Modern Commer Replacement

[Nordic]

That bloke looks mental if you ask me. All that grubbing around in fields looking for stuff for his salad. The producers have missed a trick, he should have been visiting various council estates across these beautiful British Isles, and getting a kebab in after 8 purple tins. And there's salad with a kebab if he wants to be really anal about it. Never mind "I think the clutch cables broken" Doris, it would be "which f*****g sh**y a***d f*****g t*****s have nicked my f*****g wheels again?" He'd be comfortable with that.
H

That sounds alot like 'my big fat gypsy wedding', the program that has lifted the lid on the easy going travelling folk of Ireland.

[mgmark]

...he should have been visiting various council estates across these beautiful British Isles, and getting a kebab in after 8 purple tins. And there's salad with a kebab if he wants to be really anal about it. Never mind "I think the clutch cables broken" Doris, it would be "which f*****g sh**y a***d f*****g t*****s have nicked my f*****g wheels again?" He'd be comfortable with that.
H

H,

I can appreciate the comfortable ambience that the locations you mention would bring, and the kebabs, and the 8 purple tins of extra strength, and even the salad as an optional extra.  But, I am struggling slightly to picture the quality wheels with which Mr Z might adorn the glorious Commer, such that even Liverpool's finest F1 pit crew might be tempted.  They don't normally move unless you're talking 20" alloys and even smart new embellishers http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Commer-Van-PB-New-Old-Stock-Wheel-Trims-x-4-/330528673396?pt=UK_CarsParts_Vehicles_CarParts_SM&hash=item4cf50b4e74 hiding pressed steel wheels shod with 15" Linglong Ditchfinder remoulds are probably not going to do the trick.....   

MG Mark

[BigH]

Mark! What the hell is a "Linglong Ditchfinder"? It sounds like some ungodly cross between a chinaman and a bogsnorkler. Or maybe an oriental bootleg of a film about the English Civil War starring Vincent Price. Surely they can't be tyres.
Were they a standard fitment? (and in the seventies, did proud owners highlight the writing on the sidewalls with a white wax crayon? -before smoking the crayon...)
H

[mgmark]

H,

You are your usual perceptive self - budget tyres and, indeed, a most ungodly cross, similar to its stablemate, the Nankang Treehugger.  But, in these trying and difficult modern times, where are Dunlop, Avon, Uniroyal and the like when a chap needs a good, old-fashioned, 4J 15" tyre?  Making modern low profile stuff, I suppose.  No good for the classic gentleman at all, who can only turn to such dreadful modern accessories to preserve the graceful lines intended by the designer, namely those of a skinny tyre with a minimal contact patch lost in a huge wheel arch.  

You will be pleased to know that 70's wax crayon, favoured by the home customiser as THE way to make cheap tyres look like Dunlops, is still around:
http://www.myerstiresupply.com/shop/shopexd.asp?id=429&info=Myers-White-Tire-Marking-Crayon          

Of course, you could smoke the crayon when you realise that the product of your careful handiwork is actually a bit sh*t...........but they've taken the lead out of it now.  Tippex was much better anyway; at least you could sniff that while painting the letters before they took all the interesting recreational substances out of it.  The absence of such handy period accessories as that below also makes it really tricky for the safety conscious classic car driver these days too.....you simply don't get this level of thought put into your average fag lighter these days..

   

MG Mark  



 

[smokie]

I like that that device has a universal joint... 

[Andy Zarse]

I've deleted, tidied up and reposted below. WiFi in Antigua ain't what it ought to be, Juju is in the wire and de jumby stole the megabites.

[Barry]

To be continued?

[Perdu]

To be continued?

I truly hope so

 

[mgmark]

To be continued?

I truly hope so
 

Likewise, perhaps there is a loose connection to the possible lack of tyre grip, of smoking crayons, or of the dangers of lighting a spliff behind the wheel without the benefit of an "Autosnap" fitted, but otherwise I'm having a little difficulty seeing the connection.....maybe there has been too much rum....but then, of course, that is the joy of the wanderings of this thread.

MG Mark

[BigH]

I love the Autosnap (and the fact that it's "fully automatic"!).
It doesn't look small, and I'd imagine you'd have to make a choice between having a passenger onboard or the Autosnap. Neither is it cheap, - £8-19 and six in 1970 would not have been far off the average weekly wage. I suppose a man has got to have his tabs when he's driving. Do you reckon that once lit, the machine fired them at the drivers cakehole? It doesn't look straightforward to me, health and safety wouldn't be happy, but then again, they never are.

Andy, I reckon something very strange happens to driving attitudes between the latitudes of 10 and 23 degs North, - often very dangerous, but usually in slow motion. I hauled a bloke out of his truck once, while it was busy sinking into a bog, and all he was worried about was keeping his joint dry. He had his winkle out at the time, I think he'd been trying to take a leak out the door when he lost it. Mind you, I've just got back from a spell in Dagestan, and there wasn't a lot of slow motion going on on the roads there....

H

[mgmark]

H,

I would hope for that money it would fire it directly at the target, or at the very least offer it in a gentlemanly fashion on an extending arm to save the driver having to reach for it.  Strangely, it's not an accessory that I recall seeing in the shops, alongside the pinstriping kits, Paddy Hopkirk slot-on rally headrests, clip on wiper aerofoils or, indeed, the likes of these astonishingly attractive speakers.....
   


MG Mark

[Fran]

Is it just me, or does that description put one in mind of another plastic organ style consumer product?

 

[wishy]

and...Fran?

[Perdu]

Is it just me, or does that description put one in mind of another plastic organ style consumer product?

 

It's just you Fran



honest 

[Andy Zarse]

Serendipidy-doo-dah man!

I'm currently residing on the tropical island of Antigua. I'd been for a haircut from my friend Milo AKA Colin "The Cuts" Williams and on the way home had called in at the Rose End Bar for a pint or two of Redstripe with my old pal LesRoy the Gravedigger.

At Christmas my mate Paul had sent LesRoy some clothes over from Hartlepool and I'd been tasked with finding out how Peacock's finest were standing up to tropical life. When he's not digging last resting places LesRoy works as an "odd-job man" at the local mortuary. What being an oddjob man at a mortuary in the Lesser Antilles involves I've never had the stomach to ask, but it was clear tonight LesRoy was bringing some of his work home with him. Perhaps there'd been a leakage from one of the customers or something, but whatever it was, it was all down the front of his Hartlepool Utd shirt. And on his hands too, I noticed, as he clamped my pinkies in his vicelike grip. Anyway we had a very jolly hour, LesRoy told me about dealing with the putrifed remains of some African fishermen who's been found on the wrong side of the pond basted in the filthy bilge water of their fishing boat for three months. Heady stuff, and the smell of embalming fluid hung heavy on his breath.

When I got back to home I thought I should probably wash my hands before preparing the evening's snap. I know nobody bothers washing hands at Le Mans, but it seemed only right to give them a quick rinse before I prepared a Valentine's supper of boiled ox tongue and goat water stew. Stood at the sink, I heard the sound of a light truck losing control on the steep hill and glanced up in time to see 400 breeze blocks become airborne, loosely attached to a KIA light commercial. Overloaded by a multiple of two, the poor driver had lost control when the wretched vehicle jumped out of first gear and in an act of total futility that would have even brought a smile to the lips of miserable Henri Pescarolo, he'd tried to take the racing line on the 90 degree left. I could see he wasn't going to make it, mainly on account of being four feet in the air. It was at this point, to quote Hoffnung, that he met the barrel coming the other way...

The truck rolled onto it's side spilling it's contents, as it smashed over a boulder. I could see the cab was flattened on the offside. The hapless driver made good his involunatary escape by using his head to push out the windscreen. He was flung across the road and landed in a cloud of dust on his back. It's hard to know what's going on in the mind of a man who's upside down in the air being chased by a lorry load of breeze blocks, but his facial features appeared to profess a degree of puzzlement. A once-magnificent spliff was still dangling from his bleeding bottom lip, but apart from a few scrapes he was pretty much okay. Initially I'd no idea whether there was anyone trapped in the crushed cab and was unsure whether to call an ambulance or just cut out the middleman and get Lesroy up here sharpish. Fortunately it was a left hand drive truck and nobody else was involved so I turned the engine off, which had the happy additional benefit of silencing the awful dubstep he was listening to, I think it was a Rodigan mash-up rather like this.  Indeed I'm fairly sure the guy in the natty red jacket at (51 seconds) is our driver. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQdIiEUFtqk

There being no other injuries, I thought it encumbent of me to take a few holiday snaps, oh and check out what rubber he was running... inspection confirmed my initial thoughts; the man is an idiot. He had mixed a Roadian with a Goodwear on the front axle and the back was shod with Long March from the Qingdao Odyking Tyre Company, the other side with Shandong Wanda Boto-X, which as we all know, is a recipe for disaster.




On the phone to the truck's owner. "It wasn't my fault boss, I did it like you told me..."