One job I did do was
change the plugs and leads on the Lexus. Here's a step-by-step guide
on doing the job.
1: Don't
2: Pay some other fool
to do it
3: Stand behind him and
watch him like a hawk because after the first hour he'll be
thoroughly pissed off and looking for any excuse he can find to blow
the job out. You may need a sharp stick.
It's amazing how well
they can hide such a basic service item. In one or two cases, you
have to remove the covers concealing the covers you need to remove.
Then you find that, for no adequately explicable reason, there's a
four-terminal cam-driven distributor on the front of each bank,
although two of the leads from each go to cylinders on the opposing
bank through a complicated little conduit which is the size of four
ignition leads plus 0.001”. Then you find that the plugs live at
the bottom of a long tube going down between the cams, so after
you've undone the first plug, you realise that your spark plug socket
hasn't got one of those little rubber collars inside that grips the
plug so you can lift it out. So you spend half an hour hunting around
until you find a plug socket that has one, and take the old plug out, and put the new one
in. That's when you find that the effort required to pull the socket off the plug is greater than the effort required to
pull the bastard extension bar out of the plug socket. That, and the
fact that the plugs are made of gold-plated Kryptonite and the leads knitted from
the pubic hair of unicorns... which is the only way you could explain
how much they cost. At least the car runs better.
January has one high
point, at least – Autosport International at the NEC – though
this year's high point for the NEC was £12 to park your damn car and
tickets in the region of £30.
It wasn't a bad do, and you did get to see cars like this mid-Seventies Hesketh beauty above, sponsored by a jazz-mag and spliff-paper manufacturers. Ah, those were the days.
There was this '85 Metro 6R4 in the auction, a genuine ex-Rothmans team car, that had an estimate of £85-95k. I don't know if it sold and for how much, because Coys haven't yet published the results. Slack-sided bastards.
Then there was a real blast from my past, a genuine ex-DTV works Chevette HSR driven by Russell Brookes! That really took me back. The estimate on that was over £70,000.
This Anglia was a bit special, but I don't know whether it was six figures-worth of special...
Bloody hell, another 6R4... they're as common as muck.
These two ladies were promoting the latest group of people who are trying to sell NASCAR experiences at Rockingham Raceway (because Richard Petty and Rusty Wallace tried and failed, but somehow this new shower think they're going to succeed. Well, come on now, that money isn't going to launder itself...). Every time anyone pointed a camera towards them, the lady on the right of the picture stuck her not inconsiderable chest out at Mach 2, prompting James to suggest that she certainly knew how to best utilise her 'gifts'. Gifts, my arse; I bet she's framed the invoice.
Star of the show was, predictably, Mark Todd's Topspeed Street Eliminator GTO on the Serck Motorsport stand, but otherwise I was pretty underwhelmed by the whole event. It's getting to be a bit samey, and the number of American companies exhibiting in the "engineering" section has dwindled to pretty much bugger-all. Hey-ho, it's a day out, but we were ready to go home before 4pm.
There's another beacon
on the horizon – the NSCC AGM in Blackpool on the 20th.
Doubtless there will be much profound discourse with the gravitas
appropriate to the occasion. Or not. Either way, the AGM bit starts
at 1pm, there's a sit-down dinner with cutlery and everything, and
then there's the prizegiving and Tat Auction and all the other fun
stuff. If you're coming along, you need to book your dinner as soon
as possible – you need to be booked and paid by Friday 12th. Oh... hold on... that's now. The details are all on the Facebook page.
It should be a lot of
fun. See you there. Soon be spring.
