Eunos Chump

Mrs B's Mondeo went today, sold to Bill for far too little money. No more will it's interior be redecorated with ice cream and cheese, it's carpets bathed in milk and orange squash, it's windows smeared with goo. It even gets to live in a garage now. I had to take it to a car wash beforehand, it was filthy. If anybody wants to argue with Darwin's theory, I recommend you get yourself to the Morrisons car wash and just observe for 30 minutes or so. Clearly, punching in a number and then positioning the car is far too much for some people, there must be something in the f***ing water around here.

...a plan more cunning than a fox who has just been made professor of cunning at Oxford university" (Black Adder) It wasn't quite that cunning perhaps, but getting Mrs B's Xmas present to appear on the driveway at 6:30am today has been a major logistical operation for me this month. But this is it, the Love Truck... Mrs B was so gobsmacked she's been in a daze most of today, and I've been so popular I wasn't even required to wash-up after lunch. This situation won't last, naturally. The Citroen is a youngster at 3 years old and is low on the miles, but I'm sure there'll be some excuse to start taking it to pieces before long. Assuming I've not gotten hold of some overpriced Japanese rubbish in the meantime :)

I've got enough change to buy an early Eunos now, seen one cheap in Bristol that I may investigate over Xmas. I want a late '80s BMW 325i too, for fast-tin-top days. I dunno how I'm going to insure this lot though.

Finally got around to replacing the rear disks and pads on the Taxi (oddly the NSR disk was rusted and the pads shot, the other side was fine). This would have been easy had the Haynes manual not told me to turn the handbrake adjusters the wrong way! Mrs B helped me change the brake fluid too, been meaning to do this for a year or so. All the tyres are worn again , I'm pretty sure pixies go drift racing in my car when I'm asleep.

I've dropped the Spitfire plan, it's over before it even began. I'm fed up looking at overpriced heaps of scrap, I now have a new object of desire... a MX5. Well, an Eunos to be correct, because there's loads of them about, they're value for money, you could use it as everyday transport all year round, and to be honest I've long fancied one. I almost bought one 5 years back, but eventually plumped for a Fiat Barchetta because it was unusual and felt more special, at least initially. The Fiat was rather underwhelming to drive; it lacked synergy , unlike the X1/9 I'd had a few years back. In fact it felt very much like a hot hatchback, and I've never had any time for those. But by this point Mrs B had our first bun in the oven, and it had to go anyway to make way for an enormous mortgage. I sold it back to the garage it came from (losing £2000 in the process, nice investment Mr B) and bought a trusty Cav SRI from my bruvver .

The Beirut Taxi had a catastrophic head gasket failure this week. It spent 4 days at Keylink Systems being repaired (a job much too scary for me), and cost £850. And I've had to have £400 of dental work too! So that's the Spitfire fund blown again.

I've heard about a red 1300 Spit that needs a new home. There's something wrong with the engine and it's not run for some time, sounds promising though. Waiting for a price...

Returned late from London on Friday night to find Colin had already fitted the new cat to the Benz - nice work! It may have cost £775 all in but it's worth it, the car is transformed. Smoother, quieter, and considerably more rapid, I'm not sure I need 6 cylinders after all... well, OK, I still want a C280 (but not the fuel bills). Found some money down the back of the sofa so the Spit search has begun again, haven't seen anything suitable nearby though (some good stuff at the Spitfire Graveyard but it's in Sheffield).

Got a refund on the faulty Benz cat from GSF. The replacement they had was of dreadful quality, it was a mish-mash of short lengths of squashed tube, incompetently welded up (even I can weld better than that). There was no trouble though, which was nice. Now I have to pay £700+ for the genuine article, it's the only way to ensure satisfaction. So that's the Spitfire fund gone for now...

This isn't Spitfire-related, but it involved elbow grease and swearing so I'm adding it anyway. The catalytic converter on the Beirut Taxi broke up on Friday, 50-odd miles from home, which resulted in a maximum engine speed of 2500rpm. I managed to get it home (but doing 35mph up the hills of the M3 is not recommended ). This is what it looked like after I took it off, it's pretty amazing it ran at all. Spoke to the folks at GSF who supplied it some months back, a replacement is due in Monday. There may be a battle ahead to prove it was a manufacturing fault rather than being due to oil contamination/overfuelling, I shall see...

A few years back I decided it was about time I owned a Mini. To make things more interesting I thought I'd get an old broken one and fix it up, so I bought this rusty yellow £300 skip from a student who was going for the most-number-of-lies-told-during-a-financial-transaction world record. It was officially an 850 City, but there there was a far more powerful A+ living under the bonnet. With it's stumpy 10" alloys it had quite ridiculous performance and handling, certainly more than the standard drum brakes could handle. It was a rusty bodged-up deathtrap, the seller was untrustyworthy, so naturally I bought it. It's the kind of thing I do. The front floor, wings, roof edges and rear subframe were all rotten, so I bought a load of pattern panels ( tip: don't buy patterns if you want them to fit ) and drove it up to my folk's place in Norfolk. Over the next 2 weeks, it was transformed from wreck to beauty: New wing goes on; my brother Darren got lumbered with n

I haven't found one yet, but I'm working on it. There is one for sale in town, but it's a ratty old matt black thing that's full of filler, and it's the most bodged-looking car I've seen for some time. With an asking price of £1300 the seller is either a comedian or has difficulty with decimal points. I've wanted a Spit for years now. I almost bought one some 9 years ago, but it would have become my daily driver and they're just not suited for this. They're not fast, nor economical, the handling is on a par with a shopping trolley (as is the level of comfort), and they're certainly not sturdy. Yet I like them. Oh, and there's no chance of it keeping the weather out. I've liked other rubbish cars in the past too, in fact I have a raft of damaging automotive relationships behind me. You can see some of these here (Fiat X1/9 and Mini), others are still too painful to discuss...