Sweet & Sour (part 1)

Over the weekend of 8th to the 10th of November 2019 I was asked to join the other twenty finalists for the Pride Of Ownership awards in the centre of hall three. I was thrilled to be a part of the show. This show certainly hit the sweet spot for me – Part 1.

During my time there I had a great time and spoke to many fantastic people and lost my voice as a result. Some might say that is good thing though! I even let a could of people sit in my car.

The show attracted over 3000 cars, some on show & some for sale, all of which made for a spectacular show. I took around 400 photos way to many to put on my little ol’ blog so I decided to split the weekend event into two sections. As the title suggests a fantastic time was had by all and i totally enjoyed my time there and a wonderful experience I doubt could be bettered. However – it was badly tainted with a nasty twist and sting in the tail, I will explain all of that in part two in greater detail.

I will start with the events up to the opening. All entrants for the show needed to arrive on Thursday 7th from 10am onwards up until 8pm when the building was secured for the night. I set off from home just after 7am in the rain. Yep I got the car out and it rained. I didn’t stop raining ALL the way to Birmingham all be it in various intensities I should say. I eventually arrived at ten past ten a little over three hours later. There was a couple of us early birds, promptly followed by a few more a short while later. The organisers directed us to the parking positions on the stand, well a bit of carpet actually. This is view of the hall before it started to take shape, a few behind the scenes as it were. There was a long que to get us into the correct area locations.

I started cleaning from 10:15am until 7:45pm when the place was being shut down and us stragglers who were there got turfed out for the night – I was still cleaning at that point.

The car was the dirtiest it has ever been. Chrome looked like faded aluminium and the paint a shade of grey dirtier.

Some other cars arriving as I was cleaning, these guys took it super serious with ramps and all sorts with mirrors under the car, some even trailered in with plastic wraps on the wheels.

I decided to waterless wash the car twice very carefully, then i wanted to strip the old wax off and start again. That was done by 70/30% mix of isopropyl alcohol and water. With that done I could then start to add a couple of layers of clean wax to build it up again. I took my pre packed case that I thought I would need- I needed it all.

With the car pretty much where I wanted it to be I could cover it for the night and start early in the morning for the interior and finish the wheels.

Early on in the morning there was out info sheet that was to be put into the stand next to the cars, this was mine.

 Here was the stand ready for the press and some public at 9am on the Friday morning. The Ferrari wasn’t completed as it turned up, but a few guys worked wonders on it ready for the show. then carried on with the work after the show, each day the parts boxes getting less and less.

At 7.45 we were not allowed in even a few minutes early as exhibitors, mainly down to ‘jobs worth’ security guards. So a few of us sat here looking at this for quarter of an hour.

Early and late evening I could wander around and take a few pictures without people in the way. So in no particular order because I can’t remember here are a number of pics.

So real nice old timers.

 

Something different, not everyday you get run over by a tank!

Once the day got busy I hardly left the stand. The other exhibitors were great looking after each others cars (except for a couple of owners).

The car got plenty of attention throught the day and weekend and was non stop.

So what got me so fired up? Read the next post and find out, it’s not pretty reading!

Part two will be at 2pm tomorrow! 

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Wings & Wheels

Weekend just gone I attended the Stowmarket Carnival which was held over two days with a classic car section on Sunday. The general public was let in from eleven onwards, but the cars had to be in before nine thirty, although they were still being let in at ten thirty. So, I decided to take my photos sooner than later without too many people around, and before more cars arrived. A nice mix of cars and some top quality restorations on show. It was one of the first days this year I could get my show board out without the wind and rain because the sun was out all day, I even had to apply sun cream, twice! There were stalls, a dog shows, live singing, and a fun fair too.

I follow on Instagram a group of ladies called ‘_modifiedgirls’ and they also have a website called ‘https://modifiedgirls.co.uk/’ I mentioned this because I see a FTO being lovingly cleaned by a couple of ladies. Without trying to appear anything other than a genuine car fan I got talking to Tara Ashton who confirmed that she was a member of the Modified Girls scene. We had a chat about cars and I have to say that these ladies do know their stuff. I also think it’s fantastic to see members of the fairer sex enjoying the car show scene along with the guys. Here is her FTO she rocked up in to the show. I said I would give her a shout out on my blog, consider it done.

This Mk1 Ford Escort GT was a preproduction model and was used by the media to review the car. A nice example with some serious provenance.

There was mixture of a few hot rods, kit cars, more modern cars and some restorations to wonderful standards. Did you know the Fiat 500 number was the engine size in CCs? That’s 500 cc’s or half a litre, for our US friends that’s 30.5Ci  Abarth gave the engine a stage 1 modification up to 595cc (36.3Ci) which made 31bhp.

Triumph models were varied, Stag, TR6, Dolomite, Spitfire. I almost bought a Stag when I was looking for a classic car, but when I saw the Mustang, my mind was made up. But I still like the look of those stags. 🙂

Some of the other cars that took my attention, I didn’t bother with the Nissan Skylines, as for the Golf GTI’s, Jags, Vauxhall Corsa etc, I could have gone down the road to the Asda car park and seen as many as I wanted. Is that a harsh thing to say?

From the heading I mentioned wings as well as the wheels. The Saturday they had a fly by of a Spitfire (the classic WW2 plane – not the car being propelled through the air). On Sunday we were treated to a WW2 Lancaster Bomber. If I had of known I would have taken a proper camera not just a cell phone. But I tried my best to capture this incredible plane that did three low(ish) fly overs.

I turned this into a black and white picture, I think it works better than the colour pics. I took a video of he final fly over, the trouble is you just get to hear the fabulous noise.

I took this video of the last fly over, the trouble is that the video didn’t pick up the incredible sound the plane made. 🙁

To finish the post I must be going soft in the head or getting sentimental in my old age. I had a guy Andrew who loved my car and was looking all over it. He made a good presentation to me on why he should sit in my car. I let him sit in it after emptying his pockets of keys etc. so as to not to damage the upholstery, I even took a picture of him in my car, just because I said I would. Consider that done as well.

It was a hot day, but I’m not complaining about the weather for a change. 😀 I spoke to lots of people and had a great day. More of the same next time I hope.

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A Day In The Bay; The Video

Continuing on from my last post where I had visited Meguiar’s for their ‘Day In The Bay’ series. I have now been given access to all the pictures that Meguiar’s took on the day, but more importantly the video of the whole process is now also on YouTube, all eighteen minutes of it. Here are some great photo’s of the car from the day, and after avoiding being in any photos for seven years of my blogging, there is even a couple of pics of me in there, (I’m the one with the shaved head and a plain navy t-shirt). I have selected some of my favourites photos from the day, most of which are obviously the ones where I’m not in them. Rather than repeat myself with a write up again, this post is basically pictures, I hope that’s OK.

The link for the video of my car in the bay, is now on Meguiar’s YouTube channel here or watch it below.

The Washing & Drying

Into the Bay

Then it was time watch and learn how to machine polish the paint properly. There was some tiny swirls that needed a little correction first with some compound, before we got to the waxing stage.

Then I got to have a go with the machines.

Waxing

Buffing

The Final Results

With the outside completed we moved to the inside cleaning and protecting the seats.

Outside for the finished photo shoot.

Perhaps my favourite photo of the day!

I hope you like the pictures and more to the point the video, as much as I enjoyed the day. It’s funny though, I still can’t believe that I am going to show them. So, if you are going to leave comments, be gentle with this fifty something, grey haired old bloke! 😉

Remember: This is not a sponsored post by Meguiar’s nor an advert for them. I did by some products while I was there and will be reviewing them soon. Check out my ‘Car Detailing Reviews’ menu for the latest updates.

The car show season is nearly underway for this year, and I’m looking forward to a few shows this year. But, as the calendar dates pan out, there are a few shows on the same day which is rather annoying to say the least. So I will have to be selective with which ones I attend instead of going to them all.

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First Time Videos

During some routine maintenance on my PC where I back up my files, then move them to relevant folders etc. I came across an old video that I thought I had lost. So I decided that I would share that video and a couple of others with you. The day was a Saturday 14th April 2012, I had a good mechanic mate of mine; Will from Park Garage Services came round to the house and help me with the start-up. This was a long time before I started to get involved with Mustang Maniac for my parts and the proper restoration process. After a long winter of re-wiring the car to get to the point I could turn the key properly, this was a very important day in the restoration process. I had no idea that this restoration project was ever going to be a blog that it is now, so there wasn’t that many pictures from the very beginning. I already had the old wiring out, well what was left of it that is. IThe old wiring sits in a big box and I’m still not sure what to do with it. It’s old, it’s brittle, it’s burnt and melted, it’s total rubbish, but I just can’t bring myself to dump it. Any ideas what to do with an old wiring loom? Please let me know.

The new wiring had been installed and nothing was neat at this point, or even in the right places come to that. The wiring was just connected up and roughly in place. That very early stage was just to prove the process to myself that it was going to work. Later on the new wiring would be taken back out for the full restoration and paint job, then reinstalled properly and neatly, just how I wanted it to be.

The engine was not cleaned or prepped in any way prior to this video. It just had the new blue spark plug leads, Pertronix Ignitor II ignition upgrade, new replica battery, one wire alternator, new spark plugs and new cables for earth and battery etc. The starter solenoid was an unknown entity so we weren’t sure if we were gonna have issues at that point.

Being as I had rewired the car myself over a few months each weekend, the wiring was also an unknown piece of work too, I just hoped I had read the book of words (instructions) correctly. In fact the good lady wife had the instructions colour copied and laminated for me. That would mean my dirty hands wouldn’t ruin the paper or tear it. I could keep the originals in a safe place just in case I did lose one section or managed to damage them.

Back to the start-up day; I put two gallons of fuel in the petrol tank and made sure there was no leaks. I had previously turned the engine over by hand with no spark plugs in place, that would make it much easier not having to deal with the compression, the engine wasn’t seized up. I had previously filled up the engine with water and some temporary light oil as the engine wasn’t going to run under stress for any length of time either. Oil lubrication is a critical factor to consider when the engine hadn’t run for twelve years or so for any cold start and engine wear. The turning over of the engine on crank would pump the oil around the engine at those low cranking revs. The car was cranked over for a bout thirty seconds and then left the car to settle for a minute or so. We then primed the carburetor up with fuel via pumping the gas (via the carb linkages) to help fire up and this was video was the result. The headers were straight out as there was no exhaust connected at all, the volume and resonance distorted the microphone on the phone.

My good lady wife was in charge of the camera at the time, this is the first time this video has been on the internet on any of my media platforms.

 

With the car restored I was arriving home from a car show and the car was filmed being driven into the garage. This is a nostalgic look at the before and after comparisons.

This time the Flowmaster 40 Series mufflers were fitted to the 3″ headers which gives that unmistakable Mustang v8 rumble.

This is also a first time showing of this video on the internet.

 

This video of the car backing out of the garage was another mate who wanted a ride out in the car when he first saw it back completed from the restoration. The final first time video on the internet video.

 

Then of course there is the mandatory drive by;

Apologies if you have seen the “Driveby” on my YouTube channel, but I think it’s worth a proper posting on the blog and not just a link.

I have started to review a few more Car Detailing products now and hopefully you will find them useful as well. I have found a couple of real nice products all of which can be found under the “Car Detailing Reviews” heading, the latest being from the Chemical Guys.

I’m looking forward to this coming car show season I must say, seeing these videos has made me realise how much I miss driving her. 🙁

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Last Car Show?

The car show season seems to be coming to an end and the Autumn is creeping up on us quickly. This latest car show at Fornham was a few miles outside the main town of Bury St Edmunds. I had arranged to meet up with the Bury Retro Car Club at the local Tesco’s to get my pass for the show. As his is always a popular show entry is only via pre booked tickets. If you turn up without a ticket you will have to wait to see if there is a space to let you in or not, as that happened to me last year. I arrived at the supermarket and found an impromptu meet in the car park with cars arriving all the time to meet up with their friends and clubs. With plenty of people wandering around looking at the cars before the main show.

Out club being no exception, we left in convoy and arrived at the ground and parked up to our allocated spaces.

After everything had settled down a bit I had a chance to wander around and take in the view of some great cars.

I got to speak with a lovely family about their car that they had inherited from their Uncle who had sadly passed away after an illness. It turns out this fastback was originally an export model and the vin number seems to confirm that. The car has a huge provenance of paperwork where receipts for spark plugs had all been filed away and documented. This car has all its original panels on it. The reason for the different trunk was that there was a dent in it which was removed but just not got round to repainting it again before he passed. We were talking for ages and the more I heard about this car the more I wanted to know. The car has all sorts of additional locks on it and alarms as the uncle was paranoid about it getting stolen. I can see his point here I must say.

I hope to catch up with them all again soon.

This may well be the last show of the year for me that I have scheduled, and the others I have made a note on depends very much on the weather.

In the future I am to limit my pictures to no more than fifty of a car show or at least split it up into parts if it’s a particularly worthy show.

My Reviews:

I have writing a few reviews for the car detailing products which I have bought with my own hard-earned money.

The first is the Chemical Gus detailer which can be found here. or cut & paste below. https://onemanandhismustang.com/chemical-guys-extreme-slick-synthetic-detailer/

The Meguair’ MT320 Dual Action polisher can be found here. or cut & paste below.  https://onemanandhismustang.com/meguiars-mt320-dual-action-polisher/

The DoDo Juice Lug Nut cleaner can be found here. or cut & paste below. https://onemanandhismustang.com/dodo-juice-nutt-plug-wheel-nut-cleaner/

The EZ Car Care Wheel Armour can be found here. or cut & paste below.  https://onemanandhismustang.com/ez-car-care-wheel-armour/

I have also added a little logo to the right hand side menu bar. This is for the McAfee Secure website notification. In other words it’s regularly scanned for viruses and phishing etc. Although this aimed at retailers, it can’t hurt to be safe with all these hackers out there! So you can browse knowing full well that this site is safe and I have paid for the service from McAfee. I am trying to see how the plugin works with my WordPress plan so I will keep you updated on that.

Finally:

My thoughts go out to you ALL in the USA and Barbados who are being battered by the recent hurricanes causing untold damage. I hope it’s all over soon and you can start to get back on with your lives again.

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Making Up For It

Another car show yesterday, and this one was at the same place of the worst car show I had ever been to. Last April I was at Stonham Barns in Suffolk and there was just a handful of cars there. So what made me go back? Well the car club I belong to is Bury Retro Car Club, were at the last show I attended with them and they told me they were going to be having a club stand at Stonham with a limited number of cars. So I agreed to be there to support the club at least. The day arrived and the weather was good so I had nothing to lose, even if it was just for a drive out in the car. I was going to be half an hour early for the gates opening, as I got closer to the event I was caught in a traffic jam of classic cars. Things were looking up and the cars were moving at a steady pace to get in. At the gate I was waved through after showing my car pass and directed around the field to the top of the field to a prime location for the club. Excellent organisation by the guys who arranged this show. I said my greetings to the club guys and had a pleasant chat before I had a wander around the show. The club had managed a gazebo with a nice selection of chairs too. The cars all looked great with classics, to sports cars and a Spider Van which was hand painted by a graffiti artist.

The field was segregated into many various clubs and sections.

The American car section with a few familiar cars.

Various clubs around the field, I spotted a light blue ’66 Mustang with a rare white vinyl roof, owned by a friend of mine David.

Perhaps my favourite of the show? For some reason I could see me in this truck. What an amazing machine, first time I had seen one up close, the classic Freightliner!

My final set of pics was around a great little story; an American guy called Larry was showing his grandson my car, and telling him about the Mustangs he used to own. My ears pricked up and I went over to talk to him. It turns out that he was stationed in RAF Lakenheath which was also where my car was imported to from Virginia. His grandson was called Harry and showed an interest in my car. I asked the little guy if he wanted to sit in it and he looked to his grandad for approval, who agreed. I took a couple of photos of the little guy ‘driving’ and looking happy in my car. I asked permission if it was OK to post the pics and gave Larry one of my blog business cards so he knew where to check out my blog and see himself on the internet! I hope Harry will get a Mustang just like his grandad one day too. 🙂

So it looks like I have been proved wrong about Stonham Barns who put on a good show after all, and I am well chuffed to see a good turn out for them, and they have made up for the poor show last time I was there. I have since found out that this event was organised by different people, so maybe that’s why this one was a success with around a thousand odd cars wedged into a large field.

Sorry for the large post, but I hope you liked it.

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Social Media Reflections

I should start with my head held in shame for not posting for two months. I apologise and I know it’s a bad way to treat your followers and readers. To my own self defence though, there hasn’t really been much to do on the Mustang over the winter that I can write and tell you all about it. I would like to say a “Thank You” for the emails about the look of the new blog, they have been very positive to date and I appreciate all of your comments. In the mean time I haven’t t been sitting around doing nothing over these last couple of months, oh no. I have started to spread my wings or is it; drift my tyre smoke, into other areas of Social Media. Now I must admit I am not a great fan of Facebook and all the waste of time posts along the lines of “share this post if you have dark hair”, “share this post if you write with your right hand”, “so and so is playing ping-pong and wants you to send them the golden ball” or “I have just got up and I am eating my breakfast”, type of stuff. It drives me mad in fact so I tend to keep away from that side of it. But, I do realise that it’s an important tool to keep in contact that just can’t be ignored. My reflections on Social Media have now prompted me to jump in rather than dip my toes as it were. As a result in that thought logic I have started my Instagram account which can be found here, or cut and paste this link into your browser: https://www.instagram.com/onemanandhismustang/?hl=en.   Search for “onemanandhismustang” if you want to find me that way on there.

If that wasn’t enough, I also started my Pinterest account which can be found here, or again cut and paste this link to your browser: https://uk.pinterest.com/onemanandhismus/  Search for user “onemanandhismus” if you want to find me that way on there too.

You will know the accounts are me because the Gravatar (Logo) badge I use is the Mustang Tribar on the blue background that matches my car.

The Instagram account should (in theory at least) allow me to post pics that I like from the car shows or other places that I attend, providing I have a signal of course. The Pinterest account on the other hand will be more of a save and share pics type of account, for all things Mustangs and the other female in my life, the legendary Marilyn Monroe. Please feel free to follow me on the accounts and I will follow you back, it’s only fair of course. Message me or do what you do on these platforms as I am a little new to it all at the moment.

In the mean time I have been making regular trips down to Mustang Maniac to see what has been going on down at the yard and enjoy the company of the guys while getting dirty and helping out where I can. Adam very kindly got me a surprise gift, he managed to track me down a rare almost mint condition 1966 Mustang Sales Brochure. I have scanned it as well as created a PDF document and shared it above in the menu “Articles/1966 Sales Brochure”, or click here for the hyper link. I have been after one of these brochures for a long time and this is the real deal and not a copy. I was so chuffed with it that I couldn’t speak for a while. Thinking about it – maybe that was the plan? Seriously though, it’s amazing and has now been stored away very carefully.

When the weather has been nice I have rolled out the Mustang out of the garage and given her a much needed clean to get rid of that pesky layer of dust on the paint job which is hiding under the dust cover. Why? Because I can and it’s a tenuous excuse to wax it again and see glorious reflections in my paint job. I also wanted to build up a nice few layers of wax as much as I can before the new car show season starts. Well that was my excuse and I’m sticking to it. A little while ago on the blog heading menus, I started a new section called “Car Detailing Reviews”. This is going to be used for the products that I use, or have used with my personal reviews on those products, which I have purchased with my own hard earned money. Some have been amazing while others not so. The recent additions that I have finally gotten around to writing up about are; Meguiar’s “Gold Class Carnauba Plus” wax, click here for that review. Here are a couple of pics to tease you a bit on that review.

I also have been looking for a good quality product for my Magnum 500 chrome wheels to keep them in tip top shape without damaging the polished surfaces. I found a product called “Mint Rims Wheel Wax” by Auto Finesse, click here for that review, with a couple of pics to get you going.

The wheel wax was on a special offer at the time, so I purchased another of the Auto Finesse range “Mercury Metal Polish”, for that review click here to see what I think of that product. A pic or two from the review.

Finally a question.

I have had a couple of requests to be a guest writer on my blog. Nothing wrong with that of course, and it could be good. But, when I responded back via email they didn’t want to give me any details and just wanted to post on my blog. Is it not courtesy to let the owner of the blog know what you are going to post about or not? I appreciate this blog has a limited appeal as it’s (mostly) about Mustangs, the last thing I want to do is have a post on the there about the latest Nike shoes or the benefits of whistling with one finger in your ear! Any thoughts on how this “guest blogger” process works? I would be grateful to know.

Hopefully my next post won’t be so long a wait!

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A Freshen Up

My first proper post of the new year comes at the end of the first month, yes I know that is pretty bad, but there isn’t anything to really say when there are no car shows, (lame excuse time). Is it too late to wish you all a Happy New Year? Anyway, towards the end of December last year I had an email to say that the old blog theme was a bit too dark and sometimes difficult to read on a cell phone. That got me thinking about a very valid point. I hadn’t changed the look in years, so I thought I would update the theme to a lighter and much fresher look. The title for this post was going to be a “A Quick Freshen Up”, unfortunatly it wasn’t anything like as fast as it could have been, so I dropped the “quick”. The process started off with me sifting through lots of themes to see what they looked like, can I have the menu where I wanted it, pictures, widgets etc. I found one that I liked and had created the new header pic. Alas all was not good when I checked the look on other browsers and page sizes. The header image was resized with the page style, that just caused havoc with the title I edited onto a photo itself, what that actually means is that the top part of the header picture couldn’t be seen on wide-screen versions, then only half of the title on the mobile screens. After looking at other various themes I have settled on this one along with another revised new header pic. The old header was based on the car being built with the lights on and the grill. As my car has been completed for a year now (which is still being enjoyed by yours truly), I thought why not have a nice pic of the car, so there it is. I have kept a nod to the old blog pages with the background “pony” image just being an inverted version, with a slight tint added now. I hope people don’t turn away thinking it’s the wrong blog. 🙁

So it was out with the old, and in with the new!

The blog may have a new look and yet I tried to make it still feel the same, so what’s the best bit of the blog now? It’s still the same ol’ me writing about anything however tenuously related to Mustangs. 🙂 Please let me know what you think of the revised blog, did you prefer the old style or like the new lighter version?

Towards the end of last year was interviewed Dennis Fletcher and he posted it on his blog. The last couple of posts from me were reblogs from his site: Customs N Classics, I hope you liked the reads as much as I enjoyed doing it.

The car got a treat over the Holidays, as I asked for donations to the “help keep the Mustang warm” fund. I had been saving up for a while and these came up as a real cheap deal so I ordered them and laid them in the freezing cold. These were 7mm solid PVC, coin top, click together style tiles at half a meter each tile. I ignored the fitting guide (as men do), and made sure that the car’s tyres would run down the middle of the tiles and not across the joins.

garagefloor5

The tiles have made a big difference to the temperature in the garage, now it’s not as dusty, non-slip and so much easier to clean up. Not that I spilt anything on the new tiles when they were less than twenty-four hours old! 🙁

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Videos & A Great Soundtrack

On my last post I mentioned that I had a couple of videos to be created and uploaded. The good news is that they are now on my YouTube channel to be viewed as well. I couldn’t wait to do them.

A quick note to point out here,  the carburetor was set up at idle and will run all day long like that. But, when the transmission puts the carb under load it will need a few more tweaks for choke, mixtures and float bowls etc. to become more stable. Hence the car sometimes cuts out when cold while engaging a drive gear. It’s an easily sorted out problem of course, but the car will need a few miles under its belt first before those small final adjustments are made once things settle down.

Turn up the volume & enjoy 🙂

The Workshop Move:

The first is of the car being moved for the first from the workshop under her own power. This video was kindly taken by Yogi at Mustang Maniac on Thursday 21st May 2015. The car had all the fluids checked and topped up before attempting to engage the drive from the transmission. The car was lifted off the ground on the ramps and the drive gearing selected for the transmission without load and given some gas to change gears. With the transmission and drive shafts looking OK, it could be stopped and lowered back to the floor. The car was then started up and driven out of the workshop ready to be loaded onto the truck to take her to a show.

Workshop1

The video can also be found on YouTube by clicking here,

First Public Showing:

With the best 2:30 sound track!

enfield15-14

Enfield Pageant 21 – 23 May 2015 my car makes its first appearance to the public. The car still has no glass at this point so had to be covered at night and during any weather problems. The car starts fine from cold of course but needs a warm up for the transmission fluids too. This video has a nice extended soundtrack to hear the exhaust note on grass which tends to dull the sound a little. You can hear the difference when the car starts on the flat-bed and when it starts on the grass. If you look in the background you can see some people starting to gather around the car while Adam warms her up.

The video can also be found on YouTube by clicking here,

My main channel with all the videos so far can be found by clicking on the Logo below:

click here for the link

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