Wednesday, August 31, 2005

the car aint happy -

went for drive last night while out at my parents and the car feels horrible. The brakes are rubbish the whole feel of the car is just yeuch!

So either the car gets used more often or it goes. A waste of a perfectly good car just to sit there days on end, plus is darned expensive to insure for doing nothing.

As a last resort I'll check how much I save knocking the mileage down but I have me doubts it'll make a noticable difference.

Time to move on methinks

Thursday, August 11, 2005

been a while so an update -

car news

yep I still have the tubby and loving it although there have been a couple of moments where it wasn't so nice. Let me explain

Driving up to Inverary one day for a short break away from city life I was having fun driving on some real roads. Nothing daft like but having fun nevertheless. it started to rain so knowing how crap the roads are after a spot of rain during a dry spell, I was extra careful going round the corners.

Well the corner northbound at the bottom of the Rest and Be Thankful is a real git of a corner, long left hander off camber and slippy so I braked a lot for it and kinda tip toed into it. Not slow enough, heard that familar drumming noise from the tyres as the front was fighting to track round on the surface then it happened

the front gave a big slip and started understeering quite badly
the rear deciding it wanted to play gave a huge step sideways
I kinda slightly countersteer to correct the slide, caught it
tried steering round the corner half on my side half on the other side
made it round but needing a change of underwear

Clearly I had not slowed down enough but I really thought I had done. Physics however told me otherwise.

The rest of the holiday up north was grand. The weather varied from brilliant sunshine to heavy hail 2 or 3 times an hour and I didn't care one jot. Still had a fab time.

I drove to Oban on some sublime roads but again since it was raining / not raining I was driving like a real woss round the corners. Not point binning the car, it hurts too much.

Also on the car front I have returned my V5 to the DVLA to get the make of the car corrected. Now it has never been right since day one but I figured might as well get it sorted once and for all. It has gone in and hopefully will return in time for the road tax to get purchased / parking permit too. Oops might have mucked up there methinks.

Also on the car front the exhaust has been making some wonderful sounds. Absolutely barks when I nail it. Smooth ;-))