:: Diary - October 2012 ::

:: Saturday, October 6, 2012 ::

Apologies - there's still no review of the second episode of "Classic Car Rescue" - I recorded it on Monday but haven't watched it yet, because I haven't had time to sit down and get pished enough. I do have an apology to make though - throughout my last review, I referred several times to the apparently talentless American arsehole who co-hosts the show. This is completely without foundation, as he is, in fact, Canadian. Hope that's cleared that up.

I spoke to the TVR dealer today, and it seems we have a deal. I will get maybe a wee bit less than I would get selling it privately, but without the hassle of waiting in for no-shows, or dealing with dreamers and test pilots. He is going to prep the car and get it up for sale.

Next task is to go along to the farm, to fetch the S back to the house ready for the car club meeting tomorrow. When I get there, I find that he's parked his grass-cutting tractor in the middle of the barn, which slightly reduces the space around the car, but more importantly, makes it bloody difficult to get the car in and out through the narrow door. I'll ask how permanent this arrangement is - but at the and of the day, it's his shed so if I moan too much he'll boot me out.

Anyway, car starts first time despite sitting for 2 months, and the drive home is great. Well, it is, after I've scraped the exhaust across one of his new speed bumps. I think I need to take the hint eh? When I get home I stick the car in my garage and re-seal the middle exhaust joint.

:: Sunday, October 7, 2012 ::

It's TVR Car Club day! And it's sunny (bloody freezing, but sunny). Perfect weather for an S-Series TVR, eh?

So I set off for Dave's, where I meet up with Jim and Philip for a wee run to the meeting. Within only a few miles I am reminded once again what a brilliant wee car this is. Nearly 10 years I have had it, and still I forget. After a few motorway miles we turn off onto some interesting wee roads, and then back down towards the venue. The last bit is spoiled slightly by a man in a Council van who obviously can't reach the accelerator and also seems to have to brake slightly to assess every bit of road that isn't perfectly straight. Unless he has an open vat of soup in the back, it's not necessary. I invent a new game of "how many of these corners can I go round on tick over without braking at all", and the answer is "quite a lot".

We park up at the hotel, although we're a wee bit too late to get the prime spots (largely thanks to the council brake-flasher) so we park up the side.

Lovely cars, TVRs…

There is a new boy there in a 280 Tasmin which has been race-prepared (but still road-legal). It's very nice.

And so to lunch. Despite my principles about not spending any of my money on the useless gits in the hotel (after previous experiences of bad service and downright inconsideration to the club as a whole), my stomach tells me I'm starving so I am tempted to suspend my fatwah in favour of fatgit. So we go into the bar to order food. There is a queue like a Russian bread shop, and one man taking orders for food and serving drinks at the same time. Progress is excruciatingly slow. I decide to renew the fatwah, and not have anything to eat again. Or drink - I have a bottle of juice in the car, that'll do.

Lunch time conversation is enlivened by Philip's wee girl, and chat about Dave's collection of helicopters, and his job as tomato-squasher-in-chief in Heinz's local ketchup factory.

Then it's outside for a bit of chat about TVRs and things (and a "who can keep quiet the longest" competition, which adds a surreal touch) before we all set off for home.

The journey home is also great fun, just driving and enjoying the car. I get home, park the car in the garage and there are no new items to add to the "todo" list (which was long enough already, to be fair). Oh, except for maybe "twiddle the wee knobs on the dampers just a tad" - it feels a wee bit "floaty" at higher speeds.

:: Thursday, October 11, 2012 ::

I still haven't found the courage to watch the second episode in the series "Classic Car Rescue" - the one about the Porsche. Tonight, though, I accidentally stagger across a re-run of the third episode. This time, they are taking the piss out of an MGB.

They go and look at one but the guy wants "a fousaand paands" for it. Our shouty heroes offer him £400. He tells them, with that stiff upper lip traditional British politeness that I'm not very good at, to fuck off.

So off they duly fuck, to a farm where the owner has hunners and hunners of cars in a variety of sheds. Or, more accurately, hunners and hunners of sheds in a variety of barns. He points to a pile of dust and birdshit and says "there you go". It's so rusty that it looks like it has been carved out of a fossilised dinosaur shit. Everywhere you touch, goes powdery. Even Bernie (the cockney shouty bloke) appears dismayed at the level of decay, but the owner phones Mario (Canadian shouty bloke) who agrees to buy it, based on the man's description, for £500. Bernie goes mental. No discernible change in demeanour.

When they put it on the car lift, the back axle falls off, automatically detaching itself from 4 spring shackles, two damper mounts, a handbrake cable, two brake lines and a propshaft as it falls. Aye right. Television drama, but not exactly the "documentary" it's billed as.

Oh and did you know that the MGB had an ingenious and innovative rear suspension? Yup, apparently leaf springs were unheard of till MG invented them in 1745 (or just after quarter to six, when "The Magic Roundabout" used to be on when I was young. Even that made more documentary sense than this pile of pish).

We saw Bernie sack the painter and spray the car himself. If I had drunk 10 litres of green paint, and then pissed on the car from a stepladder, I'd have got a better finish.

Then we saw Mario trying to buy bits in a scrapyard. He hadn't a clue what he was looking for, or where to find it. I haven't seen anybody so far out of his depth since my uncle decided to walk across the local pond because "it can't be that deep, it only comes up to there on the ducks". I actually felt sorry for the wee soul. The Director had to be taking the piss. He had to be.

And so, with no filming of any actual repairs to the car whatsoever, we end up with a pristine MGBGT, ready for our friend the valuer. He decides it's worth £5,000. I think he missed out a decimal point in there.

:: Friday, October 12, 2012 ::

One of my neighbours has a Citroen C2. She's a nurse (which could could come in handy) and he's a plumber (which already has come in handy). They are very nice. Today she came back from her collecting her car from the garage around the corner after a service. I happened top be outside and she asked me about a slight smell in the car. When I head over the car is full of white smoke, and stinking of burning oil. I'm surprised she didn't choke.

Anyway, pop the bonnet and the engine is covered in oil, which seems to be worse around the filter. It hasn't sealed properly.

Interestingly, though, the oil that's pishing off the engine and running down their drive doesn't look very clean. In fact, it's totally black. If I didn't know better, I'd say the oil hadn't been changed…

£300 they've been charged for this service. The man from the garage at least comes out and apologises, and arranges to have both the car and the driveway cleaned. He can't explain why they didn't check that the filter wasn't leaking in the first place.

I despair, I really do…

:: Tuesday, October 16, 2012 ::

I watched the fourth episode of "Classic Car Rescue" last night. This time it was a poor innocent Ford Mustang that got picked on. I really can't write a review that does justice though. I have now finally got the joke, and have realised that it's not a documentary at all, it's a comedy, a bit like putting Del Boy on "Dragon's Den", or Arfur Daley on the Antiques Roadshow.

They buy a Mustang. A convertible, that's in bits. Some of the bits are powdery, and used to be a chassis. Another bit is a solid block of rust that used to be an engine with separate moving pistons etc. Mario thinks it's beautiful. He should have gone to Specsavers. Or a secure hospital.

In an inspired piece of acting that would have graced any primary school nativity play, Mario manages to accidentally drop the windscreen and smash it. They need a new one. Miraculously, they find one in the first scrapyard they visit. Lucky eh?

Mario has also managed to find a replacement engine, and after spending a bleeding fortune rebuilding it, it's installed into the newly-welded-together and painted car. But it won't start, but instead explodes with a cloud of white smoke from near the bellhousing. Bernie goes characteristically mental. The staff characteristically walk out. Mario characteristically says Bernie is a loud-mouthed arsehole. Bernie apologises, the staff return. The scriptwriter suddenly realises he must have left a couple of pages in the photocopier from last week.

The smoke is apparently caused by the cam gear on the distributor drive (at the front of the engine) being worn, so the ignition timing is buggered. Still haven't figured out how that resulted in the kind of smoke that Pan's People used to dance through - not the only BBC smokescreen to become apparent in the last few days, as it happens, now then now then.

Anyway, back to the Mustang. No, sod it, I can't be bothered any more…

:: Wednesday, October 17, 2012 ::

I need a fix of proper car maintenance, after all this TV bollocks. I have a couple of spare hours so I decide to change the oil and spark plugs in the S. First the plugs: gap set to 0.9mm (there is some debate about what the gap should be, but that seems to work for me), then just work your way around, replacing one plug at a time, using my "special technique" to change No 1 plug without removing the alternator or its bracket.

Then it's on to the oil. Start the car up and let it run for a couple of minutes just to warm the oil a few degrees, then jack the front up a wee bit, and slide a tray under the exhaust (it's only a low tray but it doesn't fit under the exhaust if the car is level!). Remove the drain plug and leave it to empty.

Since I removed the remote brake fluid reservoir when I changed the servo last winter, there's a lot more space to reach the filter from above. I get the filter off with hand pressure only, and manoeuvre it out. A wee smear of oil on the seal of the new one, then screw it into place.

Replace the drain plug, refill with oil, then start it up and let it warm up while I check for leaks (very important that bit, ask my neighbours). Perfect!

Then I nip round the car and check all the tyre pressures, and then soften all the dampers by 2 clicks each. We'll see how that goes.

All of that in just over an hour, without really trying. Time well spent though, I enjoyed my wee break.

Finally, my Cerbera has appeared on the Dealer's web site. It looks damn good. I'm almost tempted.

:: Sunday, October 21, 2012 ::

Well it's dry, not too cold ("bracing" would be about right) so I am going to have a wee run in the car to see how the suspension is. Well that's my excuse and I believe it.

Roof off (of course) we set off for a wee run of about 40 miles or so. The suspension feels much better, it's not picking up every rut like it was. The rest of the car is just fine - everything seems to be working (famous last words eh?).

But no, nothing falls off (well the glove box catch detaches itself but that takes 5 minutes to fix) and soon we're back home.

This car is just brilliant!

:: Tuesday, October 23, 2012 ::

Set off in the Lexus this morning for a wee jaunt to Edinburgh (the reason for the wee jaunt is a long story that I might explain later). Anyway, first stop is the cash machine 100 yards down the road. When I get back and start it, half the warning lights don't go out, and the dash starts flashing various messages about "ABS fault", "VLC fault" and another one I can't remember.

Now if this was the Cerbera, I would put it down to the random alignment of 3 pebbles spinning round the moon. Or high spring tides in Thailand. Phuket, I would say. It'll probably be (and inevitably was) all right tomorrow.

But it's not a Cerbera, it's a Lexus. The last time something like this happened (in my previous Lexus) it went into "limp-home" mode on the way home. In Lexus's case "home" in that context means "100 yards up the road, because I'm not going any further. At all. At any speed. No go." Only option: recovery truck and a newspaper to read in the meantime.

So I drive to the Lexus dealer, which is half-way between here and Edinburgh anyway, to see if they can look at it. "No, we're fully booked for the next fortnight".

"Can I use the car meantime, after what happened to the last one?"

Well we wouldn't advise it - it can go into "limp-home" at any time.

"I may as well leave it here then."

"Well ok but we might not be able to look at it for a day or two."

{thinks - well that's a lot less than a fortnight and it might as well by in their bloody road as in mine - might encourage them to get on with it} "That's fine, let me know what you find."

Wander out, stand at bus stop and make a few phone calls to re-arrange a couple of meetings, and suddenly I don't need a car till Saturday! The advantages of working from home. All I have to do now is actually get home on a bus.

:: Thursday, October 25, 2012 ::

The Lexus garage phones to say that they have looked at the car yesterday, and I need a rear wheel speed sensor. Their "Parts availability" system says there is only one in the UK, so if I want it. they better order it. Now this might be just a sales technique, but it doesn't matter - I need it, don't I?

The cost will be £400 fitted. Eh? Again, though, I don't have a lot of choice.

They take delight in explaining that if I had taken an extended warranty (the car is 4 and a half years old) then it would have been covered. That would be easy to answer - the extended warranty would have cost me over £1,700 by this time (the original plus renewal) and this is the first thing that's gone wrong (apart from me skating it through a fence, but that's not the car's fault!) so I am still over £1,000 up. I bite my tongue though and don't tell them this, in case my next repair bill is mysteriously higher!

They expect the part in tomorrow so I should have the car back then.

:: Friday, October 26, 2012 ::

The Lexus garage have got the part in, and say the car will be ready for 4.30. So it's back on the bus, to find that off-peak, that route stops about 2 miles short of the garage. If I wait for a bus that goes to the door, I'll be too late to collect the car. The joys of living in a rural area (That means "anywhere outside a big city" in bus-company-speak. If you don't want to go where everybody else wants to go (i.e. into the big city) you're stuffed.

As I'm crossing the road at the bus-terminus-thingy down at the shopping centre, there's one of these "wee happy buses" in one of the stops, with the driver reading his paper. I go top cross in front. As I get half-way across, he looks up, stuffs away his paper and drives off, towards me. Fair enough, maybe he thought I was going to make him work, like collect a fare or something. But he's not content with that, no… after half a bus length, he stops in front of me, and signals out the window that there's a pedestrian crossing just up the road, and some extra gesticulations that his passengers can't see, and that I had better not explain here.

He laughs.

He drives off.

The lights at the pedestrian crossing change.

He stops. The door opens.

I run 20 yards and jump on his bus.

He's not laughing any more.

After asking if he thinks it's fair to nearly run people over because the didn't use a crossing, I tell him the name of his boss (I do have to work with bus companies occasionally, and this is a fairly small local one so I know the owner). I say that I'll call him tomorrow so he'd better get his version of the story reported first.

He's definitely not laughing now.

I get back off the bus.

Hopefully, he'll sweat a bit and then go back to the depot and report himself. I'm not going to, I've got better things to do.

Anyway, my half-route bus comes along soon, and after a half-hour on the bus and another half-hour walking, I reach the garage, where I pay the bill and collect the car, all fixed. Once again they gloat that I should have paid for an extended warranty. Once again, I decide to smile and say nothing.