The Jaguar mirror page,Du Ponts New Red painted Jaguar 3.8 S type

The 1967 Jaguar 3.8 S type I found on a dealers web site looks just like my own,in fact so alike it could be a mirror view,excepting its left hand drive,the only differences are the spot light centers and a rather handy rear view drivers mirror.

Pictures taken from the Sunset Classics web pages,my thanks to them,the car is now sold?

Why bother mentioning the car looks just like my own? Well for very many years the annual Cape Jaguar Drivers Club concours event would see my own car loose around 60 points due to a None Jaguar Paint Colour,one judge (dave price) docked 20 points of the engine bay alone one year,the reds wrong he told me (so much for being an expert) I still managed to win the S Type concours five times in spite of the dropped points.

So here we are,the same model Jaguar as my own and in the same paint colour,whats so special about that? Well one car and it may even be this car,went through a full rebuild,the paint shade was known to be a Du Pont paint used by Jaguar.Du Pont checked thier records and found it was indeed their paint and was named New Red.

How close a match can this be! this picture was taken here about a month back.

The lights in the garage and the Canon G11 camera have made the paint shade look

as brite as they have.

R McB

A new look HBYC frontage

We have had a donation from Lotto to upgrade the clubs facilities,mainly to allow a youth sail training program,the entire rear boat park has been upgraded and will be about finished by the months end.

The clubs frontage looked well enough untill the area in front of the fence was included in the picture,we had just loose dirt there up untill this week.

Master paver Derek looks to be doing a fine job,I would expect the frontage of the club to be completed by this week,it certainally lifts the image of the HBYC up.

Derek the paver,this just shows what a club like ours can do with donations,the response from the clubs committee was really fast,the money has been spent well and in good time,the raised employment level was equal to the size of the donation of course.

The HBYC logo thats so hard to find!

R McB

A none slip deck finish you can do yourself

The saying is necessity is the mother of invention and so it was when I wanted to apply a none slip surface to a boat I was working on.I have used some stuff from cans,its sort of ok,lasts a few years,then it needs a re coat,more money of course.

In this case the idea was a failure,the cockpit seats lasted only nine years,I missed a trick when I applied the top coats,in the case of the rest of the boat and after about forteen years we are spot on and the process was and still is a success.

 

Three cockpit seats worth of none slip finish,the beers were not a part of the process! I should not have been able to strip the polyurethane top coats from the Intergard primer surface.What had happened was some years of foot traffic in the cockpit and prior to the application of the none slip,there must have been a dirt build up,its that which stopped a 100% bond.

The same cockpit,better prepared and properly sanded,washed down with fresh water and Teepol (not fairy liquid) then given two coats of International Paints Intergard epoxy primer.The none slip system comes next,watch the next blog for details,materials to the system are available ex stock.

How hard can this be?

R McB

Trade winds arrive in Hout Bay

Yesterdays weather was becoming more normal by late afternoon,in fact it was sun cream and shorts weather,a far cry from the wind and rain of the day before and the HBYC Opening Cruise.

Picture by R Mc Bride

The blue skies and long white clouds over Chapmans Peak are a perfect indicator to summer trade wind weather days.

The making of a Gardner straight eight diesel engine,part two.

This engine really facinates me,I never knew the name Gardner was from an original Liverpool family,my ex home town of course.Gardner engines still match up for total economy,they have a large weight penalty but on some displacement boats this may not be an issue? The two engines below are on a local charter boat,they are the originals and  date back to 1943  Click on the factory picture to view the full size of the Gardner factory. My thanks to boat owner Mike for the chance to take a picture inside his engine room.If you want to experiance a trip on Mikes boat over the season,please contact me and I will give you a contact phone number.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Gardner_and_Sons check the link out for a full story on the engines.
http://www.woodenboat.net.nz/Stories/mrgardnerfolder/mrgardner.html this one I love!

They made things big and strong in Manchester in those long gone days.

Trafford Park was the hub of heavy engineering in Manchester even when I was working there, they made all sorts of things from motors to transfomers to huge generators for power stations.

The only problem at the time was the soot that every factory churned out as many of the old factories were still powered by coal fired steam engines. I can remember, on cold icy mornings on the way to school, we would stop to warm ourselves outside the open fronted boiler room of Wilsons Hat Factory where we watched the stokers throwing coal into the open mouths of three or four grate boilers. Most of the machinery then would be belt driven from overhead pullies all driven by a huge low revving steam engine near the boiler room.

Romatic days indeed if you were a steam buff.

Notty.