We are still alive

I am very sorry that silence has fallen upon the green Crayford /8. Lots and lots has indeed happened.

At the end of 2012, there was a fabulous Crayford Convertible Car Club X-mas dinner at Westerham, with the former director of Crayford signing his new book on the occasion of 50 years of Crayford. It was a huge pleasure to meet David McMullan and experience first-hand what a great engineer and man he is. The meeting at a new pub right on the green at Westerham was spot-on and drifted from a great lunch slowly into a boozy evening (for me, that is).

While I showed a picture on the blog with some spare parts late in 2012, you have shurely recognised them to be the gasket of the automatic transmission oil-pan and two new hoses for the automatic transmission oil cooler that is incorporated into the radiator. Those hoses were changed easily. The oil change in the transmission, with a new filter and a new gasket, was more troublesome. In fact, it had been long long ago since the automatic transmission had been attended to and one of the four bolts that secure the oil pan to the casing snapped off. A very unpleasent situation, as the remains of the snapped-off  bolt could not be extraced, not even with the generous application of heat. In the end, we drilled it out and cut a new thread into the casing. As it only had to withstand 8 Nm of torque, the whole operation proved - more or less - successful. New oil (Fuchs Titan 3000) and filter (MANN) are in and the car changes gears lovingly.

Next on the map is the huge fuel consumption we experienced (ahem) 2009 on the long trip to the south of germany. This is a matter of cleaning and re-adjusting the carburettors. I will attend to them very soon because there are plans to re-create said trip this year, for the 2013 Ornbau gathering in the mid of may. Stay tuned.