Wensum Goes To France Via Spain

Adrian Richmond Writes

Went to France via Spain for the Classic meeting at the Nogaro race track in October. It was a very pleasant surprise to meet Jon Marshall, the TR4/4a registrar and his lovely wife on the ferry to Bilbao. Even better as one of us was actually driving a TR4.

After we left the ferry we drove the 2 ½ hrs on to Pamplona

for the night staying in a hotel almost at the centre of the old city. Pamplona

is beautiful and we explored its old centre whilst eating roast chestnuts from

a stall in the nearby square. Then as would be expected of TR drivers we ended up

in a bar for beer and tapas.

Next day we drove the longer stretch across the Pyrenees via

Jaca and Pau to our final destination of Nogaro. The scenery was spectacular

but during a fuel stop in a mountain village we noticed as Mark was filling his

car fuel was pouring out the bottom of the TR4? Despite initially thinking the

car had lost a seal or a hose investigations led us to believe that excess fuel

had been expelled out of the tank from a breather pipe and we recovered from

this worrying set back with no major issues. However later we noticed water

dripping from the TR4's engine bay and this turned out to be the recently

replaced radiator cap, which was incorrect for the neck of the TR4's radiator

filler. Despite having explained the model and set up to the supplier it would

seem the wrong cap had been supplied with too little pressure. Following on

from my 11-month-old core plug failure just days before the trip we wondered if

this was time tor raise the TR spare parts issue.So called new parts seem to

fail very quickly these days.

However the Nogaro classic festival was a great event with

around 800 hundred classics of all marques coming to the show. We had pre

booked onto the scenic rally, the 'Tour Gascon' and as with all well organised

French car rallies this included a scheduled stop at a vineyard to taste some

wine:)

Great weather apart from a terrible thunder storm one

evening which led me to discover a leak from the plenum of my 6 that soaked my

new carpets on the drivers side.

However apart from the aforementioned hiccups the cars ran

really well and we got safely home, the carpets from my 6 are still drying out

and Mark's 4 suffered no further fuel leaks or boiled engines.