An Update and a Hiatus

Well, all good things come to an end I guess.

I’ll get back to that in a moment, but first, a couple of updates.

First, the Mini has been sold tonight. Although I will miss it, it was a great little car to drive, it needed to be sold. Owning it made me realise that the even without the supercharger the Cooper is actually a really great little car. Built like a BMW, but small, nimble and like a modern version of an old Mini (unsurprisingly). A+ would own again (with boost though).

Next up, Tess had a wheel alignment the other day. Thanks to Hutt Valley Tyres for aligning it. They treated Tess with enthusiasm and respect, which I really appreciate. The guy was stoked to work on her, and was full of compliments. A stark contrast to a call I made to another workshop the day before who, when I asked for an alignment, proceeded to rubbish my car over the phone when I said it was an SD1 I needed an alignment on. Pro-Tip, if you want customers, do NOT rubbish their car. You never know when that “piece of junk” is actually their baby, no matter what you think of it.

Here she is up on the alignment hoist.

I was impressed though, although the steering needed straightening (the wheel was on the wonky by 1/4 turn), I actually managed to get the toe pretty damn close just by eye when I reassembled it. Only needed tweaking by about a mm. Now the car tracks straight, and the wheel isn’t on the piss. Lovely.

Unfortunately, now that the front brake calipers work properly, the damn master cylinder and servo/brake booster have packed a sad. The servo has started hissing when shutting off the engine (indicating a vacuum leak), and the brake pedal now sinks slowly to the floor if you keep pressure on it. I tried bleeding the brakes again, but although the pedal feels nice with the engine off straight after bleeding, with the booster helping the pedal sinks. I suspect fluid is bypassing the piston seal, and leaking internally (as im not losing fluid). There are signs that the master has been leaking down the servo in the past, its stripped the paint off the front under the master.

I’m working on options now, it’s either get the master rebuilt locally and i’ll re-kit the servo, or buy a new master and servo from Rimmers. But for now, that will have to wait as there are more pressing matters…

After five years, I have to move house. Unfortunately the landlord has come into some serious financial issues and the only way out is to sell the rental we are in.

We came to an agreement that instead of running open homes and selling it whilst we are still here, we have three weeks to move out. There is good and bad news to go with that.

The good news is that we are going to buy a house of our own; the new Tastes Like Petrol HQ. The bad thing is that we are still about a month away from having anywhere to move to. This leaves us with a sticky situation of a crossover period without a home.

Tess will hopefully be going to the same storage lockup that Nicks Vitesse is at, so that will keep her out of trouble, and off the street. All our other belongings are going into storage. I have a buyer for Effie, so hopefully (and sadly) she will be sold next weekend. I’ll likely shed a tear when she drives off, it’s like selling your first child. The buyer sounds like a great owner for her, and he is super excited. Moving is also why it was important to sell the Mini, I’m losing my parking spaces, and don’t want to have to try to find parking for that car too.

So that’s where we are; it’s all chaos and mess. Due to this, I’ll have to take a hiatus from posting as there just won’t be anything happening, and I won’t have a home and possibly no internet access. Of course I’ll still be on Twitter and Instagram.

I will be back, and hopefully, bigger and better. As always, if you have it, drive it… or fix it.