Going nowhere...

Had a good day down at the unit today. Graham, an NSCC competitor from days past and all-round nice bloke came along and bought an axle for his four-pot Fox. It was still attached to the car, so we (I say "we" as if I helped a fat lot at all) jacked the car up, undid the shockers, undid the axle ends of the trailing arms and removed the springs, then undid the axle ends of the upper arms, cut through the brake flexi and handbrake cables, and dragged the axle out. And here's the kicker - it was that easy! Nothing was seized, nothing snapped, there were no trips to casualty... a handful of spanners and sockets and out it came. It was so quick that we were convinced we must have done something wrong, even though the axle was now sat comfortably in the back of his pick-up. He suggested that we put it back on again and do the job properly, sweating and swearing and breaking things and ending up just cutting through everything with a grinder. The only problem was the sudden attack of high-velocity horizontal freezing rain that rocked up just at the point where we both needed to be lying on the ground under the car.

After Graham had gone, I took off the fuel tank and the exhaust. What special steel do they make fuel tanks and exhausts out of? The rust that you get on fuel tanks and exhausts is unlike any other sort of rust (and, believe me, I've been around the block a few times when it comes to rust) as it seems to stain whatever it touches and won't wash off. It's like the hot rod equivalent of a henna tattoo. In the fuel tank was some fuel. Bonus! God knows how long it's been in there, but I decanted it into a five-litre fuel can, found it was a strange brown colour like a very weak tea, but it smelled like petrol and there was nearly a gallon of it, so I wasn't going to waste it. I got a funnel and a filter (a bit of old T-shirt) and poured it into the Mustang's fuel tank. Job done. I removed the "filter" from the funnel and found it full of petrified insects. What kind of numbskull bell-end insect crawls into a fuel tank? What sort of food do they expect to find in there? I may pose the question to Springwatch in the hope that Kate Humble might show up to investigate, but knowing my luck I'd get Bill Oddie come round and gibber on about how this was the larvae of the endangered Four-Star Beetle and have a preservation order slapped on the bloody workshop.

I've now hit that point in my various ongoing projects where everything is waiting on everything else. The Mustang now has four uprated dampers and three lowering springs. I've got a bolt seized in the rear trailing arm so I can't change the fourth spring. As soon as I get chance, I'll head down to one of my mates' garages where there's compressed air and an impact wrench and try to free the bugger off, but if that doesn't work I shall have to cut the head and nut off the bolt. Then, with matching springs on the car I can finally get the tracking sorted. Note - local independent tyre place, "tracking, £28". Local ATS or Kwik Fit, "four-wheel laser alignment, £80". Well fuck my flat cap. Hmmm, but even though it's the latest space-age high-tech laser technology, it's still being operated by the sort of YTS knuckle-dragging grease-weasels who I wouldn't trust with any machinery more complex than a ring-pull can. And what's the point of four-wheel alignment on a car with a solid rear axle? If it does turn out that the back axle's on the piss, what are they going to do about it?

Still, once the tracking's been sorted, I can finally put the steering wheel on straight - I changed the rack and now the steering wheel's at 90-degrees in the straight ahead position, nicely obscuring both the speedo and the tacho. And then I can put my "new" wheels and tyres on. The ones with tread on, which can come in handy with all this snow about. Damned if I'm going to fit them now so that my out-of-alignment front end can scrub the tread off for me...

Likewise I've been dragging Mustang spares into the unit and stacking them up in front of Andy's Chevy. But now I've actually achieved gridlock, and having used all the available floor space in front of the Chevy I've started stacking it behind the Chevy. So I decided I needed some shelves. So I bought a whole bloody load of shelves off eBay, thinking I'll collect them with the CF beavertail. But they've been dismantled, and even with a country mile of ratchet straps I can't imagine I'd get home with anything like as much Dexion as I set off with, having just distributed it down a 30-mile stretch of the M6. I'd have the gippos following me like Hansel and bloody Gretel... But when I do get it home, I'll have to shovel out all the stuff I've just put behind the Chevy, then roll the Chevy out, then shovel out all the crap I've put in FRONT of the Chevy so I can drag in all the new shelves, build them back up, then put all the crap on the shelves... This quick tidy-up looks like taking at least two days.

Eugene