:: Wednesday, December 1, 2010 ::
Following on from last week's theme, it snowed again today.
:: Thursday, December 2, 2010 ::
This snow shit isn't funny any more. At least it stops by lunch time.
So by now, there's 3 feet of snow between the cars and the road. There's a couple of feet of now on the road as well - I live near the back end of a cul-de-sac and there's just about no passing traffic. There's no point clearing it - nobody's going anywhere.
:: Friday, December 3, 2010 ::
The snowplough fairy arrives at 9am, dressed as a fat bloke in a JCB, and clears a single track along the length of the street. Freedom beckons!
In a frenzy of enthusiasm, I start clearing the drive again. After 3 hours, I've cleared tonnes of snow off the front bit, and the road past the front of the house (the snowplough blade left quite a lot behind!) and I've cleared off the Fiesta. I've also cleared the path. I spread out some rock salt, on the drive and the road, becoming aware of the neighbour's stares. I find out from the man next door (Manager of another B&Q, not the one I went to) that they ran out of rock salt last Sunday and you can't get any now. Suddenly I feel like a man putting gold filings on his cornflakes so I try to eke it out a bit more.
I'm knackered.
So to recover, I go back out at night with Git Jnr and dig his Focus out from the back of the drive, so that he can drive to work tomorrow - the wee soul has walked 3 miles each way every day this week.
I've now reached a state that makes mere "knackered" seem lively and energetic by comparison.
:: Saturday, December 4, 2010 ::
What to do today... I know, I'll clear more snow so that I can make a "passing place" in front of my house, in the middle of a straight bit, so that people aren't stuck in the ploughed single track from one end of the street to the other.
I'll also clear a bit more of the back of the drive so that I can get to the garage without wading through snow up to my arse (and so that I can get the garage door open in the first place). And that, dear reader, is the point of the ramblings of the last week - I haven't fitted the brake disks because (a) it's too effing cold, and (b) I could barely get into the garage anyway.
At least writing the web site passes the time - I'm going stir crazy here.
:: Sunday, December 5, 2010 ::
There's been a light dusting of snow overnight, but nothing to bring the world to a stop.
The plan for today was to remove the brake calipers, and replace the brake disks. Well the real plan for today was to go to either the Sporting Bears lunch or to the TVR Car Club meeting, but both have been cancelled due to bad weather.
However, it's still bleeding freezing, and I'm a wee bit concerned that if any of the mounting bolts are tight, they'll be a little bit more brittle and might break. Well that's my excuse. So I leave them for today.
Oh and a road gritter arrives. That's been over a week since it actually snowed so that's pretty good eh? He spreads salt so thinly that it's barely visible and even an hour later, there is absolutely no visible sign of anything actually melting.
:: Monday, December 5, 2010 ::
The plan for today was to go to work - I haven't shown face since 25 November! So I go out at 8.45, start up the Fiesta (the roads are still a bit too slippery to take the Lexus - RWD and Autobox do not a good combination make) in a light snow shower. I have 37 miles to do, but it's not predicted to be too bad, so it'll be fine says I.
30 minutes later, I reach the motorway slip road about 3 miles away, as the snow gets heavier and the roads are starting to get covered. Now usually, traffic updates arrive on my car radio a millisecond AFTER I have committed myself to a slip road exit, where I can't turn back for bloody miles, but this morning, in a welcome departure from that norm, the traffic report arrives about half a mile before the motorway slip road, and it says that the motorway is down to one lane, that some junctions are closed, that snow is falling heavier further west, where I am going, and that lorries are already getting stuck on hills.
Mission Abort. I'm going home. I go round the roundabout at the top of the motorway slip and head home. The time is 9.15.
By 9.27 I've done about a mile, and I've caught up to a gritter just as we join the back of a queue. By 10.27 I'm in the same queue, and I've done another mile. It's horrendous.
I get back home at 10.50, after an interesting encounter with a daft bint in an Audi Q7 4WD who makes four different decisions in one quadrant of a roundabout ("I'm going off - no I'm going round - no off - no round") in the distance of about 15 metres, and brings me to a stop. The roundabout is on an uphill slope and the exit is slightly steeper, so I am very lucky to get going again, but I do. Just. Stupid cow. She was ok - 4WD meant she just pissed off into the distance so no harm done eh?
Anyway, I make it home, including climbing the hill to the house like Bambi climbing a blackboard, but I make it. That's 2 hours to do 6 miles and end up back where I started from.
I made the right decision though. The "News at 10" tonight reports of drivers on my route, who are in a queue and who have been there since before I set off - that's over 12 hours. There are also pictures of people being led from their cars along the A726, about a mile from where I was going, so I would have been stuck in one or other of those. Central Scotland is at a complete standstill. It would be declared a national emergency, except the Spar shop hasn't run out of Tennants so it can't be that bad.
It snows till just after 3pm, about another foot deep. The weather forecast says no more snow now this week, but temperatures of minus 13 tonight, so I shovel up all the new snow before it freezes. My neighbours are mostly doing the same, so after a week of this, the street looks like a scene from "Ice Road Truckers".
I'll get back to writing about the car eventually. At the moment I've got too much time on my hands!
:: Thursday, December 23, 2010 ::
There haven't been any updates for a while for one simple reason - there is absolutely sod all to update. There are only so many times you can write "it's still snowy" after all. It was so bad that the motorway I didn't get to in the last entry, was shut for 3 days. If I had gone down the slip road on to the motorway that day, I would have been there overnight with several hundred others.
We did get a bit of a thaw later that week, to the extent that most of the 6 foot piles of snow melted down to 3 feet. Then the temperature dropped below freezing, just for long enough to turn all the roads and footpaths to ice, before another couple of days of snow to cover it all up again.
As a result, we've had continuous snow lying since the 27th of November, I've used the Lexus once this month, it's still ffff-freezing (temperature not above zero for a week), there's a 3 foot pile of snow, now frozen to solid ice, in front of the garage door, and I haven't been near the TVR for weeks.
I don't even want to try fitting the new brake disks in case the cold has made the caliper bolts too brittle. Besides, the garage is currently being used as a natural sub-zero fridge because the turkey was too big to fit in the fridge in the kitchen. One misplaced jet of WD40 and I'm a dead man.
:: Tuesday, December 28, 2010 ::
Well the turkey survived the garage, despite catching frostbite and starting to freeze from the wingtips inwards, it's so bloody cold out there. Fortuntaly I noticed while I still had time to defrost the bloody thing again.
So... car-related gifts for Christmas? Well none really. I did get a wall-mounted tool cabinet though, which weighs about 3 stone before you even put anything in it. I hope Santa delivered it near the end of his round, otherwise he was going to miss a lot of people while he got his hernia sorted.
The lazy bastard didn't even build it for me, which again is just as well for half the worlds kiddies - it would have taken days. It's held together with millions of tiny mecanno-sized screws and nuts, with the added joy that half of them are almost completely inaccessible behind seams and doors etc. I manage eventually to put it together, and then take down the bit of board I was using, and fix the cupboard to the wall. Between the hooks, and the socket / spanner holder I make up to slot into place on the pegboard, the cupboard holds an amazing amount of stuff, and I haven't finished "customising" it yet.
At least the temperature has crept above zero, so working in the garage is bearable. I think I'll get on with my brake disks next.
I might even get a drive in the thing soon!
:: Wednesday, December 29, 2010 ::
Finally got round to doing some work on the car!
Yep... I jacked up the front of the car and then removed both front brake calipers, brackets and disks. Because I've got braided hoses, you can't use hose clamps, so I made up a couple of bits of brake pipe, sealed at one end, and with the right fitting to fit on the end of the brake hoses, then you remove the hose from the caliper and put the sealed end on - that means all the brake fluid doesn't pee out of the rest of the system and minimises the amount of bleeding you have to do when you put it all together. I also made up another couple of bits with male ends to fit into the caliper, to keep the brake fluid in, and any undesireable shit out.
Then clean down the calipers and brackets with a wire brush and brake cleaner, and then I painted them. They were dark blue, but I fancy a change - nothing too bling, so I go for a nice neutral gray.
Leave it all to dry for a day or two, before I put it all back together - there's no rush because there's still a fair pile of ice in front of the garage door.
:: Friday, December 31, 2010 ::
Took one look at the calipers in gray, and decided I don't like them. So I paint them over, in satin black, which looks much nicer.
The snow is disappearing fast, and I fancy a drive, maybe on Sunday. So I'll have to get the brakes all back together again!
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