HARTLEY

[chugga boom]

about january time i was asked if i could recomission an augusta for a customer, basically get it running and mot'd ready for the spr, naturally i jumped at the opportunity to work on my favourite model of car   anyway to cut a very long story short the car was dropped off in the middle of march, plenty of time you may think! think again, the car was stripped to a near bare shell to make structural repairs sound , full repaint, both axles overhauled , rear springs , new roof mouldings made blah blah blah, in total over 400hrs of work were done in 2.5 months by myself and staff, the car was mot'd thursday this week and finished at 10.30am this morning, customer arrived at 11am to collect it and didn't recognise it!! totally overwhelmed by its transformation and as he put it the standard that the car was done to in the time given, this brought a huge smile to my face, pressure was on the last 4 weeks with working in the region of 90hrs pw to keep the project on time for the deadline, i've now decided to go into the restoration business as we now have all the facilities to carry out almost any work including a body shop next door with low bake oven facilities, unfortunatly for me i became very fond of "HARTLEY" during his stay hense naming him, the names a pretty obvious choice concidering its number plate

[fay66]

Well done Chugga,
Hartley looks magnificent,Good luck with your new venture, I can't ever see you being short of work

Brian
8227

[Parisien]

Great stuff, wishing you every success in your new venture, keep us posted!

P

[the.cern]

Excellent work James and delighted that you met the delivery deadline!! I never doubted you would, but there were occasions when I dropped in that I wondered how you would.

A brilliant job in such a short time-scale given the amount of work that was required, far more that anyone might have thought when first looking at the car, but then that is always the case for restorations!!!!!!!!!!

See you soon (with a couple of rubbish bootlids and some interior trim).

                             Andy

[JohnMillham]

Well done James. It looks great. As you know, I much prefer the look of the upright grille model! See you at the SPR and I promise not to mention Silent Bloc Bushes!
 Regards, John

[Parisien]

James you have a pm!


P

[chugga boom]

thankyou all, spoke to the owner again yesterday and he and a friend from australia have now driven it both saying its superb! which put my mind at rest that he is happy with it ,John as you know i never liked flat rads , always thought they were too slab sided without the moulding, this 1 grew on me and i now like both body style's equally, both have their own seperate charm which i now appriciate, anyway 2 days left to sort my own car out, spline clunk from the n/s rear hub, desperate for a service and fan belt!! i'm sure i'll sort it 

[33rallyman]

I saw car shortly after it arrived at the garage and not wanting to dis anybody but it was what my father would have called a bag of nails, honestly, where to begin, Fast forward 2 and a bit months and the ugly duckling has turned out to be a beautiful creature, to the point that I'm considering selling the grale for an older more mature Lancia.

The sheer amount of work and the quality of the work needs to be seen to be believed, top job Paz, you should be very proud of what you achieved and the owner delighted with the end result.