Friday 2 October 2015

Welsh Road trip and Gearbox Failure

This post has been a long time in the gestation, but about time I recorded how much Penny and I enjoyed two-thirds of the Welsh Road Trip, and a follow-up on examination and diagnosis of the gearbox problem which cut it short.




2015 WELSH ROAD TRIP – A Personal Reflection from the ’Newbies’


Frank and Sandra Allen’s Welsh Road Trip was to be our first event with the 289 Register, and with only 180 miles on the clock and an awful weather forecast for the drive down on Friday, we approached it with some trepidation. The Ace was loaded with a small suitcase full of tools, spare oil and water, hood and sidescreens erected, and we set off into the rain at about 3pm, fingers crossed that the untried windscreen wipers would keep working.


We’d brought a couple of old towels to anticipate the occasional leak – though the weather penetrated on a similar scale to my first car – a 1962 Midget, and Penny and I soon realised that rolled-up jeans were de rigeur. Much water came in from behind due to the shape of the rear body, some more from around the top centre of the windscreen and probably other areas as well. Traffic was quite heavy – a long queue near Tarporley on the A49 in particular. We had a brief stop at Whitchurch before trundling along to Oswestry and Welshpool. We almost found Maesmawr Hall first time, and on parking up with a line of Cobras we were warmly greeted by a number of our fellow members. Somehow we’d managed to take nearly three hours to travel 90 miles ….