Camel Disco - the once over

Ok, Saturday turned out to be a much nicer day than what was anticipated, a bit windy to start with but that quickly died down, so after an early morning walk with the dog (Max) I decided to have a look over my new acquisition - a ‘97 Camel Disco Support Vehicle, so I’m lead to believe - no real evidence yet but I’m still searching.

My mate Mark from Southampton turned up with his entourage (wife and 5 kids) and after packing the kids off to the shop (for pasties of course) and making sure the missus (Hippo - don’t ask) had a brew in hand and her laptop plugged in, Mark and myself gave the truck the once or twice over.

Why was the winch sitting in a cardboard box in the “boot”, why was there a burnt out relay under the bonnet below the windscreen, why is there a set of air horns that don’t work, along with the inevitable when you acquire any new motor “what does that button do”? And finally, why did Hippo not bring her hair dryer?

The latter being so that we could use it to get the previous owners corporate stickers off. The answer to this question was simple: A) she didn’t know she was supposed to bring a hair dryer, followed by cries of “that’s no excuse” from Mark and I; B) She hadn’t seen her hair dryer for quite some time, quick glances at each other followed by sheepish looks from Mark and myself - we knew it had found its way down to his workshop to be used in similar circumstances - many months ago. Of course, we didn’t say anything.

Before I could say “Coffee?” Mark had the winch on the lawn and had allready started to remove the front grill. I went in doors to make a round of drinks. Upon my return the winch was sat in it’s cradle and Mark had a set of four electric cables in his hand “I’m not sure which is which, but if you look at them they all seem to want to sit naturally about there”. We both agreed, it must be the natural evolution of a Land Rover, like say, if your arm fell of you’d know where it’d belong - rightly or wrongly we were using the same pricipal here. Well it’s a nice sunny day (jumpers off by now - accept for Hippo but then she’s just wierd anyways) and we were enjoying ourselves, feeling quite relaxed, and sure it would work - and it did, hoorah! One job done.

Another brew later, we’d earned it, and we were under the bonnet pondering the burnt out dodgy looking relay, and the occassional wonder if the kids had got lost, or just runaway witht he money, but that was a minor detail.

After much prodding, pulling of wires, squinting and pointing, we came to the conclusion it must be for the heated windscreen. After all that’s where all the wires lead to plugs that weren’t plugged in to sockets that were empty seem to end up. See, we do have a sort of logic, afterall the previous owner had indicated that it wasn’t wired through the ignition “so remember to switch it off”. This implied some sort of thought process maybe required from us and today wasn’t the day for that, we had the sun burning our brains allready - we didn’t want to add “thought” to any damage that may be being done. We concluded that this was a job to keep on the “to-do-list” for another day.

Damm! The kids have returned, arms full of pasties and pop. By now it was a proper summers day, maybe we wont need the illusive hair dryer after all. after much “I want, can I have, where’s my, who gave you that?” type conversation, as you get with a brood ranging in ages from 4 to 17, we (the elder/old) ones set about peeling the signage off.

The large coperate stuff seemed to come of quite easily, not of course all in one go but atleast not breaking up to much, a nice relaxing job for a nice relaxing summers day. Why however, is it always the “Wales” stickers that are such a sod, breaking up into tiny tiny pieces - this was a national emblem determined to stay put, and about the only real time I nearly cursed throughout the all day.

Once all the stickers were removed, after turning the truck round so the other side was in the sun of course, even sticker removal has it’s technicalities, with a bit of white spirit to remove any glued on grime the bodywork cleaned up quite nicely, and the Camel was already looking like a different motor. Well done us. Brew time.