Afternoon all!
Just when I thought I had everything organised, knew what was going where in the garage, what I was planning to do to the Elan, work needed on the Elise, and all the projects on the house under control, it all got thrown into a cocked hat! See the initial musings on my latest madness, the purchase of the Tuft Lotus Eleven, elsewhere … suffice to say, I have something of a project on my hands! Many, many thanks to Bruce Mansell and Warwick Bisley for entrusting the car to me, and I hope I will do them and the car proud.
Well, what’s a garage for in the middle of winter if not a project? So I can hardly complain, and it is a thing of almost unmatched beauty (particularly when finished), so this is the start of the journey – bear with me!
Elsewhere in the world of Lotus, planning is well underway for the next nationals, Lotus 2015 in the beautiful Barossa Valley in South Australia over the weekend of 2nd – 5th October next year; accommodation bookings are already open (full details at www.lotus2015.weebly.com) and filling up quite fast! Judging by the conversations I had with Ian and Andrew at the recent SSC day, it is setting up to be an outstanding event, so I look forward to seeing lots of you there!
And for those lucky enough to have been over in Europe for some of their summer, there has been plenty of interest – Goodwood Festival of Speed was on in late June, and Goodwood Revival is coming up on 12-14 September – if you’ve never been to one or the other (or ideally both!) make sure you put them on your bucket list.
July has been a cold one, at least here in NSW it has – which is good for clean running engines, but does require a bit more wrapping up of the extremities! As I was reminded on the way to Cars and Coffee a couple of weeks ago – the heater in the Elan is about as much use as the one in the Elise, so I found myself (carelessly gloveless) with my hands under the dash at any red lights! But the showing was outstanding – and not just Lotuses, but the increasingly wide array of unusual and interesting cars from the 40’s through to current models – if you haven’t been you should come along – it’s gazetted on the first Sunday of the month, so your Historic-plated car has a great excuse to come out to play!
August starts to get busy on the social and diary front, so make sure you have got all the dates in yours (and have applied for tickets where necessary), particularly as the date for the All British Day at Kings has changed from 31st to 24th August; the weekend before is the Shannons Classic on the Sunday (17th), preceded by the next round of the CSCA Supersprints on the Brabham Circuit at SMP on the Saturday (16th) – and all that starts off with our General Meeting, kindly hosted by Mike Basquil in his shed at 17 Booyong Avenue, Lugarno 2210.
Eggs Benedict bookings are now being taken by Anne, for Sunday 28th September – get your booking done now, as forgetting to do so will preclude involvement – need I say more? Anne is at anne-blackwood at hotmail.com
As our illustrious combined magazine continues to go from strength to strength, we need more CLA contributions! Please share your photos (as high a quality as you can manage so they print well!) and a few words describing what was happening, and get it to Tom by the middle of the month – it’s a shame if our friends north south and west read in here about nothing going on! So hands up who’s prepared to write up the events for August? And if you have a project, let’s hear about it – no matter how stagnant it has become – who knows, writing about it might inspire you to get it moving again!
As an aside, for anyone else who runs a Gen 1 Mini Cooper S as a daily driver, I cannot recommend highly enough a few little mods I undertook, with some kind help from Barry Mather and Paul Hardy, last weekend; we put a 15% undersized supercharger pulley on the Eaton MP45, installed a CAI, and undertook what is euphemistically referred to as the “one-ball mod” to the exhaust (the standard exhaust has two silencer boxes – you can by-pass one, and it frees up the exhaust without affecting noise levels) – these three little mods (and about 5 hours of work) have transformed the car – well worth it – let me know if you want to try it!
OK, enough from me, have a fun month, and enjoy the perfect winter weather we seem to be having. I look forward to seeing you out there at some point.
In the meantime, keep safe, upright and on the black stuff!
Pip pip,
Ashton