A brief trip report in summary for everyone, photos from Sunday, we'll get the rest of the photos from Friday and Saturday and the video from the track uploaded tomorrow perhaps.
The weekend started with us getting up fairly late on Friday morning. I think everyone has been fairly tired recently, and it was nice to be able to relax a bit at home. Amy and Keith had been working on the SC during the leak, fixing a fuel leak from the sender unit, and dealing with some oil leaks from the engine. Luckily most of these were in good order for us to make the 40 mile trip to Silverstone.
Amy was driving the SC, I had to drive the bus. Luckily the bus started second time with a little easy start after a few weeks of sitting on the drive.
We had an uneventful drive up the A roads, avoiding the M1 due to the speed of the bus and avoiding some of the driving that seems to have become normal on the motorways of Britain - tailgating, not looking, and generally not paying attention seems to have become the norm, combined with people undertaking large vehicles with restricted visibility and leaving nowhere near enough room means that we end up sitting on the A roads at 50mph. I am sure that isn't very popular with some of the people who end up sitting behind us on more open roads, but they could have taken the M1 I guess
We arrived early afternoon at Silverstone and I headed into the Woodlands campsite. The name is perhaps a little deceptive, it is a purpose built campsite with toilet blocks, showers, and washing up facilities, as well as (apparently) 250 electric hookups. On arrival I was told that there were hookups free, but that I couldn't have one because I hadn't booked it. Which is odd, because we weren't given the option of booking anything of the sort, but the running theme seems to be that See Tickets who organise ordinary tickets and camping tickets have made a complete hash of the entire thing, with friends involved in other clubs deciding not to go to the event despite having paid for tickets because of the issues they had with them. We didn't have any issues with ours, other than them being delivered a week before the event - something that I can't say I like from a planning point of view, and no idea how we'd have sorted any issues with tickets if there had been any.
Amy on the other hand had driven the SC straight to the centre of the track, as part of the group doing the Retro Run we had infield parking ready for us. Now to explain the Retro Run, it is open to cars manufactured before 1991 or of special interest, and is a scenic run similar to the ones we do on the annual rally weekend, to several different locations providing a round trip of between 60 and 100 miles. It is very good fun, and worked out to be the same price for me and Amy to do this than to buy normal tickets for the weekend.
Friday night we had a bit of dinner in the bus, cooked on the gas hob while we listened to the rain outside. We waited for the rain to clear up a bit and then headed to the track for the live music. The Silverstone Classic is a good mix of classic and modern cars, music, and a good festival-type atmosphere. The weather held for just about long enough for a couple of pints of cider and a Rolling Stones tribute act. They were doing their best, but the threat of rain and earlier conditions had dampened spirits a little all round. We headed home fairly late before the rain started again, timing was perfect as once we had got back inside the bus it started to really properly rain a lot.
Saturday morning was perfect, with blue skies and only a few clouds in the sky. Our scheduled departure time was 9:50 from the infield at Silverstone, so we got ourselves down there and hopped into the car. Hood down, naturally, Amy was driving first and we were heading to the Aston Martin Works Service - my navigation was spot on, as always. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. We got there, anyway.
Paint scheme under consideration for Project B.
Aston Martin/Shopping Trolley interface at a supermarket, evidently.
We got to look around the Aston Martins currently in for work to be done, everything from brand new cars right back to the early cars having repair and restoration work done. Something for everybody, and a good break on the run before lunch. When we got back to the carpark there was some oil under the car, so we decided to lift the bonnet and have a bit of a look at things. At this point we were a little surprised to have a couple of the mechanics from Aston Martin come over to have a look at the engine. They noticed we'd got a bit of an oil leak, asked all the right questions to make sure the engine was healthy and ok to get us back, and then had a look at where we thought the leak was coming from. They used some degreaser to clean up the engine bay, so we could find the leak later on if it came back. After some discussion they suggested a sealant that they use for almost everything on their engine rebuilds might help. After a bit of discussion to identify what product it was, we were handed a half-used tube to use. Which will probably do us for all the engines we've got to rebuild in the next few months! The guys also got out some very absorbent quilted sheets to mop up any oil from the engine, and we were left with a couple of these to chuck in the boot - very generous and unexpected, but then I guess Aston Martin sets a high standard for themselves and clearly their guys work to the same standard even if we weren't paying customers! During discussion I did mention that the Jupiter was probably the last really good car manufactured in Britain, luckily they saw the funny side on that one, and learned a bit about Jowetts as well while we were helping us out.
Amy saw a car she quite liked.
I saw a car that she might like instead:
A nice selection of cars in the AM carpark - everything from Mercedes to Jowett to Reliant. During our visit lots of cars came and went, so we got to see a lot of them as they came through.
Reckon we could get a Javelin body on this?
The return trip was a 40 mile run, my turn to drive with Amy navigating. We managed to get a bit lost around a golf course, but then who hasn't done that before! Unfortunately about 5 miles from Silverstone I heard a tinkle that seemed to be tied to depressing the clutch. Which was odd. We pulled over to test out possible theories - initially I had suspected the bonnet catches, but this proved not to be the case. Then Amy turned off the engine to see if we could see anything loose or feel anything wrong. When she did that, it then became very clear what was causing the problem - the fan continued to turn at great speed for quite some time.
A quick poke around under the bonnet, and the fan was off, it became clear after a phone call to HQ that the fan was originally attached to a conical fitting. It was no longer attached to the conical fitting. Given the short distance and clear roads, we decided to remove the fan so that it didn't damage the radiator and head back to the track. We managed about 4 miles before we had to pull over and let things cool down - testament to the quality of the radiator perhaps. After a few minutes of cooling off we were back on the road and into the track, to find ourselves almost the last ones home from the Retro Run.
Over to the autojumble, where a couple of large washers were sourced to get the fan fixed (at least temporarily) and Amy was sent under the bonnet to fix her car. Not long after we had got things back together again, I was covered in dirt and grease as well, and the fan was working. Lots and lots of interest from the general public, if nothing else because we were parked right next to the food stalls where everyone was having lunch, and we seemed to make an interesting distraction.
Saturday night meant dinner in the bus again, then a few more pints of cider and Suzi Quattro on stage. A much nicer evening, warmer, the crowd more excited, and the band was pretty good. We may have eaten some pancakes from a converted Citroen van.
Sunday morning and the Retro Run's next benefit was clear - a parade lap around Silverstone. We got into the car just about on time but had a couple of minutes of trying to get started. Luckily a bit of tweaking and swearing and we were off, and headed down to the track. We hadn't realised but we were in a group with the rest of the Retro Runners as well - around 200 cars in all. We pulled up behind them and had a bit of breakfast while we waited to hit the track. The public and other drivers and navigators were walking through the huge collection of cars, everyone was very friendly and interested in the cars, and there was a huge variety of different classic, vintage and retro cars on display.
Just see the cars above to give you an idea of the variety of cars involved in the Retro Run - everything from VW Beetles, Jag E-types, MGs, Lancia Deltas, BMWs, Fords, you name it. Loads of interest, and a really good cross-section of the classic car community.
Craig and Glenys Ainge joined us on track - we had managed to miss each other like ships in the night on Saturday - they were on a different route, going to Prodrive instead of the Aston Martin route we were on. Luckily Craig was not mistaken for Stirling Moss again, but demonstrated an ability to throw his Jupiter into a few corners in similar style, and clearly enjoying themselves!
Once we had been around the track we spent a little while wandering around a few of the stalls, saw some interesting cars and spoke to a few possibly useful companies that specialise in classic car parts. It was time to head home in the afternoon, so we headed back with the bus following the Jupiter down the A roads, for me to have a nice Sunday afternoon snooze and recover from a rather busy and fun weekend.
We will definitely be doing this again next year. The combination of being relatively local to us, the activities on the run and track, the atmosphere, evening entertainment, and inclusive approach was really good to see and be a part of.
Rock and roll on 2012...
Jack.
PS - More photos and video to follow, currently working on uploading these things so you can all see them.
