Sunny Jim

The BX has just passed its MOT with no advisories. That's two clean passes in a row, the first vehicle I've ever owned to achieve such a feat!

I thought you'd put them in the recovery position...

A grand day out! Great to meet people and put face to names and cars. Wonderful variety and atmosphere and the weather was good (in fact true to cliche the rain held off until I crossed the border back into Wales!). Organisation was shockingly bad - I overheard the event medic talking to a steward, they had a radio call saying someone had collapsed 'in the car park' but it took them several minutes to establish which car park and then work out how to get there. There's no shortage of people from the outdoor events industry looking for work at the moment - they should have spent the money they spent on that appalling band on employing an experienced event manager! The cars were great: I admire the dedication and skill that's gone into the restorations but also like seeing the survivors that are in regular use - FoTU's got it all.

@wesacosathe plan was to leave the Premier Inn at 9am to meet the others at Colsterworth Truckstop about 9.15.

It's LHM - the learned opinion of my compatriots was it'll be all right check it in the morning which I was happy to accept.

Made it to Grantham Premier Inn and had a good evening meeting Shiters and came out to this Red and yellow and pink and green Purple and orange and blue I can sing a rainbow Sing a rainbow Sing a rainbow too Listen with your eyes Listen with your ears And sing everything you see I can sing a rainbow Sing a rainbow Sing along with me

I'm at the Premier Inn too but unlikely to make it until abut 8pm so hopefully meet you for drinks later.

Congratulations on the good progress you're making here. I enjoyed watching your videos too.

There's a manual release in the cockpit and if that didn't work for some reason there's hydraulic cutters to cut the cable at the winch end. i.e. two back-ups. Stu was statistically more likely to come to harm doing his DIY than I was going gliding.

I got to do a glider flight yesterday. Winch launches you 0 - 60mph in 3 seconds up to 1000ft when the cable is released. Did the, "You have control" "I have control" bit while I frantically tried to remember what the instructor had told me and managed a few manoeuvres for a few minutes, all in all a wonderful experience. VID-20210725-WA0002_Trim.mp4

I've seen adverts for specialists repairing CEM's for other models of Volvo so I assume they'd repair them for the 480 too but I've yet to enquire. From what I've read a lot of the problems can arise from dry solder joints so they'll hopefully be repairable - something else I should probably learn to do!

I'm going to try another CEM which will hopefully let me know if it's the module or something else which is causing the electrical randomness. Got some tinkering time in this afternoon. I'd picked up some ramps off FB marketplace for a tenner so after checking they were ok got the front of the car in the air and removed the under tray. The leak is obviously coming from the right hand side of the engine - it's also obvious I'm going to have to spend some time with a wire brush and rust cure before the winter looking at the underside of the car. Back down off the ramps I jacked the front offside of the car and removed the wheel and inspection panel. Bingo! It's the water pump. The timing belt was last done in 2015 at 66k (currently on 82k) so I'll do that while I'm at it.

Pleasure to meet you and your wife. Hope you have a good journey back to the smoke. If you're ever up this way again let me know and I'll show you around.

How Ratrod do you want to go? This was at the Mavericks meet last week. It had an MX5 engine and we suspected possibly running gear too as it had discs all round.

Chodspeed, have a good day.