Mostly lemon based

Category: I’m a mechanic me…

  • I’ll just take an hour off…

    (4 hours later)

    Yeah, so I thought, I’ll just swap the hinge, a really nice bloke on the MMOC sent me a replacement hinge, ESM only list one so we wrongly assumed they were all the same – it turns out there’s a different variant of the hinge. Of course, this only became apparent when I looked rather more closely at it, having spent several happy hours swearing, leaning heavily on things attempting to persuade the panel gaps to be right, trying to coax the door into not hitting the wing, and eventually calling John to see if he had any ideas.

    Attempts to remove the hinge pin to take the different part from the old hinge (which was okay) and swap it for the new one, that failed too. Eventually we settled for making up some spacers… and adding some washers… the door now shuts beautifully, but the word ‘bodge’ springs to mind.

    I shall clearly have to obtain a new hinge. I also, sadly, need two hinge bolts as two of them stripped their threads instead of coming out. Sometimes I wish I’d not started these jobs.

  • Do you see the impressed?

    Securon, the makers of my now faulty seatbelt and Charles Ware’s Morris Minor Centre in Bath have agreed, impressively, to replace with a new one, my 3 year old faulty seatbelt; this is better than I wanted and I am, to be honest, very impressed. Thus I shall favour them with gifts of cash (in exchange for a new hinge and a couple of windscreen wiper arms).

    In other news: The NHS has moved my appointment, thankfully to later the same day; but still. I have started to recognise that cheery NHS print on the envelopes and go ‘oh god, what day am I going *now*’.

    In other other news: My battle to get a letter between one consultant and one government department rages on; the consultant saying ‘it’s been sent’ and the government going ‘la la la not listening’. Thankfully I’m a student and this process is free, otherwise I’d really be ‘quite angry’. As it is I’m just kind of bored.

    Int other (other) other news: I’ve got an appointment to view this other house. I might do a driveby and see what it’s like – I *think* there might be pedestrian access to the back too (looking at the land registry – who now have a direct line to my bank account) so I may pop down there and have a nose beforehand.

    Sadly I can’t think of anything to describe as other (other) other (other) news, so I’ll stop there.

  • And with a summary of the news

    1: I’ve got my appointment through. It appears it may not be a mammogram; it’s a full breast exam though, comprising (potentially) an ultrasound (definate), a mammogram (possible), and a needle aspiration (hopefully unlikely).

    I am, unsuprisingly, not looking forward to this. It’s 5 days before my birthday. Be gentle with me, I’ll be stressed.

    2: My iPaq sleeve has arrived. It’s charging at this very moment. Now I need a PCMCIA -> CF card adaptor and the biggest CF card I can justify.

    3: I am going to look at a house tomorrow. I’m simultaneously scared and thrilled.

    4: I went swimming today. I need to go swimming more often, as I am unfit.

    5: My MP is on the committee examining the ‘Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill’; he seems to be pro it with some changes. I remain very skeptical. Infact, I remain against the bill’s passage to law.

    6: Securon wish to examine my faulty seatbelt to see what was wrong with it. I have been offered a new replacement on the basis that if Securon want it back after examining the faulty one then I give it back in 2 weeks time. *sigh*. I think that’s probably the best I’m going to get. So, I’ll give them a ring and arrange to drop it back on Friday (I hope).

  • Oh dear god I’m tired.

    So, Friday night, I’m planning my weekend away to say goodbye to Trey – who’s heading off to climates colder and more northern – and I arrive home after my day shift to a phone call which runs thus:

    Mum: “Kate… the cistern’s leaking again…. quite a lot…. do you think you could come down and fix it…”

    The temporary repair I did a while back (because I couldn’t get the right bit) had finally given up – well, actually it’s given up because I replaced the ball-valve with the same type of ball valve instead of going with my (feminine?) instinct and deciding that the plumber had fitted the wrong kind before and changing to the type of valve I thought it should be.

    Unfortunately I’d also agreed to collect my Victorian cistern for my new house (which I have not got) from Freecycle – before I left on Saturday – and so it was on Saturday morning that I flew out of the house and round Bristol to collect a toilet cistern. Having collected it the bloke said ‘do you want the toilet too?’ – I looked, and a Victorian toilet in *staggeringly* good condition (apart from being somewhat mud filled) became mine also. Of course, this meant that my original time saving plan was somewhat destroyed – having an *entire* toilet in the car was a bit much when travelling a couple of hundred miles.

    So, I switched back, headed home (enabling me (handily) to collect my camera); unloaded the toilet and cistern and piled back in the car only to discover… a car accident.

    Then I joined the M4 Roadworks queues. I got to my mums. I fixed her toilet cistern (seeing a pattern?). I jumped in the car and (more…)

  • Eth eth eth eth eth eth eth Chris Waddle.

    I’ve been watching too much fast show, I fear.

    Yesterday my plans to do work were foiled by… well… my own stupidity. When I changed the points I didn’t noticed a subtle (not so subtle) difference between the Mog ones and the Ital ones. The ital ones have a small plastic locating notch which has to go over a pin. I noticed yesterday morning a slight hesitancy which, by the end of the day had become such a hideous misfire that going anywhere was pretty painful.

    After pratting about for 30 minutes in my nice posh jeans I decided to call John, eat lunch and reattack. After a bit of prodding we discovered this bit of plastic and it’s misplacement. Correcting this enabled a fully functional ignition system to be returned. At the same time I readjusted the idle and the mixture… So now she’s hopefully running a bit less rich.

    Today we went down to Marcruss Stores in the centre of Brizzy to get police uniforms costumes; in the end all I got was a hat and a little scarfy thing – but it does make me look roughly like a police woman. I do need a proper white shirt – I check the effect with the only plain white shirt I’ve got (it’s a dinner shirt, part of a dinner jacket I’ve got for the purpose of having it recut). It definately will work – although it needs a bit of a wash :-)

    I also need a new black skirt – my old one, well, I’m not a size 10/12 anymore – and it is. It does fit. Just. Either that or if I manage to lose a stone (unlikely).

    I also changed the battery in my iPaq which is now sat charging away. I didn’t realise the original was only 1000mAh; the new one’s 2250, so… hopefully that should be a bit better. Changing the battery in the 36 series iPaq. Ridiculously easy.

    Anyway, I should get on.

  • Oh, now I see….

    Getting permission to dress Rebecca up as a police car and ourselves up as police people for EuroPride 2006 turned out to be ‘somewhat harder’ than I originally expected. I either thought it’d be a straight yes or no (unintentional).

    Anyway, eventually we managed to sort it out – and with muchos thanks to the Met Police who’ve been ultra-helpful. I’m very impressed.

    Anyway, despite e-bay’s policy, today my police / emergency services lamp arrived; and well, now I see why they were so concerned….

    Rebecca with a blue light

    God, if I saw that coming up behind me I’d be thinking it was a real police car *grins*

    Anyway, preparations are beginning slightly in earnest. Hell, if it doesn’t come off I’m sure we can be a float in a MardiGras when I get to Canada :-)

  • Only my hair really tells the tale

    It was today that I decided to service the car. I have got services down pretty pat – they take a few hours normally. I also had a few other jobs to do, and being as it was cold getting the engine up to ‘normal operating temperature’ would take a bit longer, but hey. Should all be done before lunch, I though.

    Wearing my oh-so-slinky overalls and slipping on some stylish blue-vinyl-nitrile gloves I stepped out into the cold of a Bristol Winter’s day.  As lunch approached I was no-where near half done. After ‘lunch time’ – a time not noticed by me – I was mostly done. I paused at 2 to go get my eyebrows done, and then headed back out having stopped to buy a new brake-pin-retaining-clip (one of mine snapped) and continued – despite the increasing cold. Sorted out why the car wouldn’t start (I’d managed to misallign the spring on the points, so it was grounding itself…); and I’d managed to complete all the tasks I’d allotted for myself except two.

    The car is now serviced, thankfully; the seatbelt on the driver’s side’s been temporarily replaced (so it now works); the heated rear window’s been repaired; the brakes at the front have been replaced (very worn); the handbrake adjusted (it now comes on before the end stop); the wheels have been ‘rotated’ (I wish I’d done that a while back, the (were)front tyres are very close to the wear limit…) and a patch of rust I discovered’s been jenolited… but:

    The areas I jenolited haven’t been painted yet (ran out of time and light) and the interior light’s not working still.

    I’ve got changed now, slapped the clothes I was wearing in the kind of wash cycle that will probably ruin them all and the only bit of me that feels really grubby is my hair. I’d wash it right now, but I’m hungry, ‘cos I’ve still not eaten. So I’m going to do that now… As you might guess I’m exhausted again – and I can’t believe it’s taken the entire day just to service my car.

  • I’m sorry officer…

    …but the sun was shining.

    It was a gorgeous day as I stepped back into Rebecca after having a good WBLD experience. No, really. The absence of our facilitator made the group discussion flow – the other group’s facilitator actually facilitates and our discussion when the two groups got together was… well… useful.

    So I came out of the session in a good mood, slapped the headphones in my ears and stuck on Moby / Punkawallahs / Ladytron / Madonna – and shoop-shoop-dancie-dancied my way back to the car; chucked my coat onto the back seat, connected the CD player to the Radio Cassette… started the 1275 engine (desparately in need of a service) and pulled out into traffic.

    Only. There wasn’t any traffic. It was quiet. And sunny. And I had dancy music, a willing engine and a Morris Minor on a curvy A-road that I know too well.

    I just kept her on the boil the whole way back, the industrial roar of the ital engine, the whistle of the air intake, and the gentle flutter of me throwing money out of the window… oh, no, that’s just the effect it had on my fuel consumption.

    It’s ages since I’ve been out for a drive like that; all *Graaaarrrrrr*snick*Grraraaaarrrrrrrrr*snick*Grrrrraaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrr*snick*grrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh*.

    Anyway.

    Mmm. It was so good. So fun. It was the roads she was built for.

    So as a special gift for her I went to Ashley Autoparts and got all sorts of service bits, a new interior bulb (although I looked and am about 90% certain it’s a connection problem rather than a bulb problem…), some equally yummy fresh oil and some delightful new brake pads. And then I headed on to the junk shop that’s shutting – and picked up my second non-working video camera. More frustrating because it’s a fairly good one – and SVHS-C camera… which so far shows absolutely no signs of life. It was a fiver mind. Well, it was a tenner. Then I added two chairs, which were a tenner for the pair – and the woman knocked the total price down to 15 quid. Since the chairs work, and the camera does not I think I’d prefer to have paid the tenner for the chairs ;-)

    I guess I’ll look at the camera when I get a chance – I want to shoot some video so… But at the moment it’s doing *nada*.

    Then, anyway, I came back home. I came home, and tidied and cleaned and cooked. Tidied cleaned and cooked…. curry. It’s funny, but I really miss the dinners me and my uni friends used to have. Tonight was not on that scale – the curry is one of my ‘standard’ dishes; as opposed to something spectacular made for a special dinner – but it felt good to get the table cleared and laid up – and even if I didn’t get any work done tonight, and scared ‘meriKate with Flanders and Swann songs – I also ended up making Nikki buy a Gramophone player. But still, she’s wanted one for ages and I came across a working one which just needs some TLC.

    I was going to ramble more, but I’ve entirely forgotten what I was going to say, so let’s call that it, eh?

  • Breasts – do they interfere with addition?

    Why is it that breasts, or even just a female name, seem to cause blokes in the engineering industry to get very confused about prices and addition. I’ve had it before, at a scrapyard where they wanted over 100 quid for the head off a mini engine. My mum had some wanker of a plumber tell her she needed a complete new cistern at over 200 quid instead of, say, replacing the 8 quid part.

    I sent off for a quote for powdercoating; as I did so I thought “hrm, should I loose the ‘kate’ bit of my sig and set it to mail as ‘K Elliott’” but decided against it.

    People suggested that between 40 quid and 80 quid was the price I should be expecting to do both wheels (complete, starting from the wheels as they are now and stripping, cleaning and coating them). Guess the quote… go on, guess. 130 quid. Arseholes.

    So now I need to ring round. Fortunately, if I flatten my speaking a bit, or sound like I’ve got a cold, most auto-shops assume I’m male – presumably ‘cos I know what I’m talking about and a girl couldn’t possibly know about cars or bikes. So, I’ll use that to my advantage getting the quotes, I hope. I’m pissed off though, as I always am when this happens.

  • I’m not normally a pink person…

    But… I’ve just got my new frame for the zed. It’s going to have to be stripped back to bare metal and painted… and first I thought ‘chassis black’ for the frame. Then another altogether sillier thought came into my head.

    I’ve been pondering doing my bike with pink/black zebra stripes. Pondering. And then I thought… why not make the frame pink. Not barbie pink. Oh no. Neon vicious pink. The kind of pink that terrifies small children and animals. The kind of pink that Dyno-Rod would use on their vans. That kind of pink.

    Is that a good idea? Or is my head dangerously warped.