Driving

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SEE ALSO – Our Wheels – almost 60 years of our vehicles (Jane/Me)

In those early days I regularly completed 40,000 to 50,000 miles per year in pursuit of my sales careers. Back then tyres seldom seemed to last no more than 20,000 miles and the engineering tolerances on engine, gearbox and wheels were not as they are today. Invariably there were routine and regular breakdowns and issues, not helped by the fact that the type of car I could afford was a low-end second-hand one.

For example, my Mini Van conversion had a nasty habit that showed up particularly when crossing moors – and my first sales patch included Bodmin Moor, Dartmoor and Exmoor. Crossing them on rainy days was a nightmare as driving through any lying water would often result in the engine cutting out. If you had momentum, pumping the accelerator might just get it to restart before coming to a halt. I traced this to the coil being located at the front of the engine compartment. I fitted a plastic bag around it with gaffer tape to ‘hermetically’ seal it and this seemed to solve the problem.

Later, a similar flaw occurred with several of my Ford Granadas but this time in hot weather. I would often travel up the old A38 back to the Bristol branch (and to see the family there). In the summer this invariably involved sitting stationary for hours in holiday traffic past Exeter, Taunton and Bridgwater which was when the problem would occur most often. Don’t ask me how I established this, but I found that if you took the top off the air filter (two nuts) and held a rag over the top of the carburettor while someone pressed the pedal to the metal it would clear the airblock in the fuel pipe serving the petrol pump.

On one occasion I was in static traffic when I saw a Granada on the hard-shoulder up ahead with the driver scratching his head. I pulled in just in front of him and walked back to him with my spanner and a rag (always kept these to hand!) Without saying anything I removed his air filter, pressed the rag over the air intake and had him gun the car – it started. Wasting no time I got back to my car and felt no concerns as this Good Samaritan drove past the stopped traffic along the hard shoulder for several miles.

One piece of early good news I learned was that, as I was using the car to enable my occupation, I could accumulate all the costs at tax year-end and make a claim against tax paid, and this was from the top-end of my ‘contributions’ – I never appreciated that term; this was no form of contribution, it was wrested away from you!

But it was something like a piggy-bank. You survived the costs through the year and got a nice lump sum back after April 5^th. Later I learned I could claim for work suits which I did. Still later when I travelled internationally, provided I spent more than 28 nights in the year overseas (and I did), I could claim back a proportion of my tax paid. Needless to say successive Inland Revenue regimes set about removing each of these benefits.

ASIDE: There was also the benefit you could claim on birth of your children. You received a full-year allowance for them regardless of when they were born. Someone sent us a card on Sarah’s arrival born which waxed lyrical on the joys of a child but its punch-line was ‘And Tax Deductible Too!’ –Sarah was born on March 30^th and we enjoyed a full year’s tax allowance for the six days that she was actually with us!

Jane’s father had a Singer Chamois and we bought one ourselves in an effort to seek more reliability. On a trip home I was on the Cullompton by-pass and my windscreen was shattered. It was a cold day and I had no AA or other cover. Normally if a screen is out and you maintain a reasonable pace the air in the passenger compartment builds up a sort of baffle that stops the worst of the air-blast into the car. However the Chamois had vents at the back window and it was like riding a motorcycle all the way back to Bristol. Fortunately our young baby, Sarah, was well wrapped – but we weren’t.

In my early days I could afford only remould tyres. I knew enough not to go for re-treads that would often de-laminate. Radials were the stuff of dreams that might one day be realised. I had by now ‘upgraded’ my car to a Vauxhall Victor FB – much more about form than function. I went through a set of remould tyres in under 10,000 miles.

 

When my local Esso garage announced a new line of accessories (including tyres) that would be supplied under a ‘No-Quibble Guarantee’, I had the front tyres replaced. I noticed the steering wheel was heavy and a little off-centre but I was only driving twenty miles to Liskeard so kept going. I got back to the garage to find the treads scrubbed back to almost the canvas. They established that an inexperienced fitter had adjusted the tracking so the front tyres were turned in towards each other. I had bought the tyres on the first day of the launch of Esso’s No-Quibble Guarantee – and made the very first claim on the same day!

On another occasion the same garage did a service for me and as I drove through Barnstaple (sixty miles from home) there was an almighty clatter and I found the bottom of my bell-housing had fallen off! Fortunately, this was not an oil-filled area, so I was able to take it carefully on the way home where it was established that another inexperienced fitter had stripped most of the studs in refitting the bell-housing it was held by just two intact studs. Needless to say I did not use that place again.

SEE ALSO – Our Wheels – almost 60 years of our vehicles (Jane/Me)

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