One-family-owned from new 3.8S

[Orlando St.R]

My grandad bought 1B55440BW new from Stratstone of Mayfair on 17 November 1965. It wasn't until I obtained the heritage certificate that I discovered it was built several months earlier on 23 August 1965, so it must have been a vehicle in stock at Stratstone or distributor Henlys. For some reason, he opted for a car without power steering, which was odd given he lived and drove in London. After 13,000 miles, grandad sold the car to my dad in February 1970. Here are the notes grandad wrote at the time:

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The earliest photo I have is from 1974, taken on my Kodak Instamatic:

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Here it is at my (first) wedding in 1982:

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Slightly better pic - and substantially better weather - from my sister's (first) wedding in 1985:

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And here's my Dad putting the ribbons on the car at my sister's second wedding in 1991:

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Here's a 1992 image of the left side, showing the rear door and wing a slightly different colour. Shortly after it was new, it suffered a car park scrape which was beautifully repaired, but the paint colour gradually diverged from the original over the years:

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In 1994, it came off the road for an engine rebuild and my dad never got round to finishing that, so 1994 - 2013 were spent in various garages. Here was how it looked when I inherited it in 2013:

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A fairly comprehensive body restoration commenced in 2014. One joy of working on this car was that we knew what was under the paint and there were no nasty surprises. That filler is from the 1960s repair, still in amazingly good condition. You can see the wheel arch repairs. It also had welding around the front idelights/indicators, new inner and outer sills and also needed a new rear valance - the only new panel. Floors and chassis rails were all fine thanks to liberal coatings of ATF over the years, courtesy of Borg Warner:

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Repainted the original opalescent maroon:

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In February 2015, the rebuilt engine was reinstalled. Laughably, at this stage (being a novice at restoration jobs) I thought it was nearly finished! Front and rear suspensions were both overhauled.

Finally back on the road in May 2015:

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I've done 6,000 miles since the rebuild, without any major incidents. It's only stranded me once when the front propshaft UJ failed. Upgrades from the original specification are:
Marles/Adwest Varamatic Power Steering (as the last S-types had)
Coopercraft Front Brake Calipers
123 Distributor, currently using Curve 6
Chrome Wire Wheels
Claytons upgraded heater

[cass3958]

Beautiful colour and I have said it before and will repeat it again the Wire Wheels really make the car. Looks so sporty with the wires rather than the old dowdy steel wheels.
Great job and a lovely history. The provenance really makes the car. Love the old photos.

[Jose]

wonderful! Same color as mine I think.

What is the Clayton heater?

[Glyn Ruck]

Wonderful car, great colour ~ congratulations & enjoy. Another one saved! Interested to see some more pics of Engine, Interior etc. Always interested in why people make personal choices. Why did you select the "easy clean" wires over curly hub? The Marles Variomatic PAS was a really good move. I echo cass. These cars should be on wires.

[Orlando St.R]

Thanks for the feedback. Much appreciated.

I chose the easy clean wheels because they were (allegedly) easy clean! I realise they're not period correct for the car, but figured only a few people would notice. I realise now, of course, that no wire wheels are easy clean!

The heater upgrade from Claytons has a new/better fan and improved heater matrix. It doesn't make much difference, as far as I can tell. They upgraded my own box, so I could keep the original part. http://claytonclassics.co.uk/parts-upgr ... ler-v8-250

The Varamatic made a huge difference to the driveability of the car, mainly because of the reduced turns lock-to-lock (4.25 turns with the manual setup v 3 turns for the Varamatic). I found that mini-roundabouts (which obviously didn't exist in 1965) required such a lot of wheel twirling that I had to slow down excessively to get round them! All done with a flick of the wrist, now.

Interior is more or less untouched, apart from new carpets and refurbished steering wheel:

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I've tried to keep the engine bay period-correct, but there are one or two departures from that. And the engine rebuilders didn't check where the blue paint between the cam covers should stop (though they made such a good job of the rebuild at such reasonable cost, that I forgave them)!:

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[cass3958]

Again stunning. What I like is that it has still got the patina of age but has been restored in all the right places. With the Engine paint though and I know I am colorblind and being picky but is that not Duck Egg Blue which is for the 3.4 head instead of the Dark Blue that should be on the 3.8. Only a Nerd like me might see it but it might also be the colouring of the photo and I am wrong. I have attached a photo of my Duck Egg Blue head on my 3.4s.
As for the Easy clean wire wheels, Nice. I have the original Curlys but Is this not why man invented the Jet washer so he could keep his wire wheels clean?

[Orlando St.R]

Nice. True, re the jet wash, but the MWS destructions say not to put your jet wash on them and I always do as I'm told.

Re the blue, it was the SNGB dark blue. It started off a bit darker but seems to have faded somewhat. I don't think it's too far off the original, though:

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[cass3958]

You are right it does look closer to the original blue than my Duck Egg when you see the original blue paint on the head.

Re the Jet washer I think if you do it too many times with the wheels on you could get some water in to the bearings and hub as it is under a lot of pressure but I take my wheels off the car every six months or so and jet wash them front and back with a good scrub between the spokes just to tidy them up before the shows and weddings season. The splines are regreased when they go back on.

Looking at your cam covers and comparing them with mine now I really must take mine off and give them another polish. They were shiney bright but faded over time and you cannot polish them too well in situ. I originally sprayed them with a high temp lacquer to protect them but this turned yellow after a year or so and I had to scrape it all off and go back to bare metal. (see new Topic Cam covers)

[Glyn Ruck]

Wheels are personal. Whatever you like. There are pressed/stamped centres with a deeper curl, then they went machined from billet from late '65 with a shallower curl which is what I have (IIRC both Dunlop). I will pressure wash from time to time. I use spray on high solids (graphite & MOS2) lubricant on my splines that dries completely & does a great job. I don't want grease migrating down my spokes. No wire wheel is "easy clean".

I love the patina & it's a patina with a known history which is special.

I learned from my engine builder that the easiest way to polish the cam covers, carbs etc. for an original look is by hand with Autosol & newspaper. I did not believe him but he turned out to be right.

The metallic blue for the 3.8 litre, 8 to 1 compression head varied. Mine is a direct copy of my original colour.

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[Orlando St.R]

Wow, you could eat your dinner off that engine, Glyn!

Yes, that blue is quite a bit different, isn't it? Was your engine originally assembled in South Africa? My blue was darker when first applied, but as soon as the engine was run, turned to its current colour.