Lagonda Rapiers

12 minute(s) of a 484 minute read

On a slightly different tack, I receive a desk calendar every year from the Strohmer Family in Switzerland. They run the West End Hotel in Merano. We stayed with them some years ago on one of our numerous adventures in Europe. Merano (NOT Milano which is in Italy) is an ideal base for anyone wanting to enjoy a week or two exploring the Swiss Alps. For our guide book we used a little book titled"Motorcycle Journeys through the Alps" by John Herman.
I can recommend both to any one planing a holiday exploring in this fabulous part of the world.
Just reading some of John Herman's descriptions of his various rides in the Alps is enough to make you want to go.
There are excellent descriptions, maps  and photographs throughout the book.
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We stayed for seven or eight days/relaxing nights at the West End Hotel.

12-18-2018

So that no one feels left out I have attached a copy of our "Christmas/End of another Year Letter.
 
Welcome to our year 2018.
 
2018 has been a somewhat different year but none the less an exciting one.
Without doubt the most important happening was Helen’s decision to have her right hip “replaced”. This has made a vast difference to her mobility and overall comfort.  The operation took place on May 15th and Helen spent four days in the Box Hill Hospital followed by an extended period with her going as an outpatient to physiotherapy for an hour or so twice per week on a Tuesday and Thursday morning until mid July.
Typically she has made a great recovery and is now back to playing her weekly round of Golf at “Heidelberg” her one concession is to hire a “cart’ rather than walking the 18 holes. Each week her game is improving.
Helen’s other important celebration was her 80th Birthday, this occasion was somehow extended to cover two or three weeks, with friends and family joining in. The first event was a family affair with our four and their respective partners and families enjoying Lunch at the Riverwalk Cafe. This also included my sister Beth and her friend Vytas. Our son Nic along with his wife Susannah and their two, Julius and Helena, made a special trip over from Adelaide. The following weekend we had a special Sunday Lunch with 30 friends coming to celebrate with us at home. Another fabulous day!
Apart from Helen’s Golf and U3A activities, French, Strength Training and Yoga, as most you already know, our joint Vintage Car activities take up much of our leisure time. The 1934 Lagonda Rapier has been central to this since I first bought it in 1978, a long time ago. Added to this, buying restoring and selling Vintage “Basket cases” is a form of compulsory saving for me. This is my contribution to our “Going away Fund. This years main addition to this fund came in the form of:-
1. The sale of the 1920 Studebaker mentioned in last years letter. The has gone off to a far more dedicated person in England.
This was followed up by the purchase of :-
2. A 1926 Fiat 501.  Bought as several trailer loads of someone else’s junk. These rather pedestrian little Italian cars seem to have quite a following, especially when disguised as a Targa Florio “racer”.
I make a habit of researching any relevant history of the particular make and model that is my then current project car. While doing this I discovered that in the early 1920s a young Czechoslovakian lady made quite an impact on European motor racing. She later went on to become a famous Bugatti driver. Eliška Junková (16 November 1900 – 5 January 1994), born Alžběta Pospíšilová and also known as Elisabeth Junek.
For convenience I will use her anglicised name. Either way while not pretending to build a replica of her car, I decided to make my Fiat a “salute to her memory”. It has progressed from a load of old rubbish to a restored “rolling chassis” with a well advanced aluminium clad sporting two seater body. Now I really cannot explain but my recent “restorations” have seemingly progressed so far when I will wake up one morning having decided overnight that I really have had enough of this nonsense. Without further thought or discussion, I will decide that I have done enough, go on-line to the Prewarcar website and advertise the car for sale. In the case of the Fiat the response to my advert was so quick I had barely stepped away from my computer than I received the first of a rush of enquiries. So much so that I could even sell a similar pile of Fiat parts that our son Steve had bought from a deceased estate in the north-western country town of Stawell. Since buying his “Fiat” Steve had decided not to follow in his father’s footsteps, and so was glad to be rid of it so easily.
Both “collections” are now packed into the one container and headed to the new owner in England.
With all this “out of the way” we could start thinking about our next five yearly visit to England and France.
This is Helen’s territory and she now hard at work sorting out Air travel and Ferry schedules for Channel crossings. We have decided that as we had been to Jersey some years ago that we should try going via Guernsey we will have a one night stop over on the island. In fact the voyage from Guernsey to St Marlo requires a short stay on Jersey where we are required to change Ferries.
But before that I have a heap of work to make the Rapier ready. To meet present day Australian Border Force (Customs) requirements I have sent my spare set of the vital internal gearbox parts to England to be relined with asbestos-free material. The Rapier has an ENV Preselector gearbox that uses special linings on a series of “brake” bands to engage the various gears. These require a special friction material designed to operate inside the gearbox filled with oil. To replace these I must first totally dismantle the gearbox. I have already had all the car’s brake linings replaced with similar asbestos free material.
Without doing this work on the car it is liable to be impounded by the Australian Border Force on its  return to Australia. The only other alternative would be to sell the car in England; This is not an option!
I am currently waiting very impatiently for the vital parts to return from England. I do not really want to start taking the car apart until I am sure that I have everything to complete the gearbox rebuild. Even then I will have to do the job in record time to meet all the shipping etc deadlines. Unfortunately some of the people I am forced to deal with are not noted for their speed . The electronic “tracking of parcels makes interesting reading. It has taken Twelve Days for the 2 kg parcel to do a journey that I am reliably informed should take 1hour and 35 minutes travelling by bus & train.
Hopefully the courier firm involved may pass the parcel to Santa for him to deliver it to me.
Now back to our more recent activities in the Lagonda Rapier, the most recent outing was for the VSCC Alpine Trial. This event took us well into the mountains one of the high points in the drive was crossing McKillops Bridge, this is said to be one of the longest Timber bed bridges in the world. It is 255 metres long and is a single lane bridge.
see https://www.dangerousroads.org/australia-and-oceania/australia/6145-mckillops-bridge.html
But this just one bridge in four days motoring over almost 2,000kms including over 300kms of dirt roads. It was along this road that we took a minor excursion into the bush. Fortunately a group of members of the Kooweerup and Lang Lang Rotary Club’s 4 Wheel Drive section came along at exactly the right time and with their help we were back on the road and on our way.
We completed the “Alpine” with out further problems although we did cut the final drive home short as most of the way we were driving in drizzling rain. I must add that this years “Alpine” was a First for us in that for the first time we had entered as Tourists rather than taking the “Competitive” option; the main difference being that we were not required to find the answers to pages of questions designed to prove that we had taken the proscribed route.
For those people wanting to follow more closely our adventure on a map of Victoria and Southern New South Wales, our first nights stop was Bairnsdale, where the Trial officially started. The next night’s destination was Jindabyne, followed by Omeo and finally Mansfield. At no time could we be accused of simply following the Highway, if anything the opposite. At one stage on the road into Mansfield we drove very slowly and very carefully through a huge mob of cattle that due to the drought conditions had been turned out on to the “Long Paddock” , the grass verges along either side of the road. We later learnt that each of ten farmers had combined to add 50 head of cattle to the mob each, bringing the total to around 500! At mansfield we slept at a huge motel style Ski Lodge that had been built in the early years of the last century as a Convent/school for young Catholic Ladies. Being the last night everybody came together for Dinner and Discussion at one of the towns hotels.
Again from Mansfield rather than charge down the Highway we took a devious route going back into the nearby “Hill Country”.
 
For the final event for the year the VSCC had a relatively short tour through the Dandenong Ranges finishing at Belgrave with Lunch at the local RSL. (Returned Soldiers League) Probably typically we opted not to return home directly down the main road deciding instead to make detour home via side roads through Lillydale, Here we ran into early peak hour traffic being brought to a crawl. Most uncharacteristically the Rapier started to over heat, normally this is automatically countered by the thermo controlled electric fan coming on to bring the temperature down again. It is quite some time, at least two or three years since the fan has been required so next day I decided to investigate the problem. Very quickly it became apparent that the motor for the fan was seized solid, simply from a lack of use. Being a typical modern accessory there is no way of servicing this and the sole solution was to buy a new one. Of course nothing remains the same and this also applies to the method of mounting for one of these simple appliances. New mounting brackets were required, for a change rather than mess about trying to adapt the old
brackets I bought a length of steel strip from the local hardware and made new ones. This kept me entertained for the best part of an afternoon. Fortunately the original thermo-switch is still working OK which saved me having to go through the process of adapting a new one to the Rapiers cooling system. All that is now required is to leave the motor running long enough to raise the temperature to near boiling, so I can reset the switch on position on the switch.
As already mentioned I am still waiting for the new asbestos-free gearbox parts to come from England. The arrival of these from England is critical to the timing of the cars departure on it’s next adventure. There is about three or four days work that required to remove and fully dismantle the Pre-selector gearbox replace the “bands” and then put it back into the car. It now looks as though this will be my first task for the New Year. I just hope that the weather gods are kind to me.
The car has to be “on the water” no later than Mid February,
 
Now all that remains is to on behalf of Helen and myself wish everyone
 
A very Merry Christmas and a Healthy and  Happy New Year.
 
Cheers!

Now for the one that got away.
Having owned two or three Jaguar XJ6 sedans I always wanted a Jaguar XJ6 Coupe. The two door pillarless version Finally one came up at auction in Sydney several hundred miles to the north from where we live. Having looked at all the pre-sale documents and photographs I decided to take a risk and put in a bid without actually seeing the car.
We were away when it was due to be delivered and I arranged for it to be delivered to a well known Jaguar specialist for him to give it a service and put it through its "Road-worthy" test. This is required by our Motor Registration Office.
Imagine my horror when on our return I was greeted with a message. "I have the motor out and stripped down you had better come and decide what you want to do."