Bringing Home 1964 2000

Isn't that fascinating on the chassis numbers. Despite having a number 960 cars earlier - and I believe they are built more or less in chassis number order at that stage - Tam's car is registered just on 4 weeks later. This at a time when there was a waiting list for cars that was a minimum of 6 months and sometimes much longer. And in consequence, with cars being built exclusively to customer order - none for stock.

Nick Dunning's car from the same period seems to have sat around for a long period as well. His explanation is that it was a showroom display car that the dealer was reluctant to see leave the premises - otherwise he had nothing to show new customers what they would be buying.

I wonder if this is what has happened to Tam's car? The build date is just about as production is beginning to ramp up, so could it be that this is about the time that dealers first started to be able to hold a car back for display?

I think we really need to know which dealership this car was despatched to, Tam!

Chris
 
chrisyork said:
I think we really need to know which dealership this car was despatched to, Tam!
Click to expand...

I think mine was registered in Caenarfon in North Wales, if that's any help. It also is a reg without a suffix - presumably the authorities had a few still to go through in '64 outside the major conurbations.
 
I can now add to this to confuse matters even more, I have recently purchased my own 1964 car, which was registered 2/6/64, with chassis 2893. I have to say that I find all of this rather interesting.
 
My No 0316 and was registered April 64 and my other car was register March '64 and is No 1476 so some huge anomolies between build date, registration date & chassis number.

Given the huge waiting lists when new i would imagine the 'old boys' network had somethink to do with it, if you knew the right person or greased the right palm you could maybe reduce your lead time significantly leading to newly build models being registered much earlier maybe??

Just think it's great so many survive.
 
Don't know the dealer but will inquire over the weekend, as the previous owner is 88 he may struggle to remember though! EDIT just checked Google maps and the previous owners address is 0.7 of a mile from the Rossleigh garage!

The first free service was done by SMT bon accord st Aberdeen (Never heard of them) then every other service was carried out by Rossleigh of Aberdeen. Had a look of the dealer booklet which doesn't mention SMT.







 
Those pictures were quite interesting!

But I noticed that in the work list (the items/maintenance tasks) that they specify Champion N4 (or Lodge HLN - never heard of them before!) Spark Plugs set to .029 - .032 inches (29 - 32 thou) [and just to keep our resident Harvey 'happy' :p :shock: , 0.75 - 0.80 mm]. Am I right in thinking the 25 thou-gapped (0.63mm - though I seem to recall the information decal under the bonnet implied 25 thou was roughly 0.70mm!) N9Y (SC 9:1), N5(Y?) (SC 7.5:1) or N6Y/N7Y (TC) came later :?:
 
Well Its not quite 10 years since I put this car away for a short term :rolleyes: storage. As you can see time ran away with me and I've just got round to digging it out (literally) of shed!
Due to my lack of mechanical sense my friends in classic car club agreed to spend a day trying to sort her out and on the whole were very successful.
Initially years of dirt were removed and then onto ignition system, which partially worked but due to a corrosion on both ends lead between coil and distributor spark was a bit elusive. Bit of persistence got electricity flowing and a new old stock distributor cap had a spark.
Initial attempts to start were made with a gravity feed fuel supply as the pump was known to be bad! Once the mix of fuel and spark were established it fired up quite easily and even the oil light went out.
I had a new fuel pump to fit which went well until we tried to bolt it back to engine and the bolts weren't long enough, so ended up with the new top half of pump mated to the old bottom which is working fine so far.
A bit o rocking back and forward meant we had drive through gearbox and it moved under its own steam for the first time in a lot of years. An attempt to put some fuel in lead to a puddle of fuel on ground and the brakes are not doing very much but even so a couple of mile test drive was attempted and completed on private roads. Another issue is the ignition light is staying on. Most people reckon regulator points gummed up?
So it needs a good clean up and brakes going through, I have already replaced the 40 year old tyres. Any way so far very happy and see it back on the road in the near future.


20230410_173926 by Tam Ogilvy, on Flickr

20230410_183443 by Tam Ogilvy, on Flickr

20230412_122053 by Tam Ogilvy, on Flickr

20230412_122627 by Tam Ogilvy, on Flickr

20230412_153429 by Tam Ogilvy, on Flickr

20230416_140039 by Tam Ogilvy, on Flickr

20230416_140115 by Tam Ogilvy, on Flickr

20230419_134604 by Tam Ogilvy, on Flickr

20230501_163621 by Tam Ogilvy, on Flickr

20230501_163644 by Tam Ogilvy, on Flickr

20230501_163716 by Tam Ogilvy, on Flickr

20230501_164021 by Tam Ogilvy, on Flickr

Screenshot_20230501_172903_Gallery by Tam Ogilvy, on Flickr
 
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God, 10 years goes by so fast!!!
Frazers car still sitting there too, just beware of dust rust spoiling otherwise good paintwork.
 
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