May 2024

Good to see the first large Healey Meeting of 2024 so well attended, this was the Daffodil Weekend in early April. You can see a write up later in this issue of the magazine.

In this last issue (April), you will also have received a flyer confirming your membership and showing you how to download your membership card from our website so please check your envelope.

Our new revitalised website has met with many positive comments, especially those using the site for advertising their cars and parts, with the facility to pay on line for their advert, try it out!

Our International Healey Meeting this year 2024 is being organised by the Southern Counties Region of our Club and will be based at the Village hotel near Maidstone on 23-26 June with visits to Leeds Castle and the Historic Dockyard at Chatham. This last venue I visited many years ago and has a quarter mile long rope locker in which the engineers cycle the length of the building whilst following a buggy which feeds and twists the rope into long sections before it is made into the finished length. For those who watched the raising of the Mary Rose way back in 1982, you can imagine the massive amounts of rope required to rope a ship and still required today for ships such as those which compete in the tall ships race each year.

Which reminds me, looking to the future for members who like to book ahead, our IHM for 2025 organised by the Northern Centre is going to be held on 20 - 23^rd July 2025 so keep your eye out for venue details in due course. Don't forget the Donington Historic Festival is on 4-5^th May, I hope this May issue gets to you in time but they are offering 50% off of entry tickets. You may also be interested in a new event, the Inter - Club International Weekend at Malvern on 28-30^th June Details in (April) issue.

From our friends at the FBHVC you will see, and I expect you can remember, we used to be able to obtain information from the DVLA on previous ownership of our cars but this is no longer available through GDPR and of course no personal details are ever disclosed by our Clubs registers. As far as insurance for historic cars is concerned this is a valuable though small market that I am sure will continue. Even if we do all have to carry a black box with us! The item on fuels describes E5 as having a octane rating of 97, more than enough to stop knocking on a 9:1 compression engine such as our 3000s. Indeed, the first 100s only had a compression of 7.5:1 so the engine would have to be heavily modified to encounter any problems with today's fuel. Some grades of super unleaded are quoted at a Ron of 99 which would cover most historic race engines. I was building a race MGB at the time and the compression ended up at 12:1 and boy did that knock until I put some of that high octane additive in! I remember filling up with 4 gallons of fuel and 4 shots of Redex ! Remember - this was normal at that time!

Enjoy the fine weather and Keep Overtaking - safely!