Bird is the Word – Classic Collection

Friend of Car & Classic, Stuart Bird, has built up a small collection that should please every petrolhead. He’s got all the bases covered, from B road blasts to weekends away and he even has the tip run covered thanks to a weird classic. And handily, Stuart writes about cars for a living, so it seemed only right to hand the keyboard over to him to tell you the story behind this collection. Stuart, over to you…

Let’s start at the very beginning. Picture the scene, November 2008, studying for my finals in nursing, anxiety at an all time high. Fail one single maths question and you fail the exam. Answer a medical question wrong and you can learn from your mishap. Times were tense, I needed a distraction.

So, I go out shopping for a camper van. It was always the plan. Go to Uni, finish, buy a VW camper van. Being single, I was entitled to pay no council tax because I was a full time student so that money of £80 a month went into the bus fund. Three years later and I had just under half of what I needed. Yes, in 2008 you could buy a half decent VW camper for £6000. 

I had a list of five to look at. Four of them worked, one of them didn’t. Four of them were ready to go, had clean and tidy interiors, ready to camp. One of them, as you can guess, didn’t. So I bought it. I was happy with what I saw. It wasn’t ready to go camping, granted, and it didn’t exactly run very well, but Barry as he became known as was solid. These old VWs are as simple as feeding a horse, so as long as the body is solid, the rest is easy.

And it wasn’t that difficult. Problems with the Air Flow Control fuel injection caused many head scratching moments. I’d managed to get new injectors from Arizona. It cured the problem for 1 journey to Brighton and back. After that we had problems again.

So we threw that system out and replaced it with the CB performance twin-carb set up, we have had trouble free motoring ever since. In fact, I’ve had trouble free motoring for the 40,000 miles that Barry and I have traveled in over the past 10 years.

Well I say trouble free, but I lie a bit for 2012 was a bad year. A year of endless breakdowns, usually on the way to a venue. Rarely did I have problems returning. 

After a year, I’d had enough. It was make or break. We replaced the fuel pump for the second time, the ignition switch for the second time and rewired the ignition system completely. It worked. What the cause was we are not sure. We could never get it to manifest itself in test conditions at the workshop. But all this trouble started when a brand new alternator decided to throw out 18 volts to a system that could just handle 14. Lesson here, never buy a cheap alternator.

And so fast forward the years and Barry is very much my bus with my take on the Cal-Look with a ‘70s sports vibe. Stripes, turbo-vec alloys, bib spoiler, extra chrome and a rorty twin exhaust system. And all while keeping him at standard ride height. 

Inside, I’ve added luxurious touches taken from Jaguar, BMW and other premium cars with lights fitted into speakers, door handles and across the dashboard. Shame then really that I don’t use him that much at night.

And that rot free shell, so far I have had to have the rear valance and N/S front step attended to, but that’s it. Not bad for a 43 year old van.

In the back, I’ve re-jigged a couple of the cupboards to accommodate central heating and a clean water system. 2020’s new look project sees new lighting in the rear.

With any old camper van, I say buy the best you can structurally. That’s the hardest part. The clattery bits are the easiest, sort of, to fix.  

The Fiat X/19

Always wanted one of these ever since my sister bought me a blue Corgi toy. I was totally taken by its wedge looks. That was back in 1980. 

In November 2013, I was ready to take the iron oxide challenge with an Italian car. The last time I did this was in 1992 and it lasted 6 months. So I set myself a challenge in which to make it worthwhile. Find a 1979-1982 1500.

On the internet was just that, a 1982 1500 X1/9 in brochure pleasing metallic red. Admittedly I wanted a gold one but the 1979 model I had spotted quickly sold. So, it was back to the 1982 1500, but the sale did not go well. The Saturday I was due to look at it, my trusty MK2 Golf blew a small hose in central London. Euro Car Parts and a VW specialist next door were not able to help. After waiting SIX HOURS for the AA to not turn up, I bodged the Golf and drove home. 

The next day, my mate Dave (everyone has one) and I set off to north London, cash in hand to buy this X1/9. If it was good, I’d have it, I’d messed the chap around the day before so there was a bit of guilt in me.

It looked great. It had been restored 10 years ago and painted yellow but he didn’t like the colour so painted it back to metallic red. He ran a body shop so it wasn’t a costly exercise for him. However, despite the body-shop there was no ignoring it was an ‘80s Fiat and as such, had a history of rotting. I was cautious. I needed not be. A magnet in a cloth soon proved that there was more metal than was standard in an X1/9. The car was bought.

I returned the car ten minutes later. I couldn’t get the fuel cap off. Anyway, he turned the cap and it came off. That wasn’t a proud moment!

On the way home, a gremlin manifested itself. The N/S headlight would pop up on its own when you switched the lights off, leaving the X1/9 looking like it was winking. And it broke down. It managed to over-fuel itself on a roundabout and splutter to a halt. It started again thankfully.

As for the handling, even on dodgy old tyres, it was legendary. Poor by today’s standards but you have to treat it differently in a corner. Once you commit, you have to keep going. Let off mid corner and it gets all sideways and embarrassing. The steering isn’t as quick as it should be. That would help make it more fun.

That said, it is fun to drive when the sun is shining. Roof off, and the 85hp engine behind you spins freely to 7,000rpm. The gear change was a lesson of precision feel that no other Fiat of the time could match and it feels as fast as a Ferrari in traffic.

Problem is, in traffic, it gets hot. It doesn’t overheat but the carb is known for fuel evaporation. I’ve had this several times on the M25. Thankfully the little Fiat weighs nothing so pushing one’s car by oneself to the hard shoulder isn’t difficult. I’ve since learned how to overcome this, by opening the engine lid. Problem solved.

As for rust, yep, we’ve had to meet the welder twice in 6 years. And it needs to meet the welder again soon. But, hey, it’s 37 year-old Fiat and we all know that one Fiat year equals three years for normal steel-constructed cars, so that actually makes my X1/9 111 years old!

Terra-fying 

The Seat Terra. Oh the terror. Purchased one drunken night from eBay. I wasn’t even looking for a fifth car and I wasn’t even looking for Seat Terras, so I’ve no idea how this algorithm found me, but alas, it did.

Probably the worst car I have ever bought and I’ve bought some dogs. Broke down three miles from the vendor’s home. Suddenly the Terra decided that it couldn’t carry on any longer with 14 year-old fuel. That’s right, this box of Spanish sunshine had been held up in a barn for 14 years. This would justify its overall rust free body.

Mechanically it was shot to bits in a worse way than we saw at first. First to give up was the… well everything related to the cooling system except the water pump. Radiator was full of gunge, coolant hoses were all weakened by a mix of engine oil, engine gasses and very little antifreeze.

The head was blown. And probably the original reason why it was stored away. Trouble was, it didn’t give much of a sign that it was blown. The sniff test proved inconclusive. What did seal its fate was going for it, gay abandon style, at 50mph, when ‘BANG’ the radiator top hose, already weakened by engine oil, split from thermostat to radiator. That was when I knew there was a problem.

On removal of the head, you could see what radweld does to cooling systems and what it can’t do, like fix a leaking head. It also appeared that four of the ten head bolts were less than tight. More than finger tight but not really much more. A skim, a refit and a tweak and it was running worse than ever.

It would appear that the cheap knock-off carb wasn’t going to play ball anymore. So a strip down and a mixture of some general fixings and a Weber carb and all was good again. Well, almost. At a certain throttle position, it sounds like a whistling kettle. Weird. 

I’d like to say I’ve driven this but I haven’t. So far I have travelled three miles away from home and three miles back. We did manage two miles in total a few weeks ago. Prior to that it has gone around the block where I live (I’ve driven it and it is, frankly, awful – Ed).

It’s not only a lack of trust I have for it, but a not inconsiderable lack of faith in the brakes. They aren’t very good and yet they are as good as they are ever going to be. I fitted a Bible in the dashboard pocket to give me some hope of stopping!

I will get it running properly. There isn’t much to do really. Replace the other coolant hoses and the small matter of the gearbox leak that started when the head was put back on, because that makes sense. Thankfully I have breakdown cover with my bank. We’re going to be on first-name terms, soon.