:: Diary - May 2007 ::

:: Tuesday, May 1, 2007 ::

My welcome pack to the Sporting Bears arrived today - a nice magazine, details of upcoming events, a window sticker etc. This all started last year when I saw them at a show last year giving rides for charity.

:: Thursday, May 3, 2007 ::

The car is booked in for its MOT on Monday.

I start to plan how to get the outriggers on the chassis stripped and painted before Monday. The weather promises to be good this weekend so I'll do it at the house rather than at the garage. Also the TVR club meeting is on Saturday so I will have to fit the painting in around that.

:: Friday, May 4, 2007 ::

Another early finish at work today so I go to a timber merchant and buy some thick wood offcuts to put the jack and axle stands on, so that I can get the car a bit higher to get my bloated carcass under.

Then I go along and pick up the car with the very best intentions to jack it up, wire brush the chassis tubes and repaint them before it gets too dark..

Instead I go for a wee run and that's the end of Plan A.

I receive 4 letters from Parcel Force. 3 of them contain an acknowledgement that they have received my claim and are processing it. The fourth letter contains a refund of the £28 I paid to get my trailing arm delivered to Adrian Venn. This therefore further confirms that they have never heard of a sentence containing the words "piss-up", "brewery" and "organise".

:: Saturday, May 5, 2007 ::

Off for a wee run in the morning just because I felt like it, then off to the club meeting in the afternoon. Again the attendance is excellent (although I forgot to count the number of cars) with yet more new faces who haven't been before. The club has really taken off this year - it's great going along to meet like-minded people just for a blether - and to receive and, hopefully, impart a few tips.

The car looks good considering it hasn't been polished since April last year. That's a job for the next month before the show season starts. First the chassis painting though (or I might have no car to polish next year).

3 or 4 of us have a good chat about going to the national S meeting in England in July - this is TVRs 60th anniversary so I suppose this is the year to do it! Yep I think I'm in for this. 300 miles each way in a car that was built 17 years ago and hasn't seen a garage for the last 4. If the 49ers could cross America to reach the gold in them thar hills with a wooden cart and a mangy horse, I can get the blue bomber to go 300 miles. Each way. Whether my ears survive the racket for 5 or 6 hours is a different question, of course.

It does sound good though - opening the throttle to overtake releases a beautiful noise as the engine revs rise - it's so intoxicating that you have to hold back from passsing EVERYTHING just to hear it again.

:: Monday, May 7, 2007 ::

It's that time of the year again - MOT day! First I take the car for a run just to warm it up, clear it out a bit and make sure that the autochoke etc isn't engaging during the emissions testing (not that I think it works anyway).

It fails. One stupid thing - when you have the rear fogs on, and the back lights, and the brake lights, the offside indicators cause the other offside lamps to dim. It's fine when the fog lamps are off, that's probably how I didn't notice during my cursory inspection of "easy stuff" over the weekend. Obviously a bad earth - the plague of fibreglass cars since noah built one out of his first canoe.

He also considers failing the steering column bulkhead bush but I persuade him that I have the bush and bearing in the house (I have!) and just haven't got around to it yet, so he agrees that it's marginal and gives me an advisory.

I take advantage of the "free re-test if you fix it by the end of the next working day" rule and go straight home to take out the rear lamp bulbholder, clean up all the connections, bend the terminals to give a tighter connection, remove and clean all the bulbs, put it all back together and I am back at the MOT test garage less than 45 minutes after I left.

Result - Pass!

I take the car back to my own garage and put it away, jacking it up onto stands and wooden blocks to give me the height to get underneath to clean and paint the chassis. I don't do any cleaning or painting though for the simple reason that I can't be bothered - I have other stuff to do including a chiropractic appointment.

I have added a bit here, following a couple of comments from readers (jees I sound like the Beano), to say that the car isn't balanced as precariously as it looks in that photo. There is a large axle stand under each chassis member at the rear, although they are obscured by the wheel there. That photo looks as if the back wheel is balanced on a wee bit of wood - well it isn't. I might not be very clever but I'm not (yet) suicidal.

My next required use of the car is 3 June when I am doing "Dream Rides" for the Sporting Bears, so I should have plenty of time to paint the chassis and polish the car up, before then. Famous last words, I'm full of them.

:: Sunday, May 13, 2007 ::

I had the day all planned - scrape and paint the chassis outriggers and the other swing arm, change the spark plugs and paint the wee seat belt brackets I made last year. Unfortunately I got nobbled by a yoof offspring who has bought a huge bleeding sub-woofer to fill his boot, and has no idea how to wire it up.

So wiring that up, including a trip to Halfords for some connectors, occupies most of the morning. It works though. He sets off for a trial, happy as a sandboy with blood pouring out of his ears. I can still feel the ground vibrating when he is about 3 miles up the road.

Although I finish that well before lunch time, I can't be bothered going along to the TVR. Shameful.

:: Saturday, May 19, 2007 ::

Despite the protestations of every aching part of my carcass, I decide that I really have to strip and repaint the rear suspension and outriggers.

First step is to remove the shock absorber. One bolt top and bottom (bleeding fiddly ones) and it's off.

Then as I set up the wire brush in the angle grinder I realise that I have forgotten my goggles so I have to go back for them. The paint, rust and bits of wire brush fly off in all directions, and I dont fancy getting one in the eyeball at high speed.

3 hours later, 3 bleeding hours of graft withy a wire brush, a chisel, a scraper and a putty knife, and I have most of the paint and surface rust off the trailing arm and rear chassis arm. This is a laborious and tedious process, getting into all the joints and welds etc. The wire brush in an angle grinder works very well but is very unwieldy, and can't clean the tricky bits.

By the time I have finished, the car and the garage are covered in granulated Hammerite. The bloody stuff is everywhere. Except under my trusty goggles. I look like a sunburnt panda.

I stop after 3 hours because: (a) I have to be somewhere else, (b) I am knackered and (c) I'm pissed off anyway. I leave it, with the outriggers still to do. I was hoping to be ready for painting tomorrow but it's not to be. I have to go to the Sporting Bears meeting tomorrow, which should be good - but that only leaves me one more weekend to get the car ready for the show.

:: Sunday, May 20, 2007 ::

The plan was to do some chassis-scraping before heading off to the Sporting Bears meeting. Unfortunately, by the time I get up, there isn't much time. This reinforces my initial instinct, which is not to be bothered.

The Bears meeting is good. I win a book in the raffle, and meet a wide variety of folk owning a wide variety of cars. A high proportion of them seem to be either new (and hence expensive) or restored (and hence expensive). This leaves me a little bit uneasy, for reasons I can't quite pinpoint at the time.

Later, I settle down to read the book I won. It's a collection of articles by Alan Clark MP, who was an avid collector of cars of all types, from the expensive to the mundane. He was opposed to the idea of restoring cars to a condition where they couldn't be used, or had lost their character. He liked a patina of age. This is what left me uneasy earlier - my "restoration" isn't really progressing - yes the car is better than it was when I bought it, but it's not "restored". Despite the fact thatI never intended, when I bought the car, to carry out a full restoration, I'm uneasy that, although I love my wee car, I'm still not that bothered about "restoring" it. I have done various bits of tidying or tarting up, but don't really intend to replace old bits with new, unless the old bits are broken.

The rally and autotest in March (even though it left me with a shattered suspension) brought home how I have never really used the car in a proper "sports car" way. I really enjoyed driving it around the cones or over the rally stages, chucking it about the way it should be driven (well as far as I can get it, anyway). I've left the rally stickers on, just as a reminder.

I like seeing the car all polished and shiny, but that's not why I bought it - I bought it to drive and to tinker with, and that's what I'm going to do. I'm happier with the idea of driving the car about with the Bears, than sitting in a static show.

This helps motivate me to the chassis painting, which only started because I want to be sure that the other trailing arm and other vulnerable bits of the chassis aren't about to rust through.

:: Tuesday, May 22, 2007 ::

I get home early from work, and decide that there is no better way to spend a lovely evening, than to crawl under a sports car and cover myself in rust and paint dust.

I start by going over the swing arm with a scraper and chisel, getting the last of the loose paint out of all the tricky bits, bush mountings, joints, inside box sections etc (well as far as I can reach). Progress is slow but I want to get this right.

Then I move on to the rear suspension mounts and chassis, again scraping and chiselling the loose survace off. Fortunately it's in pretty good nick underneath so I'm getting a bit happier.

Confidence restored, I move on to the nearside outrigger, first with the angle grinder wire brush to get the tubes clean, then again with scrapers and chisel to remove the less accessible surface paint, between the tube and the sill, and on top of the tube. with the help of the hooky thing I made. Again this is laborious but by the time I have finished I can get a scraper up between the sill and the chassis, all the way along.

Careful inspection with a light and mirror, combined with careful fingertip feeling, finds no trace of corrosion on top of the tube, even along the top beside the front body mounting, the second notorious rust spot on these cars. Mine looks and feels fine!

And this, boys and girls, is the array of fine quality tools used in today's Blue Peter assignment, to whit, one wire brush, one putty knife, one half-inch chisel, one wallpaper scraper and a home-made hooky thing. The angle-grinder wire brush was already sulking back in its box by this time.

Again, I've run out of time tonight and I haven't started the offside outrigger - I think I'll leave that till after the show, rather than risk running out of time.

The garage floor is now covered in a layer of red dust which is visibly thicker, and so am I (covered in a layer of dust I mean, not thicker - well ok maybe that's debatable). When I get home and have a shower, the layer of red dust going down the plug hole looks like that scene from Psycho - I keep expecting to be ripped to bits by a hooky thing through the shower curtains. I'm taking this all too seriously...

Next step is paint!

:: Saturday, May 26, 2007 ::

I hate painting. No, not just a little - I really don't like it. Some people find it quite therapeutic, apparently, but I hate it. I can do other things while my brain wanders about thinking about other stuff, but for some reason, when I'm painting, I can only think about how much I hate it.

So after a couple of hours of preliminary procrastination trying to think of something better to do, like setting my hair on fire with petrol and then tamping it out with a sledgehammer, I make my way along to the garage armed only with a tin of Hammerite, a couple of brushes and my wee secret weapon - a couple of little paint pads to reach the top of the tubes.

After a couple of hours, I've completed the first coat on the swing arm, the rear mounting tube and the nearside offrigger. The bent paint pad worge perfectly!

I forgot to bring Hammerite thinners. Bugger. I put the brushes and pads inside some rubber gloves to stop them drying out.

While the chassis dries, I take off the two seat belt mountings I had made, and paint them black.

Then another couple of hours applying the second coat of red to the chassis and trailing arm, and it's starting to look good - a fair old transformation!

At least I know there's no serious rust under there - the most rust-prone bits of the car.

I haven't done the offside outrigger - I really need to get the car ready for the show next weekend and I don't want to start that, and then find I don't have time for other things - the car is manky, the wheels are manky, the roof is manky, the interior is manky and the engine is manky. Lots to do this week!

:: Sunday, May 27, 2007 ::

I hate painting, but I like cleaning, while my brain wanders about thinking about other stuff.

First I refit the rear spring and shock absorber, and the back wheel. I get the car back down off the stands and blocks, and take it outside to clean up a bit.

First the wheels, with an ordinary non-acid wheel cleaner. They come up ok, I suppose, but not as shiny as I would like them. Never mind - if I get time I'll give them another polish, but they'll do.

Another shot of the wheel - except here you can see the car's freshly-painted red knickers, and also how little clearance there is under there!

Then I clean the cloth roof and panels, using an Autoglym kit - spray on the cleaner, rub it in with a foam pad, then wipe out the muck with a damp cloth. Before long I have a clean roof and a bucket of manky water so it must be working. After it dries I re-waterproof it with the fabric conditioner that comes with the kit. It dries smooth and smear-free so I'm happy.

Then I wash down the rest of the car - this time the water has a distinctly reddish tinge as it washes off the Hammerite dust. The car looks good though - much better than the dusty heap I drove out of the garage (at least now it's a shiny heap!). I was going to clean the interior but it needs a vacuum. I could also clean the engine but my stuff is at the house. As I've said before, this is the main disadvantage of renting a garage - if you forget something you're stuck till next time you visit - although it's only my stuff that's in there I don't like leaving it open while I go back to the house (20 minute return trip excluding "where the hell did I put it?" shed-searching time).

Interior, engine bay, glass, and rear window to clean, then give the paint a bit of a polish. Most of that stuff would be better done at the house. The weather forecast is for rain today but dry tomorrow so I'll leave it and do most of it tomorrow.

:: Monday, May 28, 2007 ::

I decide to bring the car back to the house - it's easier than taking a housefull of stuff to the car. I go through the normal routine to get the car out of the garage: put down the ramps at the door, start the car, then manouevre it forwards and backwards, edging it to the left till it's lined up with the door. As I take my last swing {to get the bonnet out of the door) there's a loud screeching crash. My heart stops, in that way they do when you've just crashed the corner of your car into a brick wall. (If you don't know what that feels like, don't experiment to find out).

I reverse back a bit - more screeching and grating. Oh no...

But wait. As the door frame comes back into view, it's totally unmarked. I get out to look at the car. It's totally unmarked. So what was all the noise about then?

Then I remember - I kicked my car creeper (a trolley to lie on) under the car yesterday. I have a look - yep I've run over it, and it's wedged under the wheel and against the chassis. I have to jack the car up to extract the creeper, which is ok except for a crushed castor.

I'm a tube.

Anyway, back to the house, where I hoover out the interior then clean the seats, dash, console, steering wheel etc.

Then it's on to the windows, including polishing up the plastic rear window.

A jetwash under the wheelarches and the easy bits of the chassis, and over the engine bay, followed by a wee drive to dry it all off. The wee drive takes 2 hours. I'm thorough at drying out engines.

Then I clean the inside of the roof panels which are filthy - they are the one bit of the car I have never cleaned since I got it.

Then I decide to clean the door surrounds and the paintwork in the engine bay. I don't have much Quick Detailer left and Halfords didn't have any yesterday, so I decide to make my own. Here's the recipe.

Carefully measure out "some" car shampoo into an empty Meguiars sprayer.

Then add "some" water until the bottle is almost full.

There you go. Accurate eh? I think my mix was probably about 4:1 or 5:1 or something like that, if you want to be precise.

Anyway, it works. Spray it on to the door shuts, leave for a couple of seconds then clean with a terry towel. Sparkly sparkly!

Then I spray some Autoglym vinyl cleaner onto the engine hoses and leads etc and leave it to dry. Makes them come up nice and shiny!

I want to keep the car here so that I can polish it - that's all there is left to do before Sunday. The weather forecast says rain tomorrow, but last night it said dry today, but this morning it said rain, and it didn't (well there was a light mist for about 5 minutes but nothing serious). The BBC weather forecast is bleeding useless. Just in case it rains overnight, I put the roof cap on.

It's looking not too shabby at all, and that's before it's polished.

:: Tuesday, May 29, 2007 ::

The weather forecast was right. It starts raining at 9am and it keeps raining till 10pm - no, not intermittent showers with dry spells, just a single unbroken constant drizzle that means that if you're outside, you get wet.

Halfway through the morning, I start to ponder on the relative merits of moving the car back to the garage, versus leaving it where it is. If I move it I'll get the underneath all wet then put it into a garage. I haven't waxoyled it yet so there's bare bits along the sill tubes... There again if I leave it where it is, it'll get wet, the body will be ok but the wheels are unprotected. The roof cover will keep the roof clean and dry and it won't leak. The chassis will stay dry.

On balance, leaving it where it is, is the best option.

So instead I stay in, and write the monthly report for Sprint.

The weather forecast says it'll be dry tomorrow so I might move it later when I get home. Except that later tonight, the weather forecast says rain from teatime onwards, so that's that plan buggered. I think I could forecast the weather better by telephoning somebody upwind and asking them to look out of their bleeding window. Weather forecasters are rubbish.