Car Preparations (Part 1!)

With less than two weeks to go before the "Festival of Slow" at Goodwood, I thought it was time to start giving the car a good clean and a thorough check over!

Sadly the car arrived in a less than clean and tidy state on the inside, so I would like to say a big thank you to my mum (Frances) for following my vacuuming with a shampooer. (Sorry Rach, but there is no longer chocolate embedded into the rear seats!)

Of course, I couldn't write this without also acknowledging Becky, the perpetual distraction - shown here helpfully modelling the boot space mid cleaning:

It would appear that at some point in the car's past someone used the jack in the wrong place, damaging a join in the body work.  Unfortunately, this also bent part of the actual jacking point in the process, which made it difficult to get the jack in place properly:

Careful application of a 2 lb lump hammer via a die (piece of wood) put it right though:

The second problem of the day was one of a (very) stuck wheel nut. It also turns out that the car's own wheel wrench is not very strong - it bent surprising easily. Not to be outdone, I found a stronger, longer wrench - but failed again and had to look for a bar to extend the wrench. It would appear these are either missing in action, or buried in the garage - so I had to improvise with the peculiar sack-truck contraption below*:

Despite applying approximately three times the torque to which the wheel nuts should be done up, I still couldn't get it to shift. There is now a thread un-locking solution (hopefully) working its way in. If that doesn't work, it's going to be an embarrassing trip to the garage! (I hasten to add that I had no such issues with the other 15 wheel nuts...)

Otherwise, the car appears to be in a very good state mechanically. A set of new windscreen wiper blades and re-fixing the number plate using bolts (instead of peeling sticky pads) finished the work for the day. Once we've fitted a new alternator belt and the new roof rack, we should be ready to go!

Antony

*Before someone points it out, the wooden block is just to hold the sack-truck up for the photo, it isn't a pivot point!