Australian Zephyrs meet at Easter
The Sydney and Brisbane Zephyr clubs met over the Easter break
at Coffs Harbour on the northern NSW coast.
8 cars ( 1 '51 Mk I Consul, 6 Mk II's and a support van) left Sydney
at 6am on Good Friday. 6 cars (2 Mk II's and 4 Mk III's) came from Brisbane.
Traffic out of Sydney is always bad at Easter - 4 hr delays on Thurs night -
but it was flowing smoothly for us.
First stop was at Toronto, just south of Newcastle. Out came the gas
stoves, eggs toast, coffee, you name it! About an hour later we were on the
road again. (Good name for a song).
All was fine until we hit Raymond Terrace. Just south of that town, the
freeway ends, spewing all that traffic onto the (ultimately) single-lane
Pacific Hwy. Whenever traffic has to merge lanes, the total throughput
drops to about 5 - 10 %. After sitting and crawling for about 45 minutes
we decided to head for the backroads. This was much better - no traffic
and beautiful scenery on a bright sunny day.
We sure got a lot of stares as we cruised through the small villages!
After lunch and a couple more stops we finally arrived at 6pm. The only
problems on the way up were
1. The Consul had fuel problems causing it to run very jerkily
under load up hill
2. A Mk II popped his distributor cap.
The time in Coffs Harbour was great, swapping stories with the Queenslanders,
looking at their cars, sight-seeing, shopping, driving, more shopping etc.
On the way up, I was approached by a young bloke who said he had a Mk II
for sale, "a bit rusty", for $100. I said I'd look at it on the way back.
It was pretty rough, with LOTS of rust, windscreens out, interior lining
hanging loose etc. I decided that it wasn't worth all the hassles of
trying to organise a transporter to get it and bring it back to Sydney.
It was a breakthrough of sorts though, my wife was actually in favour
of looking at the car - I thought she was sick of one!
The trip back was going nicely, sitting on 70-75 mph and giving a few modern
cars a shock as I passed them going up hills.
I spoke too soon didn't I? Prince Lucas struck. The first sign was the
Ignition light staying on a bit (about 10 -30 seconds) after starting.
Next was the ammeter needle starting to flicker back and forth for a while
until it was permanently on discharge.
I knew it had to be a brush problem and that I could continue running on
the battery for several hours (I had done this before in a rally).
When we reached Mum's place in Newcastle, I went to her neighbour who
is a restorer. Short aside: he has a Humber Super Snipe finished
and has almost completed a '53 Sunbeam Alpine Roadster, a beautiful car.
Anyway I was sure he would have some generator brushes. He DID have,
two weeks ago before he gave them away!
So I pulled the genny out and found that the brushes were good, the only
problem was that one was stuck in the guide. Ran it up and down a few times,
put it back and away we went.
The trip back to Sydney was a record, 1hr 20 mins for about 90 miles. No jams
on the freeway at all, so everyone had come home early or were staying on
for another day.
paulr
1957 Ford Zephyr Mk II
_____ ___ ___ ___ | Paul Rodenhuis
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