[ Riley Elf - Lucie Mabel ]

Elfin adventures

Australian National Show and Shine Euroa 2017

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Sometimes you just need a little nudge… In September, a cheeky DM on Facebook that said “You coming to Euroa?” was enough to get me planning to adjust my social calendar to make it happen. I’m really glad I did.

The National Show and Shine is a day show in which the town of Euroa closes its streets to normal traffic and where all the streets and parks host a huge array of beautiful classic cars and bikes. Prides and joys all of them, and such a variety of American, British and other classics.

I went up with Lucie, repping for the Victorian Mini Club and you’ll see from the pics below that herself looked lovely in the line up of other minis. Her friends Elsie and Maisie, the Morris 850s and their owners Angela and Tony and I had the good fortune to share a house and a meal. It was a great time, and it was a great inspiration for getting some of the cosmetic issues I want to resolve sorted so she makes a bit of a better showing over the summer season… Holding out for my tax return…

In any case… here is a gallery of pics from the day, you can see my bent for British cars in that I basically didn’t take pics of anything else… OOPS!!

 

Lake to Pub to Bakery Drive

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When you’re a new participant in a hobby like I am with this new found interest in chrome, and motors, and the like it’s quite the thrill to find other similarly minded enthusiasts and to see that they occasionally congregate and ‘Do Things’™ in their vehicles. They may even have banded together into associations or clubs,

To be honest, for the newbie it can be a bit intimidating approaching a group of people who know ever so much more than you do, and have been doing it ever so much longer… So, when you see an event on the calendar that piques your interest it’s a good idea to send the email suggesting you’ll participate before you have a chance to talk yourself out of it. Much the same way as you should just get out of bed when the alarm goes off, instead of hitting snooze.

Anyway, I digress.

The Victorian Mini Club calendar included an invitation to the Lake, to Pub, to Bakery Drive organised by a couple of club members and which included town, country and even mountain driving just to give us all a bit of variety! I hid reply and booked my slot.

Sunday rolled around and so I got up early for the 45min drive to Lilydale lake to meet up with everyone, and then we headed out towards Warburton, stopping for a coffee and a bit of a wander around the town.

Once refreshed we headed off into the hill country to drive across the ranges towards Buxton where we stopped for a pretty decent pub lunch. From there the group hit the highway back towards Healesville where it was time for more coffee and cake at the famous Beechworth Bakery. I instead opted to replace a bottle of gin from the fabulous team at Four Pillars and then drove the rest of the way home.

I took the opportunity to trial a dash cam app and setup I have to leverage the cheeky 12v charger I have had installed and the video below is the result!! A great fun day, and fun to relive it, even if I should have used Benny Hill music for the video…

Wintering

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It’s been winter down here in the Southern Hemisphere so there haven’t been any shows or outings. Lucie and I have been out and about a bit just to stay running, and of course there have been days when she didn’t run and so she ended up back in the garage getting her innards looked at.

So she’s had a few little jobs done in the winter season, and every little job is one more way I’m hopeful she gets closer to being my ‘every day’ vehicle.

Back in February I was all set to take her for a long run out into the country but as I pulled out of the driveway and went around the block she kept losing power every time she wound down to idle as I pulled up at an intersection… So I drove her around the block a few times, it didn’t improve so I parked her back in the garage and took the Starlet on my travels.

This didn’t resolve the issue though so I drove it carefully to the mechanic and got him to take a look. If you know cars at all it won’t surprise you that it was a carbie issue… and a couple of tweaks and replacement bits in it and we were away and running, and like a ROCKET! So much better for that little bit of treatment…

Of course, I can’t just leave Bryan and Dave to fix the one thing… there’s always a shopping list she goes in with, and on this occasion I wanted to add on her 2nd wing mirror so she matched on both sides, and to sort out the problem with her liquid suspension the symptom of which was that she kept dropping on the passenger side.

Ok, so in normal circumstances in the hydrolastic suspension system the fluid flows between the front and back suspension via a metal tube. Replacing this requires pulling out the engine and the subframe to refit it so it’s not a job to be taken on lightly, and at some point in the distant past, the passenger side hydro tube on Lucie has been replaced by a PVC pipe. Not exactly able to hold pressure well… nor particularly robust if you fling up a stone underside. So, without boring you with the details (any more than I already had) The mechanics had the brilliant idea of getting a hydraulics specialist in to advise if we could replace the PVC with a metal braided, pressurised tube. Brilliant idea, given the answer was affirmative the end result was a stable car, floating on its fluid filled bags, and staying level! Top Work! (Photo credit: Josh Reeve)

Fast Forward to the first weekend in August and a beautiful day with a bunch of out of town friends all together to celebrate a wonderful wedding. The girls and I piled into the car and drove a couple of suburbs away, enjoyed the wedding and turned tail to come home before the reception. We turned into my street, Lucie coughed a little as we did so, and we pulled up outside the house. I ducked inside to let the girls in to freshen up and came out to check the wee girl out as she’d felt a bit funky as I pulled up.

She wasn’t having it… I could turn the key, she’d turn over, but wouldn’t catch… we weren’t going anywhere.

Bad news she was parked in the driveway… but, what good news! I happened to have 3 friends with me to help get her into the garage…

Hilarity ensues…

https://www.instagram.com/p/BXcvXlHA_IJ/

As I’m not sure of the rules about flat towing in Victoria, and actually for safety I ended up organising a tow truck to take her the 13km from my place to the mechanic.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BX4KOdvANxk/

And of course, she went off with a catalogue of issues to resolve while she was there… this time we got the issue fixed, of course which was simply wires needing resetting on the coil, but we got her petrol gauge sorted so I can drive her a bit more confidently (even if I do keep 10l in the boot… a 14l tank doesn’t get you far), got her heater rewired in, so now the thing actually blows warm air! How modern! And actually, to make it truly modern I got a cheeky 12v electrical socket installed… I mean,  a girl needs to be able to charge her phone on a road trip…

 

The RACV Great Australian Rally

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The Second event Lucie was shown off at was the RACV Great Australia Rally on February 5th. What a cracking day! It’s an event run by the All British Classics Car Club and raises funds for Peter Mac (the Peter McCallum Cancer Centre).

The Mini club met up at the carpark at Stud Park mall so that we could all convoy together towards the Mornington Racecourse where all the cars lined up, some for judging, some just for display.

Lucie was a late entry and so was just there for display, and I’m not sure she’s ready for judging yet, so we lined up with all the other minis there. Lucie, as is often the case, the only Elf in the line up.

You may notice when you see her in the pics below that she’s looking a little lopsided. Since she came over from NZ she’s had problems with her suspension fluid leaking on the passenger side (she rests on hydrolastic suspension as other minis of her vintage do). It’s since been fixed, but she did look a little wonky that day.

All in all it was a fun drive, and a very pleasant day spent meeting some of the other mini club owners and get an understanding of how showing a car like her goes.

Minis Represent!