Yes - it was a bit cold...
We left Northampton at about 6:30, and went down the A508 / A5 route to LB. It was fine on the slow bits, but as soon as you got on the open road and up to national limit, it was bloody RAW. I had my thermals on, two t shirts and a rugby shirt, a scarf and a ski jacket it was still bitter. My trick with two pairs of gloves (fleecy type under my leather gloves) didn't work, as I couldn't feel my fingers when we got there!
There was one moment on the way there that will stick with me for a long time - belting down the A5, I had a blood red sun rising on my left, with the full moon still fully visible on my right. It was almost like something out of Star Wars. Not that I was going to the biggest hive of scum and villainy in the know universe. Just LB.
We got there with plenty of time to spare - arrived about 07:15, and had to wait on the entrance way for one of the VOSA bods to arrive and open the gates.
The actual test was very interesting, and the chap doing it was very amenable - after about 5 mins the banter was flowing and everybody was laughing, despite the cold.
The car sailed through the emissions check, .5% C02 and about 400ppm HC.
The external projections check threw up some items - he wasn't happy with the rear of the headlight bracket - but everything else was fine. He also hemmed and hawwed about the slots around the nose cone - apparently they need a 1mm radius edge if they're 25mm wide. The only other thing he pinged me for was the rear reflectors - they didn't have a 2.5mm radius
Inside, there was nothing to really note, apart from he didn't pass the gear knob. Everything else was fine (boy was I glad I made up the panel to cover the electrics - he shine his torch in there and just shrugged and said "well, there's nothing there to check..."). No probs with the console, either. When he was checking, he mentioned that anything above a line he chalked on the tunnel had to be checked with the larger 160mm sphere, for head strike - so whilst the 100mm may have been able to get in to touch the console, as it was above the line he used the other one, and he couldn't even get it past the gearstick and the lower line of the dash.
There was a bit of a moment with the seatbelt bar - when I had positioned it, I had triple checked the height, and added a few mil to be sure. Lucky I did, because with the tolerance it was spot on. The inspector lucked at me and said "Where's your spare couple of mil then" And then winked at me. I can only assume the rubber matting and the carpet on the seat bars took it up.
Checking the lights, he did discover a fairly major boob on my part - you could turn the rear fog on when you only had the side lights on. And the only other item of note was that the self centring wasn't really working right, even with pumped up tires.
So - it got to mid-day, and he said we'd break for lunch, and if I could rectify the issues he'd found in the afternoon, he'd pass me.
Popped in LB town to the little Halfords there and got a replacement gear knob and some emery paper, and some lunch
Returned and as soon as he came back, we rectified all the issues - sanded a radius onto the rear reflectors, radiused the edges of the front slots, changed the gear knob. He seemed mighty impressed that I could take the dash off by disconnecting a couple of plugs. 5 mins later, after a switcheroony of some of the terminals in one of my connectors, and the fog was fixed. "Good god - it's even neat and tidy under there" said the Inspector.
The back edge of the light brackets was sorted with some rubber edging I had left over from the bonnet - we just slackened of the light and clamped it bak down trapping the rubber - The Inspector then helped us re-align the lights afterwards.
The self centring was cured by giving her more toe out - We popped her back on the lift and used the wheel skates to allow the wheel to freely move when we wound the track rods out. It did mean cutting of the shrouds I'd heat shrunk on - I did have spare ones. I asked him if he wanted me to put them on now (which would have meant winding the rod all the way out and slipping it on before screwing it back in), or if he trusted me to do when I got home. All I got was another grin in reply.
He took it for a spin, declared it was feeling a lot better an centering as required, and told me to wait whilst he did the paperwork.
That's when it hit me that I'd actually done it! YAY!!!!
Got the paperwork, (IAC, copy of IAC, and all the print outs and calcs from the test) and was on the road again at 3:30ish. Coming through MK, I opened the taps to celebrate - she felt great. I only slowed down as it felt like the helmet I was wearing was about to tear my head off.
All the way there, and all the way back temps where fine - stayed at about 80ish - fan was cutting in and out as it should - so I don't think I'll have too many issues with cooling - but the real test will be this summer when it's a bit warmer.
She's tucked up in the garage, having a snooze at the moment. I think I'll leave her be for the rest of the weekend.
Still can't quite believe I've done it!
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