Hills, Valleys, Creeks and Vales

[Jaymo]

I already have a build thread, that will probably get updated more sporadically now… but finally; this is my drive thread!

So last Friday, I got the old girl through Regency , (South Australian for a full “Roadworthy Pit Inspection”)… it is a pretty big deal, they are very thorough, but it means I can finally Register the car for driving on the road…

It looked like rain, but there is a fair lead time to get a booking in, and after a year I was somewhat sick of waiting… so I decided that this would be the one time I would deliberately drive the car in the rain… if I can help it, this won’t be happening again!

Finally, I lined up all the paperwork, picked up my plates… and on Wed we finally got a break in the weather to get her out for a drive.

I need to start repaying my long suffering wife, so a quick run to the Cuddlee Creek Café, then the Green Shed for some produce,

and off to Mt Brera for a cheeky little wine tasting

So, what is with the Hills, Valleys, Creeks and Vales? these are all our neighbourhood wine regions… the main purpose of this Cat is to transport us through the SA wine regions. Particularly (By geographical distance from us)

Adelaide Hills, Barossa Valley, Eden Valley, Maclaren Vale, Langhorne Creek, Claire Valley, Currency Creek, Padthaway and the Coonawarra…

So a quick little squirt to our local Adelaide Hills fave was just the ticket!

[Jaymo]

After a year getting the car roadworthy…. Australia is now into its third “La Niña” weather event in a row… I have only been able to get the car out sporadically.

I figured little runs, such as a run to pick up “The other KFC” isn’t worthy of a post (Korean Fried Chicken)…

On Friday , with a gap in the clouds I went to pick up the kids from school …. Someone else had the same idea, and thus in a Suburban Adelaide school car park an American car show broke out …

As somewhat of an introvert, I can’t be a$$ed with playground politics… but now I have someone to talk to united in classic AmeriCarna…

[Jaymo]

Had a great weekend in the Cougar, the weather finally broke so on Saturday evening I went and joined the Zipple Cruise, which is a monthly summer (mid-Spring to mid-Autumn) cruise for Classic American cars in Adelaide.

I grabbed the two biggest kids, and went for a drive into town (I have some great driving road options into town)

then cut across to the meeting point.

Got there a little early, there may have been thirty cars, so I parked the car opposite a blue 68. With no one around it to chat to, I took the kids to Hungry Jacks.

Choked on a quick burger, and came back out to tonnes of American cars.

Just some pictures of cars, there was not enough time to walk them all… I figured vanity plates are a “part of the build” so I haven’t blurred those, I have blurred regular number plates…

Five photos can be uploaded at a time… cool. I do prefer Fords and Mopar … so I took more photos of those, but I do appreciate GM muscle cars and Tri Fives, so those were next priority.

[Jaymo]

This post was stuffing up so splitting.

Next batch coming

[Jaymo]

And

[Jaymo]

Nice mustang and some heavyweights

[Jaymo]

Finishing with some of my favourite Mustangs…

I finally started to chat with the 68 Cougar owner, but before I got to ask what is under the bonnet , the cruise began!

[Jaymo]

[Jaymo]

Sunday was a resumption of normal operations, owed the wife some wineries, so it started with Pizzas at Tenafete Creek

Followed by a Drive through to the Barossa Valley where we hit Schild

And Turkey’s Flat winery

Look, if we don’t drive them they rot!

[Jaymo]

Had another good Sunday with the Cougar. Adelaide has one of the worlds biggest annual car runs, The Bay to Birdwood. Birdwood being a little Town/Village that contains the Australian National Motor Museum.

1550 cars officially started, there are an extra 500 odd classic cars that do the run unstickered, the odd pelican that paid $700 grand on a new Lamborghini or Ferrari that was not going to miss out on the attention … and at least 1000 odd classic cars by the side of the road … many, many tens of thousands of spectators line the sixty seven odd kilometers to Birdwood. Adelaide represent!

I live up that way, so I started by doing 3/4 of the route backwards to get to the Start at West Beach….

Started the car in the morning, tach was dead… turn onto the main road leaving my country lane, no blinkers… bugger, approach West beach… Cops everywhere, lucky our numbers were so large, otherwise I would be defected.

A selection of my kinds of cars from the start…

[Jaymo]

Half the field had already left by the time I had arrived (one of the last) and even then I couldn’t fit in a photo …

And then there is the Veterans… 1904 was the oldest. They have a right to be there… but geez the are a pain in the a$$.

They are like Cyclists…. Cyclists also have a right to be in the Adelaide Hills, but those MAMILS (middle aged men in Lycra) do stuff up the driving roads for the rest of us….

Anyhow, the wooden wheeled brigade was in force…

[Jaymo]

Heaps of people post up the videos they take….

I started near the back, this isn’t terribly representative… but we are at 2:18 ish! Near the start in town on a main road with “normies”.

Bay to Birdwood 2022 a motoring event for veteran, vintage and classic vehicles.

This is what I am talking about re classics on the side of the road …

[Jaymo]

Back to the wooden wheelers….

We have had massive rains in Oz. (Much of the state of Victoria is under water) but SA had the first beautiful weekend with the first hot day of Spring on Sunday.

It was now I realised that whatever took out my tach, took out the blinkers and took out my booster thermo fan… temps were hot everywhere… and then we hit the hills…

This beautiful XY Fairmount behind us (the dark car)

Is a case in point.

We hit the slopes at the foothills and the Wooden wheelers are straight into first and chuff chuff chuff chuff.

We in our big V8s with stally torque converters are doing 10km/h at 1800-2200 rpm up a steep hill on a hot day with temps through the roof!

The Fairmont XY that was behind us overheated and disappeared (and I was close)

[Jaymo]

Conveniently, being a small town, there are a bunch of fields behind the motor museum…. There were five fields of cars, classic cars everywhere…

[leonbray]

B2B always has a great mix of classics. Hope you manage to sort out the electrical gremlins

[Jaymo]

Thanks Leon, Just one fuse that took out tach , the blinkers and the thermo-fan trigger…. Whilst tracing that, I found the loose wire to the stereo, which would be awesome except I ripped out the crappy speakers the other day…

It was absolutely awesome. Amongst 5 fields of cars I saw only One other Cougar, a beautiful 68 XR7 , purple with a white roof … my phone was dead so I couldn’t snap it… however when we left it ended up in front of me

Awesome day ! Lot’s of waving, lot’s of mouthing and pointing “What is that” at us… a few “nice Cougar”!

[Jaymo]

Oh, and one last post regarding Bay to Birdwood.

Park of the day goes to, (drumroll)…!!!

[leonbray]

@Jaymo

Oh, and one last post regarding Bay to Birdwood.

Park of the day goes to, (drumroll)…!!!

They used to sell them badged as a BMW

[sfhess]

Austin 7?

[Jaymo]

I am not sure if you are aware in the states, but we have had a crapload of rain… most of the las couple of months have had rainy weekends. Washing out the SA all ford day. I got there, put my car in and got judged in the Americana group. But did the bolt as the rains came in. No way I got anything compared to the quality of other cars.

Second ever photo of my car wet… I managed to get a set of calibrated sponges to close out the bonnet scoop. It rained hard by the time I got home, motor stayed dry this time.

The other big drive I did was when I went for my gun license. Six months to get my application approved, metro was around three months to do the course, so I went for a shorter couple of months at a rural location in the Riverlands. 300 odd kilometers away.

Six hundred kilometers wrapped around an intense 8 hour day (5 hrs theory , 3hrs at the range for practical…

3.55 diff at 70mile an hour gets a little draining! However, I did find overtaking Road Trains a breeze! A lot of our highways in South Australia are 110 single lane each way, minimising the time spent on the wrong side of the road whilst overtaking “triples” was imperative.

Here we are at the range… I kept imagining the sound of dueling banjos… it’s a tight shot because they don’t like you taking photos.

The second shot was my leaving at Dawn.

I do have to drive the length of the Barossa Valley both ways to get to the Riverlands. On the way back it was dusk, so I dropped the roof… got propositioned from the footpath as I trundled through Williamstown (note, happily married, so I pay no notice, but it is disconcerting…it always seems to be the rotund toothless ones yelling out).

A few more cruises including Barossa Valley Fords and a couple of Zipple Cruises were rained out.

The next bunch of weekends had one dry day in each, which were spent removing snake habitat… and then just as it gets dry…. My ignition craps out on me in town ( starter motor runs when “on” ignition and doesn’t disengage)…