davehedgehog31

better walk the birthday boy first. Happy birthday Merlin. 4 today! 
 

 
Poo count now 2. This will steadily increase due to the vehicle I’m collecting and the distance I’m travelling. 
 

 

Shoes off poo! Decadent.

For those of you who were unaware, keep up at the back! The Audi was supposedly sold earlier in the week but the buyer is still trying to scrabble funds together. I’ve left that parked at work, because I currently have no driveway and I’ve made my “disconnect” from it. 
 
todays journey takes me 150 miles in to a hostile territory to repatriate an unwanted animal. Taming these animals is a skill not many folk have, but is thwarted with graft and depression. WCPGW? 
 
poo count - 1
 
 

Woof woof

Not bad for me at all. It was sold to me at a very competitive price point with my eyes fully open that it was likely an end of life vehicle. 
I actually enjoyed owning it for a week or two.
Timing worked out well for it to help WV02VEG live on. 

Think this is the same lump. Love the bit where they ask the old boy about diesel emissions. 

Not bad for me at all. It was sold to me at a very competitive price point with my eyes fully open that it was likely an end of life vehicle. 
I actually enjoyed owning it for a week or two.
Timing worked out well for it to help WV02VEG live on. 

Not bad for me at all. It was sold to me at a very competitive price point with my eyes fully open that it was likely an end of life vehicle. 
I actually enjoyed owning it for a week or two.
Timing worked out well for it to help WV02VEG live on. 

Breakfast the second. I'm going to need every bit of sausage energy for the activities ahead.

Poo count : 0. There are spiders in the toilet so I'm just holding it in.
Mode of transport : Legs

Another lovely morning at FOD.
First job : get the car out so I can see all of the big holes and leaks, but still commit and say 'that looks fine'. It's the only way to choose a quality automobile.
It wasn't for moving at all thanks to a stuck brake and a flat tyre.  The first was solved by using a 4lb persuadertron on the rear wheels.  The second was solved by putting a battery in, plugging a tyre compressor into the lighter socket and thus using its own powers against it. A good tug (on the car) and out it popped (the car).


 
 

There's no point stringing out the collection journey and the car in question as it's going to be a minor point in the larger picture as you will soon see.
Poo count : 2, as the journey began in the afternoon.  However I predict bowel movements will be into three figures before I get the car home.
Breakfast the first : 

Mode of transport : Trafic Campervan

6.5 hours later:

900 MILE TRIP IN A 34 YEAR OLD BRAN FIND CITROWEN WILL IT RUN AND DRIVE HOME!?

Not bad for me at all. It was sold to me at a very competitive price point with my eyes fully open that it was likely an end of life vehicle. 
I actually enjoyed owning it for a week or two.
Timing worked out well for it to help WV02VEG live on. 

Think I've found an even shonkier towing rig than yours. 

Marginal fleet updates:
106 is getting fixed by a grown up. It shall be on fleet soon. Fuck knows what I'm doing with it but I'm deep into sunk cost fallacy territory here.
Limo: 24hrs of ownership. 500 miles of driving. 
Lessons learned: none. 
This is how I parked it when I abandoned it at the station.

Also looks like the Rexton I sold was more fucked than I thought. Considerably so. 

Much running about undertaken, car sitting somewhere between 84k and 85k miles now, I'm not sure really. Either way, it's lapping it up quite well. Still a stark contrast to the 2k miles a year it did on average before I bought it.
As of now, I've been shuffling back and forth across Ayrshire... mostly. Decided to take a run to B&Q with my mate as he's needing some stuff around the house since his partner moved in and so on. We had planned to get some planks of wood for building usage and get them cut to length in store. Unfortunately, the guy we spoke to in the shop refused to cut them up using their saw. Therefore, I used my £10 off voucher for the shop to get a hand saw (therefore free) and we cut the planks up in their car park. That'll learn 'em... or something.

Trailerage has been going well mostly. I did have a case of a tyre attempting to remove itself from the steel wheel (thankfully at a low speed), and the dolly pole thing ejecting itself at 50mph which was sub-optimal. But really, considering it's... *ahem* a fair age and had been laid up for about 12 years or something, it's been doing pretty well. Plus I've chucked about 400 miles at it lately, so it's doing okay I'd say.
Yet again, I washed it, as it had been incredibly grubby getting. Plus I wanted a proper shot at the wheels to tidy them up.

Oooooh, shiny. And all that.

In the process, I discovered once and for all I have buggered the wooden section of the boot partition when I made a tit of myself at ShiteFest.

So that'll require a new bit of floor I suspect. Thankfully it's all easily replaceable.
Finally, on to the main feature. This all began as a conversation on Tuesday night where I sarcastically suggested to some friends that we go to Fort William for the sheer hell of it when there's a good number of us free to do so. We were all free Wednesday (yesterday). So we ended up in Fort William... travelled up the A82, a lovely route that I hadn't been on for some time. Shame it's full of bloody tourists though, including a suicidal Fiat 500 driver that tried to take us out by coming around on the wrong side of the road on a bend that wasn't even that tight. Driver looked half awake if at all. Air horns and a swerve from me managed to prevent him from taking us out but it was close and rather terrifying.


Decided to head a bit further north and stopped at the Commando Memorial viewpoint thing I can't remember the name of.

And then, by sheer accident* ended up in Inverness.
Oh dear.
The total stands at 528 miles worth of driving, averaging 47mpg or thereabouts. Quite chuffed with that considering there was four of us in the car and it's pretty hilly up that way.

Quite chuffed with the way it's running at the moment. Even after everything that has happened to it. I have a list of jobs I've to work through with this car, which is decreasing nicely. Going to a scrap yard tomorrow that's meant to have another red Fabia in to see if I can mooch some bits I'm needing for my one. Will report back

I'm seeing subtle signs everywhere

Leg 4: PLEN

Leg 3: fucking hell, £10!?

Me waiting for the aircon to kick in tomorrow

Revisiting the TT has shown that most of the small diameter hoses have perished, including the fuel lines which you can see above the thrraded mount fornthe charge pipe. The aux belt isn't too fancy either TBH although not splitting yet. Thats even although the belts aren't due for another 2 years.
Nothing expensive or difficult though and the cars small size means more room to work around it in my garage. I need to pay more attention to the car on my fleet that I don't drive regularly, I just assumed that because it had been so reliable for my wife that it wasn't really needing anything doing. 

Well I won't tempt fate but it looks like this is going to happen. Price agreed, deposit paid. Hopefully a collection next week! 

With the summer coming to an end I thought it was time to address the non functioning drivers window.
I had previously taken the door card off and delighted in the six wires that ran to the motor!
Electrics are very simple on window motors when there are two wires, unfortunately this was not the case.


Wtf is all that for!
Anyway I went on Insightcentral and followed a link in the frequently asked questions bit.
This led to taking all the bolts that hold the motor and window in place. Then I stripped the motor, cleaned the commutator and the brushes and put it back together.
With the plug on the side of the motor removed I used the power probe to test and it worked!
Then I lubricated the channels and reassembled everything.
Even the one touch works so @sdkrc switch fix worked well.
So for the first time in a little while, possibly two years, this is possible.

Chuffed to bits with that!

Yesterday BIG BLUE recovery services  were called to my mates Corsa van which seemed to have lunched it's gearbag about a mile from my door.

Tow rope on and dragged it to my lockup where it was swapped with the Kangoo to let him get to his work today. 

The Rexton genuinely offers exactly the same sparkling* levels of performance regardless of whether it has another vehicle hanging off the rear of it or not. 

Yesterday BIG BLUE recovery services  were called to my mates Corsa van which seemed to have lunched it's gearbag about a mile from my door.

Tow rope on and dragged it to my lockup where it was swapped with the Kangoo to let him get to his work today. 

The Rexton genuinely offers exactly the same sparkling* levels of performance regardless of whether it has another vehicle hanging off the rear of it or not.