A very happy New Year to all Moggy drivers and their families and many happy moments with these wonderful old cars!
Thank you to all those of you who have taken interest in the first three parts of the story, which are here:
http://www.mmoc.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=38596
http://www.mmoc.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=45194
http://www.mmoc.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=51873
Part three ended in August 2013, so the next part has long been overdue. So here comes part four about the fourth and fifth year with Maggie.
Highlight of 2013 had been the journey to Cornbury Park for the Morris 100. However, there was another very nice event in the autumn of 2013, the annual rally of our German society, the Morris Minor Register Deutschland (MMRD). That year it was held at Baden Baden, a pretty town in the Black Forest.
We met with 24 other Morris minors and had a very nice outing on minor roads through the Black Forest.
There was the occasion of Maggie meeting an almost identical convertible.
Over the winter I had the opportunity to occasionally go for a ride with Maggie to let her stretch her bones. Nothing important happened until April 2014 when she was due for the TÜV-examination, the German equivalent of the British MOT test. You can have that done at a testing station or at a certified garage. As the price is the same, I usually combine the test with a service and have it done at my garage. Maggie passed the test without problems, but during the service the garage found out that the engine couldn’t be tuned properly due to a slightly twisted manifold. That allowed the rear two cylinders to draw excess air, and the engine to run too weak on those cylinders. The manifold was levelled with what I would translate as a milling machine and fitted with a new gasket. Unfortunately one of the valves had suffered from overheating, but the garage found it not necessary to take immediate action.
So after a number of shorter trips in the area, which did not result in an increase of my Maggie-photographs, we joined Dieter Hedrich and his Pickup for a journey to the “Brazzeltag” at the technical museum at Speyer. The German word “brazzel” describes the sound, an old engine is emitting when it is running. It is a meeting of not only old cars and motorcycles, but also of weird machines of all kinds and it held each year in May.
One of the major attractions of these days is the show of “Brutus”, the museum’s mighty machine. It consist of the chassis of an American La France fire engine, built 1907 and a BMW aircraft engine from the first world war. For more information see http://sinsheim.technik-museum.de/en/brutus I can tell you, Brutus is truly impressive!
For the Brazzelday the museums sets up a track of y few hundred yards through thir premisies, and there are regular runs of vintage vehicles, like these two Bugattis, small and big.
But there are also really weird machines, like this monocycle which was demonstrated by a Frenchman.
After we had bought Maggie she lived in a garage we had leased somewhere else in the village. At the end of 2013 we had the unique chance to purchase a piece of land on the other side of the street from our house. After we had demolished a garden shed and levelled the area, a contractor could move in and start erecting a 50 sqm garage.
The garage is of wooden construction, similar to the old half-timbered houses. But the outside is lined with boards and then plastered over, so it appears to be a brick-built garage. We chose this method because we could do all the jobs inside the garage ourselves which saved us a lot of money.
The last thing we had done was the paving of the drive, which is now also complete. We now have the space for Maggie, my daily driver and my scooter inside, and there is a set of jacks to ease Maggie’s maintenance.
June 2014 saw two nice events for us. One was the first Edesheim historic. This nice little town in our area had its 1300th anniversary and held a classic car meeting with an 80 km-outing to commemorate it. Maggie was one of about 60 cars that took part.
Usually British cars, except the MG Bs, are quite rare to see at those meetings, but there we even saw an Austin Ten.
At the same time there were 11 big steam locomotives at the nearby Neustadt (Weinstrasse) railway museum. They were used to replace regular diesel-hauled service trains, a thing we call “Plandampf”. I took Maggie out to shoot some of the trains. It is always one of my greatest pleasures if I can combine both hobbies, steam locos and vintage cars.
For those who are interested in steam: The photo shows 41 360, built 1940 by Jung and converted to oil firing in the 1960s. She was one of the last steam locos to run in West Germany until spring 1977 and is now preserved in working order.
On the way home from this shot Maggie blew the gasket at the manifold which the garage had fitted in earlier. I don’t know how this could happen. I ordered one from ESM and fitted it, and there haven’t been any similar problems ever since.
During the summer we did a lot of work at the garage, so unfortunately we were lacking time to drive Maggie. Only occasionally I used her for my ten-mile drive to work.
In September 2014 we went to the annual car show at Bornheim, one of our regulars. We like it for the atmosphere and the cavalcade through the village. When the 50+ vintage cars slowly go through the village, most of the inhabitants take chairs and benches out into the streets and watch the cavalcade.
Mag1
A week later there was a similar event at Albersweiler, another village in our area. For this occasion my Mrs. was able to wear her new petticoat dress for the first time.
At Bornheim I was approached by someone who was looking for a convertible to take two celebrities on a procession through the village. The occasion was the oldest folk festival of the area. There was a short report with one photograph in Minor Matters, so I don’t have to explain too much.
There were five cars to bring the celebrities to the grandstand for the opening of the festival. We had two local “princesses”. Here are the five cars used for the event.
Each year in March there is a big vintage car fair at Stuttgart, called Retro Classics. There is always a combined booth of several clubs, called the English corner. It is run by clubs of the makes MG, Rover, Triumph, Morgan and Morris. Maggie was on show there in 2012. In 2014 they had four Minors of different types and all of them in OEW.
At that time Maggie was resting at the garage. Since the previous autumn I had a problem with her beginning to run badly after some time. We never broke down, but I sometimes had to wait 20 minutes with the engine idling before she would pick up power again. I consulted literature, the internet and took advice by friends, but all the measured they suggested did not cure the problem, which only occurred at certain times. So in the end I put Maggie on a trailer and brought her to the garage, where they finally found the reason. I had an electronic ignition installed in 2011, and something must have gone wrong with it. It sometimes caused the coil to overheat and the power to be too weak to create a decent spark.
After a short discussion I decided to have a Dutch 123-ignition installed http://www.123ignition.nl/. I must admit, it was expensive, but it has improved everything. The engine runs much quieter, it hardly needs any choke and you don’t feel the effects of the burnt valve any more. And most important to me, the known reliability has come back again.
The first longer run with the new ignition was to Ludwigshafen was to Ludwigshafen in June 2014. A model car shop organizes a bi-annual vintage car meeting, and I usually meet one or two other Moggy-owners from our club there. Some of the cars are positioned on the market square and in the yard of a brewery, which is where our two Minors could be seen.
The nice thing with this exhibition is that most of the cars are parked on the sides of the adjacent streets, and the majority of the cars are “everyday” vehicles, which creates scenes as in the 1960s or 1970s.
In July I visited one of my English friends. As I came by plane he was afraid I would miss the Morris Minor, so on one day we went to Gaydon, where I celebrated my meeting with NWL 576. Apart from that the museum is the best car museum I know. What a pity we don’t have a museum like this in Germany.
My friend is a loco driver at the Severn Valley Railway, which had their vintage vehicle weekend while I was in England. That meant another combination of both of my hobbies. I admired the two lovely Minors which were displayed under the canopy of Kidderminster station, but there were also a few more Moggies at the other stations of the railway.
The summer of 2015 was one of the sunniest I can remember, which meant that I hardly had to close Maggie’s ragtop, and we went out quite often. On one of those outings we stopped at Böchingen, a small village which had a vintage car exhibition that day.
In September I took part in the aforementioned event at Bornheim again. I learned that one of my friends, who had previously driven a Mini had recently bought a Riley RME and put it on show for the first time. Together with an MGB GT we had our small “British corner” at the show.
The same month there was another show at Knittelsheim, a village nearby, where we went. Maggie and I were interviewed by the local paper, which was made into a full page article about three of the cars that took part in the event. We were both rather proud when we read it.
Knittelsheim is a small village with only 500 inhabitants, so the 250 cars and 80 motorcycles which arrived completely blocked the village for a whole day. Again it was nice to see quite normal cars on the road. I must admit all those high-priced posh cars don’t mean much to me.
Highlight of the year 2015 was the annual rally of the MMRD in October, which I had been asked to organize. As it was the 20th meeting our chairman had invited members of the clubs from adjoining Morris Minor Clubs, which resulted in entries from Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria. The 30 Minors got together at Gleiszellen, a lovely village near our home. This photo shows some of the cars prior to the outing on the Saturday which took us round the area and into France.
A similar photo was published in Minor Matters. For part of the outing we went along the German Wine Road, a theme road through many wine growing villages.
As can see from the numberplates, it was truly an international affair. The photo shows the oldest and the youngest participating cars.
In France we went to the fortress of the WW II Maginot Line. We were allowed to place the Moggies in front of the main entrance while we were given a guided tour through the 3+ km underground fortress.
The last day of the event again combined steam and cars, when we visited the Cuckoo-Line, a preserved line where I worked as a volunteer between 1984 and 1996. After a ride behind the 1903 steam loco the rally ended. I am very happy that I received many positive comments afterwards.
The last event of the year was another highlight, although the vehicle of our choice wasn’t a Morris Minor but a 1964 Routemaster bus. We went to see the London to Brighton Veteran car Run and joined the veteran cars as passengers on that bus. Before we went on the bus we had some time to watch the cars starting from Queen Elizabeth Gate at Hyde Park. The atmosphere was incredible!
Our bus had an open top deck, so we enjoyed excellent views, not only of the veteran cars but also of the spectators along the A 23. Many of them had come with vintage cars, like this Morris Commercial lorry.
There were also many Morris Minors alongside the road, like this blue Traveller. I watched a group of about eight Minors at another place, probably the outing of one of the branches, but I wasn’t quick enough to photograph them.
We arrived at Brighton in beautiful sunshine at about 20° and watched many of the cars finishing on Madeira Drive. With our bus tickets we had access to the paddock which was another wonderful opportunity.
We are now having the warmest winter ever, which means that Maggie is taken out regularly. We even went for a ride on Christmas Day. And would you believe it, we met at least ten other vintage cars whose drivers had the same idea, an MGB even had the top down (which we found a little bit too uncomfortable).
We are looking forward to many outings with Maggie in 2016. And one thing we must do again, for which we didn’t have the time during the last two years, is to go out with Maggie and have a picnic in the countryside.
If you don’t mind, I will again report what has happened next year.
Cheers
Hubert
Loved reading it and some fantastic photos.