You know you are getting old when......
- Thread starter Harry Bloomfield
- Start date
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Three years before me. I had an old series one Land Rover in '63, earned myself a few bob pulling cars out of the snowdrifts we had in rural Essex.
Hope we don't get more winters like that, not at my age ... playing in the snow doesn't appeal anymore
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I took her out in the car at 7am Saturday morning, in the snow, to get the shopping in. She had already taken the dog out and was going to walk the half mile, but I insisted on taking her. Just her walking with all the ice was bad enough, without lugging bags of shopping. The supermarkets were completely empty.
D
Deleted member 174758
I remember it well. Snowed in twice (for a week or more each time), bread and milk dropped to our community from a helicopter, no electricity and going out in groups to saw down and cut up some of the Forestry Commission's stock for heating and cooking over an open fire. It was also ruddy cold!I don't remember that winter - maybe couldn't see it for the smog
The nearest to that would have been '78/'79 when I came home for Christmas and the local garage persuaded me to spend a week going round jump starting vehicles with flat batteries (and selling them a new battery when theirs tested as "dud" - there were a lot of them!) and pulling others out of snow drifts, ditches in a wheezy old LWB Land-Rover with a Harvey Frost on the back
Was that empty of people or items ?
We've just come back (2130h) from visiting two different supermarkets & stocks of canned food, rice & flour were almost non-existent.
I reckon folks are expecting another lock-down, after all we are less than a month away from Christmas ... remember last year ?
As an apprentice at a Vauxhall Bedford dealer, I had to go out one winter with my mechanic to a local firm that we had a fleet contract with as none of their TK's would start due to fuel waxing. We had to get a couple of their paraffin 'rocket' space heaters and direct them under the cab to warm the engine/fuel pump up and on the fuel tank before we could start them. The cold start system in those days were a type of cigarette lighter element in the inlet manifold that dripped neat fuel into it to start a flame. When the flame was well and truly going you could start the engender, it sucked the flame in and fired up.
Remembering the old fashioned TK's, years later I once had to pick up a VW Golf diesel that had cold start problems. I had no easy-start with me so I took off the air filter cover and element and built a small fire out of paper in the housing to start it.
Remembering the old fashioned TK's, years later I once had to pick up a VW Golf diesel that had cold start problems. I had no easy-start with me so I took off the air filter cover and element and built a small fire out of paper in the housing to start it.
We used to dip a rag in paraffin, light it, and hold it over the inlet. The flame and burnt pieces of rag was sucked right in.
Along with the TK the York engine in the Ford A series must rank among some of the most difficult engines to get going in the cold.
Along with the TK the York engine in the Ford A series must rank among some of the most difficult engines to get going in the cold.
Sorry, I should made it more obvious - there were no customers in there. The usual fully stocked shelves in both Home Bargains and Lidl.
There has only been one occasion when there has been a shortage of stock on the shelves, that was last year when there was the stupid panic rush to buy toilet rolls. The only concession we made to the panic, was to buy a couple of cartons of that long life milk.
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I have never had to allow time for the heater light to go out, mine always seems to fire up before has cranked a full 360, even if not used for weeks. It is boringly reliable. The only concessions I make is that it is kept garaged and the battery gets a 20 minute boost charge each day, controlled by Alexa.
It's the first diesel I have actually owned, but I have had several works diesel cars over the years. This diesel has a more predictable ability to start immediately than any petrol I have ever owned, though I have never had any petrols which would refuse to start.
This was in the eighties with an old mechanical injection pump - none of your common rail wizardry.
I still have a few of those 'Thermostart' units as Perkins called them, in a draw in the garage, from my diesel conversion days. They used to have a little reservoir to supply the fuel, but I found they worked just as well if you plumbed them into the low pressure fuel supply.
Peter
Peter
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