Warning - much waffling ahead!

 

MOT Passed!

 

After gritting my teeth and paying the bill to Gordon's Autocentre in Wakefield (it was a reasonable price, but it added up to more than I paid for the car!) it was time to look for insurance.

 

I thought this would be simple enough, insuring a second car for limited use, especially now that I'm over 30 :-(

 

I must have called or done web quotes with at least thirty insurers, both classic and not, and the quotes ranged from 600 to 2400 quid (yes, really). Most were around a thousand. I was beginning to despair, when I finally tried Firebond and they quoted £275. I asked them to call me back while I got a couple more quotes, and when they did they'd reduced the quote to £221 by joining me to a car club - Torquemor - well worth the £17.50 joining fee!

 

That was that sorted - time to buy a tax disc. I gathered together all of the required documents, filled in a V10 form and was about to set off to the Post Office when I realised that Gordon's had mis-read two digits of my VIN. Argh! I went over to the car that night and double checked the V5 against the bulkhead VIN number - phew! It matched. So my dad took the MOT certificate back to Gordon's with the V5 and they sorted it out - thanks dad!

 

While I was there I fitted an air filter - the car didn't have one in at all!

 

The next day, armed with my documents and £90.75 I went to the Post Office and finally got a tax disc - yaay! After nearly 10 months I was finally going to drive the car.

 

Driving Time!

 

I rushed over after work, the plan being to drive round to Steve's and fit new plugs and do an oil and filter change. The car refused to start.

 

The new battery was fine but the engine wouldn't fire. After much fiddling with leads and checking of connections, I went and collected Steve. Steve pointed out that the car had no petrol in the tank. Doh! So we went and got a gallon of petrol, and the car worked a bit better! But not much. We got it to start, but it wouldn't idle and was running very roughly.

 

We fitted the new plugs and checked that they were sparking properly. They were okay, so we decided to go for a run to the end of the road and back - see if it helped. We got to the end of the road and I stalled the car. For some reason by this time I started referring to the car as "she". I have no idea why! Anyway, we pushed the car over the road to the space outside the chippy to try and get her to start. After much coaxing, she fired up and we decided to try going a bit further - to the nearest petrol station and get a full tank.

 

I stalled the car again on the way into the petrol station and rolled to a halt at the pump. It's quite hard to brake, press the clutch and keep the revs at 3000 or above! We bought a bottle of Redex and put half of that in, and forty quids' worth of fuel. After some coaxing, she started but still was far from running properly. We did another ten miles or so, with much stalling and re-starting. Upset a van driver at one point because he was so close behind when I stalled that he had to reverse to get around me! Serves him right!

 

All in all not too successful really. All that's changed since the MOT is the fitting of the air filter, so the next thing to try is removing it again to see if the car runs. Hopefully I haven't blocked the injectors by running out of fuel and dredging the bottom of the tank.

 

Good Stuff

 

I did get some impression of how the car will drive when we sort it. She makes a beautiful sound - that five cylinder roar - and is surprisingly loud.

 

She felt solid and composed up to 90 on the motorway (kph, honest, officer). Nothing rattled or fell off. And when I floored the pedal around a roundabout in second she leaped into action and gripped well. (oo-er)

 

Lots of fun will soon be had!

 

All I have to do is find the time, seeing as my wedding's in eight weeks!