One morning, several cars

It started off with sorting out a flat tyre on The Special’s ever-loyal Perodua Nippa runaround: the night before a rear tread lost all its air and when pumped up to the correct PSI it was flat again in less than 10 minutes.

That meant an early-morning dash to Welsh Dragon Tyres and by 8am long-term staffer Carl had the wheel off, the tyre removed and the truly-slashed inner tube (the culprit being a long screw embedded in the tread) out. A replacement 12-inch tube wasn’t in stock so a 13-inch temporary stand-in was fitted and come 8.20 the Mighty Nippa was back at Special hq.

But not for long as The Special’s top mate, Mr R, was down at our collection stash to fire up a Stag we’ve been looking after. Unused since the end of December it fired on the third turn of the key and didn’t take long to warm up: we do like the burble of an original Stag engine….

Stag seen to Mr R’s attention turned to his Morris Minor convertible which is in a generally good state but despite many new ignition parts didn’t wish to proceed, the cause being old fuel. One glance at the filter showed petrol the colour of strong instant coffee. Time for not only fresh fuel but maybe even a new fuel tank.

Next up, a check-in on Project 55, whose completion is drawing near. We’ll be covering more about that very soon, but in the meantime a beach buggy had appeared at the same business: and it’s not even Easter and the clocks haven’t changed, let alone the days getting warmer…