I left Wellington about noon on Sunday & immediately understood this was going to be no fun cruise up country. For a kick off the drivers seat was devoid of cushioning & it the stereo was busted so the 9 hour drive was looking very grim. Luckily I had my MP3 player & with headphones so I was at least entertained – until the battery went flat. Pretty soon I found out that the Transit is no rocket & it found hills rather difficult. The problem with NZ is that you find hills rather often so I soon got used to 3rd & even 2nd gear crawls up what I had considered to be fairly mild inclines. God, what a clapped out shed this thing was. The rev counter had a green band from 1500 to 3000 indicating the power band but I strongly suspected this so-called band of power was broken & needed replacement. One usefel aspect of the van was that it had a handy map of New Zealand painted on its flanks so if I ever got lost I could just have a look at the side & get my bearings again.
It’s a funny thing to be the one holding up traffic for a change. Before you Americans scratch your heads wondering why cars didn’t just change lanes & pass me, you need to understand that outside of the cities our state highways are mostly single lane roads with just a painted line to protect you from the opposing traffic. We have strategically placed passing lanes which are like motoring gold in this country & after 10km sitting behind a slow moving vehicle you let rip on these passing lanes like there is no tomorrow. God help you if you are caught doing less that the legal limit + 10 in these lanes because 50 Mr. Wheelers behind you will only count to 2 before attempting to run you off the road. It is what makes tourists in their hired camper vans find the average NZ driver so reckless.
Anyway you certainly notice all the impatient pricks in their over-powered 2-seater sports cars (usually red [}:)], sometimes triton green [:p]) as they go flying past with their engines hurling insults at my virility when you are dragging your butt up a hill at 60km/h. Fair enough too. What I couldn’t accept was the fact that I wasn’t the slowest vehicle on the road. I came up behind a little Mazda doing 70-80km/h (the speed limit is 100km/h) along a bit of flat road. There was no way in hell I could muster enough acceleration to safely pass between corners so I just sat there mournfully watching this car as it bounced from one edge of the lane to the other. I noticed that it had a big NL sticker slapped on the back. Johnny bloody foreigner[;)]. After a while the road tilted up & couldn’t even keep up with this speed-challenged motorist. In fact the road got very twisty & undulating & I didn’t get beyond 3rd gear again for about 30 minutes. When the road flattened out I caught up with the Mazda again after less than 20 minutes! Luckily it was on a straight downhill bit of road & I went sailing past at almost 100km/h.[8D]
An hour later I stopped for some food before the next stretch. This allowed the Mazda to leap-frog me but less than an hour later I caught them up again & it took 10 minutes to re-pass them. I had hoped to make it the rest of the way without a fuel stop but it wasn’t to be. But I didn’t want to risk being stuck behind the Mazda for a 3rd time so I calculated that if it had been 1 ½ hours since I last passed them & I was going 10-15% faster than they were, I had about 10 minutes for a fuel stop. I raced into a service station, leapt out of the van, realised I’d parked on the wrong side of the pump[:(!], leapt back in & repositioned the vehicle, pumped diesel into the tank while keeping an eye on my watch, ran into the cashier, paid & ran back out. I jumped in, fired it up & exited the forecourt just as the Mazda cam in to view. Phew! I felt like I’d just beaten the pace car to prevent going a lap down at the Indy 500.[8D]
I got to Jolyon’s place just after dark feeling a little road weary so it was nice to relax in his very tastefully decorated home, meet his tastefully decorated partner Gail, down a few tastefully brewed beers & catch up with what he’d been up to in the 12 months since I last saw him.
It turns out that he’d been building a TR7, Shock horror.[:0]
The next day Jolyon helped me do my errands, which was just as well. The MG was sitting in a very muddy patch & the only way we could move it was to use his 4WD to pull it onto the trailer. Then we went to see a bloke called Morley who was also restoring a TR7. Morley used to work for the Triumph special tuning department but reckoned that we knew more about the cars than he did. I was delivering a 2.5PI motor to Morley for his son’s Herald so he might have a point there! I think Heralds are best left unmolested. Finally, we paid Jolyon’s car a visit at the upholsterers & I have to say it is looking very good. It has a few stylish enhancements courtesy of the local plater but otherwise has the look of a brand new car (Canley, not Speke) as you would’ve expected to see in a BL dealership back in the day. It has taken a year or so but he has done a careful & thorough job of this & does him huge credit. I know he is itching to get the car finished but he is still taking the time to do each job properly & I am in awe of his patience. I can see all the shortcuts I’ve taken on my car just so I could both afford to keep the car & actually have it ready to use but Jolyon will be justifiably very proud of what he has accomplished with his 7.
Then, with the little hand on the clock starting on its downhill path it was time for me to hit the road. I wasn’t looking forward to another 9 hours of drudgery & annoying other drivers but was now even more determined to get back into my 7 for a return trip before the end of the year to see Jolyon’s car completed.
The map: http://tinyurl.com/wedgemap . The blog: http://www.forum.triumphtr7.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=8548
