We’ve had loads of Big Car Colouring Competition entries which you can see here. But don’t let that stop you submitting a new entry, check out the instructions in this post. Here’s an example of one of the more practical designs (we could do with more of these)…

I popped down to Big Car’s garages this morning to try to work out what seats she has missing.

I’ll have a look on the internet for some bench seats to complete Big Car’s complement. I think she’ll happily seat 11 people some day – a proper party bus!

I’m thinking this for the front seats and this for the back…

Alice sent me a bunch of photos from last Saturday, which I have put up on Flickr here. They show the work that was done on the wiring and dash by Shaun and Al, as well as the newly fitted seating. Here’s a sample

Some time soon we’ll have Big Car’s Big Painting Day. We can all get our paintbrushes out and make Big Car pretty. However, we’re going to need a paint job design first. That’s where you can help. Simply click on the picture below to get a big version, print this out and colour it in with your paint job design, then photograph (or scan) your design and email it to enquiries [at] bigcar.org.uk, alternatively you might prefer to right click on the big version of the image to save it to your disk and edit it in Microsoft Paint, it’s up to you – we’ll put all the designs here for all to see and paint Big Car to match the best one.

Check all entries here.

Shaun, Al, Alice, Simon C and I got down to the garages yesterday. Shaun got cracking with Big Car’s wiring and dash. However, a lack of new fuses stopped play, though he got the heater and blower working – that’ll be handy over the next few months!

Meanwhile, the rest of us tackled Big Car’s seating. We’ve installed the driver’s seat and 3 bench seats in the back. Alice took some measurements of these so that she can make some cushions. I think we’re going to need to get on eBay to get some more seats – we’re missing a forth bench seat in the back and a passenger seat in the front. Also, we need to work out what to put in between the two seats in the front – there’s a thrid seatbelt and there seems to be a backet to accommodate a third seat, however a fire extinguisher housing seems to be in the way of mounting a third seat. What would we rather – more seating, or the piece of mind that a fire extingusiher would bring? I suppose it depends on how much we trust Shaun’s rewiring!

Once Alice sends me the photos she took yesterday, I’ll stick these up on Flickr. Also as I type, I’m scanning in a couple of photos from the old days of Simon and Tidy working on the head of Big Car’s old engine – I’ll put these up on Flickr shortly.

Take care all, Bob.

Hello all,

Mel dug out some videos of Simon working on Big Car. The first video shows Simon starting Big Car and getting excited.

Click on (more…) to see three more videos from that day.
(more…)

For anyone that’s interested and available, more work will be carried out on Big Car this Saturday (tomorrow) (depending on the weather- we will have to get Big Car out of the garage and Shaun doesn’t really want to sort the electrics in the rain…)

But all being well we’ll be at the garages on Harrison Road from around 10.30am. Possibly in the Jackpot Cafe for breakfast shortly before…

All the best,

Al

You can see more photos from today’s visit here.

Today, me and Shaun went shopping for all the bits needed to rewire Big Car. She’s in a big jumble under her dash, so we picked up enough cable, switches and connectors to solve any electrical problems that Big Car may be suffering from. I showed Shaun the massive printout of Big Car’s wiring diagram that I made by selotaping 18 sheets of A4 together – he smiled…

Take care all, Bob.

I’ve managed to dig out a wiring diagram for Shaun to get cracking with…

…rather him than me!

Oddly, it seems that the military 110’s were wired differently to conventional ones because this wiring diagram differs to the ones found in the Land Rover manuals (which can now be found in our Downloads page). I’ll try to get a big print out of this ready in time for Saturday.

Laterz, Bob.