RogueRunners '26, Days 0 & 1

 Why Days 0 & 1? just like last year I established "base camp" at my girlfriend's house so I didn't have so far to drive. This turned out to be something of an adventure in itself as there were a couple of bursts of hail, short sharp bursts, with the emphasis on the sharp. But almost instantly the sun came out, so my luggage in the passenger seat remained dry - ish.

The following day I woke up stupidly early, but after a couple of hours of lying very still, I got up & we loaded the cars before heading for the breakfast meet at the Stamford Garden Centre. We found Richard on the A1, but as I'd refuelled on arrival the day before, I went direct to the café & found everyone else standing around in the car park when I arrived. As usual the garden centre café did us proud - the first of many Full English Breakfasts.

Having paid our dues, we headed north through the almost Cotwolds-like areas of Lincolnshire. Finding quite a few quiet sweeping roads, we stopped for coffee & cake at "The Courtyard Tearooms", but unfortunately Richard didn’t see the turning & carried on. We were looking a little unkempt so we were ushered into “the barn” which was very nice. As we left, the staff took an interest in our journey & came out to see the cars & wave us off.

Immediately after that was the 50p toll bridge, I checked the price again this year - still 50p.

After that, more sweeping curves, but with more & less attractive villages, there was one speed camera van, but not a problem as I was 10mph below the limit behind a car. We then lost Linda & Mark at the same fuel stop we lost Linda at last year, but while we were there a message came through from Richard (now the one-man advanced scouting party) saying a road was closed, but follow the diversion signs until the SatNav tries to double back, then delete a waypoint. Wise words indeed. By the time I got to that point I’d taken a wrong turn on a dual-carriageway (or more correctly NOT taken a right turn) so I was on my own, only catching the others at the final fuel stop immediately before the hotel.

Richard had already dealt with the confusion caused by the hotel having us booked in on the wrong day, so we all checked in successfully & had a drink & a good meal at a very reasonable price, before retiring to bed.

There's a video here

RogueRunners '26 Epilogue

 Well the big tour is over for another year, so it's time to take stock & ask what we learned.

Firstly, we leaned that the weather in south west Scotland isn't always brilliant. Though to be fair, it wasn't anywhere near as bad as the forecast.

Not strictly something we learned as we knew it already, but the Ecclefechan Hotel is a brilliant place to base a tour. with comfortable rooms, excellent food, plentiful "out of sight" parking & good access to superb roads & scenery. Adrian & Cath made us very welcome.

This year kit cars were once again in the majority & no-one went home on a lorry, so I suppose we learned that a properly maintained kit can be reliable in "less than optimum" weather.

There was no falling out, everyone just got on with the driving, chatting, eating cake & having a good time, some stayed for the whole tour, others came & went, took days off to see other things or just have a rest & this is as it should be, it's a holiday after all.

There will be more posts over the next few days as I look at my notes of things that happened & places we went. There will also be videos appearing on my YouTube channel "Fury1630"

This year's Rogues - well, most of them, Steve & Bob weren't there that day - an excellent bunch.

RogueRunners '26 Prologue

 

We have routes, we have hotels booked & most important of all, we have stickers & tee-shirts printed! For anyone who's wondering, no that's not AI "artwork" it was all created by my lovely girlfriend's fair hand, yes, she is very good at it isn't she.

Usually we alternate between Scotland & the north of England, but RR25 was SO successful & the Ecclefechan hotel SO welcoming, that we decided we would like to do it all again.

So here we are girding our loins for RogueRunners 2026 "Another Fechan Tour". There's a couple of people from 2025 not joining us, but on the other hand, there's a couple of people we didn't have on a run last year, one of whom is new to to the Rogues. The routes are more or less the same as last year, a couple of the longer ones have been pruned down to 200 miles as last year we were doing the South West Coast 300, so there were places we needed to reach, this time we're just up for the driving. I may have reversed  to direction of one ore two to avoid driving the same bits.

I don't suppose we'll get the weather we had last year (which was spectacular) but we will still enjoy ourselves, because that's what we do.

BRING IT ON!

Trim

 It's less than a week before the 2026 Road Trip, so what am I doing to the car? Checking important items? Topping up fluids? Testing electrical circuits?

No, I'm making door handle trims.

When I got the car it had Fiesta inside door handles - broken Fiesta inside door handles. I made up a plate & modified the release so it would hold together & work - which it has - but it's not a pretty thing & with the increasing "gentrification" of the Stylus' insides I thought something better was required.

Here's a picture of the passenger side handle, because - yes - I didn't think to take a "before" picture.

As you can see, it's  "serviceable" but not a nice thing to look at.

And yes - you just know the 3D printer is going to appear in this story, don't you?

Here's the 2D model I drew & you can see it has the same grooves as the handbrake boot / trim & the gearstick trim. I had to re-work it a little as it's all curves & angles, but the second print was very close, so after a few more adjustments I set the printer going again.

So there it is, all printed & in place. When I originally made the handles work I just put a countersunk bolt with a nut on the Ford bit, but that now has a riv-nut to save my knuckles, the hinge is all hidden & I'm quite pleased with the result. I may improve on it a little more yet, but it's a lot tidier than it was before.

Nice!

 

The steering wheel boss is finished, glued & fitted. 

I LIKE it, suits the style of the car perfectly.

It also has a little orange & blue stripeage going on Just to continue the theme.

Considering that wheel was a £30 Mini cast off from the Beaulieu auto jumble with a bit of 3d printing & a piece of alloy scrap, I'm pretty chuffed with that.

The instrument panels are looking a little "plain" now though. They might be a winter job.

Creature Comforts

There are a few things on the Stylus that have waited a very long time for me to get round to / work out how to fix / work up any enthusiasm for.

One such thing is the finer points of the interior. I guess it's a bit like decorating, you know you ought to do it, but there's always something more interesting to do.

A case in point is the handbrake, I've spent a very long time making it work, none at all on how it looks & frankly, it looks pants.

Here are a couple of photos from just after I bought the car in 2021 & as you can see the aperture for the handbrake is nothing more complicated that a slit in the carpet with some trim glued on - they're old photos because as always I forgot to take pictures before I started, so that air / fuel meter isn't there anymore.

Like a lot of the things on the Stylus, this may've looked good when the car was new in 2001, but it hadn't worn well, especially after my attempts to make the handbrake work, I pulled the lever right back & ripped open the rear join in the trim.

I have no idea why I started looking at this yesterday, perhaps the need to do some painting in the house concentrated my mind, but it occurred to me that I might be able to draw up & print something to tidy it all up, so I took some measurements & fired up the laptop.

My first attempt - just a prototype printed for speed, not finish - had a large slot at the front for the handle of the handbrake to fit through - I'd done something similar on the Fury, but on presenting it to the car I found that central bolt hole was almost - but not quite - right where a self tapper (self tapper! PAH!) was holding the trans tunnel roof on, but it was good enough to prove the concept was sound, though the torn edges of the carpet could still be seen at both ends. Back to the drawing ...... thing.

The second one covered up the cut edges & I moved the centre hole to match the car. It clearly worked, but was it any less ugly?

For two cars that are so similar looking I've always felt there was a wide gulf in the "style" of the Fury & the Stylus, for example I loved the yellow on the  Fury, but the few Stylii I've seen in yellow just don't look right to these eyes, my Brother summed it up when I first got the Stylus, he said is was "an E-Type to the Fury's D-Type". So while the Fury had a bare alloy trans tunnel with just a slot cut for the handbrake, which I liked because it looked "racer", I felt that sort of thing wouldn't do for the Stylus & to me the photo above just didn't look "right".

Then I realised - "that large hole at the front for the handle - it's printed in rubbery polyurethane you fool, you can just bend it over the handle", also the bolts on top on a flat flexible thing going wavy from the pressure of carpet below? Print a rigid trim to hold it flat.

So V3 looked like this & that all got printed over night & fitted to the car the following morning, onto the riv-nuts I'd fitted the day before.

Now of course with the handbrake trim in place, the gear lever trim ring looked "under done" & those screws? They are cheap wood screws self-tapping into sheet steel & in one case the trans tunnel tube itself, so while I shall use the trim for its stiffness, it will be inside a matching printed "cover" (on the printer as I write) & I shall rotate it though 45 degrees as while the current holes are at 3, 6, 9 & 12 o'clock, they're not all quite the same distance from the centre.

So I'll use the print to mark new holes in the alloy, use that to mark new holes in the trans tunnel & put some riv-nuts in there too.

All this got me thinking & my attention turned to an alloy ring which has been kicking around my property for years, it's either in the garage if I'm trying to find a use for it on the car, or it's in the house if I think I may be able to incorporate it into something indoors. I have no idea what it is or how I acquired it,  - it's not an aircraft part, so that rules out the usual method.

But, as part of this mild interior refresh, yesterday I spent far too long drawing a new steering wheel centre cap, it didn't need the colour or the texture, but I got kind of interested in the drawing of it - & the alternative was to do the painting.

There's a bit of a queue built up on the 3D printer, but within the next few days this will get it's turn. To my mind that's really quite late '60s & fits the car's image pretty perfectly, hopefully all this unnecessary bling will be on the car ready for the road trip.

Now while all that's printing & I've finished typing, I guess I should get some of the painting done (sigh).

Although it is about lunch time........

RogueRunners 2026 Preparation

 It's getting close.

RR26 officially starts on the 15th of May, of course there are a couple of people who for good & proper reasons will join us after a day or two, or leave before the end, but this always happens & it's not a bad thing really, it makes the hotel booking complex, but the "dynamic" of the group changes as people arrive & leave. So as it's about to do some proper mileage I've been looking round the car & doing some preparation.

Sitting in traffic waiting to get into wheels day on a none too warm morning the engine temperature rose to 100deg & stopped, but it didn't come down & the fan kept running, so I've done two things, I replaced the engine thermo switch with one that operated at a slightly lower temperature & I replaced the radiator fan with a slightly larger one, fitted to the front of the rad instead of the back.

I know arguments rage about whether a forward or rear fan is better, but to my mind if either was significantly worse, there wouldn't be any arguments, we'd all just know.

Anyway, it's better now, the temperature stops climbing at about 95deg & falls slowly until the fan stops.

This is "a good thing".

Another thing that's been improved is the battery. One of the things I liked about the car when I bought it was the Odyssey PC680 battery. I had one in the Fury & it always started the engine perfectly OK for something the size of a car stereo. I don't know how old the Stylus' one is, but it was in the car looking pretty "used" in 2021, so when it showed signs of falling off it's perch I wasn't surprised & then at my girlfriend's last time, it just wasn't going to try. "Clunk" went the starter solenoid, "Clunk".

So I connected the jump pack & it was just fine.

A little research suggested that the quality of Odyssey batteries has declined in recent years - we shall see, there are certainly alternatives now, but I wasn't ready to try one just yet.

AND another thing! In the hope of preserving the battery I made up & fitted a "side-light screamer". it's nothing more than a two way switch-over relay & a buzzer, which all fitted just in front / inside the steering column shroud.

Lousy picture of poor wiring - but it works!

The relay is energised by the ignition circuit, the switched side of the relay has an input from the sidelights & an output to the buzzer. So - ignition on, relay contacts held open, ignition off, contacts close making a circuit. If the lights are off there no power to the buzzer, but if I've left the lights on, the buzzer screams at me. I have a buzzer in the indicator circuit, but I put a switch in it's earth so if I ever need to sit by the kerb with the hazards on I can turn the buzzer off. I may run the earth from this buzzer up to the same switch for similar reasons. But the best thing about it was - it's all made from bits I already had in the garage.