RogueRunners '26 Day 2, Snaith to Ecclefechan

Day two, up with the lark, re-pack the cars & head out for breakfast at "The Motorist". Today they were holding a Ford meet, so hopes were high as I consider myself to be a Ford person, though I haven't actually owned a Ford car since a "Sebring red" (orange) MkIII Cortina in the late '80s - lots of Ford parts in numerous other cars, but no actual Fords.

We arrived at the gate brandishing our tickets, the chap said "Umm - is this a Ford?" "most of it is" I replied, but he sent us off to park on the gravel anyway, but not before saying "and him behind you?" while he pointed at Linda.

If I'm honest, I was a little underwhelmed by the cars on display, they seemed to be mostly restored front wheel drive cars from the '80s & not a single Hot Rod, though we were early, so more interesting things may have arrived later

Not a "Ford day" car, though it is a Ford & very nice.

This seemed to be a real RS200, one of the road cars

Not really a MkIII Escort, it's an RS1700T rally car, produced just as the rally world went 4WD. Pity really, we could've had RWD MkIII Escort homologation cars & maybe a production RWD RS car

But apart from a few interesting things like that, the order of the day was hatchbacks.

So we out headed north on the A162, past the inevitable speed trap van. There was a spell on the A1(M) but we were soon off & heading west past the Harewood speed hillclimb course. We crossed the river Wharfe in Otley, where the town fete was in progress - I made this mistake last year & repeated the error. We dropped into Blubberhouses & up the other side of the valley & after a fair bit of good moorland road we drove into Masham & saluted the Black Sheep Brewery, then there was a guy taking photos on a bend, no sign, no website, just a red van parked up, but Linda found him & the photos he took of us on the internet anyway. Shortly after that was the first refreshment stop at the very nice Brymor ice cream parlour.

Suitably refreshed, we had some confusion over a petrol stop, before passing the hamlet of Booze & up onto moorland - over 400m up & then down to Barnard Castle, where all of us saw the castle. After that there was a run up the river Wear valley to – unsurprisingly – Wearhead, then climbing over the 600m contour into Nenthead.

We'd been going a fair while by this point, so called into “The Nook” farm shop & café for the next refreshment / loo stop. 

After our cake nourishing snack, we found ourselves rising up the South Tyne, we passed through Slaggyford, but missed out the M6 altogether, headed north west with not far to go. I had planned a refuel stop at Longtown, 36 miles from Ecclefechan, but it was just a pile of rubble, fortunately I was just checking the SatNav for "petrol near me" when a Gulf station hoved into view.

Shortly after that we rolled into The excellent Ecclefechan Hotel to find Duncan already there, having driven up from the south coast in a day. The car park was also filled with biker types from The MZ Owner's Club - though they mostly seemed to be riding BMWs.

So considering the weather forecast looked like this before we set off, with that rain front pretty much right on our route, we actually did rather well, only a brief shower just before Ecclefechan, certainly not worth putting the roof up for.

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.

More Fiddlin'

 The first 2023 road trip is fast approaching & I've been fiddling with the car.

Thing 1 - It's never boiled over, but on the rare occasions that it sits in traffic the temperature goes up to 100 deg & pretty much stays there until I move off. So I got onto the good people at Car Builder Solutions & ordered a larger fan & a switch with a slightly lower temperature, they were fitted & when tested, the new fan came on at 95ish instead of 100 & actually cooled the engine & then went off.

Thing 2 was a more permanent solution for powering the nose camera, I'd established that the remote control would still work even through an aluminium bulk head, an engine fizzing with sparks & an aluminium radiator, but I'd just wrapped insulating tape round the wires & tyrapped it on to the radiator mount. Now I drew up & printed a polyurethane boot for each end & a "saddle" for it to sit on, so now I know the system works, it all looks a bit more permanent.

There is still a little tape & a tyrap, but it looks a lot better & is much more secure. I've just been on a little test run (to the Hogs Back Brewery if you must know) & it all worked just fine.....

.....Except - Thing 3 - the bonnet release was VERY stiff when I got back, which was a worry. It opened in the end, so I set about investigating it's stiffness. The latch itself seemed free enough, but the pull handle was grating. I disconnected everything & the handle seemed much freer, so it's the cable adjuster at the latch end then.

This has been a bugbear several times on kit cars, people don't seem to understand how a simple Bowden cable works. In this case the builder had gone to great lengths to drill a 2mm hole right through the length of an M6 x 30 bolt & used it as a cable adjuster - but while that stops the cable outer, it doesn't hold it in the right orientation, so it pulls sideways & binds up.

I was going to look in my box of bike spares, but even before I opened it, I found just what I was looking for lying on top, It was a proper cable adjuster & even threaded M6!

The cable outer was a little loose in the adjuster socket, so once again the 3D printer got fired up & in 3 minutes flat I printed a sleeve that fits over the cable outer & inside the adjuster, holding the cable outer in line & now the bonnet release is all smooth & nice.

Brake Light Broke

 I was on my way to visit my girlfriend in the Stylus a few days ago, I pulled up at a red light & a black BMW pulled up beside me & rolled the passenger window down. I was expecting a "nice motor mate" or "is that a Ginetta?" but instead I got "Your brake lights are stuck on mate".

Oh good, the brake lights again.

On the road trip last year they weren't working at all to begin with (my own fault) & I'd recently had some problems making the pedal switch work properly. I found somewhere to stop & disconnected the pedal switch - the hydraulic switch works fine, the pedal switch is there because it comes on faster & is in theory more reliable.

The pedal switch was a standard microswitch with a roller that should trigger as the roller rolls off of a mushroom headed bolt in the footwell roof. But if I was gentle, the pedal wasn't quite moving upright far enough to switch it off. Come smartly off the brake & it was fine.

I ordered a new microswitch with a long flat "blade" & drew up a block that could bolt to the hole the mushroom headed bolt had screwed into & trip the switch a slightly different way. Then when I got home I measured it all up properly, changed the design to suit the real world & printed the block. It all appears to work fine, there's a few things to consider, obviously my foot shouldn't catch the block & neither should the pedal, the wiring to the switch shouldn't be able to short out on anything etc

So there it is - the picture shows everything except the car. The grey angle is bolted between the pedal & the footpad - which is alloy, the microswitch screws to that as does a black polyurethane buffer which is just there to protect the wiring if I'm bleeding the brakes so the pedal is going to the bulkhead & the blueish bit is screwed to the footwell roof by the orange bolt & has an edge to trigger the switch. So far it works, but if it all goes wrong again, I can just unplug it.

When I started measuring the real world I thought I had a problem, the riv-nut for the bolt is M6, an M6 bolt head was too deep to let the pedal pass below it. Then while rummaging through a tub of bolts I found a furniture bolt that was M6 & the head is only 2mm thick. Problem solved & god bless Ikea!

Windscreen Fixed!

When I bought the Stylus, one of its issues - one of its many issues - was a chip in the screen. I didn't worry about it, it's an Elan screen, so easy to get & now available heated, I had a heated one in the Fury & it was worth the extra.

There was a large chip with a couple of small (8 - 10mm) cracks radiating from it & a couple of smaller chips. It'd been like that for 5 years of my ownership, but I decided to do something about it.

There's a whole load of kits out there, some very cheap, some so expensive that they're nearly as much as taking it to Halfords & having it done professionally - I say professionally - it's Halfords.

I wanted a kit with multiple suckers to hold the plastic jig in place, there's a few Chinese ones with instructions to match, but I went for the same thing branded as "Rain - X" because the instructions seemed to be better & it was only an extra £2.

I suckered the jig over the chip, screwed the "resin chamber" into it & looked from the inside, it was a bit "cocked", one of the suckers hadn't sucked, a bit of water sorted that out. I put some resin in the chamber, screwed in the plunger & looked from the inside.

Nothing.

I put some more resin in & screwed the plunger down again.

Nothing.

On the third attempt the chip kind of vanished & most of the cracks did too.

I added a little more resin & it got slightly better, so I left it for the stated time & warmed the screen a little, then took the jig off & put one of the thin plastic film sheets provided over the main chip & the two small adjacent chips, adding a little more resin as I did it.

After that it was just a case of opening the garage door & wheeling the car out into the sun to let the UV cure off the resin, I left it 15 mins or so.

After a well earned coffee I went outside & bravely peeled off the film & yes the resin appeared to have hardened, so I left it another few minutes before using the supplied razor blade to scrape off the excess, which came away nicely.

The end result was that the chips are filled, the cracks are mostly filled & hopefully stabilised & I haven't got the stress of trying to get the existing bonded in screen out & sticking a new one in - in the short term at least.

Time will tell if it's "fit & forget" but for now I'm pretty pleased with the repair, the damage's all but vanished & in theory shouldn't crack any more.

It's gone to the extent that my phone really struggled to focus on it & that's good enough for me.

Boot Straps

 The Stylus has a boot. It's not a large boot. It's almost as wide as the car, but shallow, perhaps the oddest thing about it is that the aperture is almost - but not quite - wide enough to fit the soft top in.

In order to maximise the space I decided to collect all those bits & pieces one needs for a kit car road trip into defined areas, I haven't been able to do that before because the things would move about while travelling & stop the boot hinges opening and if I can't open the boot, there's no need to take the stuff that's stopping the boot opening (sigh).

So anyway - there's a bunch of good people called Church Products UK who sell all manor of straps & clips, so I put in an order for some clips & 2 metres of orange strap, then drew up & printed some clips to fix it all to the boot sides.

The point of this is that there are bits of boot where the roll bar comes through or where the tail lights are, or where the hinges are that aren't a lot of use unless something is the right shape & contained.

So the jack, the tyre pump, the puncture repair kit & the emergency tyre goo aerosol went right up in a corner, with a couple of straps to hold it all in place.

In a similar location the other side is the jack winder, a bag of nuts, bolts, wire, connectors, fuses, tyraps etc with enough spare strap to put the spare fuel pump in for the really long trips.

The orange is good 1/ it's orange & 2/ these are dark corners, so it helps to see what is strap & what is buckle. The bag is also good, I have several, they are American Airlines goody bags from when I used to travel business class. the family had the bottles of moisturiser / girly stuff & I had the robust zip up bags.

While rummaging about in the back of the car I started looking at the boot release, it's never been good & in due course I'll buy a new one so I can make the route much better, but when I pulled the release, it came a very long way before the latch opened - EEK!

That turned out to be the cable outer slipping at the tee handle end, I superglued it for now, but that started me thinking, how would I get in the boot if the latch failed? It turned out I'd thought of this already some years ago when I fitted the latch. there are hidden bolts on the outside of the car that release the whole latch / bracket assembly - trouble was I'd forgotten I'd done this & when fitting the new number plate light I'd tyrapped the wiring to the bracket so my cleverness would've been all in vain. Obviously I've sorted that out now. Whether I remember how to gain access should I ever need to remains to be seen.

Axle - AGAIN!

 Yes again I'm afraid. It had been leak free, but then I took it to Peterborough & there was "evidence" when I got back. So I had the axle in bits again & put in another of the 2mm cross section O-Rings & this time ran a file round the edge of the axle to make sure there were no burrs in it, covered it in "Hylomar Blue" & pressed it in very slowly.

It cut a sliver off the O-Ring.

"Perhaps the Hylomar will hold it" I thought - no, it didn't. When I put it on I read the instructions "allow the solvent to evaporate off before assembling" OK, any clues for how long? Not long enough as it turned out. it appeared to have dripped a single drip, but it had dripped.

I ordered more O-Rings, this time 1 1/2mm cross section, then looked up the Hylomar wait time on the internet - 10 - 20 mins. I dry assembled the 1/2 shaft, I put an O-Ring in the groove on the bearing & dry assembled it, I put an O-Ring at the far end of the bearing rebate in the axle as well & dry assembled it making sure that didn't put load on the bearing retainer plate.

I put a bead of Hylomar round the bearing & the O-Rings & pushed the 1/2 shaft in - then pulled it out, ensuring the coating was thin & even. After 10 mins I pushed it back in & bolted it all up.

(sigh)

It's been out a couple of times since & no leakage yet. The jury is still out & my fingers are still crossed.

In other news I've been ferreting away at cameras again. I have a camera mount right in the nose cone & I really like the low view it gives, but up to now using it has meant stopping, moving one of the cameras into the nose & setting it going on battery, driving for a bit & then swapping it all back. As my lovely girlfriend gave me new cameras for Christmas, it occurred to me that one of the old ones could go in the nose, but experiments with battery life suggested I'd not get much of "the good stuff" if I set it going before I got in the car. I considered powering it from a USB but a hole in the case would mean it would fill up with water in the inevitable showers.

So what to do? I had a matt black GoPro case that I'd not used because it had a large rectangular hole in the side for putting a USB cable in through, so I drew a box to fit snugly in there, then a round open cylinder with "bead" on & printed it in rigid plastic. Next, a conical "boot" with a matching recess for the bead printed in rubbery stuff. Having glued the rigid part to the camera shell, I can plug in the USB & pop the boot in place & it's waterproof & operable from the remote on the dash.

It actually looks quite techie. What would I do without my 3D printer & On-Shape?

The boot in 1mm thick 90 shore polyurethane is just right & stretchy enough to force the pug through a 4mm hole so it seals against the cable outer, it's a simple thing, but my videos should be a bit more interesting & I won't have to stop & re-arrange the car to achieve it.