... I recognise this one.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that The Great Collector had another couple of cars up his sleeve. This Alvis is an old friend and was once part of his stable. It was always a good runner and benefited from a twin carb conversion. It came up for sale in a West Country auction house but remained unsold. Maybe the colour put off prospective buyers?

The second of the cars was this very pretty 1913 Straker-Squire which came back to Suffolk from the same auction, also unsold. With the car was an almost complete spare engine, gearbox, rear axle, propshaft and a brand-new radiator (that weighs almost as much as the gearbox). The only thing missing is the hood fabric, which is now on my to-do list.

The toolbox - an original Brooks example - has several compartments to save digging about for the thing you need, and much to everyone's relief, the Straker has been fitted with a starter motor. A starter ring was found to fit the flywheel and a modern lightweight starter, painted to blend in with the rest of the engine, is mounted on a substantial bracket bolted to the equally substantial crankcase. I've been asked if I might investigate fitting a starter motor to the 1913 Buick that Counsel and I got going the other week, though I'm thinking that a friction roller engaging with the flywheel is going to be the answer - finding a starter ring that fits the Buick, might be a bit of an ask. As I understand it, Buick fitted starter motors to their cars from 1914 - but also discontinued the right-hand drive models from that date.

Progress has been made on the Crypton fandango. I rubbed down and undercoated the chassis and then applied a topcoat of radiator paint in a shade as close to the original as I could find. Radiator enamel will stand some knocks.

It took me a couple of days to produce a new wiring diagram for the Special. I'll have to run it by the experts, but I think I may have begun to get to grips with it. It had its moments - the blue lines didn't always arrive in the right place and there were problems when I forgot the orientation of the relay contacts as drawn. I also found confusing the contradictory advice of how the spades 85 and 86 should be arranged.

To save me getting a zillion colours of cable, I'm going to use black throughout for the general wiring and number each of the circuits.

The exceptions will be the main power cables and the wiring in the electrics box where I'll use stuff left over from my Austin 7 'Sunita' days. I may completely rethink this area as it looks as though I'm going to end up with a complete tangle of wires which could benefit from being directed underneath the components where possible.

For your continued edification and amusement, The Trumpet, a monthly magazine I edited and produced from December '87 to December '88, will, through the good offices of Albion, be available in the publications section from Monday 1st May and each subsequent month. At the time, it was the 'Hello' magazine for the discerning modeller.