Saturday - Ying & Yang:
Next week will be very busy for me at both work and at home.
So I figured it would be worth a personal visit to the garage to check up on the car and pre-authorise spend if required.
Therefore I was slightly caught off guard when they said it was actually ready, they just hadn't worked out the bill yet.
As they were closing in an hour, there wasn't time for me to drive home in one car and then come back on the train for the other.
Instead, I simply swapped cars, drove the Swordfish home and came back on the train later on for the car I arrived in.
As I arrived in a car with a roof I wasn't wearing a hat and my bald head quickly got toasted on the way back.
But it was great to be back behind the wheel and I'm lovin' the T-shirt driving weather.
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Given that I had missed most of last Summer painting the car, I didn't want to be off road for a prolonged period this Summer.
So I was happy for a few temporary fixes to get me through to the Winter this time around:
Oil leak
- All the obvious (when the car in on a ramp) issues were dealt with.
- But the only way to guarantee the job is to pull the engine out at some point.
Emissions
- They spent some time sorting out my carbs and an air leak in the manifold.
- So the car should both run better and pass the next MOT with ease (it barely scraped a pass last time).
Heater leak
- The good news is that I wasn't making a complete mess of tightening up the heater hoses.
- As the bad news is the real leaking is coming from the heater itself.
Many long years ago I dropped my brand new micro heater when mocking up where to fit it.
At the time I thought I was lucky to get away with just a small dent.
But I obviously weakened the whole area, as it is this section with the hose connectors that is leaking.
So there is some rad fix in there as a temporary measure for now and I've already ordered a replacement heater.
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After picking up my flat cap and applying some suncream I was ready to go for a longer drive.
But I just couldn't escape the traffic jams in very direction that I pointed, barely covering 15 miles in an hour.
Then disaster struck when I stopped to fill up with petrol, although I'm still not 100% what happened exactly.
Either way, the end result was "
rivers of petrol" overflowing out of the filler cap and all over the rear deck.
With the pump nozzle still in my hand, I watched helplessly as the petrol dropped neatly into the gap around the boot lid.
I mopped up the mess as best I could and headed straight home as carefully as I could.
I then used a watering can to rinse the rear deck area with water and then spotted one corner overflowing.
Sure enough, with the boot lid removed, the driver's side drain hole was blocked.
I used a bamboo skewer at both ends of the drain to free it all up.
But by this point, the petrol had already mixed with the black paint inside the rain channel and "tie dyed" the body work.
Which means at some point I will need to give a large section of the rear of the car a fresh coat of paint.
However, for now, I will just have to live with the 'lived in' look.
I'll be back in a minute with a slightly better Sunday report...