Category Archives: Les Guis

Friday 7th August 2015 – I’M NOT QUITE SURE …

… what happened this evening.

I came back up here at 18:00 and I don’t remember anything until about 19:00 when the evening buzzer went off. The best that I could do then was to haul myself off into bed – at 19:00!! – and I didn’t move until 23:30 when I crawled off to do the stats.

It’s not as if I’d done very much either. Up at the usual time and then a few hours on the website.

After lunch, I went out and tidied up the drive, collecting all of my tools because, as you might have expected from yesterday, the owner of this Hyundai never turned up at all.

Lieneke came past though, and we had quite a chat for a while.

But now all of my tools (except my trolley jack, which is holding up this Hyundai) are now put away. I’ve officially finished work until I return from Canada towards the end of October. Just some tidying up, cleaning up and doing a pile of paperwork.

And that was when I came up here to sit down for five minutes.

What a waste of an evening.

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Thursday 6th August 2015 – *@#&*@ç&!

Yes, tomorrow is my last day to work on this car as I’m now booked up before I go away.

And the client says that he can’t come down. Apparently he has a paying job that has come in, and my convenience is apparently so much lower than that. Well, it’s nice to know where I stand.

He says that he’ll come round on Saturday morning and finish it off, but I won’t be here. I’ll be in Montlucon. And the car had better be gone by the time that I come back as I’ll be putting Caliburn in my drive. I’m off for 9 weeks and I’m not leaving Caliburn in the lane under any circumstances. I haven’t paid all of this money for this concreting that we did last year to leave my van on the public highway.

And I also need to clean my drive, with the amount of oil that’s leaked out of this car. That has totally dismayed me.

This blasted Hyundai has totally messed up all of my plans. There’s no chance whatever now of me tiling my bathroom before I go and I wanted to have this long-done before I go.

I’ve had a major sense of humour failure over this car. And the worst of it all is that, having seen the photos that I posted on here a week or so ago, you know as well as anyone else that this vehicle won’t be going very far even if we do manage to get it going. I’ve wasted all of this time and done all of this effort for absolutely nothing and I’m sure that I won’t receive any thanks for it. I shan’t see the owner of this vehicle ever again until his next car goes wrong.

Apart from that, we were radioing today at Marcillat. Two months’ worth of programmes that we recorded for Radio Anglais
 this morning and that will take us up to the end of October with the next recording sessions pencilled in for 26th October. Just one more session, at Gerzat on Tuesday, and that will be that.

Liz and I went for a long chat afterwards and then I came back here. On the way back, I noticed that the construction work on the edge of Marcillat on the bed of the old railway line has now developed into a small petrol station. It seems that we will be having some 24-hour petrol pumps there. The Auvergne is definitely dragging itself into the 21st Century.

Back here, I had a pile of stuff to do, most of which I managed to complete, and I even managed for once to make some food this evening. This is progress.

I should have been having a day out on Monday but I’ve cancelled that now. I have too much to do, and it’s a shame that the tiling isn’t going to figure in that. I’m really fed up now.

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5th August 2015 – ANOTHER THING THAT I HATE …

… is people who say “seeing as how we have the injector seals, why don’t we fit them?”

Still, the client is always right and so at 15:30, having wandered along slowly but steadily towards the end of proceedings, we stopped to fit the first injector seal.

At 19:00 when the car came to pick up the aforementioned client, we were just on the point of taking out the first seal. And had we not taken the seal out, the car would have been gone by then. So one rather unhappy bunny here.

The worst thing about this is that by 19:00 I had suddenly twigged how to do it, and it was a job that could have indeed been done in minutes. But when you don’t know about these things, you have to learn by experience.

During the night I was on the prowl around town with one of my friends off my social networking site – a woman probably about 15 years older than me and she was behaving like a kid of 8 and it was most embarrassing. We ended up in a luxury hotel with another group of people and we ordered coffee, which took about an hour to arrive.

I was told that we would be restarting work at 10:30 as the car’s owner had to go to Montlucon for half an hour. So it was 12:30 when he turned up – I thought that 10:30 was rather optimistic.

And we made steady progress too – head torqued down, timing belt fitted and covers fitted, fan belt fitted, turbo coupled up, engine mounting fitted and a pile of other stuff done too. And then we ran aground on the injector seals.

After we finished, with the water in the solar shower at 40°C, I had a gorgeous shower.

I might have another one tomorrow too!

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Tuesday 4th August 2015 – AS YOU MIGHT HAVE GUESSED …

… seeing as how we have been working on this Hyundai today, we’ve had 29.5mm of rain today.

Luckily most of it fell during the night but there was still sufficient falling down to postpone our start until 11:00.

So Rob came round and brought back the cylinder head and I finished dismantling it – using a hammer and chisel on the reluctant nuts. Luckily, it’s all standard metric threads so I soon found all of the bolts that we needed.

But the cylinder head is as bad as the bores, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s impact damage, maybe a broken piston ring and that would explain the slack in the bore. It’s not a broken timing belt because there’s little damage to the valves and stems, which is what you exepct in that case. But whatever way you look at this, it’s ruined.

With the cylinder head being dismantled, it went on comparatively easily and the manifold was much less of a struggle than I was expecting. I got 9 of the 10 bolts onto the manifold at the cylinder head, but everything else is properly bolted up, which is a surprise. The bracket that caused us all of our problems the other day – that was a 2-minute job to reattach it. New nuts made all of the difference. The old ones were cheap and nasty, clearly not made to be taken off once they’ve been fitted. I could tighten up to infinity the new nuts using the open end of a spanner. With the previous nuts, even a 6-sided socket would just round them off.

Rob had to leave early so we called it a day. Tomorrow we need to fit the timing and fan belt, refit the turbo controls, torque down the head refit the water pipes and bleed the diesel system.

I had to shave my head too – I’ve been lying for three hours in a pool of oil and my hair (such as it was) was ruined. At least I can wash it easily now.

And Rosemary was on the phone for a good hour or so for a chat, so I missed my tea. But I don’t care.

Having crashed out this evening, I’m off to bed now.

See you in the morning.

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Monday 3rd August 2015 – I HATE PEOPLE …

… who post on the internet photos of what they have been eating.

vegan meal clermont ferrand puy de dome franceHowever, just very occasionally, there are rare occasions where a meal merits being photographed, and this is one of them.

Right in the centre of Clermont-Ferrand this lunchtime, not one of the restaurants had a vegan meal on offer, but there was one where the chef was busy plying his art (and art it was) in the corner of the dining area and so I went over for a chat.

And this is the result. And no complaints whatever from me. I had a struggle to finish it.

So after a telephone call at a time where quite often I hadn’t even been to bed, I was down at Sauret Besserve and picked up Liz, and off we went to Riom for Liz’s hospital appointment.

I had a wait of about 50 minutes for a groggy-looking Liz to emerge, and then we went off for a coffee so that she could recover.

Next stop was the Auchan but there weren’t any of the Nikon D7000 cameras there – it’s an end-of-range deal and the prices had been slashed so I wasn’t expecting much, but nevertheless, we were nearby so it was worth a try.

tram clermont ferrand puy de dome franceAnd then a first for Liz.

We decided to go into the centre of Clermont Ferrand and the tram lines pass at the rear of the Auchan so, leaving Caliburn on the car park, we hopped on a tram that whisked us silently and effortlessly into the city.

€1:50 a ticket and there can’t be much better value than that. Anyone who has driven into the centre of Clermont Ferrand and tried to find a parking place will tell you all about that.

We went for a walk, went to the Tourist Information office and down to the Conseil-General – and I had a brainwave. I need to insure Strider, the Ranger, in Canada and I wondered if I could obtain a printout of my licence showing my motoring history.

We queued for a good while and, at the counter, “yes, we can do that. Do you have your driving licence?”
So I duly produced it
“And do you have your identoty papers?”
“Ohh blast! I’ve left them in Caliburn, haven’t I?”
“We are really supposed to see some identity papers in order to do this over the counter, but I’ll tell you what – let’s do it anyway”

So there we were!

pope urban II crusade cathedral clermont ferrand puy de dome franceBack to the city square and in the shadow of Pope Urban II preaching the First Crusade to the pigeons fluttering around the Cathedral, we had our lunch.

Back on the tram and off to Gerzat to record the Radio Anglais programmes for the next few weeks, giving Samantha Fish her first run-out, and then back home.

All in all a quite profitable day.

And hats off to the reception staff at the hospital at Riom, hats off to the chef in Clermont Ferrand and hats off also to the lady at the driving licence desk at the Prefecture in Clermont Ferrand. Things are definitely looking up!

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Sunday 2nd August 2015 – PHEW!

I’m glad that it was Sunday today and I could have a lie-in. Because I was thoroughly exhausted after my journeys during the night.

It started off with me looking for a vehicle to convert into a mobile home (obviously what’s going on in North America at the moment is preying on my mind). I ended up with a Leyland Leopard 53-seater with a Plaxton Supreme body – the body from 1979-81. It was blue, the same colour that YNT was when we bought it, with the company name in black block letters down the side. I had it parked in Buchan Grove but, thinking on now, it was on the wrong side of the road. We moved on from there to a newish house on a housing estate and Nerina appeared. We met in a dark and gloomy bar like the Crown Hotel in Nantwich, and she was telling me that she was going to move back. And so she did, but with a proviso that every now and again she would be staying in a hotel somewhere. But whenever she did, she was always back by 21:00. We ended up at my father’s, who was actually Terry, and he’d moved into a new house which had had half of the side wall demolished. It had been rebuilt but the repair and the bricklaying was dreadful – even I could do better. But as I said to Terry, at least it’s done and it’s easy to tidy it up.

So after that, it was 10:00 when I arose and quite right too. I was still not on the same planet as everyone else but a coffee dealt with that.

I’ve been doing more of this updating the blog and with summer having dramatically returned (189.9 amp-hours of surplus electrical energy – a record as far as I can tell) and water in the dump load off the scale, I put 5 litres of hot water into the solar shower and had the nicest shower that I have ever had.

Round to Liz and Terry’s for rehearsals and Liz had had a go at making home-made ice-cream, which wasn’t bad at all. Terry gave me some screwdriver bits that he had bought for me, and Liz had a cardboard box of supplies which I promptly forgot.

On the way back, there was one of the biggest moons that I have ever seen – really impressive, it was. And back here, I had some stuff to do and then off to bed as I have an early start in the morning.

Liz is off to Riom for a hospital appointment, Terry has some work, so I’m chauffeuring.

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Saturday 1st August 2015 – NO WONDER …

… I had a struggle to leave my bed. And no wonder that I didn’t feel like anything at all until I’d had a nice hot coffee. In fact, I’d been to somewhere round Stockport during the night, and on a pushbike too. I had Paul Ross with me on his bike too and we had gone there with the aim of doing some taxi-ing with our bikes (don’t ask me how). Anyway someone came over and wanted to go up onto the moors and so I told Paul to take him – I didn’t fancy the mountains. But Paul was being difficult. He said that he had to be home soon and this was going out of his way. I explained that it was “sort-of” on his way (which it wasn’t of course” and he’d only be 10 minutes late, but he was still unwilling. Then onto the stage came another friend of mine from Uni. He’s a friend of mine in a social network and for the last year he’s been tetchy and argumentative, and tonight in Stockport (he lives no where near there) he was being his tetchy and argumentative self.

But whatever were these two doing in my nocturnal ramblings?

So today I’ve done nothing at all of significance except to talk to Liz, Hannah and a guy from Bangor, Maine on the computer. And I may have some exciting news to report on Monday night – who knows?

And apart from that, I’ve written three enormous pages of my blog from 2011 about my journey around southern New Brunswick. If you start here and go forwards, you’ll find them and you can follow my adventures from there.

All comments welcomed.

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Friday 31st July 2015 – I’M LOSING MY GRIP!

I’ve done something really silly today and I’m still bewildered as to how I managed it.

I was busy doing some electrical wiring when I glanced at the clock.

18:15! Blimey! The shops will be shut in 75 minutes!

So I quickly changed my clothes, leapt into Caliburn and head for the hi … errr … St Eloy.

The road down the hill from Montaigut was packed with traffic and I did wonder what it was all doing at that time of evening. But on the other hand, LIDL and Carrefour were comparatively empty. LIDL did have some 12-volt LED bulbs (it doesn’t now, of course) and Carrefour had some soya deluxe desserts reduced on special offer.

I picked up some cash ready for my voyage in 2 weeks time, and then drove home.

While I was organising a few things the stop-work alarm went off. 19:00.

What?

Yes, 19:00. It appears that it wasn’t 18:15 when I shot of to St Eloy but actually … errr … 17:15. D’ohhh!

I blame last night, though. I couldn’t sleep and I was still wide-awake and working on the laptop at 03:30. And with an alarm at 07:30, no wonder I’ve been feeling rather feeble today.

I had the usual sessions on the laptop and then after lunch, stripped off all of the masking from the door, fitted the air vents and wired in the socket at the head of the stairs on the landing so that I can plug the livebox in there. And that was where I was at.

But the air vents looks good in the door. The idea is that warm air heading up the stairs (once I finally have the fire going downstairs, whenever that might be) will go in through the vent at the bottom of the door, rise up through the shower room and out through the air vent that you might remember me drilling out all that time a couple of years ago. And that will stop condensation building up too.

So tomorrow, if the parts for this Hyundai haven’t come, I’m sure I’ll find some other things to do around the house. But do you realise – in 2 weeks time, I won’t be here?

But then again, I’m not all here now judging by my performance this evening, am I?

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Thursday 30th July 2015 – HERE WE ARE THEN.

hyundai trajet diesel engine blocked waterway les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis is the engine of this Hyundai, with the cylinder head removed. And you can immediately see one of the problems.

If you look in the foreground of the photo you’ll notice that one of the waterways is blocked. And diagonally opposite in the bore of the cylinder is a little trail of rust. Water coming along the waterway is hitting the blockage and being forced out under pressure, right into the bore of number two cylinder.

My suspicion is that we are going to find that the head will be slightly warped. I hope that the new gasket will take that up.

damaged piston hyundai trajet diesel les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut there’s another major problem with this engine.

Look carefully at the crown of the piston in the foreground. Can you see how damaged it is? That’s either major impact damage or else it’s a severe heat seizure, and seeing as how there is play in the bore, I suspect the latter.

Apart from the play though, the bore isn’t too bad. It’s not scored or marked.

damaged piston hyundai trajet diesel les guis virlet puy de dome franceHowever, this engine is ruined. It’s not going to last long and with us having disturbed it, it’s probably not going to last even that long.

So what we are going to do is to replace the cylinder head gasket and patch it up with other previously-used components and then just drive it until it stops. 5 miles, 50 miles, 500 miles, who knows? But it won’t be doing much. And there’s no sense in throwing good money after bad

This is an object lesson for anyone – don’t buy vehicles off Ebay. This is about the seventh or eighth that I’ve encountered that has turned out to be a pile of scrap – a bodged repair job after major damage and quickly moved on.

There aren’t half some dishonest people out there.

So after an early night, I was up quite early having had yet another really good night’s sleep. And I cracked on with revising this blog that I’m trying to update relating to my voyage around Canada.

I must have written about 5000 words I suppose, one entry being nearly 1500 words. Clearly I don’t have anything better to do.

And later this evening, I replaced the door furniture on the shower room door where I’d varnished it.

But what a waste of time that this is turning out to be. This Hyundai has really p155ed me off, what with everything that has happened and what I’ve discovered today.

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Wednesday 29th July 2015 – I FEEL A LITTLE …

… better today, after an early night and a really good uninterrupted sleep.

It was still a bit of a struggle though to leave the bed and I had to wait until I’d had a good coffee before I felt like anything at all. And an instant coffee too. It was a wet, grey winter day with a winter’s amount of electricity being received – a portent of things to come – so no percolator today.

But now all of the radio programmes are up-to-date, including two live concerts that I’ve had to cut down and edit. And I’m surprised at just how well the songs fitted together. My technique must be improving.

I’ve heard that the parts have been ordered for this Hyundai and might even be here tomorrow – but we shall see. But according to the engine number, it’s not a Hyundai engine that’s in it but a Kia engine. It’s all looking very confusing to me.

So I’m going to have a very early night and charge up the batteries for tomorrow. And they’ll need it too.

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Tuesday 28th July 2015 – I’VE HAD A BAD DAY TODAY

The alarm went off at 07:30 as usual, followed by the reminders at 07:45 and 08:00, but there was no way that I was able to leave my bed.

I ache just about everywhere – in places that I didn’t realise that I had places. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m far too old to go crawling around under cars the way that I did. Nice and leisurely, with a cup of coffee and a couple of biscuits every hour, I can manage that and I’m quite happy to do so. But working like I did yesterday, 9.5 hours non-stop without a pause, mauling some really heavy equipment about – I’m far too old for that.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. On a reasonable car where everything is there within reach, it’s quite easy. For example, with a Ford Cortina with a Pinto engine (of which there are dozens around here) the only time that you have to lie down is to take off the bottom pulley on the crankshaft. And that is that. The rest you can do standing up. With this blasted technological marvel of the 21st Century, you need to be up on top and on your back down below at the same time with three hands each.

And I have to do it all again when I need to re-assemble it.

But I can see now how it is that the vehicle has come here to be done. It’s quite simply that no-one else will touch it. And I can understand why.

But at least I had a nice concrete pad to lie down on after our efforts last year. Imagine trying to do this lying on damp gravel.

So I eventually crawled out of bed and I sat down in my chair and that was that. I couldn’t even move to make myself some food so I’ve just been nibbling on what I could reach.

Rosemary rang me up for a chat and instead, she had 90 minutes of me venting my spleen and letting off steam. Poor Rosemary. I just hope that I feel better tomorrow. I couldn’t even think about tiling today. And this is going to annoy me. I wanted to finish my tiling before I go away but Caliburn is parked up the road while this pile of scrap is parked in my drive and so I would have to carry all of the tiles and the sacks of cement 200 metres down here. There was no way that I was going to do that today and I probably won’t feel much like doing it tomorrow either. So it’s not just losing two days of work by working on this car, it’s also losing several other days while I recover from my exertions and no-one will ever think about that. I wish that I had never offered to do it now. It’s messed up all of my plans completely.

So starving, hungry, cold and fed up, and aching just about everywhere, I’m going back to bed. I hope that I have as much excitement as I did last night when I was once more back at school in Nantwich with a mini-traveller loaded with stuff and all kinds of people trying to peer in to see what there was. And an old girlfriend of mine, Ann, putting in an appearance too. Whatever was she doing here?

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Monday 27th July 2015 – I HATE CARS

Especially mass-produced monsters made in Korea.

I had to take the cylinder head off one today , a job that normally takes about two or three hours at the very most. And so we started at 10:00 and finished by … errr … 19:30. And that with no break, no stopping for lunch, no stopping for a drink, anything. Working non-stop.

timing cover bolts grounding out on bodywork hyundai trajet diesel les guis virlet puy de dome franceThe issue with these cars is that the engines are all assembled and mounted onto a subframe, and the body is lowered on top. And this leads to all kinds of complications – the most astonishing of which was that in order to adjust (or slacken in order to remove) the cam belt, which you need to do in order to take off the cylinder head, you need to take off the belt cover. But the bolts of the belt cover ground out on the inner wing of the car so you can’t do that.

And take the exhaust manifold. It can be removed in about four different ways, each one of which involves the removal of a pile of nuts and bolts. And in every case, you can take out all but one, and then you are stuck.

I’ve never seen anything like it.

We finally removed it and the horrible thing about it all is that we have to put it all back together again in a couple of days time. I’m as black as the Ace of Spades, just as I used to be when I was pulling Ford Cortinas to bits all those years ago, and I’m never going to get myself clean.

And, of course, it was raining this morning while we were doing it, after all these weeks of glorious weather. Isn’t that typical?

But I was worn out before I started, having been awake since 05:00. I’d been on my travels, back to school in fact. And I had no shoes – I’d left them downstairs in the main hall but there, when I went down to retrieve them, was a three-piece rock band playing, right by where I had left my shoes. I chatted to the guitarist/singer in the interval to ask him that if he knew of anyone looking for a bassist, to let me know. “But I have a bassist” he said, indicating a young boy playing with him. “And I can sing” I said – “but my sister sings with me if I need a singer”. “But I don’t mean you – I mean anybody” but he was so negative that I quickly picked up the hint – that it was too much trouble for him and that he was not going to do it

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Sunday 26th July 2015 – IT’S BEEN THREATENING …

… for quite a few days but today it finally happened. Summer ended and the weather broke, and we’ve had rain this evening.

This morning though I had a nice lie-in until 09:30, and quite right too, for I was well-away during the night. I’d made my escape from a concentration camp – an extermination camp in fact – that was actually a fortress something along the lines of Colditz Castle. I’d made it to safety but two young girls whom I encountered (I know who they are but I can’t recall them now) insisted on going back to see for themselves what it was like back there. And so I took them, and I wanted to introduce them to a girl whom I knew there, but I was warned off because it would be likely that I would be arrested and that would be the end of me. So I spent all of the night skulking around the town with these two girls, trying to evade capture.

And you’ve no idea how exhausting that can be. I was totally worn out when I finally awoke.

This morning I’ve been carrying on editing my blog and I’ve made an outstanding discovery. Well, it’s not a discovery because it’s such an obvious requirement that it must be a possibility, so perhaps I had better say that I had worked out how to do it.

And that is that I can write up blog entries and then change the posting date so that they relate to an earlier date and fit in, in the correct chronological place. And so where I didn’t make a blog entry back in 2010 because I didn’t have internet access, I can do it right now.

And here is one that I made earlier.

After lunch I started to write up the text notes for another topic for our radio programmes. And although it’s a subject about which I know a considerable amount, it must be something of a record that I was able to sit down for just 2 hours and 15 minutes and dash off 2131 words. That should keep us out of mischief for a month at least, but nevertheless it was quite impressive.

Tomorrow I have this car coming and I’m not feeling much like it, but I’ll have to fix it, I suppose. And I know exactly how it’s going to turn out because of past experience. But if I’m this depressed about the thing before I’ve started, whatever will I be like tomorrow eveing?

I shudder to think.

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Saturday 25th July 2015 – AND IF YOU THOUGHT …

… that working late on a Friday night was exceptional, how about working on a Saturday morning too? Yes, I reckon that I didn’t even have 12 hours off.

shelob shower room les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd I wasn’t alone while I was working either. I had company – or, rather, an interested spectator.

I don’t know where Shelob came from, or where she went back to, but she was certainly there while I was sweating away. And to be honest, I don’t think that I’ve ever seen a spider quite like this one before. The photo makes it look huge, but nevertheless …

suspended ceiling fitted varnished recessed lights fitted les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd I was there for a good couple of hours too this morning.

But now we have all three coats of varnish on the doors and on the shelves and it does look good in there. And all of the wiring is finished and the recessed LED lights are in place. And wasn’t it a good plan to buy that pile of recessed light fittings at Brico Depot? That works in spades, doesn’t it?

And you’ll see the LED striplight on the far wall. The bathroom mirror will be going under there when the tiling is finished. And that’s the next job, starting on Monday when I’ve done this car that I have to do.

Just as I was settling down, Lieneke came round for a chat and she stayed here for a good few hours. She was really impressed with the work on the house too – and so am I, it has to be said. It’s looking quite good so far.

But that diverted my attention and I’ve not done anything after that – just relaxed. Tomorrow, I need to press on with the radio programmes.

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Friday 24th July 2015 – WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME …

… that you heard of me working at 21:10 in the evening? I might have done at one time, I think, but I didn’t make a note of it, so this time might well be the first official occasion.

And not only that, I’d been to do my shopping at St Eloy in between too, so that’s something of a rarity too.

This morning I managed to tie with the alarm going off and then after breakfast I had a nice uninterrupted morning on the laptop sorting out another pile of previous blog entries. If I crack on doing four or five each day, I can finish the Canada 2010 and do Canada 2011 before I go away – at least, that’s my aim.

After lunch, I finished off all of the masking, dismantled everything that needed dismantling and then put on the first coat of varnish. It was then 18:00 and the drying time for a second coat is 2 hours. Thus I leapt into Caliburn and headed off to St Eloy in order to do my shopping.

Back here by 19:30 and I had to wait for another 45 minutes or so, and then I put the second coat of clear varnish on the wood. And when I’d finally finished that, I could knock off and have tea.

Tomorrow after breakfast, I’ll do the third and final coat and while that’s drying I can carry on with the blog. And when the varnish is finally dry, I can fit the recessed lights and reassemble the ironmongery.

That will mean that, in between dealing with this car that’s coming here on Monday, I can make a start on the tiling.

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