Eunos Chump

Have been back to McLean in the USA to remove all the kit from the office I installed 8 years ago, as the company continues to shrink. 2011 2019 It's all gone into a datacentre but we had to work ridiculous hours to get the systems live again for Monday; we arrived at 11am on Saturday to start installation in the DC, but it was 11 pm before the data cablers finished so we had to work non-stop until 7pm on Sunday to hit the deadline. Unfortunately this created a problem in Toronto which couldn't be fixed remotely, so I had to have a day trip there, as you do.  It was raining, I had a nice croissant for lunch but that was all I saw of Canada. Back to Washington, and had another look around the Air & Space museum before getting the bus to Dulles. Getting home was a faff, had to go via Detroit due to delays and ended up on an ancient Delta Boeing 767 instead of a Virgin A330.  It was alright though.  Final indignity was a £223 car parking surch...

My holiday this year is 2 weeks of messing about with cars and bikes, I'm bloody loving it.  This CLK is 3 years older than Mrs B's, has quite a lot less equipment, more rattles, more rust, but the familiar vague steering feel.  Blimey is is SMOOTH though, the V6 just whirrs and perfectly suits the car.  It's a little bit quicker than the 230K and uses a little bit more fuel, as expected. It's been raining since I bought it so haven't had much chance to tinker with it - a number of small fixes are required, the biggest being the weak OEM CD player but I'm already working on that. Didn't actually spend much time in Torquay, it's reminds me of Reading but with a marina. High street is vape shops, Sports Direct, Wetherspoons and tattoo parlours.

I decided to get another track bike the other day - maybe a GSX-R or possibly a Fireblade.  Yet somehow I've ended up buying this instead: It came up on Autoshite and was a golden opportunity, it has the silky V6 motor so I had to have it.  Collecting from Torquay tomorrow, excitement! Also fixed the Mini, bought another AC compressor from Silverlake car breakers for £25 and stuck it on this evening.  I'm pretty adept at ripping the face off Minis now, can do it in 10 mins.

New tyres on the H2 today, old ones shot after just 4200 miles.  Went for Bridgestone S21 again though, they do effectively glue the bike to the road. Fixed the Superduke too.  The chain tension nuts had seized in the swingarm (galvanic corrosion), it took several sessions to get them out (eventually a blowtorch on the swingarm with a rattlegun on the the bolt did the job).  Recovered the threads so total cost to fix was just £6.70 for new nuts/bolts. This means for the first time, every vehicle is operational and road legal!

Have been replacing the clutch on the aircon compressor on t'Mini today, my diagnostics indicated it was blown.  Got a replacement from Germany delivered for about £36. Access was impossible so I had to take the bumper off and put the front end into the service position, where it basically slides forward a few inches - there's a lot of screws and some big 16mm bolts that required a rattle gun to remove, but it's not bad. Eventually I get the pulley and clutch off the compressor (much circlip grief), and go into the garage to get the new one... suddenly POP then HISSSS.  The seal has blown off the shaft.  I eventually find the seal some distance away, it must have ricocheted off the house - good job I wasn't in front of it at the time.  Compresser is now toast so will have to get one off eBay. After all that, it seems the clutch is OK anyway - certainly there's circuit continuity (but was impossible to test this without taking it all apart anyway).  Per...

I mentioned on the Autoshite forum I was definitely probably maybe selling this, and a deal has been quickly struck with a long-standing member.  He has one already and was considering turbo'ing it, so this provides him with a shortcut.  Will be sorry to see it go but also pleased my procrastination has been brought to an end. This will leave a space on the drive, and nature abhors a vacuum...

It's back on the road!  Took it to work today - what could go wrong after leaving it idle for 3 years?  Well, the MAP sensor tube came off actually, and made it run like shite - soon fixed that though.  Seems to be an exhaust leak around the turbo, despite me replacing the gasket last night (think it's from the exhaust connection). It's as noisy and lairy as it always was, and is both STUPID and DANGEROUS and inappropriate for a man of my age.