Mark's Project at the NEC

Good grief... is it Thursday already?

Anyway, here's a few photos from our weekend as part of the Classic and Restoration Show at the NEC Birmingham.  The Disco 5 hire car did a great job of towing the Marcos on the trailer round the west midlands motorways and in through the doors of Hall 11...

 

 

It always seems a bit strange to be driving around these large halls on set up day...

 

It took a few hours on Thursday to clean up the Marcos (she'd collected plenty of water when we drove through several showers on the way).  We also had to off-load the display boards and carpets from the club van, and set up the whole display.  By the time we left on Thursday we were already pretty tired...

 

The weekend was fun but exhausting... three more very early mornings and long days.

By the Sunday morning Mark just wanted as much sugar as he could reasonably eat on one iced bun!

 

Younger niece I. joined us for Saturday and Sunday.  She's been working with Mark for the last two years on the project and is very enthusiastic about the cars.  However, this was the first time that she'd got the chance to come a show.  She enjoyed the chance to sit in the other cars on the stand and generally assess the engineering and design that's needed to finish our project.

 

We also put her to good work at the end of the show when everything had to be pulled apart again..

 

When Mark went to get the Disco and trailer, I sat down to eat in the middle of all the chaos.

(At events like this it's important to take every advantage for 'fine dining'... haha!!)

 

In the end it was easier to push the Marcos out of the hall than try to get the car and trailer in through the doors.  As the lightest member of our team, niece I. got the chance to steer while we pushed.  You can see that she can't wait for the day when she gets the chance to drive this car for real!!!

 

Fortunately the daylight just about held until we got home.  I think we did a 14 hour day on Sunday.  Mark took the day off on Monday so we all had chance to relax and recover..

 

Since the weekend we've been trying to resolve the issue of the damaged Disco 2.

On Monday afternoon Mark and I went to look at 4 cars that are similar or lower spec/mileage than ours, at several different garages.  All of them were more money than the insurance company has offered - so Mark is spending a lot of time having very irritable conversations with them to try and bring about a resolution.  Bearing in mind that we are completely 'blame free' in this whole episode AND we have a 'like for like replacement' policy... we are starting to feel  extremely annoyed about the whole thing.

 

There's lots of other stuff going on... but I'm running out of time today so it will all have to wait for the next post.

Jx