I had a bit of a scare last weekend.  When I went to try to start the car for the first time I discovered that the lock on the garage door had been smashed in with a brick in an attempt to get into the garage.  It scared the living daylights out of me because I would be so devastated if the car was stolen, it has been ten years of my life.  Anyway, I made some effort to make the garage more robust and this took pretty much all of Saturday morning.  I did try and start the car again having checked the basics in line with some suggestions I had received on the AHExp website but I had no luck.

That night, ie Saturday night, I had a few beers and a good meal before retiring to the sofa and a session of surfing.  Now I thought I should go back to basics and one of the basics I considered was that the very front cylinder wasn't actually number 1 cylinder and so I went surfing for details on that.  It was quite late when I came across a post that mentioned that they had been an idiot and assumed that he distributor rotated clockwise when it didn't.  I had done that too, I was an idiot as well.  I said to my wife that I think I may have put the spark plug pleads on in the wrong order and she asked if that was a long job to change.  I said it wasn't so she replied that we should go and try it now, so we did.

I have got to say that my weekend has been heaven sent ever since we visited the garage very late last night.

Today I bent the exhaust around to make it fit properly and secured it to the car.  I tried the engine again and without the smoke it certainly looked better but was raving very high.  I adjusted the throttle stops, took the choke off and moved the distributor around and got it running much better.

I then fitted the clutch lever and tried the gearbox and clutch out.

Boy, am I a happy man.

I have a few little issues that have serviced.  The ignition light doesn't work but the alternator is charging.  The fuel gauge doesn't work and neither does the overdrive.  I am not remotely surprised that the overdrive doesn't work but I am not going to worry about that now.  All in all it has been a great couple of days.  The engine is running really well and the clutch / gearbox working; it is all too much.

Oh, and I finished the weekend off by watch Spurs win this afternoon.  Pinch me, I might be dreaming.