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Showing posts from October, 2012

RBRR done

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Well that was fun. Nigel and I finished 2000 miles in 48 hours in a car that up until 2 months ago had not been anywhere for at least 2 years and had done very little in the previous 18 or so. As you can see, we worked the car hard, at least the brakes did. It wasn't all easy and there were issues along the way but we completed the course, have a full set of signatures in our road book and more importantly still have the car, our friendship and sanity mostly intact. Having prepared the car I was fairly confident that I had covered the ground needed, there was nothing in there that was suspect, well not much. I was not 100% confident of the radiator, there is a tiny leak somewhere that I have been unable to find. Rad weld is in there and I packed some extra water. Oil consumption seemed a little high, I was worried about that but and had packed a few litres of oil spare.  There rest was all good. However, it didn't start so well, when we packed the spares and kit

The list is down to one page now

I managed to waste most of last night on a "minor" job - the front bumper fit. When the car was painted they removed the front bumper but when it was refitted they neglected to fit the two end bolts so it was only attached by the main two bolts. As far as I could see the holes didn't line up as the main fittings were bolted up tight. Because the sides were not bolted up they were chaffing the new paint, not a huge issue as it is easily touched up and out of sight. I figured if I loosened the main mounts I could get enough slack to get the bolts onto the sides. Wrong! Well to cut a long story short, I had to remove the bumper then found no threads in one side and very bad alignment. A couple of hours fettling and slighting elongating a few holes gave me just enough room to get three bolts out of the four in, I figured if I could just get this last one in then I could wind them all in a bit at a time and it would settle. I ended jacking the bumper up into position and

Mirror mirror......

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Every now and again a job comes along where you know what needs to be done, you have the parts, the tools, you even know how to do it but you just can't bring yourself to actually do it! Fitting a pair of door mirrors was that job - all I had to do was mark up and drill 4 holes then screw in the plinths, attach the mirrors and adjust. Easy as falling out of a loft really. Why then did it take me about a month to fanny about doing this? Probably because I had to drill into my nice new yellow paint with a power tool. Holes that would be permanent and obvious if they were in any way wrong. Well yesterday I marched out to the garage and did the job, took me all of 20 mins and that includes getting my lovely wife out to hold the mirror in the right place and check placement. Oh and I must remember not to give her a pencil when she's near the car so then she can't drop it down the door glass opening into the inside of the door! Love you Claudia - grrrrr. So here