Tag Archives: hyundai trajet

Monday 26th June 2017 – I SEEM TO HAVE ACQUIRED …

… a washing machine. And it’s sitting in the back of Caliburn right now.

Terry rang me up – and at 08:30 too. “Doing anything? I can’t get the dumper to start”

Actually, I wasn’t in the mood right then and there. If you had been through what I had been through during the night you would not have been either.

I had had a dreadful night, and there was a time round about 02:00 where I thought that I would never ever go to sleep. So much for the early night that I promised myself.
But I must have done at some time or other because I had a visitor during the night.

I’m not sure why Nerina came to visit me but, as this little girl who was in my room at the time remarked, she was wearing a black cloak – and there were various references to all kinds of famous fictional characters. The meeting at first was quite acrimonious but after quite some time it mellowed and in the end we finally agreed to a division of our assets. But not our physical assets – agreement was reached over that years ago – but all of the paperwork. And there we were, during the night, dividing up all of the paperwork sheet by sheet, regardless of whether the division made any logical sense for the accounts or the correspondence that were involved.

Ohhh, how I didn’t want to get out of bed, but I did, and managed some breakfast -and while I was vegetating over a hot mug of coffee the telephone went. Fetching it back, I answered it and it was Terry.

I had a few things to do – like updating a couple of entries on the blog (I am determined to do some of it every day) and having a shave and a shower – and then I hit the road to Roncey.

Terry was right – the dumper wouldn’t start. But I made it start by pouring some drops of neat petrol down the air filter. Fired up a treat but it wouldn’t run on.

So knowing that it fired up, then it can’t have been an electrical or mechanical fault – must be fuel. Plenty of fuel in it and it was going down the fuel lines into the carburettor and the float chamber was full.

Here we were interrupted.

Liz has an old washing machine that only works on one programme and which rattles about the floor of the bathroom like a jive dancer on sherbet dabs. But having had a good month at work, she’s bought herself a new super-duper mega-washing machine and it came today. We signed for it and spent an hour mauling it into the laundry room and installing it.

What a beast.

And the washing machine is awesome too.

“Right, let’s sling the old one into the trailer. I’ll run it down to the dechetterie this afternoon”
“Why?” I asked. “Has it finally handed in its chips?”
“Ohh no” said Terry. “It still works like it always did – maybe more rattly these days – but it’s no use to anyone now we have this one”.
“I can think of someone who will have a use for it” I said. “Let’s sling it in the back of Caliburn”

I know that I decided that I would only have new things here in this apartment, and a new washing machine is high on my list of things to purchase, but you’ll remember that the other day I told you that I wasn’t going to spend any more money for a while and go to have a good time in Canada instead.

So it’s the launderette for me then for the rest of the year and that’s extremely inconvenient for all kinds of reasons. So any old washing machine that will keep running for 6 months or so will be a big bonus for me. It’ll save me €50:00 down at the launderette as long as it keeps on going.

Back to the dumper, and with fuel getting into the float chamber, it was time to take off the carburettor.

The carburettor is held on by just two bolts. But if I were to tell you the performance that we went through in order to gain access to the two bolts, and then to disconnect all of the throttle and choke linkages, you wouldn’t believe me. It was like that stupid Hyundai Trajet that I did two years ago – all assembled onto a subframe on a bench and then fitted into the framework, so you can’t get at anything.

That took us to lunchtime.

After lunch with the carburettor in my sweaty little mitt I went to take out the jets – but they are fixed in – can’t be dismantled. So I had to work out where all of the air passages were and use a compressor to blow them out backwards.

Sure enough, I eventually discovered a passage that was blocked and so with a fine wire I probed the orifice and eventually cleaned it out. And then a few more blasts of air to make sure.

I checked the float to make sure that it wasn’t holed, and then reassembled the carburettor. And then, I had to stick it back on the engine – which was even more interesting than taking it off.

The good news was that with the first pull (it’s a recoil starter) of the starter it fired up correctly. And Terry and Liz (who was by now back from work) reckoned that it was running better than it had for quite a while.

Liz made a gorgeous tea and afterwards we sat around in the beautiful evening sunshine chatting about this and that.

And now I’m home. And with a washing machine too. Terry and Liz think that they might be on their travels at the weekend so they will pop by and help me bring it upstairs and install it. So this weekend I might even be able to do my own washing. And isn’t that progress?

It’s looking more like home every minute.

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Friday 16th October 2015 – I WENT TO BED …

… at 22:00 last night. And so I didn’t wake up until 12:00 midday today. And I would probably have still been in bed even now had I remembered to switch off the Canadian telephone last night so the alarm wouldn’t go off at 06:00 Quebec time (12:00 French time).

By the time I’d finished having a shower and a shave and a good soak, Liz was back from work and so I had breakfast followed by a bowl of Liz’s vegan soup, and then Terry brought me home.

The jungle has taken over as you might expect, and so finding the house was an adventure. But that wasn’t really what annoyed me.

You remember that just before I went away to Canada I had that pile of scrap on my yard that needed the head gasket changed. It leaked oil all over the concrete pan that we did last summer, and I had asked the owner of that Hyundai to come along and clean it off while I was away.

Of course, it goes without saying that the amount of time that I had spent oh his car, and how much I had put myself out for him with what I did, he couldn’t be bothered to come along and clean it off. And now my concrete is thoroughly ruined.

I’ll tell you something – and that is the that this is the last time that I am EVER going to put myself out for anyone. No-one else’s car is going to come onto my concrete and if anyone else wants any work doing on a car then they can whistle.

Just one exception for this of course. Liz and Terry have done me a great service in all the years that they’ve been living here and their vehicles are more-than-welcome to come here. And that reminds me – I need to buy an engine crane. I’ve promised myself that for years and I’ve a feeling that one is going to become necessary around here in the immediate future.

The house is freezing. It’s 9°C in the bedroom and just 11.3°C in the attic. And a mouse has managed to enter the attic and so it (the attic, not the mouse) needs a good cleaning and disinfecting. That has really dismayed me.

But the positive side of all of this is that, in contrast to last year, the batteries are fully charged and the fridge, that I had plugged into the overcharge circuit, was running quite nicely. All of this despite the miserable weather that we were having. But I dunno what has gone on here while I was away but something is lurking about in the fridge so I need to clean that. It looks like Quatermass’s Experiment in there.

So I cleaned off the attic a little and sat up here freezing, resisting the temptation to light the fire. Eventually, after chatting to someone on the laptop for ages, I decided to go to bed. Freezing in the bedroom of course, and so decided to slip into bed and undress under the covers as I warmed up.

Despite the cold, it was lovely to be back in my own comfortable bed and I wasn’t awake long enough to undress. I just went right out and that was that.

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Wednesday 12th August 2015 – AT LAST!

This Hyundai has finally gone.

But it’s not gone far – about 400 metres to the wide grass verge.

Terry turned up tonight with his Jeep Cherokee 4×4 and that made short work of moving it. Unfortunately, Terry’s trailer is just too small for the Hyundai so there’s no possibility of putting it on there. And with me closed down for my holidays, I’m going nowhere tonight with my Brian James car transporter.

Consequently the Hyundai sits on the grass verge and there it will stay until the owner has come up with a Plan B. What this will be will be a depanneuse – a breakdown truck. And had a breakdown truck been summoned on Friday, this Hyundai would have been gone long ago with no stress and no bad feeling and no nothing.

And of course, the question of the degreaser for this oil slick. The car’s owner “didn’t have time” to pick any up. Why am I not surprised? But at least, Caliburn is back home where he belongs.

All of this is an object lesson in how doing things “on the cheap” rebounds with a vengeance because I’m never ever going to be doing anything coming from over there ever again. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!”

But last night, I had a bad night. I was still awake at 05:00 and I woke up again at 06:30. Clearly the stress was getting to me and I really didn’t need that with what I had to do today.Nevertheless in between the bouts of sleep this afternoon I’ve managed to do such a lot of what I had to do and I’ll be finishing the rest in a moment when I’ve eaten my pasta.

And I had a stroke of luck too. I’ve been hunting high and low for my Vox Bass amPlug – the one that you plug into the jack socket of the guitar and plug earphones into it so that you can hear what you are playing. It’s never come to light.

And then there I was, I suddenly had a brainwave, remembering what bag I had taken with me to Belgium and Germany a few months ago. And sure enough, there scrunched up in the bottom of the bag, was my amplug. That cheered me up. On the downside, with sorting out this Hyundai, I missed my shower window. I was looking forward to that, with new bedding and new clothes waiting for me. I’ll have to wait now for Lyon tomorrow night. I hope that no-one on the train complains.

So now I have something like a tidy attic, some bags all packed (and I bet that I have forgotten hordes of stuff) and just a few more jobs to do before I go. I’ll try to have an early night – I need it after last night to be sure, and I’ll be fighting-fit for tomorrow.

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Tuesday 11th August 2015 – WELL THAT DIDN’T GO ACCORDING TO PLAN

So in the absence of any better offer this afternoon, I set to work to move this Hyundai. First thing though – the battery in the Kubota was flat. Not much of a surprise – I haven’t used it since last October. And so I had to put it on charge for a while.

Later on, I put the battery back and made sure that the Kubota started, and then went back in ready to do the job as it went dark.

later that night, I went back out, to find that the battery was flat again. So I moved Caliburn down to jump-start the Kubota. Once the Kubota fired up, off I went to tow the Hyundai, leaving Caliburn there.

And wasn’t that a fatal mistake?

I eventually managed to put the Hyundai out of my drive (it’s not easy pushing a big heavy car like that and I’m far from in the prime of life) and then set off to tow it away.

But that didn’t work, as the Kubota didn’t have the waft to pull it away. It just dug itself into the gravel up to the axles. Giving it a final whack and the motor stalled. And, of course, the battery is now flat again.

And so, we are stuck in the lane that the farmer needs for access to his field in the following order –

  1. the Kubota, with a flat battery
  2. the scrap Hyundai that won’t run at all
  3. Caliburn, the only vehicle that is working right now

And it goes without saying that Caliburn is stuck down at the bottom end of the cul de sac and can’t move until the others are gone. If only I had moved him first.

I really and sincerely wish from the bottom of my heart that I had never set eyes on this vehicle and that I had never set eyes upon its owner. I am thoroughly and completely fed up.

All I need now is for the farmer to put in an appearance and I shall be well and truly stuck. I am beginning to hate everyone and everything.

But apart from that, the morning was comparatively successful. Liz phoned me up early (and I was awake long beforehand too) and so I took her off to Riom and the hospital, in exchange for which she did a couple of loads of washing for me to bring me up to date.

Although Liz’s news from the hospital might be perceived in some quarters as being bad, for Liz it is in fact good news because it confirms her suspicions, and with the knowledge that she gained today, things can only get better and that is what she needs to know.

We went for a coffee and then off to Gerzat for the Radio Anglais recording sessions there. They passed quite easily and incident-free, which makes a great change and makes it quite a pleasure to go there.

sculpted fountain chatel guyon puy de dome franceIt was such a nice day so we stopped for a coffee on the way back.

Chatel-Guyon is a beautiful spa-town at the foot of the Combrailles. It’s a beautiful place to visit for an afternoon’s walk but we just contented ourselves with sitting outside a cafe near a sculpted fountain
looking at the water, soaking up the sun and drinking a good strong coffee in pleasant company.

And then back home to more of this total nonsense.

How I hate this car.

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Monday 10th August 2015 – MY PATIENCE IS NOW THOROUGHLY EXHAUSTED …

… and my good humour has now totally disappeared. I am never ever going to help anyone out ever again.

hyundai trajet leak oil on concrete drive les guis virlet puy de dome franceJust look at my beautiful concrete hardstanding.

I worked on old wrecks for years at Gainsborough Road in Crewe, and despite everything that was thrown at me, my drive there never ever looked anything like this.

But here I am, having spent a fortune on concreting my drive last summer so that I would have somewhere nice to work in my dotage, and this is what I get for helping someone out.

The guy who owns this old wreck came round to try to finish it off, but forgot to connect up the oil pipe. As a result, when he turned over the engine, I got the contents of his sump all over my concrete.

And if that isn’t enough to be going on with, he wandered off to think of a plan B, not only leaving his car in my drive but making no attempt to clean up the damage. That’s all over where people walk into my property of course, and it’s all soaked into the concrete and thoroughly ruined it.

Consequently tomorrow, as soon as I come back from Gerzat, his Hyundai is going out into the street regardless of whatever else happens. I’ll tow it out with the Kubota, get it as far away from my premises as possible, and then just leave it for whoever wants to remove it.

and if you are wondering why I waited until Tuesday to publish this, had I published this last night before I went to bed, as I usually do, there would have been nothing that would have been fit to print.

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Sunday 9th August 2015 – YOU CAN ALWAYS TELL …

… what the weather has been like, just by looking at the difference between the maximum and minimum temperatures of the water in the solar shower.

Today’s maximum was 19.0°C and the minimum was 16.5°C, a difference of just 2.5°C. So, in other words, we have had no sun at all. We’ve been swathed in hanging clouds and had a persistent drizzle all day. It’s been just like November today.

I had a nice lie-in until 10:20 and I’ve been having a relax today, ready for my marathon packing and tidying up for the next three days.

As well as that, I’ve had a lengthy chat with Cecile on the computer. There was a lot of news to catch up on, and we were probably there for an hour having a good chat.

So tomorrow, I’m packing. And I’ve just worked out that I’ve forgotten something quite important – my proof of address that I was going to ask for at the mairie yesterday. That’s upsetting. I’ll have to see if there’s a way around all of this.

And, of course, it goes without saying that this Hyundai is still here in my drive.

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Saturday 8th August 2015 – MISERABLE DAY

Too hot in the bedroom last night so I had the window open. But it wasn’t the dawn chorus that awoke me, it was a torrential rainstorm. In fact 31.5mm of rain fell today.

It goes without saying that the guy whose Hyundai is on my drive never turned up to move it, and I wasn’t working in these conditions.

I was doing a few bits and pieces here and then went off to St Eloy to meet Rosemary. She’s off to the UK next week for a medical appointment and needs plenty of moral support before she goes – although since when has any support that I have been able to give anyone been moral?

On the way back, I went via Pionsat to do some shopping at the Intermarché, and it did spring to my mind that the next time that I’ll be doing any food shopping will be in the Metro supermarket in the Cote des Neiges in Montreal. I’m not sure if breakfast is included in my hotel room, so I’ll be needing my bagels and strawberry jam.

Back here I caught up with another few things that I needed to do and then I was engulfed in controversy. The football club that I follow, Bangor City, is in financial difficulty which is astonishing seeing as they are the best-supported club in the WPL and have the second-best exposure. Clearly things aren’t right in the club and, due to British law about slander and libel I shan’t go into them on here. But despite releasing three or four of their best players last season (remember that the club finished just third from bottom, even with these players in it) and having kicked out half of the development squad, today they have just sold their best player to a league rival.

These directors just don’t “get it”. Struggling near the foot of the table will cause attendances to fall, so they will lose just as much, if not more, than they have gained. And then with the inevitable relegation, they will lose the Welsh Premier League prize money, league sponsorship, all kinds of financial support and the club will go on a great big downward spiral.

It’s a classic case of “short-termism”. Press the panic button and the Directors all run around like headless chickens. There’s no long-term plan, no vision, no nothing. People like these aren’t fit to be in charge of a whelk stall, never mind a half-million-pound business.

Just one close-season signing – and he’s from a club two leagues down.

At least Afan Lido two years ago waited until mid-season to throw in the towel. Throwing in the towel before a ball has even been kicked is totally shameful.

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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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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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