April 9

I've arranged to go for an MOT at a local garage today. It's also the place that I'm hoping will do paint job on the car, so it's an opportunity for them to look at the state of the bodywork and quote for the work needed.

On the way there, I found a long, little used road (actually a metalled farm track just over the road from Tim's house) and spent a bit of time accelerating to 30mph and 60mph, braking hard in between, in order to bed the brakes in, and to test the brake balance. All seemed OK, although the brake pedal travel is much longer than I'm used to from the 21.

Nothing very remarkable happened on the rest of the trip, there or back, which I shall take to be a good thing! Oh, except for the grinding, binding sound from the back.

There were some difficulties caused by the position of the seats (which I've got set to the SVA friendly position at the moment, which is a couple of inches too far forward, and an inch too high): I kept bashing the indicator switch with my knee; and my forward view is almost entirely filled by the foremost roll cage bar.

Other points of note:

• Petrol stations don't like you if you don't have a number plate
• Using the horn to try and start the car after a stall doesn't work
• 2nd -> 3rd is not in the same direction as it on other cars
• I should not mock other BECer's who bottle out of using lots of RPMs on their first few outings - I didn't get above 8000 rpm
• My dash layout is all wrong - the CBTech dash is too far away to read when you've got shades on
• The steering is very sensitive to small inputs - Was definitely weaving a bit at the start. Just takes a bit of getting used to!

The MOT itself didn't happen, as the garage had misunderstood me a bit on the 'phone - I'd told them that I wanted an MOT, but didn't actually need one - I just needed an excuse to get some miles on the car. So they gave me an appointment, but didn't actually have anyone on hand to perform the test.

When I got back, DH2 came round. I can't remember why - I think he might have been bored. Whatever the reason, he decided to take the cap of the oil tank, and to my horror, found some mayonaise in the cap - a sure sign of water in the oil. Mysteriously, my coolant level was fine, which meant it couldn't be coolant. We decided that it was moisture from inside the engine, wiped it out, and that I should keep an eye on it. Worrying...

This page last updated on: Sunday, Jul 16 2006