Beaulieu or bust......

actually Beaulieu & bust.

Sorry I haven’t blogged in a while but making a living has interfered. Progress on the car has been slow, mainly due to weather, but more on that another time.

Rich & I went to the Beaulieu autojumble in May. Went over on the ferry & managed to get to Birmingham Morris Centre before they closed. Rich wanted to look at the stainless steel grill but decided that it didn’t fit in with the concept he has.

That disn’t stop us getting a load of other parts (altenator, service parts, front cowl, rear brake parts) and looking at the nice shiny bits for the Minis in the store.

Saturday in Beaulieu was good, windy but dry. Sunday it poured out of the heavens. But over the two days we managed to get some of the stuff we couldn’t get at home in particular paints. Also picked up a couple of gauges, headlights and other odds & ends. Best bargain had to be the emblems we picked up. Had an AA one in good condition for the right money & then started to look at an Irish one we hadn’t seen before. Whilst doing this the guy in the stall said he had another one from Ireland & showed it to us. I couldn’t believe it – Limerick Motor Club – my old motor club. I’d never seen one in my 20 years membership. He said it came out of the Killarney museum auction, I nearly snapped his hand off to get it. They shined up beautifully.

We alsovisited the museum (photos will be on photobucket) but to help others here's two emblams in perfect order to show the correct colours if you want to fix yours.

I had ordered a boot lid & stainless windows & the hotel was good enough to store them for me & that was one of the reasons for bringing over the car – to bring bulky items back.

On the Monday we were heading back, everything going great until we stopped at Cardiff services. Bearing in mind it’s my wife’s Saab 9-5. We came out & it started to overheat. Tried nursing it, releasing pressure, draining the rad, but no luck it just got worse & worse. So nothing for it, pulled off in Port Talbot outside the crematorium & called the AA.

Here I have to say thank you to Tony from the AA & the garage he brought us to.

Not a sight I want to see too often!

They had secure parking & looked at the car 1^st thing next morning. They couldn’t find anything wrong but checked it out anyway & said it should get us home. They didn’t charge, said it cost them nothing just a bit of time between two other jobs. Brilliant!!!!!

But home it got us 24 hours later & I changed the coolant the next day & since then the car is driving better than ever.

What could have been a very expensive trip just turned out to be expensive!!!!!!