:: Diary - October 2026 ::
:: Sunday, 4 October 2026 ::
TVR Car Club day! The weather forecast says "dry" but it's already raining, so much for that... After the monsoon we drove through last weekend, I'm
not minded to drive a TVR in the rain again this week. Yes I'm a wimp. No. I'm not a proper TVR owner. I'm going to take the moon buggy.
Dave isn't going today because he's racing his toy cars. Bobby is servicing other people's cars. So I've agreed to pick up Eric along the way.
The meeting has the usual stalwarts, but only two TVRs, a Tuscan and a Chimaera. Everybody else has also chosen to travel in dry cars. Then Hugh
turns up in his S, and with the roof off! See, that's dedication... Or maybe it's because the roof probably doesn't fit right.
Anyway, we have our lunch, and we discuss lots of TVR stuff, including isolator switches, punctures, differentials, etc, but mainly other irrelevant
stuff.
I discover that details of the 2027 season opener have been released. It will be in April at Stanford Hall near Leicester, so we have plenty of time
to decide if we're going, and then book accommodation, and then get cars ready. None of us, naturally, will do anything about it until at least
February.
Then it's a wee drive home, heater on and working, radio on and audible, lovely!
Oh, and, the puncture repair on the S is still holding full pressure.
Oh, Oh, and, and, I've added a "todo" article about "how to change a Vixen differential without taking the whole back window out and cutting a hole
in the boot floor", available in the menu on the left.
:: Tuesday, 13 October 2026 ::
I haven't been near the TVRs for a week, because I've had a bit of family business to sort out. Without going into detail, it seems that when shit
happens, Mrs Git and I become the default shit-sorters, cos nobody else wants to do it. This says more about everybody else than it does about our
competence. Never mind, my inheritance will be a pile of shit to be sorted through...
Anyway, in the middle of all this, I came across a box of old photos, and among them was this:
This is a photo of me in 1979, beside my Sunbeam Alpine that I describe under "Cars I have owned" in the menu over there <---.
When I bought it, it had been resprayed in red, but the paint was hanging off in strips. I rubbed it down and primed it, but in the process, a huge
crack developed in the front wing, which had been dented in and crumpled at some point, and then repaired with a 2 inch thick layer of filler on
top of the original crumpled metal, without the slight inconvenience of sanding back the paint first.
Even at that tender age, I had developed the sense to know that I had to fix this or lose money, so I knocked out all the filler then beat the wing
roughly back to shape, then cut out a section of the worst crumply bits and the rotting wheel arch and headlamp surround. Then I drove the car a
couple of streets to my cousin's driveway (I didn't have a drive or access to electricity near my house) and welded a new section of metal (well,
two new sections to get the shape right) and a new headlight surround. All of this metal came from the side of an old fridge that had been
fly-tipped nearby.
Then I took the car back to my house and annoyed the neighbours by spending days with proper panel beating hammers and dollies, etc to beat the new
bits into shape, including reconstructing the shape of the wee wheel arch lip and the flange underneath, before spreading on a thin coat of filler
to smooth out the final shape, before painting the whole car white.
Not exactly "concours restoration", but it looked a lot better than it did before!
:: Wednesday, 21 October 2026 ::
That's 2 years today since our pal Jim passed away. I have a day off from the rest of the shit that's going on around me, and decide to spend the
morning in reflective therapy while I fit new horns to the Vixen. At the moment, it has one - a single tone horn, facing backwards, that's
barely audible over the noise of the rest of the car - in fact it would be barely audible over the sound of a sparrow farting at the other end of
a field.
I've bought a pair of horns as direct replacements. I did contemplate fitting air horns, but then you have the hassle of wiring up relays, fitting
a compressor, and running bits of plastic air pipe all over the place. I did have them once, on a Mk 2 Escort around 50 years ago, and they were
very effective. But no... I looked at the box, and the air horns were rated at 115 decibels, while the ones I bought are rated at 112 decibels.
"O" level physics taught me that because the decibel scale is logarithmic, 3 decibels is the minimum change that the human ear can detect. So the
simple solution it is, then.
First I remove the bracket holding on the old horn. It's held on by a single bolt, but it's rusty so I have to unwind the whole length with 2
spanners in the confined space.
Then I mount the brackets onto the horns, but not tight yet. Then I make up a twin earth terminal, and fit the brackets to the chassis with the
earth termonal under the new bolt. Then I line the horns up so that they point forward and down (so that they don't fill with water) and tighten
everything up.
After that, all I have to do is a bit of wiring, and ta-da! No more feepy-beepy arse-facing puny asthmatic sheep baa - horns upgraded to twin
turbo super GTi de luxe ghia get-it-right-up-ye spec…
All I have to do now is hose up the mess I made when I tested them in the garage... they are plenty loud enough!
Later, I meet up with Dave and Eric to go into Edinburgh for a wee dinner and ice cream, as we remember times with Jim... we miss his silly jokes,
stupid pranks and wind-ups.
:: Thursday, 22 October 2026 ::
I got an email the other day from a reader, asking how to find wee jobs that aren't in the "how to" section. The answer is that they should be in
the "diary index" in the menu on the left. The site isn't easy to index though, it has to be done manually, because it's all written in very basic
html code, rather than the more modern methods used now, using web builder software or other online tools. It's a bit primitive - each page and photo
is saved on my computer and then uploaded manually to a web server.
The downside is that it's not easily searchable, unless you're on this computer.
The upside, though, is that I read this morning that a lot of public websites, including many government websites, several local councils and some
parts of Wikipedia, have had to be taken down, because of a security flaw in the PHP web language. PHP has been around for about 20 years, and is
the language that web-builder software like Wordpress etc use. There are more modern website languages, but they estimate that around 70% of the
internet still relies on PHP.
Well, not this bit. If the rest of the internet is a Ford Escort, my site is the equivalent of a Model T - it starts, it runs, it gets you there,
but it doesn't leave any cookies on your computer, it doesn't track what pages you read. It doesn't ask you to log in, or provide any details. You
visit, you read what you want, you go. Simples. And you never see a Model T Ford stuck because of an ECU fault or a failed software update, do you?
It's possible (and highly likely) that the third-party web server also hosts php sites - I don't know, I can only see mine. At the moment, I can't
see how any security issue on the web server can affect security on this site, since it stores nothing but random pish, and no visitor details. The
only risk is that the server loses its shit altogether, and deletes or corrupts my site. But if that happens, I have the whole site here, offline,
and backed up elsewhere, so I would hope that normal service would be resumed pretty promptly.
I get asked occasionally to upgrade the site to PHP, so that it's more "modern". I've never bothered - partly because it works as it is, and partly
because I don't have the slightest clue how to do it anyway, but it sounds a lot like "too feckin' hard". And I'm certainly not paying a "web
developer" to do it - I did that once for my business website, and you end up with a site that you can't update yourself. No point in that, is
there? Not unless you're the web developer who has to get paid for every change.
All of this problem was discovered, after 20 years, by AI searches. Just goes to show, artificial intelligence is still no substitute for natural
stupidity.
:: Monday, 26 October 2026 ::
An email arrived today from a man who runs a web site for former car dealers in North Wales and the Wirral. They started up in 1969, and ceased
trading around 40 years ago. Thet were main dealers for TVR, as well as Maserati, Lotus, De Tomaso, Scimitar and Lancia. Their web master asked me
if I could include a link to their web site.
Now, I don't usually do links or recommendations for commercial sites, but this is different. Although they closed ages ago, they apparently still
help various classic car clubs and vehicle owners. They say that they have a lot of vehicle sales / history information that they can provide to
anyone who now owns a car that they sold back in the days. For example, they show a TVR Turbo which apparently now lives in Italy. It was their
original demonstrator, and they have been helping the new owner to restore it to original, lots of info provided and help in sourcing correct parts
not available in Italy.
They also have a lot of original manufacture to dealer tech info, plus workshop manuals and parts manuals, all available free to any car enthusiast,
because they are all just true car nuts!
The TVR models covered are mainly pre-80s, although there's some good information on wedge models as well. Although there's not a lot about the S
Series, it's still an interesting read!
There's a link to the site on the "links" page on the left, or you can just click HERE
