Aprilia Diary

[stanley sweet]

The little trailer is in Panzer grey too! Hook it on the back for your bread, cheese and wine lunch (or ammo for the MG). There's an amazing number of these strange little carts still being used around France. I call them 'refugee carts' because they always remind me of the old films of people streaming towards Dunkerque etc. You've certainly collected some great bits and pieces.

[fay66]

The little trailer is in Panzer grey too! Hook it on the back for your bread, cheese and wine lunch (or ammo for the MG). There's an amazing number of these strange little carts still being used around France. I call them 'refugee carts' because they always remind me of the old films of people streaming towards Dunkerque etc. You've certainly collected some great bits and pieces.

Enough for a Museum

Brian
8227

[simonandjuliet]

Have an idea for hooking it onto the back of my bike ......

Finally finished the mods on the replacement wiper motor in between more jobs on the Ercole and plumbing in a new heating/cooling system for the wine tanks.

Ultimately, I turned down a piece of steel rod (terrible first photo, sorry !)to fit through the existing hole on the bodywork under the windscreen, turned a flange on it so that it would sit neatly on the new motor's baseplate, leaving another section to go through the existing hole where it could be peened to hold it all in place (I cut off the original threaded tube because it was too wide for the bodywork).
The rod was then reamed to take the turned down spindle from the new motor, then the rod was threaded. Final job was to cut down a metric fine nut so that the wiper arm does not sit too far off the screen.

It would have been so much quicker just to have bored out the original hole by 1.5 mm, but then my original motor will not fit properly. I will not share with you how long it all took .......

It works nicely and just needs to be fitted along with the repainted wiper arms. Please excuse the before and after shots, but the arms took an age to clean and you can see the lovely brass bits in the "before" picture !

PS as an Ercole buying tip for Chris - check the front forks, they seem prone to fatigue ! I got a nasty steering wobble driving home yesterday and discovered yet more cracks and broken plates on the forks. They had obviously been repaired before ( see iron bar attachments !) but after some TLC should be OK for a while longer. Picture of the front brake shows how simple they are ......

[DavidLaver]

Can you expand on the peening?   How thick, how tall, how scared clobbering all that work with a hammer...?

David

[simonandjuliet]

Peening - very scared, but done carefully ! I left about .7 mm thickness and a length of 8mm. Slid a suitably sized pin punch down the sleeve and the cone at the top of the punch formed the initial flare , then I tapped down and peened the rest using a smaller punch. Seems very sold !

Ercole used as intended today, worked well .... we only picked 110 kgs of grapes to make a bit of rose, but also to start a ferment. This will produce some CO2 which we will use to protect the rest of the grapes when we pick them later this week. More later if there is any interest .... ancient press found in a barn functions well, but needs some muscle !

[stanley sweet]

I'm happy to hear more wine making tales as you progress. I'm intrigued by the whole thing. Also love drinking it! Do you have rose bushes at the end of your vines do give warning of disease like some vineyards?

[davidwheeler]

Is that a 2CV in the background?   Looks like a Mehari.

[Sebastien]

A similar car to the Mehari, on Renault R4 basis? Rodeo 4 perhaps?

[lancialulu]

A similar car to the Mehari, on Renault R4 basis? Rodeo 4 perhaps?

rodeo is correct!

[simonandjuliet]

David, actually it is the lesser, rarer Renault 4 based "Rodeo" (1972) - a fraction of the price, less pretty but arguably more usable.

Built-in obsolescence - plastic body, steel chassis, holes in but no holes out .......

[simonandjuliet]

Back to Aprilias - finally fitted the new wiper motor. It is a tight fit due to the slightly taller motor cover and built in switch. The electrical connection is on the other side so to make life easier I added a short extension and clamped it to the original feed

All works well, 110° arc is spot on for my wipers (one has been shortened slightly so it doesn't foul the rubber). With everything cleaned and lubricated, there is reasonable pressure on the blades but a new spring on the passenger side would improve things further.

Last thing was to fit a thicker (copper) washer on the driver's side to take up some of the wear.

Now I have wipers again, I can concentrate on remaking the original cog and rebuilding the old wiper motor.

Sorry it is all so dusty/grubby , but we have water restrictions - indeed today we have NO water .....

[simonandjuliet]

Thought I'd strike while the iron's hot - CT (MOT) passed this afternoon !! An oil leak on the engine, very slight unbalance on rear brakes (adjust next time the spare wheel is out of the boot) and that's about it .....

I am aiming to import her fully this year, so since she is still on a UK V5 I can only have a 2 year CT but once she is registered here as Vehicule de Collection the next time I do the CT it will become a 5 year check.

As an aside, my CT centre has also offered to do all the paperwork for the new Carte Grise (V5) for free (I just pay the registration tax) - how cool is that ! Stanley, I don't know if it is a France-wide thing but could be useful in the future ??

The CT proof now resides alongside the insurance vignette - nearly there !
 

[stanley sweet]

Congratulations after all your hard work! It's a nice feeling to know you can now tinker at leisure for two years. I hadn't heard about the free paperwork thing I must admit but will bear it in mind if I ever import another car. When I first registered my Fulvia here as a Vehicule de Collection I also received a thick pad of travel passes. I could travel in my region and all adjoining regions without problems. But if I wanted to go further afield I had to fill out a chitty in advance and send it off somewhere to give notice of my journey. This was scrapped a while later and I never had to use it as to be honest my region and the surrounding ones add up to a huge area!

[lancialulu]

My local Marie did the paperwork for my Delta purchase to change the V5. They asked me to send a blank cheque as they did not quite know what CV class the car was. No worries as I was warned and 167 eu was duly deducted from my bank account as estimated.

My delta has just crossed the 25 year threshold for voiture de collection but I wonder what paperwork and further tax is involved to make the change?

[simonandjuliet]

Our Mairie will not do it and when asked ,looked as if I had asked to de-flower Marianne ....





(ps Marianne is the symbol of La République as seen on stamps, coins etc !!!)