Day: September 30, 2009

So, it’s rained.

Then it stopped, and now the Volvo is sporting a brand shiny new hose. The leaky porous old hose…

is now shiny and new:

And should stop dripping coolant on the drum, which would be nice. It was a bit of a pain to persuade it to run without kinking, I think the original one was moulded wheras this is just a long stretch of plain old heater hose. Anyhow, it looks like it works. I’m hoping that I don’t need to do anything complex to prevent it getting airlocks. It says in the manual that the later 340s are ‘self bleeding’. So hopefully that’s correct…

I’ve also fitted the radio, which was foolish because I discovered afterwards that you need the radio out to extract the heater controls – and so I’ve decided to skip that. It’s autumn, coming on winter; it can stay on hot for the winter :)

The radio is fitted, and seems to more or less do its stuff. So that is a success. Less of a success is ‘finding the accelerator pedal for the minor’. I’ve tried searching the shed, unsuccessfully. I’ve tried looking in the attic. I’m thinking that it must be at my mums, despite my previous failed attempt to locate it there. We’re popping down this weekend, so hopefully I can find it then.

So I went for an abortive run today, my knee was a bit gribbley yesterday, it often gets this way after nights, so I left it ’til today to try running. Uh, not enough of a gap. I made it about 3/4ths of a mile before my knee went ‘um…No’. Fortunately, I listened, stopped fairly quickly and walked back, so it’s not so bad that I am limping, but enough that I know it was unhappy.

Still, I though. Nice breakfast, cook bread, bath and:

– Change the leaky hose on Chester since Volvo can’t
– See if I can’t bodge the heater control cable onto the heater control valve using tie-wraps or bent wire, or magic pixies, since apparently ‘the clips are no longer available’ and are missing. Hence the ‘very hot’ state of the heater.
– Find the throttle pedal for the Minor and ‘pop’ up to see her in her current state of disassembleage.

Easy peasy.

Only the weather has decided that today it shall rain. Rain and rain and rain.

I checked in the attic for the throttle pedal, which I am fairly certain I brought back from my mum’s; more certain now because I have looked in the pile of bits at my mums and not found it. I think it’s in the shed, but can’t easily go look there because (our survey said) it’s raining…

Poot.

So I’m sitting here listening to the washing machine wash, waiting for it to become dry so I can do any of the jobs planned for today.