it was £ 89 fully comp, do you get really stung if the motor car is described as 'modified'? MidnightBlue
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midnightblue
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Apr 29, 2016 14:32:30 GMT
Post by midnightblue on Apr 29, 2016 14:32:30 GMT
I do use Adblocker+, but this isn't really my point.
I have all this webspace, completely unused, which could be put to a better purpose.
If you own and control webspace, you can do with it whatever you want.
Rather than thinking 'what can I do with this free facility?' it's more like 'what will this webspace do for 'crab owners''?
It'll still be free. And Ad-free.
What it means for you is that you'd have total control over the website, but because cPanel is Linux-based, and therefore Unix, you can delegate bits of the website to others, and you can delegate functionality to others. This makes it a community, but still under your over-riding control.
Don't worry about all those terms like mySQL and phpBB and cPanel. Do you have kids? They'll do the techie stuff for you, and if yours don't mine will. They're taught it more or less as soon as they leave the breast.
MidnightBlue
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midnightblue
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Apr 28, 2016 12:31:36 GMT
Post by midnightblue on Apr 28, 2016 12:31:36 GMT
This isn't a reply to all the bits of your very helpful reply. Firstly, thanks for moving my request to the appropriate sub-forum. Secondly, I will shortly have a domain which is only used for e-mail. There is webspace attached which allows for 3 GB a month throughput. If you want to host stuff there, well you can show a lot of pix of spares you need/have available, and a lot of people can view them, within a 3 GB a month budget. It's a cPanel site, really easy to administer, and as cPanel is Linux-based, I can set up people like yourself to administer your relevant bits of the site to your heart's delight. If you know mySQL and phpBB, you could host this forum there, and get rid of the ads. This is a phpBB-derived forum, ProBoards is a dumbed-down version of phpBB 3.0. The basic cPanel package I am going for does 2 mySQLs. this is enough for a very basic phpBB. If you want to get fancy, the 'Advanced' package does 5 mySQLs, this will allow you create a forum like, for example, the BBC's. It's only an extra tenner. Details at yunethosting.com/hosting/cpanel.html# , I hope you read Serbo-Croat. As long as you don't put up porn, and as long as I pay the bills, the servers really don't care what goes on. If I bust the 3 GB a month limit, they'll be delighted, they can send me an invoice for the extra: only if they do that would I want to put up advertising or something else to defray my costs. Otherwise, I have for £ 17.79 a year a fully featured domain with cPanel, a couple of mySQLs, 3 GB throughput, loads of e-mail addresses... ... and all I really wanted was my surname as my email. The rest I make available to 1800 drivers and restorers. (not yet, until Serbian bureaucracy has done its thing - which can take a while) richard at shea.rs MidnightBlue
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midnightblue
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Apr 27, 2016 21:55:28 GMT
Post by midnightblue on Apr 27, 2016 21:55:28 GMT
Please move this to the appropriate thread. I'm not sure which *is* appropriate, so I've put it in the General Board, in the manner of odd vans being left in shunting yards while shunting drivers decided what to do with them. You know theo one's marked. 'Urgent. Perishable.'
Although my 18/85 has taken me to Italy and back, in snow, it really needs some bits. E.g. the springy thingy that hold down the recirculating odd bit is currently made of a bit of coat hanger, I'm sure this is not an BLMC approved part although it seems to do the job fine.
You can see I'm really into detailed and accurate technical descriptions. I'll take a photograph...
I thought P45 was Spares Secretary of the LOCI but this must be my mind failing, that's Tony Wood according to the Mag.
I did have the MoT bent and welded to my specifications before setting off on a 4000 km round trip through Alpine snows, but it would be nice if both the windscreen wipers were for the same car. One is retired from a scrapped mini.
There are one or two other bits that I want to replace once my pension has been paid (it's paid annually - I tend to be a bit strapped for cash in the weeks leading up to the 28 April each year), what are recommended sources of bits for the 'crab?
MidnightBlue
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midnightblue
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Post by midnightblue on Apr 20, 2016 20:01:14 GMT
I'm about to move my family away from Sooke BC; my Wolseley 18/85 is the European side of the Atlantic, I have a Rolls Royce Spirit II in BC (which shortly will be for sale).
Hydrolastic bits are neither expensive or difficult to obtain; talk to P45.
(Hydrogas bits for the later 'wedge' Austin Princess make hens' teeth look as common as pebbles on a beach - luckily, yours being 1971 has a plentiful supply of spares.)
If you do a bit of searching, I understand that parts for classic cars can be imported into Canada duty-free if the sender puts the right words on the CN22, or whatever they call it these days. It's not the duty that is expensive it's the handling fee - and the delay while Post Canada work out what fee to charge is annoying too.
I've never had to worry about this, I've just brought bits for the RR across as hand-luggage or hold baggage.
MidnightBlue
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midnightblue
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Post by midnightblue on Apr 10, 2016 13:17:32 GMT
If it's an automatic, you need to adjust the mixture every 2000 metres of altitude. You can buy altitude meters for pennies on the internet. You just take the mix down by a sixth of a turn. Remember to enrich again when you come down. This is especially important as fuel in Italy is now E85 and burns hot.
The poor little 1800 cc engine will be gasping with the reduced mixture. It's a heavy car and not that big an engine. Take it easy. In the middle of the tunnel, the highest point, you have the performance of a 900 cc vehicle.
There are constant patrols on both sides because they really don't want an unfit vehicle to get stuck in a tunnel. I ring them beforehand, pull over about a kilometre before I enter the tunnel, lift the bonnet, make the adjustment, and wait. Normally not more than a couple of minutes.
If you are on the Italian side, the Polizia Stradale speak English.
On the French side, you may want to write down and print off the following phrase:
'I need to adjust the carburettor of this vehicle so it will not stall in the tunnel.'
'Je dois régler le carburateur de ce véhicule afin de ne pas caler dans le tunnel.'
You'll go through the tunnel with a police car in front and a police car behind. They put up the 50 signs. That's 50 km/h, 30 mph. The 1800 doesn't get hot and bothered at 50 km/h, even at the summit.
They don't really have a lot to do, it's not a frontier any more, but they hate breakdowns in the tunnel, and the second police officer gets to inspect all the lorries going by. He sits behind the driver, on the left, and has a camera.
The Italian cars have the candystripes, the French ones are usually unmarked. Everyone speeds past the unmarked French cars and get stopped and fined on the Italian side.
The police have full communication through all of the tunnels. Because the Italian police cars have the candystripes, they sometimes just put up the 50 limit, and put an officer with a radio in my motor car. As it's RHD, she is on the left and can look at all the vehicles overtaking me, illegally.
Polizia Stradale literally means 'Road Police', Italy has several police forces. Polizia Stradale are normally quite interested in cars. They are not your friendly English Bobby on the beat, their aim is to get convictions, but if you speak to them nicely, and admire their cars, they can be quite co-operative.
Putting up the 50 sign slows traffic through the tunnel enormously, and causes huge tailbacks, but they'll do it, not so much because of the risk of the 1800 breaking down in the tunnel, but because they get so many convictions for speeding.
Because other communications don't work in tunnels, people don't realise that the police communications do.
MidnightBlue
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midnightblue
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Post by midnightblue on Apr 10, 2016 11:48:34 GMT
Likewise, thanks! I think this thread could usefully go in the Mag. Loads of useful stuff! Don't forget to include the link. I think I might go for static belts after all.
I like the description of my motor car as a 'Mk 1.5'. After pension day, I'll keep an eye out on Ebay for a Mk. II manual, as it seems there are quite a few things about my motor car which aren't in the Mk. I manual.
The advice 'in no circumstances remove the end covers to inspect the reel' was invaluable as I was about to do precisely that.
How many other ways could I damage this bit of Britain's motoring heritage, or myself, or bystanders, through not having the right manual?
As regards 'having my kids rattling around in the back', this is part of the charm of the vehicle for my kids. When they are strapped down in the back of the RR, which has quite a high 'waistline', all they can see is sky, and the occasional tree. This gets monotonous after a while, so they'll watch Frozen for the thousandth time, even though they know it now, in English, Spanish and Italian, word-perfect. If I hear '¡Libre Soy!' one more time I may be tempted to twinfanticide, which their teacher has threatened several times. (The Frozen song in Spanish is '¡Libre Soy!', 'I am free!', and they sing it every day nanoseconds after the school bell rings. Their teacher has heard this 220 times. I can understand her murderous feelings.)
In the Wolseley, the rear of the passenger cabin is quite spacious - due to better use of space, actually more spacious than the RR, and there is no transmission tunnel - and the twins can stand up, walk around, look out of the windows, make a picnic, make faces at people, and do other five-year-old things.
In the RR it's 'are we nearly there?', but in the Wolseley it's 'slow down, Papa, I want to see this!'.
I took them to Disneyland Paris, and we never actually got there. They kept on wanting to stop the car and look at France. Saved me heaps of money.
21st century kids just ignore the TV/McDonalds/Disney hype (except Frozen), it just washes over them unnoticed. But anything natural, like their first sight of a Percheron, and they're rapt. Because the Wolseley has a big glasshouse and no seatbelts in the back, they love it.
The only rule which *has* to be enforced in an automatic is that they can't squirm between the front seats because they might kick the transmission lever into reverse. This doesn't apply in an 1800. The selector is over on the right. In any case, if they are up front they have to wear a seatbelt. As there aren't headrests, they can see forwards almost as well from the back as they can from the front.
When I'm on the continent and stuck behind an HGV, I rely on a twin to say whether I can overtake (both I and the Wolseley prefer the more relaxed pace of the Routes Nationales to the Autoroutes). I'm risking my life, and theirs, on the judgement of a 5-year-old. They actually err on the side of caution, I've never pulled out yet without a safe distance of not only the vehicle I'm passing, but another one besides.
And 55 years ago my father did the same. The two main difference between then and now are that I don't have diplomatic immunity, so I can't drive drunk, and we have a woman in the car with us who says 'a trois cents metres, tournez a gauche.'
When you cross into Italy along the coast (all the other approaches are through tunnels), she says 'Benvenuti in Italia. Dopo dodici chilometri, al sinistra' and the twins go 'Yay! We're in Italy!', there's really no other way to tell you've crossed a national border. I think it's kinda cute that the satnav welcomes you to Italy. It doesn't welcome you to France on the way back.
MidnightBlue
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