The 99-Year-Old Car: Engineer Spends 15 Years Restoring His Dream Car
A man has spent 15-years transforming a rusty wreck into the vintage car of his dreams. Terrence Cleife, a retired motor engineer, bought the wreck of a 1916 American LaFrance saloon car in 1998. The pre-war vehicle had been dismantled and was lying as a pile of scrap on the floor of a barn. The car’s missing parts were welded by Terry out of bronze and cast iron to match the vehicles original chassis and the engine completely re-assembled. Now 71, Terry has the car of his dreams and has completed the painstaking piece-by-piece restoration.
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MotorTranscript
00:00You
00:30See what completely dismantled it was basically a heap of scrap metal on a barn floor when
00:44I first saw it and then I came into the garage for the winter and started on the engine and
00:48other bits and pieces that were missing. Well on the top here we've got the priming taps
01:01you have to prime the cylinders with fuel before it will go. Ignition on, neutral, retard,
01:14throttle and that stuntman hasn't turned up yet has he. It's a four cylinder 10 litre
01:21T head design the valves are exposed you can see them going up and down when it's running.
01:26Looking at the dash we've got the speedometer here is the ignition switch for the coil and
01:34distributor operated by foot when when driving. Then we've got the ammeter, the horn. Here is
01:44the magneto switch, oil pressure gauge it reads very low actually because they didn't use very
01:51much oil pressure in those days. When out on the road a lot of modern car drivers flash their
02:02lights and a few wave. It's actually very pleasant it's a bit like riding a motorbike
02:07or flying a plane. I don't normally go more than 60 miles an hour which is fairly uncomfortable
02:14for the passenger. I'm okay because I've got the monocle screen. Would I ever sell it? Well I'm
02:27getting on a bit now so one day I will but I'm not ready yet, not ready to put my feet up yet
02:32and put the slippers on.