Motoring for the Museum

Following on from the Haslemere Classic Car Show we have just organised a new one-off event – Motoring for the Museum – a fundraiser for the Haslemere Educational Museum. The independent museum has been in Haslemere for over 125 years, we can remember visiting it as children and you can still see the bear and the Mummy with it’s toes sticking out today. It’s a fabulous local institution and has won several awards. The ‘Museum in a Million’ appeal is raising over a Million pounds to set up an endowment fund that will enable the museum to meet the day-to-day running costs of the Museum and safeguard the Museum for future generations.

We ran the day along the lines of the popular ‘tour’ at the car show but opened it up to classics and thoroughbreds and so introduced newer cars. The cars met at 9.30 in a local carpark, the 1268 (Haslemere) Squadron Air Cadets helped with the parking and everybody wandered over to the museum to sign on and enjoy a simple breakfast of pastries and coffee while meeting their fellow entrants and have an opportunity to look round the Museum galleries and collections.

At 10.30 the cars started to leave on the outbound leg of the tour. Navigated by tulips, pictorial representations of the route, first used on Dutch rallies in the 1950’s, James had devised an interesting route of around 37 miles, mainly on smaller roads, some of which we’d never been on before! The route went from Haslemere to Lickfold, Fernhurst, Milland, Rake, Greatham, Oakhanger, Binsted and Frensham before finishing at Churt where we had been given access to a private car collection. 

The Lewis’ have a spectacular collection of cars and automobilia and very generously offered it to us to help the Museum. The entrants were able to spend a couple of hours looking around the unique exhibits and picnicking in the adjoining field.

After lunch the cars left the collection for another tour, a little shorter at just under 25 miles to wind their way back to Haslemere via Elstead, Puttenham, Compton, Hydestile, Brook and Grayswood. To finish the afternoon we held a BBQ in the grounds of the Museum.

We had a great collection of vehicles on the event from the 1920’s up to 2015! They were an eclectic mix of vintage, sportscars and everyday classics, mixing with modern supercars. Alongside the more popular MGB’s and Triumphs were a Hadfield-Bean, Aston Martin DB5, Alfa Romeo Montreal and a team of Jenson Interceptors.

Mario was obviously very pleased to help out on the day and after we had signed everybody on and distributed the route and information, we set off to leapfrog the route and take pictures in the very beautiful village of Binsted. We created a lot of attention with the villagers coming out to see what was going on. We had unknowingly clashed with a cycling event and we really confused them as they thought we were there to take photos of them! Several of the cyclists stopped to have a good look at Mario. We then followed the last part of the morning route to the private collection before a quick dash back to Haslemere to take pics of the entrants coming past the museum. Mario was in fine form following his recent ‘repairs’ and the handling was much improved as he flew along the lanes.The day was a great success, everybody seemed to enjoy driving their cars and we raised in excess of £2500 for the museum. Keats, a local independent estate agents very generously sponsored the event and paid the majority of our costs and they joined in the fun, bringing a VW camper on the event.

There are loads of photos of the day online

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Best laid plans…

…Last weekend we had planned to take Mario to Goodwood breakfast Club and a small car show but it wasn’t to be.

Mario has been poorly since his overexertions at the last Revival. After his last run at Easter ‘Doctor’ James had diagnosed the problem, and after some research we ordered the new parts – a water pump and Head Gasket from a company in Holland. The delivery was expected before the weekend so Mario was taken apart last Thursday and with due efficiency the package arrived on Friday lunchtime. The plan was to fit the new parts on Saturday so we could take Mario to Breakfast Club at Goodwood on Sunday and a small car show on Bank Holiday Monday… James worked on Mario, all day on Saturday, the water pump fitted just fine but once the head and block was cleaned it revealed that when Mario had got hot, the head had distorted slightly and left an area that water would still seep from and so the head would need skimming. Not a major disaster but a set back, as James’ mill wasn’t large enough to do the job and being a bank holiday weekend we wouldn’t be able to get it done elsewhere until after the weekend, hence the change of plans.

The head before cleaning Block before cleaning Cleaned head, you can see the damage bottom right New gasket

Breakfast Club was ‘Supercar Sunday’ not a favourite of ours by any means as modern ‘supercars’ really don’t do much for us, Mario hadn’t got a entry pass anyway (can’t understand why as he’s a super little car!) so our main reason for attending was to promote the Haslemere Classic Car Show which we organise. However the forecast was terrible and for once accurate, and Sunday morning was very wet and grey. The posters and fliers, we were hoping to hand out would have got very soggy, so we decided not to go! From Goodwoods pictures it looked like quite a lot of people and cars did brave the horrible conditions and cars such as La Ferrari and the Lamborghini Miura were among the exotica on display. (photo’s from Goodwood forum). From social media after the event it certainly looked as though one Supercar driver didn’t enjoy his day, with pictures posted of a new McLaren in the undergrowth! The drivers over enthusiasm or is there an issue with the McLaren – there have been several reported incidents of them leaving the road without any other vehicles being involved?

Rather than wasting the day, we took the opportunity of some extra time to continue plotting the route for the Haslemere Show’s tour. 90 pre-75 vehicles are signed up to do a drive of around 55 miles through the beautiful local countryside in the morning before the show. It is difficult to chose the route as we try to find roads we haven’t used before and this is the sixth tour we’ve organised! We also have to find a route that is; interesting; safe – we often find lovely roads but they are too narrow, plus we avoid difficult junctions etc; have a place of interest/refreshments for a halfway stop; the correct distance in a circular route to finish back at the show. We generally go out two or three times trying variations and then have a final run through to make sure all the instructions are clear. The route is written using ‘tulips’ – first used by Dutch rallies in the 1950’s – which are pictorial diagrams showing directions plus written instructions and distances.

 

 

1.Straight on  2.Turn right  3.Second junction at roundabout 4.Turn left at T-juction, pub on left, take next right turn

Example below
1 You have travelled 1.5 miles from previous instruction, 2.5 miles travelled from the start, tulip – straight on past hotel on right
2 Travel another 0.8miles (total 3.3) take a right turn, signposted to Lurgashall Winery, Take Care.
3 Travel another 0.6 miles (total 3.9) Keep left on same road, ignoring a turning on the right.

The sun came out and the route looked very pretty with lots of wild garlic in bloom and fields of little lambs, hopefully it will be sunny when when run the tour for real in a couple of weeks.

Monday was a small car show at the Frog and Wicket pub in Eversley near to where our friends live. As we didn’t have Mario to take we just popped over inn the afternoon to see what was going on. The pub was very busy with lots of people enjoying the sunshine and quite a good showing of cars. Our friends had taken their whole collection along to the show – a Daimler, Mini, Jaguar D-type replica and ‘Kato’ the other Subaru 360 which we imported with ‘Nippy’ our 360 and did the Microcar rallies with.

On Tuesday morning James was back in the workshop and took Mario’s head to the engineering shop to have it skimmed, 6 thousands of an inch being removed. It’s been previously welded up in a couple of the waterways and the passages need opening out again with a mini grinder to increase the water flow. In the evening he put the engine back together again and so far so good it looks like it’s working, although there now seems to be an issue with the electric fuel pump which seems a bit intermittent, so we are going to try using the original mechanical pump which is still in position and just needs plumbing in to see how that works.

A test drive will now be required to see how everything is working. At least it looks like Mario will make it onto Lion Green for the car show on the 24th, it wouldn’t be the same without him being there…