CharlesM

It's a nice job for what I paid! Certainly perked Peril up very nicely, so much so I might give her a thorough clean this weekend.

I decided the Peril could do with a bit of love. The rear wheelarches were a bit bashed about inside and the rear nearside wing had been very badly filled and painted, my flatting skills being no match. So after delivering numerous bits and pieces, including a Mercedes wing to the restorers, I had the bodyshop who did the Mercedes work do a block down and respray of the wing, plus a flattening out and touch up of the rear wheelarches. The initial blocking revealed a lot of filler and primer from previous work, but we got a much better surface to work on. A nice mop and polish completed the work, and I must say for something cheap and cheerful, the car is now looking very much happier. Dan, one of the partners, was encouraged to have a drive in it by me and he really loved the comfort, seats and the howl when opened up. All in all, a success all round!

Where's the vomit emoticon when you need it?!

I happened to be by a Tesco with a close to empty tank. Harmony has been restored with a full load of Shell V Power last night. It is my preferred choice but I'd rather have Momentum than 95 Octane E10 fuel, if push comes to shove! The car is booked in for a small amount of bodywork. I amused the young lads at the bodyshop (who already find it hilarious that this 50 year old classic car lover has installed an induction kit) by suggesting I might consider slamming the car and fitting a bodykit if I could find one reasonably...

A tankful of Tesco Momentum 99 octane and lots of fast and mixed driving later, and I averaged exactly 30mpg. Car running beautifully and given how many times I hoon it to wallow in that NSX like induction sound, it is gratifyingly frugal. I temporarily solved the rattling induction kit with that essential of every budding mechanic, a cable tie...

Not sure Dave, but I'll have a look soon. Took the Peril up to the restorers today to transport parts (the Volvo is being overused and I couldn't be arsed to unload all the stuff in it). It ran beautifully, and I noticed it was about to hit an important milestone, so I pulled over when I could to capture the changeover. I am going to get the tiny bits of bodywork attended to, and hope to get it into good nick for the meet later.

Thanks Dave. When I get the front off to have a look I think it will indeed need a new mount, the length is most probably the issue to keep the kit centred correctly.

Hughezee dropped me a PM, so I'd thought I'd check in, been up to my eyeballs in my Mercedes W114 coupe restoration and still have yet to find the time to sort out my sheared induction kit on the Peril. As the former is weeks away from finishing, that has to be the focus for the rest of the "summer".

To cheer up Ahsy - I brimmed with fuel and did the calculation. MPG 22.5 on the last tank. However, it wasn't the Honda but my Citroen SM on its out of winter blast, rev happy to blow up winter blues and running with slightly under-inflated tyres, plus a lot of city driving to the specialist for work. I'm hopeful of getting it up to 26mpg on the next long run!

With two cars off the drive a good opportunity to have a look at the induction kit issue. The nut and bolt that hold the rubber buffer are all in place, but the kit is hanging off. Feeling around the base there is still a nut with a bolt through it, so I'd guess that bolt has sheared. To get any better understanding requires me to get the wheel and wheel arch liner off, which I'll do later, but it looks like some kit failure. A bore.

Back again, this time the MacBook is purring effortlessly without any issue. Been really tied up with singing, restoring the Merc, old cars generally and being screwed by Volvo on my oil service, so when things calm down this weekend, I'll give thought to sorting out the induction kit and to make a start on the paint on the Peril. There are times when I really wish I could teleport to places, but knowing my luck I'd get rust in unpleasant places at the other end!

Forgive my fat fingers normally but iPad was autocorrected to IPod.

Grrr - computer packed up within another day of getting it back, losing the screen display totally. Finally I found the forum info from Facebook and managed to remember my password, so I'm on a borrowed IPod. The nut holding on my induction kit has fallen off, despite loctite, so car is out of action until this is sorted. Keep putting nuts is not the optimum solution so I'll think about some re-engineering.

In the case of the broadband, the router turned out to be Fubar. My Macbook has always liked chargers so I think there was a fault from the beginning on that. Whether or not TalkTalk were responsible, their customer service was hideous. I only started getting attention from them when I began using twitter (believe me, I really really didn't want to become a twat!). For example, they sent round a BT Openreach engineer who did SFA on the Saturday of the bank holiday weekend. The following day, I got a text at some ridiculous hour from TT demanding that I reply with solved or not solved, if I didn't get back to them within 24 hours (they'd taken a week to revert on each occasion) they'd assume the problem was sorted and close the file. Useless! Anyway, got my new mats from Cocomats in the US. I love these - made out of coconut fibre with nibbed rubber backing which makes the mat both heavy and stick in place. Cleaning is just brush and shake, and they'll probably outlive me. I just had the fronts made as the rear mats are fine and I used the new Grey set as a template - Cocomats didn't have a RHD template, so I used brown paper, traced the outline and posted it. How pleasingly analogue. To my surprise and delight (I have never been remotely gifted with arts or crafts skills) they fit perfectly. I now need to clean the front carpets as the colour is a bit greyer than it should be!

Trying to catch up on a lot of emails and sites. After 5 weeks TalkTalk finally sorted my broadband, but the Macbook burned through a second charger in 18 months so I took both in to Apple, who decided I needed a new charger (free) and a new battery, charging system in the computer and a whole load of other stuff totalling £700 - all paid for by them as the computer was under 2 years old. So I got my money's worth, but it's taken 10 days to sort. A progress update will follow when I get my pictures uploaded - there is a long queue though!

Finally back. My computer had to go off for repairs and is now back fully working.

Ho ho ho!

Makes perfect sense to me. A service is on the cards some time soon (when I get my life back from my car restoration) and I had already clocked the oil spec required. All systems in a car work together, get the correct spec and it should run like a literal well oiled machine.

Bugger, no mantelpiece. Never mind, I'll take it to a taxidermist and get it stuffed.

Here's the old engine mount. It's hardly surprising everything was jolting.

When warm and with savage use of right foot to get double kickdown to high revs the problem has completely gone. Two more ATF changes and this will be completely smooth. I wonder how many people have written off cars on the back of this for transmission issues that are nothing of the sort?

Engine mount now changed, not without difficulty. Old one was in far worse condition than the photo earlier showed, now replaced and the heavy clunk on kickdown gone. Still a slight lumpiness changing down, but about 75% better.

The flattening is part of the design of the exhaust Dave, it's the only way it will fit around the suspension. Typically! I have come across numerous moronic and incompetent tuners in my time. Some just seem to think that clients only want top end gains, with all that means for compromised low down tractability (a friend who sold me his Benz W210 320 cdi estate said he had a fantastic tuner who reckoned he could get another 20 bhp out at the top, to which I replied he must be an idiot, as the top speed in the UK is 70mph, which means in all bar 2nd gear it is a total waste of time and fuel). I did have a superb tuner in Essex who remapped my BMW 2002 tii into a dream car to drive, but as the CPS bracket kept breaking, it was all a bit moot.

One thing that tickled me yesterday. I am machine polishing a friend's BMW E30 325i Mtech in Dolphin Grey, and my Jamaican postie, a lovely young guy, stopped for a chat about it. He loves German cars, had a Mercedes 190E with Cosworth body kit etc, wants a Golf VR6 or Corrado, but is worried about parts costs. So I pointed at the Peril and said that's what you really want - 3litre Vtec V6, reliable, goes like stink, sounds incredible, you can bodykit it, lower it etc. It must be said the Peril, being rather dirty, didn't immediately get the juices running for him, but if I get him out in it and let loose the induction kit, he might just see the point. While on the subject of induction kits the BMW 325i has one fitted. Let's just say that compared to mine, which is positively Banzai hooligan, that is a very polite and well bred one. His exhaust though is much more fun...

Thanks Dave. We (well, John, the tech doing the work) are going to weld in a bung. The sensor is a bugger to locate - it has to be at least 2 feet from the exhaust outlet which, typically, is where the downpipe is passing right under the front suspension, and of course it has some wiring to fit. The downpipe has been flattened at that point too, so putting in a section requires yet more work. Of course, if we get the location wrong and the sensor gets either too hot or too cold we'll have to move it... Of course, the lovely thing about the wideband lambda and Megasquirt (no doubt applies to other ecus too) is that it will self tune the map to stoichiometric (AFR of 14.7) leaving the rolling road work to concentrate on the idle and full throttle fuelling (oh and as I'm a glutton for punishment, the ignition settings too - I've replace the old distributor with a Ford EDIS coilpack system). I've had about three sessions on a rolling road before, which is lots of fun, and I always go for low down torque and economy. The map on my Citroen SM (which I didn't do) is absolutely stunning - real low down torque and fuel economy improved from about 15mpg to 30! It's all great fun, but boy, is it eating up the hours and my bank balance. Keeping the original Bosch D Jetronic was just not an option though.