wuvvum

As if it isn't bad enough having to drive around in a Vectra B.

I bought some isopropyl alcohol off eBay a few weeks back, as a cheaper substitute for MAF cleaner. It's still readily available.

@BeEP Fancy a spare? Right on your manor.

Went for a pleasant bike ride up to Walcott this afternoon - enjoyable despite the amount of traffic on the road. On the way into the village there was an old dear out in her garden celebrating her 100th birthday with her family. Beach was as rammed as you'd expect on a day like this, but I wasn't intending to sunbathe anyway. Quite a few interesting old motors out and about - I got overtaken by a couple of old Yanks and a black MGA, and when I was nearly home a 3 litre Bentley came rumbling past, which was nice to see.

I would imagine that if you take London out of the equation, the average salary (however measured) will drop significantly. London has a tendency to skew the stats in a lot of areas.

This must be close to the ultimate 75 spec (HGF notwithstanding). Connie SE Tourer 2.5 V6 manual.

Had a reasonably productive day of fettling. I didn't manage to get everything done that I wanted to as some of the bits I ordered off eBay haven't arrived yet, but I got the replacement driver's seatbelt fitted to the V70. That wasn't too bad of a job once I'd worked out how everything went together - the HBOL had Step 1 as "Remove driver's seat", but that turned out to be completely unnecessary, the book once again living up to its name (the manual for this car seems to be even more misleading than the norm for some reason). I initially thought I'd been sold a duff belt as it didn't seem to want to unreel, but it seems that it's just very sensitive to mounting angle, as once it was bolted onto the B pillar it pulled out with no problem. Battery earth was reconnected without anything exploding or any ECUs shitting themselves, which was good. I've now got to ring the garage on Monday morning and book it in for a retest. The other job on today's list was to jack up the CR-V and see if I could find out what the annoying rattling noise from the nearside front is. Took a while to get the car jacked up - my trolley jack wouldn't go high enough, and I had to have several goes with the car's own scissor jack as the side steps are in the way of the jacking points. Got the wheel off and soon found the cause - it's the brake caliper, there's loads of play in the guide pins so the caliper is rattling around. That'd also explain why it stops making the noise under braking. I'm going to buy a new set of guide pins first to see if that fixes it as they're pretty cheap - I'm hoping that it won't be the holes in the caliper itself which have got bigger. There is also an occasional knock from the offside front over bigger bumps - I'm going to replace both drop links and see if that cures it as they don't look particularly recent and again, they're cheap. Replacing fuses got the sunroof and rear fogs working again - the aircon doesn't seem to do much though (I can't hear the compressor kicking in), and the airbag light is on with my Delphi kit unable to find a fault code, so not sure what's going on there. Overall it's still a nice thing to drive with pretty car-like handling, although with black leather seats it could do with working aircon. The remainder of today's fettling time was spent fixing bicycles.

Why does a 1-litre Fiesta need 205/45x17 tyres?

Being pedantic it'd have to be 211.25ml as these are 845cc not 850.

I think a high percentage of the population of Autoshite would probably agree with them on that particular point.

What a superb motor car! I am quite jealous. I would expect it to be 12v, most post-war British stuff was. It was mainly the French who persisted with 6v into the 1950s. And the Ford Prefects, but they were pre-war cars anyway. Edit: this PDF of a workshop manual appears to confirm that. http://ld10.awardspace.co.uk/articles/trader138.pdf

I treated mine to a new filter a few weeks back. They are one of the things that are still readily available and cheap.

Surely they weren't still making those in 1959?!

That's the AS spirit!

You had three more children in the time it took to plan a collection mission to Sweden? Impressive!