Below you will see some photos of the 9th national rally of the Daimler & Lanchester Clubs of Australia, held over Easter in Bendigo, Castlemaine and the other historical gold-rush towns of central Victoria.
Oddly enough, of all the photos I took, none of them feature Dame Zara! But as many (many!) other photos were taken by John Spry, Richard Bowen, Domenica Ashworth and others, I'm sure I will soon be able to post visual proof that she was there.
As we were late in booking, and frankly a bit skint, we only attended for the Saturday and Sunday, but we still had a blast and full marks to the organising committee for a great program.
My garage sessions of the past few weeks have shown some distinct improvements in a number of areas - but of course there is still work to do.
Dame Zara is currently a rare Daimler in that *all* of her main electrical features are in full working order! Not content with having a Smiths clock that keeps near-perfect time, I have also stopped the heater fan making its 'chewing up a cat' noises (thanks to some mouse-pad derived rubber bushes on the motor and a good smear of grease on the fan shaft); have fixed the 'ignition' tell-tale in the speedo; have pretty much cured the speedo needle of its wobble above 50mph; the boot light works again; and - by the simple dint of plugging in a loose connector in the boot - I have made the 'low petrol' light work once the tank gets below 1/4 full. Both fog-lights now light up, and I was very pleased to find that the somewhat weak low beams of the headlights are more than compensated for out in the country by very good high beams - high beams which lucky illuminated a fox in the middle of the road as we were zooming back from Bendigo to Castlemaine on the Saturday night at closer to 70 than 60 mph: the brakes and steering are working very nicely too, thankfully, and the suicidal fox survived to stand in the middle of the highway another night.
On the 'not yet quite right' list: while I have freed up the heater temperature cable and reconnected the 'car/screen' one, I have connected one of the flaps around the wrong way, so while the heater is *trying* to put out warm air, it's not *quite* doing it while the car's at speed as fresh air is blasting through - but it's toasty warm once you slow down, though, which shows that the tap is working and the matrix mustn't be too gunked up. The 4lb radiator cap is doing a good job of keeping the radiator pretty full of green goo in short-trip, around-town driving, but after the long highway runs the header tank was pretty much dry and I needed to put close to 2 litres of coolant in before we headed back to Melbourne. I suspect there is also a pressure leak in at least one of the many hoses that run around the engine bay, as even when nothing comes out of the overflow pipe, there is still sometimes a puddle of coolant left on the garage floor.
Then there's still the 'hesitation waltz', which makes sustained highway driving at 3500rpm/60mph (and over, where legal and safe to do so!) rather frustrating. Having asked the opinion of 4 or 5 Daimler hexperts at the rally, I of course received at least 7 different possibilities - so I'm still going to have to look in detail at the distributor (points and condenser), fuel pump and filters, spark plug leads, etc. before I can cure it. Actually, I'm beginning to get a little suspicious of the spark plug leads, as I replaced the supressor on the alternator and still get interference on the radio that changes with engine speed ...
I'm in two minds as to whether I should rely on the expertise of the club members and host a 'garage day' so they can have a poke around; or take to car to Mike Roddy and get the once-over from a professional, including compression tests, etc. so as to put my mind at rest that there is nothing seriously wrong. The latter, of course, will not only cost money up-front, but I'm sure to come back with an even bigger 'to-do' list than when I started!
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