I found a place that has an amazing stash of old BMC/COMMER/HILLMAN/every other-limey-car-ever-built parts. HEAPS of new-old stock. Some old aussie stuff as well. They have a huge stock of lights and lenses. Unfortunately no VW parts. The place is called Auto Spares Galore it's near the corner of Dorset rd. and Burwood Hwy, Ferntree Gully.

mmmmmm...
Hillman........
Nice car....
I had a 58 minx, but the crap i used to cop was terriable.....
The car was made by the Rootes Group...
Ahhhh those were the days.....
:thumb:thumb:thumb

I had 10 Austin 1800's in a row when I first got my license. Why? Because they are cheap, handle and brake well, perform reasonable for a car of their size/weight/age and have a little more character than a Falcadore. They also don't tend to attract the attention of the boys in blue unless bajafied or dropped on their guts like a couple of mine were.

I visited a little secondhand bookstore today and looked for VW workshop manuals to no avail. I ended up leaving with a manual for early Hillmans and another for the late 40's Vauxhall Velox/Wyvern, both for the princely sum of $10. I figured they'd make interesting reading material.

I ran Morris Majors as a student. Good tough cars & easy to fix. The poms just use heaps of bolts to do things. As a old mechanic customer of mine once said- "If the poms use 10 bolts to hold something on a motor, the yanks could do it with 4 big ones, the germans would use a metal clip & the japs would use a plastic clip!" I recently removed a sump on a 1950 Jag- 23x 5 16ths BSF bolts- sheeeez- took a whole afternoon to put it back!

Ah, the memories of my beloved triumph stag...Every day was an adventure into the unknown world of british engineering, broke down all the time, leaked from every possible place that contained fluid!! but boy what a car..... fantastic handling convertable with a v8 that would rev to 7000 rpm..... the sound was out of this world!...... gimme another!!!:thumb

Hey, Stag's aren't unreliable!! My Dad's has never let him down, but then again it's done under 1000km in the last 20 years.
It's also done under 80000 since new! I'm waiting for the day he gets sick of it and gives it to me. :thumb

i'll keep that place in mind, while i restore a hillman imp gt, the one with the big 998cc engine!!!

They had a LOT of imp parts. I think I found a square vdo fuel guage, how do I tell if it's for a volkswagen?

I had a Ford Anglia when I was a teenager. Black, side pipe exhaust 9sounded as loud and throaty as anything. fats, chromies, raised at back, leopard fur ceiling, high bucket seats and a cortina motor. Went like the clappers. Also had a cb radio with a loudspeaker attached under the bonnet. Got pulled over by the cops lots in it though (they couldn't find anything to defect) so I got ride of it. really hated the front nose / grill area. Looks very ugly no matter what you can do to it. notice Harry ptter has one now...
Ian

Being from Nu Zalund that's all we got mostly. Learnt to drive in a 1932 Brooklands Riley. First car was a Standard 10 with kind of centrifugal clutch type of thing.
I'm not that old it's just that we had some classics still on the road over there....

My first car was an 850 mini we bought it at night and towed it home and got booked for towing an unregistered and uninsured car, the fine was more that the car was worth? nice car though handled well, cheap on fuel
marcel

G'day guys.
This is my first post so i'll try and make it as interesting as I can
I'm not ashamed to admit that my first car was a 78 Mini Clubman S.
I have a funny feeling my dad was into British cars big time when i was a kid as all we ever had were P76's, Cooper S's, Austin 1800's (including an 1800 ute) as well as a morris 1100. Phew!!!

My first car was a early '60's mini .. It was a bargain .. I bought a CB Radio from a mate for sixty cents and swapped it for the Mini! I spent the next year or so getting it on the road ... Did not know how to weld back then so I bogged the pan with fibreglass .. Put four huge Aircraft Landing lights on the roofrack which took up the whole roof and a nine foot stainless stell CB aerial on a huge spring .. When I hooked the car around corners the aerial used to hit street signs .. All was good till the Brisbane cops did a machinery on me .. Once they saw my bog job they made me take it off the road ! Ah what a great car!!

Check out my Dad's MGA in Buying/Selling!:thumb

Hey strex!
I had a auto mini with teh 9FT S/S CB aeria too...
looked like a remote controlled car....
l
then one day we decided to go through teh centenery drivethrough ( for some refreshments) and took out every fluro they had on the way in!
:cussing:cussing:cussing
needless to say they didn't serve us and we left taking out the rest of the fluro's on the way out!

My old man was a British Leyland worker, and instilled the BL following through the family - therefore my first car was a '76 Triumph Dolomite - not a Sprint unfortunately. It was as tough a nails, cruised all day, until I put it down a ditch.

Luckily I learnt to think for myself as I got older with my next car being a '70 Notch, and the rest is history.

My first car that was mine mine it's all mine was a Morris Major Series 2. Beautiful, reliable, strong as an ox and only cost $550 including a car for spares.

It was fantastically easy to fix.

The worst problem they had was that if they were still original, the axle would definitely break eventually (which is a real bugger when it happens crossing a major road at peak hour, and then RACQ tries to insist it's your gearbox that's gone)

Oh yeah, and the brakes were a real bastard too.

But the car WAS very cute!

Best wave ever was driving down the SE freeway, and another major driving beside me. There are about 3 majors in Brisbane, and we got so excited! We were waving like idiots and shouting to each other! Must have looked quite a sight.

Angela

My history is 2 Series 1's & wait for it... a Morris Major ELITE! Man those fins and that radical two colour paint job- grey & pink!!!
Yes I had a diff break too but when you could buy complete cars from the trading post for $100 it didn't matter much. And that BMC B series motor- talk about tough! When VW engines go bad, they generally stop or won't start but that thing just kept going. My 1st series one got hard to start in winter so I used to tip "liberated " solvent ether down the SU throat to wake it up. When I eventually took the head off I found 4 (four) burnt exhaust valves! But it never stopped. I dreamed about owing a Wolsley 1500-polished wood dash & leather seats- but couldn't afford one!

As some of you know I'm in the UK and you can keep 'em thank you.

With the exception of some ultra expensive old Astons I'd generaly rather have German cars any day

Geodon, I saw a Wolseley 1500 for sale in Brisbane recently, just sitting on the side of a very obscure country road. It was BEAUTIFUL!!!! Interior was perfect. I didn't dare ring the number for the pricetag, because then I'd have to find the money to buy it!

Angela