Down to Bunbury
Martin Wood
This run was pre-arranged at our last meeting pending the ok from Bunbury club member John Ingham... as he was not at the meeting and the purpose of the run was to check out progress on his 'R' Series.
When I contacted John and told him he was very happy to have us all there and informed me that the car would be at his daughter Fiona's home in Australind.
During the week leading up to the proposed run the long range forecast for Sunday was rain and possibly storms. No doubt the farmers would have been happy as many dry seeded several weeks ago in the hope rain wasn't far away, but little did they know opening rains were a couple of months late.
As we had made arrangements it wasn't an option to cancel and Ken sent out emails saying the run was definitely on and members were encouraged to use their everyday car if they preferred, however once again the response was poor.
Bev and I left home in the Jeep 8am and picked up Liz Curtis in the next street on our way. Our timing was perfect as we met right on time at the truck inspection bay on Forrest Highway where we found Ken & Gloria (white 'S') and Paul Spittle and son Rory (white 'S'). Ken led the way to Australind meeting up with Tom & Bridget (already down that way for the weekend). Jim and Clint, Lisa and daughter Alana arrived not long after having spent the previous night in Bunbury for Jim's grand-daughter's 21st Birthday party.
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We were welcomed by John and his daughter Fiona and immediately set about inspecting John's 'R' Series. This car belonged to John for many years, but most of those years sat in his carport unused until he finally made the decision to restore it... but that restoration project report will be in a later edition of "The Grapevine". Suffice to say it was a full rotisserie rebuild.
Fiona had prepared a morning tea that would have fed an army and it was absolutely superb. The ladies retired to the dining room to chat, very cosy with a wood fire burning whilst the guys went over and under John's car. John then asked if we could get it going for him. A quick check revealed no spark from the old original distributor, however with a bit of emery cloth Tom got them clean and we had spark and the fuel filter was full. A flick on the ignition key and the car fired up and ran until a fuel leak at the carbie made us shut it down. John had just spent about $300 or $400 on a reconditioned carbie so knew it shouldn't be too serious a problem.
We took the needle and seat out and found fine particles of rubber. Once cleaned we started it again, but after about 2 minutes the problem started again. As John had the original fuel pump on it which had sat dry for many, many years we guessed it was particles of rubber from a much perished diaphragm and advised John to fit the new pump he had purchased and intended fitting.
Overall the 'R' looks very nice but still has some final work to be done before licensing. From here we followed John into Bunbury where he had arranged a cafe/restaurant right on the water to enjoy lunch — what a beautiful place with most of us opting for fish, chips and salad.