I think it is a difficult time for classic car prices at the moment. Seems that they are down 20 to 30%. Part of that will be the time of year.montpellier wrote:Not sold, no interest. She will be going back into mothballs for a few years. Maybe I will revisit the resto one day in the future.
Perhaps you can spend a couple of days doing conservation work on the car. ATF in the spark plug holes, etc. Just make sure no one tries to start it with oil in the bores. Some plastic spark plug hole fillers that blow out would be a useful aid for storing old engines, not sure if they exist. I wonder if the old plugs are J12's from back in the day? Neats foot oil on any leather. Hopefully you can check leather doesn't go mouldy after a couple of months or so. The bonnet, wings, wheel arches could do with some oil brushed on it to stop further rust, etc.
I might suggest any parts removed need to be stored and boxed up in the car, but that has a big downside, as was the case with Vignale FF 119/013, the interior and critical Vignale parts were sold off separately from the stripped out bodyshell by ReJen when they bought it as a complete basically solid retrimmed but partly restored car. The parts being worth more than the car as a whole and the car in pieces doesn't bode well for any classic. Cropredy Bridge acquired the original door seals, and under bonnet trim fittings missing from your Vignale Interceptor if I am not mistaken, to restore an FF with, which then went on to win the JOC President's Cup, feature on TV, and help make Jensen the marque it is today. 119/013 still exists, other FFs have been saved by the availability of parts from ReJen over the last 15 years. ReJen have done very authentic Vignale interior retrims for Ulric that he is happy with.
The plans for 119/122, which is far worse than this Vignale Interceptor, is to make repair panels for damaged areas only, and then "invisibly" tig in the repair sections, and redo joints to existing panels using the methods the factory did. It may or may not ever be finished by me, which is not the point really. I would plan an engine repair, project minimum, etc, as Ulric recently did on an FF. That might overlook some part, go wrong and wreck the block. I might abandon the project, get divorced, married, die, all of the above etc or otherwise cause the project fail and the car to be apparently doomed.
Does any of this matter, if the universe is going to collapse into a black hole one night? Perhaps we should 3D scan this Vignale Interceptor, capture seat forms, stitching patterns, headlining seams, supply CNC ready engine and drivetrain blueprints, and beam the design into space, bouncing it off distant meteor showers in the hope that some alien life form captures the bit stream and recreates it "as a hobby"?
You are probably right not to follow my previous advice about the house extension!
.... Have you been puffing the Pipe John
.. always be-careful with a naked flame
.. bloody good entertainment though John.. Thank-you
