Indeed plenty of entertainment and steam on my trips up and back down.
I've now got a brand new radiator for an A Series Metro thanks to Tony. The journey up had a minor boil over at a garage while I filled up with petrol thanks to the 'wrong radiator cap' but there was a method in this which sadly I'd forgotten about and would remember on my return journey.
It was really good to finally get to a Midas meet in my own Midas at last
other than the boil overs the car handled really rather nicely and I enjoyed the trips up and back plus the couple of jaunts out in the Gold Coupe to compare with other's cars.
Now as some of you will know I fitted a K series radiator earlier in the week so had to do a bit of bodging to make things work (actually I fitted 2 K series rads one an MGf and the other a Rover 100) the Rover 100 unfortunately has smaller diameter hoses than the A Series hoses feeding the radiator. So I did a bit of a make do and mend jobby by cutting a surplus bit of hose to make up the difference in diameters between the radiator inlet/outlets and the inside diameter of the A series hoses. It all worked pretty well for my test runs and also almost the entire Blandford-Enstone-Blandford trip. Only I forgot why I'd deliberately fitted the low pressure 'wrong radiator cap' to the overflow bottle which had resulted in a minor boil over on the up journey at the petrol station (to stop the sleeved bodged hoses blowing apart) So a mere 4 or 5 miles from home guess what? Yep the hose blew off thanks to me swapping the radiator caps over at the petrol station when the car had the minor boil over.
A quick panic and contemplation of abandoning the car with a hike down the A354 was given a second opinion by calling Alistair to ask how resilient an A series engine is to over heating and thermal shock should I refill it with the copious amounts of water I'd had to hand for the journeys. I pushed the hose back on as best I could by hand (note to self to make up a 'Kit Car Tool Box' for all future journeys just like the old days), decided that I would leave the radiator cap off all together as I'd no confidence in the hose remaining on the radiator for the remaining few miles.
Fortunately I'd stopped in a lay-bye at the top of a rather long hill that had at the bottom of it a pub in a small village next to a small stream. So a quck squirt and a long coast down got me to oodles of clean refreshing water leaving me a short hill and then a ring road to get my car back to my workshop
Phewwww I made it and it seems got away without any obvious damage. Lots of entertainment, a few thrills, a fair few spills and as Alistair has already said a whole lot of steam.
Good to see everyone, next time I will be in a Midas that's bound to be smarter and hopefully the days of bodging will soon be over too. However I still think these are cracking little cars and urge all of you out there with cars up on stands to set them down on some wheels and get them out on the road. They are so much fun!