Extracted from the Jan 2008 Newsletter

The Astura has been parked for a while as we noticed that the Diff pinion Oil Seal was leaking. The only excuse for the delay is that I have been rebuilding a Jaguar and 2 x 1928 Sunbeams. With the Jaguar now complete and running - the Sunbeams are still under construction - we are now getting ready to remove the rear axel from the Astura and replace the seal with a modern one. It is such a good car that I do not want to damage anything if I can help it. At the same time we will redo the rear springs, which look very rusty and may need retempering.

Once this has been attended to we will take the motor out and attend to the oil consumption. The car was standing for 12 years before I bought it and I think the rings, especially the oil rings have lost their tension.

The car has some interesting rims on it. They are 'Bibendium' i.e. Michelin Rims that were apparently supplied if you bought a full set of new Michelins in the 30's.As well as taking a tyre size of 15 x 45 ???? they are only partly wellbased. The wellbase 'washes' out over a section of the rim near the valve. The only explanation is that they are a type of transition from 'Beadedged' tyres to full 'Wellbased' tyres. I have had the rims rebuilt by MWS in the UK - I carried over 4 rims while my wife took the other 2 as hand luggage! The problem has always been that these particular 15 x 45 tyres have not been available for years. However I spotted in the 'Automobile' magazine that they had just rebuilt a 1930’s Morris Michelin Service van for Michelin UK which took the same sizes tyres. As it was for Michelin themselves there was no way they were going to let it run around on 'Dunlops' so they did a limited run of these size tyres. I managed to book a set through Langstone Tyres.

If you have ever tried to import tyres you will know what a run around it is. Not only do you have to get an import permit but you have to get SABS approval for that type of tyre. This took six months. I had to appoint a cleaning agent and advise them when they would arrive at the Airport via Airfreight. Imagine my surprise when  a parcel arrived from the Post Office - 4 new tyres! They had come in without any import permit or SABS clearance needed. Doug Crawley of Langstone had just posted them to me!

Another surprise was that in spite of being marked as the same size i.e. 15 x 45 the rolling radius was some 30mm smaller that the current tyres. So when it is back on the road you will see an Astura on 'Low Profiles' I also found an Alvis in the UK with exactly the same Mayfair Body on it see attached photo's.