Today was the day to visit Bayeux, obviously to see the tapestry, but also other delights which might present themselves. We started with a look at the cathedral. This was fairly interesting and the crypt contains some medieval paintings which Dad spent some time trying to photograph in the poor light where flash is not permitted. Moving on to the tapestry, the good news was that there wasn’t too much of a queue. The tapestry is well displayed – indeed
Normandy 2019 – Day 3
Today we intended to visit the zoo, but on the way there it rained heavily so we decided to visit Caen instead. Caen is a big city and Dad did quite a bit if hyperventilating as he tried to drive to the centre and park. In the end we found a central underground car park which wasn’t too expensive. Dad and Sophia started by heading for a large ruined church near the centre. Bizarrely, this was not only completely fenced
Normandy 2019 – Day 2
Today we had a bit of a lie in and then went over to have a look at the local town, Vire. Dad strongly approved of their parking policy which seemed to be the novel idea of having large free car parks in the middle of the town! After lunch – where Dad got into the swing of being in France by opting for Moule Mariniere – we had a look round. Unfortunately, the extensive town museum was closed for
Normandy 2019 – Day 1
The start of our summer holiday in Normandy. After depositing Gordon at the cat hotel we made our way to Poole to catch the ferry. There weren’t many passengers which made the advantage of our cabin rather less than it might have been, never the less it was handy having somewhere to retreat to and it also allowed us to keep the cool box plugged in to keep the sandwiches chilled. We ate on the ferry as we were intending
Fiesta lives for another year
I took the now repaired Fiesta back for another go at the MOT. Regular readers will recall that in addition to rear suspension bushes and a rusty brake pipe, it also failed the last test with truly awful emissions. The natural idle CO reading was 5.39% against a limit of 0.5%. With such a huge discrepancy I was seriously concerned that something very expensive had failed but I couldn’t see how since it had only drive 6 miles since the
Polyurethane rules!
Today I fitted my new polyurethane suspension bushes and it was ridiculously easy. Just as in the YouTube videos, all I had to do was bash them in with a lump hammer using a lump of wood to add some protection. Then the rubber mallet to drive home the steel tube in the centre. The supplied grease made this even easier and I found that I could push the bushes about 20% of the way in by hand! No more
Interference fit? Pah!
Time to try to fit the first of my suspension bushes and what a disaster it was! I understood from my Haynes manual that the bushes were something of an interference fit. I therefore bunged them and the freezer several days ago and today cut some scrap pieces of oak flooring to allow me to force them in with a G clamp. It was a complete none starter. Even with heating the mounting hole with my blow lamp and applying
Removing the first bush
Today I made a start on fixing the rear suspension bushes on my Fiesta. I spent a long time (and nearly all my bricks) raising the back of the car and unbolting the suspension trailing arms. The near side wasn’t too difficult, but on the offside a found that I couldn’t remove the trailing arm support bolt because the exhaust was in the way. In the end I had to unbolt the suspension support bracket from the bottom of the
Good God, its failed again!
Took the Fiesta back for another go at the MoT. I was quite confident, as I had fixed the three failures from last time (tyres, disks and number plate) and since I can’t drive it it had only done about 6 miles and spent all its time in the garage. But, of course it failed again. It appears I got a different inspector and he took a different view of the car’s shortcomings! The failings were: Rear axle bushes. OSF
I feel a fool!
Today, finally, after weeks of work trips, holidays and being ill I found the time to try and diagnose the fault with the Fiesta which – you will recall – failed to start after I replaced the number plate!! I was expecting to have a long task to locate the problem and read sections of the Haynes manual about checking such things as the coil and the fuel injectors. One key test mentioned was to check that the fuel pump