LagondaNet

[Francis]

To all my Lagonda friends,

In the next few days I will try to provide a step by step explanation of all the work that Alvira has gone thru since I purchased her in April 2006.

This car was purchased new in 1983 by the Emir of Bahrein and remained in his stable until my purchase. Alvira had only 17 000 kms on the odometer in April 2006 but was left in a non air conditionned warehouse in Bahreim for years before I got to her.

Later I will explain the state she was in, the steps I took to remedy the problems.

She also was unfortunate enough to be involved in a serious rear accident in May 2008, I will go in detail explaning the work that was done then, including the rear roll down window up-grade.

Last year she had over heating issues and I will also go thru those.

This year, the idiot who drives her was inconsiderate enough to park her onto the bumper of a fast stopping car in front of her... so I will go into the ongoing process she will have to endure to be back at the top of her form.

So bear with me and this should be interesting.
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Alvira's keeper

[Francis]

When I got Alvira, she looked great! The patina on the paint was perfect! The leather was smooth and did not have any cracks. The tan color was unstained and unmolested. The engine bay was also very clean. She was still on her original tires! The only real visible flaws were the rubber seals around the doors. Then by looking closer I started noticing the door seals also were brittle. The inner leather rapped door seals had shrunk. The leather around the steering wheel housing had also shrunk. The trunk floor carpet and tool kit was missing. Inner door panels looked good but the wood had been dyed dark brown to hide some repair that had recently been done. The digital electronic worked fine except for the inner/outer temp read out. It would (and still) shows 1 or -1. AC needed refill and the rear ac knob to change speed was missing. The lining looked ok to me.
The importer, or the dealer from whom I bought the car went ahead and replaced it and I still don’t know why…he added $1000.- to the purchase price based on that work. The wood re-dye was also one of his initiative.
One thing also that I now remember, I purchased the car site unseen with only pictures while the car was still in Bahrain. I guess he needed a deposit before putting it in a container to be transported to Montréal. I saw the car one hour after it came out of the container in mid-May. The longshoreman that drove the car out of the container nicked the right front corner of the car. So that had to be fixed before delivery.
So finally, on July 1st or so, I took delivery of the car. It was 32 degrees C outside… The dealership was about 10 kms away from my house in city traffic. I made it half way to my place and the car started steaming up! It was overheating!
I stopped, called the seller who directed me to a service garage probably one km away from that spot.
I waited for the heat to go down and slowly drove the car there without anymore radiator flairs.
I left the car there as this shop was the one that handled service issues for the dealer that sold me Alvira. About a week later the verdict came down, the heads of the engine were warped.
Having purchased this car from a registered car dealer in Québec, this work had to be done under warranty. So the dealer was not too happy and tried to pin it on my driving… but since I had only added 6 kms on the car from the stated registered millage of the car… he could not make his argument stick.
The car was to remain at the service shop until April of 2007. The dealer paid but specified to the shop that this work was to be done only in their spare time. So work only started in late October and involved also to have the carburetors re-done.
Now, having the car sit outside in the backyard of that shop all winter long did not do Alvira any good.
In the spring, after a few cycles of freeze and thaw, the paint had cracked in a pinstripe fashion! Every half a centimeter a perfectly strait crack had appeared from front to back on the roof of the car! The leather became brittle and ripped on the driver’s seat bottom cushions.
I drove Alvira home, finally a year after my purchase . I drove her around for a few days, participated in a few events and got great comments on the car. At that time I started ordering parts to replace the worn rubbers and started getting issues like the rack and pinion started leaking oil. Explanation, the boots, made out of rubber were dried out and needed replacement. The car had a heavy stench of gas. The hoses coming out of the gas tank were dried out…
I got the picture and figured that any part that was rubber needed to be replaced. The leather, with it’s shrinking parts and the rips in the driver seat, the cracks on the paint… that was it, I was to do a complete restoration on her. Work was to start in July, just after the rack and pinion job.
So I proceeded by stripping the car myself, to make sure that the paint would be done properly and evenly. All exterior parts were taken out. All rubbers stripped off. The metal frames around the windshield, moon roof and rear window, taken off. Front grill, front glass panels, side marker lights, door handles, window frames, etc… etc… etc. and off she went to the paint shop! I went on vacation expecting to pick her back up upon my return…It, always take a lot longer than expected... The paint work was very orange peel like and I did not like that at all so I asked the guy to redo the work from scratch. Now we are October and the second coat did not help the texture of it. I took her to another shop that started the paint work all over. In late November the car came back but still did not look the way I wanted it.
I had to get the interior work on the leather started if I wanted the car to be ready for the next spring season. There they directed me to a guy, Ted, who would polish the car back to a mirror finish. So while the interior work was being done at the leather shop, he started in the polish job.
The interior work was not too complicated, replace everything except the rear seats, those only got a re-dye job to match the new leather and the center leather console (I will do that console upon her return to Canada next summer).
So finally for the spring of 2008, Alvira was to be ready for service and to be shipped to Europe to come and meet her sisters in Germany at the 2008 Lagondafest!
Got her back in early May and she was stunning! The paint gleamed! The new sent of leather was wonderful, the trunk carpet was replaced. All rubbers were new. But the rack and pinion was still leaking… I took her back to the shop that had done the work the year before after only driving her about 100kms since the restoration…and then it happened! That idiot rammed Alvira backwards in a wall doing over $35 000 of damages on her.
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Alvira's keeper

[Francis]

WOW! I was devastated! So many hours of work, so much getting to know the car, getting personal with her and being fully in love with my Alvira, I think I even cried!

Clearly this could not be rerpaired before the end of June cut off date for shipping to Europe, so I cancelled my presence at Lagondafest 2008.

The damage was so extensive that the roof had buckled between the left front and rear door.

The rear roof pilar was pushed in. the rear left quarter panel sheered off the frame, rear bumper, valance, boot, rear lights, inner sub frame, exhaust pipe, etc, etc...

All body panels being aluminium, you need a specialized shop to do that work and for some reason they are not that many in Montréal.

I went around a few places and finally ended up at the Asrton Martin dealership and asked them to take care of it. Easier said than done!

They could not find a quarter panel or a boot. The insurance company of the garage that did the damage would not pay more than $12 000.- so a mexican stand off started. Dealer wants $35 000.- to get started. Insurance company won't pay that much.

At that time LOOL13223 came up for sale in California and I offered the insurance company to purchase that car for me, the price would have been $20 000.- as long as I could keep Alvira. That would have made Alvira into a doner car to LOOL13223. I did not fancy this idea much, but you got to do what you got to do sometimes. They refused.

Then I heard of a parts car that had frontal damage and no engine in it. This one was in Florida, LOOL 13422. I got in touch with the owner, offered him $3000.- while the left rear fender and boot was intact. So I took my Dodge Magnum with a hemi 5.7 (a lease that was to be turned in in October, this being end of July) with lots of spare kms to make it to the aloted limit. In Virginia I stoped for the night and picked a trailer up, drove to South Florida, got 13422 and proceded to take her up to Montréal. A 5000 kms round trip in 4 days. I really must have been in love with Alvira to do that!

So work begone and She was back home on October 31st just i tome for Halloween and the dead line for winter storage with the insurance policy.

I need to mention that I finaly contacted my insurance company that paied for the work, It came up to $35 000.- and not more because of my finding that donner car! My company went after the garage's insurance company and finaly got paied in the summer of 2010... I then got my $500 deductible back!

I kept the remains of 13422 and stripped it completly. All those parts went to Puddleduck last summer.

I kept however, the rear door roll down mechanisms and did the conversion my self. One day I will go into details in the technical section to give you the step by step process to acomplish this conversion.

I would like to note at this point that this upgrade was done by me, but final ajustments were done at AML Montréal. Since all parts used are AML parts, this is a factory upgrade therefore not a modification made to the car. LOOL13207 Alvira got this upgrade aproved by AML and is now part o factory work done to the car.

The valance was repaired and the rear bumper was replaced by a brand new one.

During the winter of 2008-09 I also changed the wood and made the inner door handle upgrade. I did a meticulous research on the type of wood used by AML, and they used quite a lot of them! I finaly chose lohan as the base and did a bit of a canadian twist to Alvira by having maple burl as veneer on the lohan boards. All doors, dash panel, center console (radio board) and sections that had leather up to the shifter were replace by wood panels. Even the shifter was redone! On the wood panels, you will notice that both sides have notches taken out of them. All Lagondas are like that out of the factory. I took those out and made the wood panels flush with the leather. I think it looks much nicer. I also added some lighter sockets under the passanger dash to plug in the GPS and other apparels.

One other thing I did, with the panel in front of the shifter, I took the ashtrays out. One flat wood panel with switches à la roll down rear windows of the cars that came later. Alvira smokes enough as it is! (usually from the radiator cap!)

So she finaly was ready for the big trip to Europe! On June 30th 2009 she entered a container for the journey to Southampton.
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Alvira's keeper

[Francis]

From Southampton, in late July 2009, I drove Alvira strait to Puddleduck Farm to have Julian do final ajustments specially on some electrical issues such as the front pop-up lights that had just developped a capricious tendency not to open properly every times.

The rear door on the left also was hard to close. For that the latch was replaced.

The electrical issue was to be fixed with a simple relay replacement according to Julian.

Alvira was there two days and left without a fix and on top the foglights and driving lights as well as the ventilation inside did not work...Alvira also had aquired a serious stench of gas when driving. Julian said that this was due to the fan not working and the exhausts fumes coming in from the boot when driving with the windows rolled down.

I needed to modify my travel plans thru England to bring the car back to Puddleduck after one week. (that did not make my wife very happy...) An other 3 days with Julian without getting the original problem fixed nor the new ones. So on my way out, and after driving one hundred miles, Alvira started to seriously overheat.

She got towed back to Puddleduck while we decided to go and spend two weeks in the sun, in Egypt!

Julian's diagnostic, The car was to be completly rebuild starting with the engine that was cracked from the inside, compression was non existant on two cylinders while the others were very low. The electricals needed to be completly replaced as well as the electronics to fix the fan issue and the fog/driving lights problem as well as the pop-up's issue.... This meant that I was to leave the car with him and give him carte blanche to do what was required to get Alvira back to her former glory. Price to do this? Let's start with 30 000 pounds and we will see what this gets done...

I replied that in that case the car should be sent back to Southampton for shipment back to Montreal, while if I could not drive her to Belgium for the LagondaFest 2009, there was no point in keeping her in Europe.

Julian then told me that with a replacement of radiator, a new water pump and the injection of a sealant product insude the engine, we could get Alvira to drive again so that she could make it to Belgium. I told him to proceed with that fix and I would afterwards address the permanant fix's issue.

Making it to Belgium would provide me access to other Lagonda owners with their opinion on the issues Alvira faced and would probably be a source of original ideas on how to do this permanant fix.

So with assurances from Julian that Alvira could make it to Belgium, I went and picked her up from Puddleduck Farm for the drive to continental Europe.
I picked her up, but not before my pockets got picked for the emergency fixes including a radiator and water pump replacement...

I drove to London, spend the night before driving to the Chunnel. The next morning, even before we could make it out of London, she started to overheat again. I had to stop to fill the water twice before making it to the tunnel, missed my crossing time by five minutes. There we where to cross with Julian, Keith and Jane. I called Julian to let him know of our issues and to have him wait for us on the other side. He wouldn't! They drove on passed the Belgium border before stopping to wait for us. We had to stop twice again to cool off and fill up with water. When we finally cought-up with them, Julian told me that I should not drive faster that 100kms/h in order not to overheat some more.

We drove on, but the group would not drive slower than 130... and when steam came out again, we were stuck on the side of the highway 45 kms short of Brussels.

So on the side of the road, with no water to fill Alvira up, I was told that this was the end of the road for her, one of the heads was cracked and I was to put suage water from the gutter from the side of the road in it while it did not mather anymore since the engine was dead.

At that point I knew what plan he had in mind for me and it did not please me at all. We managed to drive to the next gas station a couple of miles up the road. I send Lise and Danika with Jane so that they could make it to Genval, the first stop on the Lagondafest 2009 tour.

I waited for a towing for 3 hours and ended up in Genval while everybudy was sitting down for dinner... What a day that was!

The next morning Alvira started but kept on overheating thru the whole Fest. The opinions I got from everybody present that knew about this car was that the radiator or the water pump was not working properly. No head crack, no internal engine issues.

Funny since the radiator and water pump were replaced just a few days prior...

Vincent Ameye, one of the organisors of the fest told me that he could take a look at the problem in his garage in Belgium before doing anything further on her. I agreed to that.

Diagnostic: The radiator had not been replaced, as evidenced by the bolts that had not even been touched! the water pump was slipping on it's axis not pushing the water with enough force. The radiator was clogged with goo and so were the internal conduits for the water to travel in the engine.

Compression was magicly back to normal, even before the water flow fixes were done!

Vincent also tackled the electrical issues and with a retubed radiator, a fix of the water pump and a serious cleaning of the couduits with a full set of new hoses and radiator cap replacement, Alviar was to her former glory!

Oh by the way, one minor issue also was fixed. Remember earlier I told you about a gas stench in the car? Well that was because the gasket on a carburator was cracked and gasoline was dripping directly onto the engine block. Nothing major, but it was not picked up in any of the interventions up to that point... This was literally a bomb waiting to explode!

Cost: 3 000 Euros!

In October I drove Alvira from Belgium to Geneva Switzerland with peak speeds over 200 kms/h! she drove brilliantly!

No issues what so ever. I parked her in an closed garege for the long winter storage. Came end of February and I went to Switzerland for a week of ski with Lise and Danika. I decided to drive from Geneva to Anzère (Canton Valais) about 200 kms away with Alvira. We made it to the base of the mountain wit only 7 kms to go. On the way up, she started to overheat again... I had to stop twice before realizing that one of the hoses from the radiator had ruptured. I was a bit relieved to see that! I replaced the defective hose. Problem solved! Or so I tought. One week later on the way back down, the heater would not heat the interior of the car and as long as we drove on idle all the way down, we had no issues.

We got on te highway and not even a kilometer on to the road, she overheated again. I stopped cooled her down, filled her up with new water and went on our way again... Three kilometer further, she bolsted a nice new head of steam, just like a locomotive...

I got her towed to a garage in Geneva. Diagnostic: warped head...again.
This time, and after consulting with Vincent, we agreed to transport her back to Belgium to see again what the issue was.

It had to be done, the engine was taken out, heads were sanded down, new gaskets, and rubbers al over the engine the valves had to be re ajusted with the new hight of the head.

Cost: 3900 euros including transport from Geneva to Tournai, Belgium.

That is until I picked her up to drive to Holland for the LagondaFest 2010.

Having taken a plane in Budapest at 6am the morning of the fest's start I was up at 4am from about only 4 hours of sleep.

I took a while to get going so we left Tournai with three cars at about 3 pm. I was geting impatient (and very tired) so at a gas stop I went ahead alone on the road to try and make it faster to Holland. Si on heavy traffic, I was not quick enough to react when a car slowed down in front of me and I rammed Alvira in the back of it!

In my next installement, I will chronical that new ordeal that Alvira suffered!

I am thinking of creating a trophy to be handed down next year at the LagondaFest 2011 to honnor cars with similar runs of bad luck that would not die thanks to the dedication of the owner.
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Alvira's keeper

[Mitrovic]

Amazing story, indeed!
Speachless...

[Francis]

The estimate on Alvira's damage is in. Not too bad! Some paint, a new bumper, that I found in the USA and that I have restored to a brand new finish (myself!). I did this here in Montreal, so this will be an international affair. Bought in the US repaired in Canada and installed in Belgium!

I also purchased 2 new lenses to replace the plexiglass one that I had and the one that got destroyed in the accident. I will attempt to install anti fog heating lines on it and see how it looks and work.

The body shop in Belgium was instructed to check the car over and found indicatons that some surface rust is present under the rubber door sil on the driver's side front door. There is also a spot of pealed paint around one of the windshield washer spout and some ware and tear on the boot of the car as well.

Since I was having full nights of awake time over the fact that the aluminium door panels, all four of them have waves in them, and not the fenders, it gives a fatigue look to Alvira. I have been wanting to address this upon her return to Montreal. The replacement rubber seals connecting the door panels to the windows are also a pittyfull sight to see, so that will also be fixed with new old, original ones. Available at Puddleduck! The ones AML now supply are crap! Those are the ones I replaced two years ago and are wrong... Frankly a shame that AML provides that as replacement! But since the front fenders and the hood must be repainted, the rust issue must be dealt with. I have elected to have Alvira fully repainted. A full strip down, sand down, paint and 3 coats of clear job.

Work has started this week.
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Alvira's keeper

[Francis]

Here are some pictures of the work being done presently at Vincent's body shop.

It is amazing how much is needed to be disassembled to do a proper paint job. Take a look:

http://picasaweb.google.com/Francis200261/AlviraRepaint2010#

Merry Christmas everyone!

Francis
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Alvira's keeper

[Francis]

Today, February 22nd 2011, This is how Alvira is doing:

https://picasaweb.google.com/Francis200261/AlviraChezVincentFevrier2011?authkey=Gv1sRgCMO496CyhLaY0gE#

I will bring the bumper next Monday to Belgium and let Vincent do final instalation. By March 5th I will be driving her for a day of two before going back to Canada.

Francis
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Alvira's keeper

[Vincent]

Hi folks,
Alvira is back in Belgium !
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Welcome to Paradise ! (FRONT 242)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS30BC3D5WM