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Day 5 - Monday, August 18th - The Kilkenny friend helps locally. Robbie helps internationally. The yelllow Morgan's home farewell




The first part of this morning was quickly past looking out the hotel window into the beautiful tree pictured above, while using the smart phone for all such a device can do. Phone calls to the Portuguese dealer, to Robbie, to Derek, and email to Mark Ledington, entitled quite dramatically “call for help”.

I must say that Mark’s reaction was quick and always in the right direction.

This had a calming effect on me (you guys won’t believe what I was willing to do if MMC didn’t react as it should, and as it did, but an hint to that comes from my absolute silence in this thread during the most trying days).

I will quote our email exchange, because I think it’s important to be exact about it (and since I was mostly pleased/satisfied with Mark’s response to this whole deal, I´m not quoting anything with a derogatory intention, quite the contrary):

From my own email:




From Mark, about 40 minutes later.




About 30 minutes later I got a second email from Mark confirming that Williams would collect the replacement exhausts that same afternoon. And that was that.


Must say this – to me unexpected – reply from ML gave me some mixed feelings.


Mostly good, because it was a quick reply and in a good direction, but also because before getting it I was really thinking “what use do I have for new exhausts that will also last two days? Will MMC send me weekly exhausts for the rest of this car’s existence? Shouldn’t I do as MO63LWR and just return it at Malvern, ask for a lift to Birmingham and get a flight home?”

And after getting this reply I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. My car had Mk1 Brooklands exhausts, and now I was getting the Mk2 version.

And this, being good, also made me mad, because one has to wonder “WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?” when they fitted these faulty exhausts into a new car.

It was all very odd, and in me grew a suspicion … could it be possible that I had been given a 2013 car? I had the cooling kit and the steering looked steady, but I couldn’t tell if I had a Centa compensator or the NVH around the bevel box.

This line of thinking happened also because I had noticed that my car doesn’t have the 2014 “louvres” at the back, but this - that I immediately noticed when I got the car at the factory - didn't give me any second thoughts before because I remember Nick Baker telling me, when I ordered it, that the Brooklands 2014 model would be fully 2014 spec with only the “louvres” exception (and I even thought, for no reason, that was as cool and as distinctive as the exhausts themselves).

However, I also remember thinking “apparently the guys at MMC changed their mind about the Brooklands no louvers policy” when I saw the picture that Peter (Gambalunga) published here in TM a couple of months ago




I even wrote about it (the louvres) in my comment/reply to that thread. Here:

http://www.talkmorgan.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/197346/Re_Fully_polished_with_Brookla#Post197346

Anyway, I’m digressing, sorry. I thought that my doubts about which version of the M3W I had got could be cleared at Williams Morgans (as it happened) and left those darker thoughts for a later moment.


Onto attempting to mend the broken exhaust, with the help of Derek. Although the surfaces we needed to connect were very “quirky” we successfully managed to finish our job, and after it was done the exhaust sound was coming from the back, as it should, and almost sounding “normal” (for a Brooklands exhaust, that is … )

I don’t have a picture of the job immediately after it was done but only from later that day, after some 60 miles or so. The wire had become loose so I tried to hold it to the heat shield and in need of a tensioning device I used what I had, some of the mrs.’ paper handkerchiefs.




Anyway, after the “mending” was done and with renewed hope that it all would be solved with Mk2 exhausts, I offered my friend a ride in my M3W (he was obviously eager to do it, lol). After we were done he said something like “this is true motoring”, something I clearly understood as being the opposite of driving his big BMW. In a good way!

Here as we return from a few miles of true motoring. Derek’s grin is bigger than mine!




After we said goodbye, it was Monday and he had his own work to attend to. We then spent the day in Kilkenny, a little city I had never heard of before but a true gem in many more ways than one. I’ll just share now a few pictures depicting some of what we saw there:


1. The Castle, its Garden, its Park








2. Churches, inside and out
















3. Flowery Street Views












Late in the afternoon, we head for Rosslare, where we would take the ferry back to England.

However, being the Irish as kind as they are, we had the chance to meet Robbie and his lovely wife once more (and it was the third time in our 3 Irish days so it seems we didn’t leave them alone at all, must’ve been a relief for them when we finally took to the ferry )

This happened at the Rosslare home, just over the harbor, of another PaddyMog couple, Billy and Mary, the proud owners of a beautiful yellow Trad Morgan (yellow was the colour of the Matchbox Morgan I had as a kid and that became forvere my favourite car of the entire collection).

The fact that they invited us for a farewell drink, and the “untranslatable” (to words) welcoming feel we got from both Billy and Mary meant a lot to us and of course, having Robbie there gave me the opportunity to once again thank him, now in person, for all he had done to help us since that morning.

I don’t have any pictures of that part of our day, I do have of a view to Rosslare Harbour, where our ferry was already waiting us.



After we left to the ferry there’s not much more to tell. When we arrived in England we still had some more miles to cover before we reached our destination Hotel for that night (St. Bride’s Hotel in Saundersfoot), and the only important thing to say about it is that I had there my first night driving experience in the M3W.

Got to say the headlights are good (something I had wandered about), of course not as good as leds but they do provide a clear view of the road ahead.

Next day would be Monday, and my only concern was that the car’s exhausts held enough to get to Williams Morgans. Left side mending was already starting to fail, right side showed no signs of weakness (in this I think I was a bit more “fortunate” than MO63WLR, because he had an almost instant double failure).


Sorry for once again only covering one day in a wall of text but I couldn’t organize myself to cover more. Will try to finish tomorrow.