Charity Road Run
Posted: Sun Sep 15, 2013 10:56 am
I attended a Charity Road Run in the South of the County yesterday driving my 1959 Dexta, fortunately it turned out to be a dry and sunny day. The actual run was some 26 miles, however I reckon that my Pal and I drove some 80 miles including travelling to and from the run plus we got lost. Fortunately I had my GPS with me so we eventually managed to find our way back to the Pub. I had taken the GPS in order to measure how fast my Dexta can travel at full throttle, at an indicated 2000 rpm I measured the speed at between 19 and 17 miles per hour.
My Dexta performed well, although there is an oil leak which I am having difficulty in locating as the cooling fan is blowing the oil onto the offside front wheel. I fitted one of the aftermarket sprung seats in place of the original seat so I enjoyed a reasonably comfortable ride. As we have a lot of holidaymakers at this time of year who are not used to driving along our narrow lanes I fitted a rotating orange beacon on a pole, which I can remove when required, in the hope that one wouldn't run into me.
I have found that on hillstarts the Dexta will struggle to pull away in 6th gear and even though the gearbox does not have synchromesh I can change from 5th to 6th gear on the move without any expensive noises coming from the gearbox.
One incident which occured during the run was when the front wheel on the tractor (MF) in front of me started to wobble and eventually nearly came off, when we looked five of the six wheel nuts were missing. Fortunately we managed to find two of the missing nuts so he was able to continue with care. So check those nuts.
Gerald
My Dexta performed well, although there is an oil leak which I am having difficulty in locating as the cooling fan is blowing the oil onto the offside front wheel. I fitted one of the aftermarket sprung seats in place of the original seat so I enjoyed a reasonably comfortable ride. As we have a lot of holidaymakers at this time of year who are not used to driving along our narrow lanes I fitted a rotating orange beacon on a pole, which I can remove when required, in the hope that one wouldn't run into me.
I have found that on hillstarts the Dexta will struggle to pull away in 6th gear and even though the gearbox does not have synchromesh I can change from 5th to 6th gear on the move without any expensive noises coming from the gearbox.
One incident which occured during the run was when the front wheel on the tractor (MF) in front of me started to wobble and eventually nearly came off, when we looked five of the six wheel nuts were missing. Fortunately we managed to find two of the missing nuts so he was able to continue with care. So check those nuts.
Gerald
