Moving stock

I've been wanting to run down the tool business for some time and devote time to other projects. I have literally tons of whitworth,BSF,BA and AF tools to clear out and have been working out the best ways to do so.Ebids auction site is really a waste of time and Ebay is not the force it was,I suppose I could try the 'normal' auction route but without lots of advertising the audience will probably not have the faintest idea of what they're looking at and the prices the tools will fetch wont be much higher than scrap value.To buy some of the really big spanners now would cost a fortune but the demand simply isn't there and people are far more inclined to buy cheap chinese and indian tools than stuff made to a standard and not to a price.
Decisions,decisions.

Lowestofts Rubbish

The council must have been well over a hundred times to the alley close to me to collect bags of household rubbish left there by the occupier of one of the tatty flats on the corner. They know who dumps it,who the landlord is yet chose to do absolutley nothing about it.
I bet if I threw my rubbish out on the street they'd be down on me like a ton of bricks.
They can fart about fining people for putting the bins out a day early yet ignore some tosser littering the place on a daily basis
Why?.
No wonder Lowestoft is such a filthy place.

Trying to save a bit of Lowestofts heritage.

There is a large ex department store known as "The old Tuttles building" in lowestoft that has survived fires,two world wars and lead thieves on the roof.Its owners seem determined to let it fall into a derelict state.
A petition has been launched to stop this building which is of historic importance being allowed to simply fall down through neglect.
The petition is here.Save the Tuttles bulding.

Scams,con men and money laundering.

I see a few directory sites are still carrying listings for the ficticious company "Baconsdozen Industrial Ltd" the sites use my companes name and address but a wrong phone number and or e-mail address.Contacting them usually leads you into a cheque laundering scam run by some Nigerian con man using various fancifull names,sometimes he's even a 'woman' under the name of Precious Brown or Cassandra Casadian. The whole thing farcical apart from the fact that some idiots fall for it and endd up being conned out of money.
My web site is here click to visit .The old adage if it seems too good to be true its probably not true seems lost on people prepared to hand over money to these con artists,I've even had driving licences,bank statements and pictures sent here from those all to ready to believe someone they don't know from adam is prpared to give them thousands of pounds or dollars for cashing a cheque for the,
Sad really.

Autojumbling in the rain.

The weather was pretty poor for the autojumble on Sunday but I sold a few bits and pieces.Mainly sockets and spanners from the shop but some old car spares went as well.I was hoping to find spares for my Rover P5b but couldn't see anything.

Autojumble at the Rednecks diner.

I'm hoping to go to an autojumble at Beccles today.It's early in the morning,I've just got up and had a cuppa and noticed its piddling down with rain.This time last week I was getting ready to leave for a car club meeting at Aldeburgh in bright sunshine.
We'll see what happens later on.

Working on the shop front.

I managed to get some work done replacing lots of rot on the frontage of the shop.being so exposed and getting plenty of salt air hasn't done the paint any good but it's been a long while since any work was done to it.

This was the best of the gutters,there're cast iron and heavy but had managed to hang on despite the fixing screws rotting away.they sit on wood which had rotted away and also ran uphill so water had no chance of getting away.

 The gutter on the other side simply crumbled away to nothing The heavy wooden beam behind was soft and decayed and was cut out and replaced with new.

Two coats of primer and undercoat and a couple of coats of top coat should help slow any future rot down.The wood has beeb fixed to the wall with heavy screws and some of the 'Hard as Nails' type glue.I've been carefull to seal any gaps as before water had been getting in behind some of the timber.

Still up in the air.

Still more work to do on the building.The gutters are rotted out and all sorts of woodwork is crumbling away.The shop is in what is supposed to be one of Lowestofts conservation areas,although with all the plastic windows,satellite dishes and gaudy signs everywhere it's difficult to work out what they are hoping to conserve.However that means that the gutters will be repaired with welding and braze rather than being replace like everyone else has with plastic and the repairs will be in the original materials.
I haven't had much time to do anything to the club web site.Hopefully a few more weeks will see all these repairs finalised.

Latest instalment on scaffolding.

I've got a sort of scaffolding tower outside the shop.Most of it went up Sunday morning.It took the guys two days to get it all up,the road is a busy one and highways don't allow too much disruption so the bulk of the work was done on a Sunday.

Scaffolding aand other problems.

Hopefully I can start work on the front of the building this week.I made the mistake of getting a firm called "Be safe" scaffolding of Lowestoft to erect scaffolding but all they came up with was an endless stream of excuses for delaying work.Thankfully I've now found a proper organised firm with all the right qualifications and in theorey the scaffolding will be up in a day or so.

Real big spanners at real big prices.

I bought a load of big whitworth spanners over the week end.All made in Englans all,new and all pretty big.
They were heavy,so much so that I cream crackered myself getting them back to the car but well worth going for.These old Imperial spanners are hard to get hold of in the smaller sizes let alone the bigger ones,I bought some huge AF tools a week or so back and some went almost straight away to transport museums.
I bought a load of big sockets as well,shame that so many of these have gone for scrap,the price of new ones in the reall big sizes can be measured in hundreds and probably scrap for just a couple of quid.

Show time for the fairway.

I've been too busy to devote much time to anything away from business or repairs to the building.The last show I went to was with the taxi.Cleaned up and polished it looks half way decent but isn't what most would call a classic car.

I did a bit more on the Rover the other day repairing the passengers side window regulator but thats about it .

Not much to report

I've been busy on the building and just can't find any spare time.
I sprayed the door bottoms on the P5b and topped up the waxoyl (or rather the Eureka Fluid Film) and that was about that.
I went to a couple of car club meetings but in the bad weather most had taken their modern cars so didn't even get any pics.

Oiling the wheels.

I've now started stocking oil for classic cars.Made by Morris and Penrite.The older 20W/50 oil is recommended even now for classic cars and bikes as the modern thinner stuff tends to promote leaks and high oil consumption.

Oils well that ends well

I'm stocking the older transmission fluids.The Borg Warner boxes in most classic cars use a non dexron type fluid that can be hard to get hold of.The dwxron fluids might promote slippage in a box not designed for them as they are more 'slippery' than the non dexron types.

Taking a bearing.

I took the Rover p5b out and after a while one of the front bearings got a bit hot.When dismantled I found the outer bearing had cracked and was badly pitted.The bearing parts were all by different makers and odd sizes.I bought a replacement bearing but found the old one had started to turn inside the hub so the new ones simply dropped in.I had to buy another rover hub and disc.

Car club web site.

I've started on a web site for my local classic car club the Norwich classic vehicle club So far its a bit basic but I've been held up a bit with work on the shop.

Rain?.It must be car boot time.

I tried the car boot again but the weather was pretty grim.After a while I gave up,put all the stuff back in the van and came home.I bought a decent socket set and a small pressure washere so it wasn't all bad news.
I've been working on a forum for a classic car club I belong to.So far it's going well and I'm finding out about a lot of events I previously knew nothing about.Good idea to swpa info with other classic car owners,you never know whos got that bit you've been looking for for weeks.

Wet start to the car boot.

Funny sort of day at the car boot.Rain first thing but then it was hot and sunny.I bought one of those big tool box thingies on wheels and a pile of really big imperial combination spanners.I bought a bumper for a car,looks like it might be for an A30 or A35 or similar for a couple of quid and a couple of nice elora socket sets.The last thing that had sat nder a stall nearly all day was a Snap On timing light in its box and a compression tester by the same people.

Mystery car,anyone know what it is?

I found this photograph the other day.I know I took it but can't remember where or why,does anyone recognise this old car?. I seem to remember at the time I had an old Rover P3 but I can't think why I should have taken this picture,is it an old Standard?.

A mystery car,anyone know what it is?.