It’s starting to get cold outside, and the ‘heating’ such as it is is something I’m becoming increasingly fond of. The gas fire in the lounge is really quite nice of an evening, and curling up beside Kathryn ‘n reading or watching telly, or a film is about the nicest way to pass an evening. But, there is one thing that goes with the coming of winter…
…car problems.
Brick seems to have heard the call of the winter somewhat early and has had a little bit of a quirk with his brakes for the last few weeks. That is, namely, that pressing them leads to smooth application of the brakes until about half way down when the brake pedal will sink about a quarter of an inch with very little effort and the brakes will come on incredibly hard. It seemed that flicking the brake pedal upward (it would stick slightly down) would remove this tendancy, but it seems to be getting worse and worse at a rate which means I’ll have to fix it rather than wait for the service. I’d been intending to do that this week but it’d got lost under the battle to get the radiators in (2 out of 3, the third needs stripping and painting before it can be fitted), then all the heating-plumbing is done upstairs. It’s just fitting taps ‘n the shower mixer now for the other plumbing. Mmm.
But this morning we got the ‘won’t start’ quirk back. Fortunately I recognised it quickly, but I’m now at a loss as to what’s causing it. The voltage seems correct at the coil, so the resistor clearly is working correctly… bypassing everything does work, but it’s a touch tedious. And the coup de gras today; a while ago the clutch-end of the clutch cable disappeared through the plate into which it is mounted. For reasons best known to themselves the cable appears to be slightly smaller than the original and the hole into which it is meant to rest is big enough that it goes ‘whoosh’, straight through. My lovely local garage sorted this by sticking a nut on the end of the cable so it can’t go through the hole. As if to torment me, today as I left the railway station having dropped of my beloved, the other end of the cable went *chunk* though the top of the firewall and approached the pedal. Fortunately, it still had enough length in it to work, but it remains irritating.
Far be it from me to suggest that this cable is not correctly manufactured and to utter a rant about the quality of modern parts. It would never occur to me even to consider suggesting such a thing, but now I have to disassemble the clutch cable mechanism and see if I can persuade the bloody thing to go back through the hole and sit, correctly, on the correct side of the firewall. I’m meant to be tiling, but I’m just steeling myself for a cold day outside covered in oil. Whether oil is worse than tile glue is something you may debate (yes, is my opinion incidentally), but it’s not something which makes me happy. Especially when I’ve forked out the first 50 of around 150 – 200 quid to have brick’s engine converted to unleaded.
