:: Diary - April 2008 ::

:: Saturday, April 5, 2008 ::

Busy day today - went down to Culzean to meet the organisers of the Autoclassica, to see how the Sporting Bears can participate. It l0oks like a good event, and an excellent venue so I'm looking forward to it already (and it's not until August).

While I am away, my new mirror covers are delivered. I expected them to be bare fibreglass and to need painting before fitting, but they arrived with the correct "grain" effect and already finished in black, ready to fit. Top man Trevor Bee! I was going to paint them but I think I'll leave them for now. You can see exactly how badly corroded the old covers are.

:: Sunday, April 6, 2008 ::

Mainly cleaning and polishing left to do. I intended to take the car out of the garage, wash it then polish it, but decided that wasn't a good idea after the snow shower this morning.

I decided to fit the mirror covers, and after a bit of fiddling, they're on! (There's nothing wrong with the covers, the old ones were just as fiddly. Makes a huge difference!

Then I get a wee tin of enamel paint and paint in the edge of the windcreen to cover the delaminated bits - effectively painting in the bit that was black originally. I know, it's a bit of a bodge but it looks better than having the screen sealed with tape! Then I change the tax disk and leave it so that I don't get dust all over the paint.

:: Monday, April 7, 2008 ::

Found a set of original Ford alloy wheel nuts on the 'bay. They're in Germany though, but even including the postage they're a lot less expensive than they are from Ford. So I order them.

:: Saturday, April 12, 2008 ::

The weather's dry for a change soi I decide to wash the car and start polishing. After I've washed and dried it, I go over it with a Meguiars clay bar - basically you spray a mist of detailer on to a small area and rub the clay over it, turning and kneading the clay so that you're always using a clean bit - and being careful not to drop it on the floor! By the time I have finished, the clay bar isn't too manky (nowhere near as bad as when I last did it 2 years ago) and the car is gleaming.

Then I go over the car examining for paint scratches or swirl marks, polishing out the worst scratches with Meguiars Scratch X,again a little bit at a time just concentrating on the scratches and any paint blemishes (like birds' doo-doo marks etc).

Forget what I did next - oh yes, cleaned all the door shuts and the paintwork under the bonnet.

Unfortunately 2 things stop me continuing to the polishing and waxing stage: first it starts raining so I have to put the car back in the garage, and second, my polishing mops haven't been washed since last time so they are a bit crispy, and not really suitable for smooth polishing.

With the car back in the garage, I go round and swap over all the wheel nuts, 2 at a time (yes they arrived from Germany already!)

Then I polish the brake pipes and the clutch pipe under the bonnet, because they are amost green.

The front n/s sidelight isn't working - after removing the headlamp, I find that it isn't the bulb as I had thought - I connect the bulb across a wee battery and it works. I check that the rear n/s lamp is on (they are both controlled by the same fuse) but that's ok. Must be the wiring then. I don't have my meter or tester so I'll have to leave it for another time. I need to get it working before MOT time at the start of May. Stupid bloody sidelights - why do cars need them anyway eh?

Otherwise the car is starting to look OK!

:: Sunday, April 13, 2008 ::

I arrive at the car armed with a voltmeter and a sense of pessimism. Yesterday the bulb worked when connected direct to a battery, but not when it was in the car - so you would think it's the car's wiring eh? So step one is to test across the sidelight wires - 12V. Hmmm... so it's getting voltage but not coming on... Right, Ohm-meter on the bulb shows that the circuit withing the headlight isn't broken... so there's power going in and an earth coming out but no light. I plug the bulb back in and it comes on. No matter how much I jiggle the wiring and connectors, it stays on too. I don't know what was wrong with it but it's working now... bloody thing!

After I've put the headlight back in, I get back under the bonnet, put a bigger bit of plastic tubing on the wiring on the offside of the engine, clean up all the radiator hoses, polish the alternator, wipe down the rocker covers and generally tidy things up.

I also start to polish up the exhaust manifold but get bored.

So instead, I clean all the windows, because they're manky. When I went to move the car yesterday, I could hardly see out!

:: Thursday, April 17, 2008 ::

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday wee TVR...
Happy birthday to you

It's 5 years today since I bought my wee S Series. I've done about 22,000 miles in it, in all weathers. It's been away up north and away down south. I've driven it for miles on my own, just for a wee run at my own speed, and I've driven it on club runs etc with others.

I've spent a lot of time replacing bits and tidying it up. I've had a couple of bigger jobs like the trailing arm and the bonnet, and a lot of little jobs along the way. I've probably spent more time doing that stuff than I have driving it.

Even after all of that, I still love it. Every time I start it up, and I hear that engine burst into life, it's all worth it.

Every drive in it is an experience. My other car is a Lexus which is a very nice comfy car, excellent for wafting about, and I enjoy driving that too - but the TVR is something else. It's like a go-kart, much more direct, much more involving, and demands concentration and care. It's also much more rewarding when you get it all right, and when you hear that engine noise echoing back from walls and bridges.

I don't drive it enough. Other things get in the way, and because I don't have a garage at the house, it takes ages to drive to the farm, extract it from the garage and bring it back. I should use it more, because I would love it - but would that ruin the sense of "occasion" when I do use it? I don't know.

Friends sometimes say "Oh a TVR - very nice but they're unreliable." Naturally, these friends have never owned one and can only take the advice of Porsche-obsessed magazines and Ferrari-drooling TV programmes. Yes, mine has needed repairs - the leaky water pump, the cracked exhaust manifold and the trailing arm (again) being memorable examples. But hell, the car's 18 years old, and you can't expect perfection. It's a sports car, not a Mondeo. AND ANYWAY have you seen the cost of Ferrari and Porsche repairs? The only time it's actually broken down was 3 months after I bought it, when the ignition switch connector fell to bits and brought me to a stop on a roundabout. 10 minutes with a bit of silver paper sorted that.

So I'm looking forward to this summer (if we get one). I'm looking forward to every drive, every mile, every exhaust-roaring second I can get out of it. Happy birthday wee car!

This message is brought to you by "talkingbollocks.com".

:: Sunday, April 20, 2008 ::

A day of polishing today. I started by doing a complete Meguiars 3-stage on the bodywork. First the cleaner: applied with a random orbit polishing machine, and cleaned up by hand with a terry towel.

Then the polish - again applied and worked in by machine, and polished up by hand, this time with a microfibre cloth. Then I go round and hand-polish all the tricky bits round the badges, door handles, mirrors etc.

Then the same again with the wax, except that this time I apply and buff off by hand. Rather than Meguiars wax, I borrow some other stuff called 3X or something, from the Chemical Guys or something (see how carefully I take note of precisely what I'm using eh? You can never be too careful. My car's body is a temple). It's a thick paste and it don't half polish up goodly.

Then I clean and re-waterproof the roof and panels, using what's left of my Autoglym kit from last time.

I found the rear-window polishing kit I bought from "hindsight" last year. It's a 2-stage process, first working in a thick paste all over the plastic, then rubbing in a thinner cream before buffing it up with a chamois-like cloth that comes in the kit. It's hard work but the window ends up crystal clear.

A bit of polish on the headlamp rims and the rear of the exhaust, hoover up the bits of fibreglass in the rear parcel shelf (swarf from drilling holes for the roof struts) and it looks not too bad at all. Time to put it back in the garage.

Now my garage is about 4 miles away from the house. When I arrive at the garage my speedo shows that I have done 48 miles. Must fix that. No wait, hang on, maybe I did have a slight detour...

:: Monday, April 21, 2008 ::

Oh yeah. Something I forgot to mention yesterday.

When I brought the car back to the house yesterday, I had the roof on, because the boot was full of stuff. When I took it back, I had the roof off but the rear window panel still up (forcos I'd been cleaning it see?). In the course of my 40-odd mile drive, I found that the new roof struts whistle at speed, because the ends are open and the wind obviously blows down the tube over the hinge pin. Even better than that, they each are tuned to a slightly different pitch, and cut in at slightly different speeds, so your journey is accompanied by this two-tone harmonic whining racket, which gets on your nerves after a (very short) while.

I'll have to see if I can make up a wee plug to fit in the top of each tube to keep Roger Whittaker inside.

I've also remembered that I should really service the car before the summer season.

And its MOT test will be due soon - the reminder arrived today. I'll have to book it in, probably on the May bank holiday, but first I'd better make sure that I'm not outside the "30 days early" rule.

:: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 ::

I've got some photos taken by the photo fairy (who is closely related to the polish fairy) on Sunday after we had polished the car, just to show its general shininess!

Not bad for 18-year-old paint...