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Back To Your Rootes – No 12
The following article is one of a number I wrote several years ago for the Humber/Hillman Car Club’s ‘Torque’ Magazine - Graham Smith 2022
Around 1976, shortly before we left Wellington, I took a wheel off the 1951 Humber Imperial into a local garage to have a slow leak repaired. When I called to pick it up at the end of the day I found that the rim embellisher had been removed and was lying on the floor and the retaining clips were nowhere to be seen. I asked to see the person who had done the ‘repairs’ but he had already left for the day. I duly searched the garage floor and finally found the clips. Now firstly, there is no need to remove the rim embellishers to remove or fit wheel weights, and secondly, if you do need to remove them you just unscrew the clips from the back of the wheel. The clips are a bit like a cut off and straightened section of a hose clip with the tightening screw on one end and the other end bent into a hook. However, it was clear that the monkey on the wrench didn’t have the brains to look at the back of the wheel. Anyway I took the various bits home, repaired the clips and the rim embellisher and fitted it all back. It’s frustrating how often so called servicemen will butcher something in the name of fixing something else. Speaking of tyres on the Humber Imperial., the correct size was 7.00 x 16” but apart from heavy tread commercial tyres they were almost impossible to get in the 1970s. I used to get my warrant at a garage in Strathmore, Wellington. When one of my tyres got down to having little tread the garage wrote a letter ‘to whom it may concern’ to say that tyres were currently unavailable for the car and that letter was supposed to get me off the hook if I got pulled up for a worn tyre. I never had to put it to the test. I eventually put 6.50 x 16”s on the back rather than running on balding tyres. On a similar note, when I worked at Lands and Survey Department in Auckland in the mid.1960s I used to go to regular meetings of the Land Settlement Committees and Marginal Lands Committees in Whangarei and Kaitaia with the Commissioner of Crown Lands. He was the chairman of the committees and, I, the secretary. He told me that in the 1950s he was the personal secretary to the Minister of Lands and that the open road speed limit of 50 miles per hour, apparently introduced as a cost saving measure during the war, didn’t apply to people on ‘urgent Government business’. I never had to try that excuse but there was one occasion I nearly had to. Lands & Survey in Auckland used to get ex Traffic Department cars as office cars. They were generally about two years old and I suspect they had been tweaked for traffic cop use. The office had a c1964 EH Holden and two c1964 PB Vauxhall Veloxs. They were still in the Traffic Department livery of black with white roofs but the single flashing red roof lights had been removed and the Ministry of Transport crest replaced with the Lands and Survey one, which was similar. Anyway, on one occasion I travelled to Whangarei with the Commissioner and was asked to drive one of the Vauxhalls back to Auckland. Now, those who know the North will know that the Ruakaka straights are just south of Whangarei and a favourite spot to put the foot down. That
model Vauxhall had a drum type speedo that rolled over from green to orange at 30 mph and then to red at about 50 mph. It was a nice day and I had a young lady to pick up in Northcote, Auckland so was stocking it down the straight. Halfway down the straight on the right-hand side was a small shop, a dairy I think. The traffic cops used to sit out of sight in alongside the shop waiting for the next speedster to come along. In those days I wore a suit to work so I had a white shirt and dark tie on with my suit jacket over the front bench seat beside me. The speedo had rolled well into the red as I shot past the shop. Needless to say there he was in an almost identical car. I just waved, he waved back, and I carried on. I often wonder how far I was down the road before he realised my car had the wrong crest on the front door to be one of theirs! Maybe he just realised he had little chance of catching me. Anyway that day remains as the fastest I’ve ever driven, just over 95, and that as I say was pre metrication. I did Whangarei to Northcote, 110 miles, in two hours flat and that was when the motorway north finished at Northcote Road. The car was a bit twitchy and could have done with a couple of bags of cement in the boot, and was on crossply tyres. No seatbelts either. Anyway I didn’t have to try the ‘urgent Government business’ excuse and drove a bit more sedately in future. Back to the 1970s. In 1977 I got a transfer from Wellington to Gisborne and Esther and I moved there along with our various cars. We used the Series III Super Snipe to tow the 1935 Snipe ‘80’ to Gisborne over two days. We stopped overnight in Waipukurau at the then VCC clubrooms on Hatuma Station. Day two and we faced the challenge of the steep hills between Napier and Gisborne. A bit north of Wairoa is the Morere scenic reserve and hot springs and the particularly steep Morere Hill. We climbed the hill with the car locked in first gear (automatic) getting slower and slower. I asked Esther to look up the manual beside her to tell me the revs at which the engine developed maximum torque. By my rough calculation the max. at 1800 rpm equated to about 10 mph in first so I knew that if we got much below 15mph we were lost. The car hung on at just over 15 mph and we made it! I never tested the Series Snipe so severely again, especially with a trailer with no working brakes!
The 1960 Super Snipe towing our 1935 Snipe ‘80’ having a breather at Lake Tutira on the way to Gisborne in 1977. The trailer all-up must have been well over two tons.
