May 5

Erk. Just had a call from Ian, and he needs his exhaust kit back for another customer. After some negotiation, we establish that the best plan is if I stop of at his after my SVA retest on Monday and remove the kit. Better remember to take my old silencer with me...

May 9

Well, not technically a 2nd retest, as I never made it to the first one, but who's really counting...

The test was scheduled for a very civilized 14h30, which gave me plenty of time to get there. I was particularly keen on being able to stop at service stations on the way up and checking that the starter relay hadn't got stuck on again, and had a spare battery with me to get me back home if necessary...

But there were no such problems. The car wouldn't run above 8000rpm (on account of the air bleed kit), which made the journey a bit tedious. I stopped in at STM on the way up, in order to drop off my exhaust silencer (thought the SVA might object if he saw it) and to borrow some 6" front wheels (in order to get through the 'sticky out wheels' fail of the first test)

I got lost on the way to the test centre, and whilst I was lost, the engine started misfiring, big time. No idea why, but it was enough to dislodge the TBs again. I screwed them back down and hoped for the best.

At the test centre, the tester checked the emissions first. What a disaster. I could hear the engine popping and misfiring and could hardly get it to maintain a steady fast idle. The tester confirmed the worst - a lambda of 0.88 (very, very rich) and HCO off the scale.

I suspect that the engine is running so rich that the air-bleed isn't able to compensate, and the cat doesn't stand a chance.

And to add to the misery, he found that the front wheels are still protruding outside the line of the bodywork - by 1mm.

Everything else was OK though. Yay!

This page last updated on: Sunday, Jul 16 2006