Another day brightened up for people!

It always surprises me how few classic cars are actually out on the road. It was brought home when we took an MG TC and a frogeye sprite for their MoTs today. We usually get people doing a double take with just the one, two together almost had people walking into lamp posts etc before lots of waving and smiling.

Arrival at the MoT station almost caused work to completely stop at the adjoining units - our cars were far more interesting than the Mercs, Porsches and BMWs they were working on!

What more could you ask for sunshine, classic cars and smiling faces!

Tea - Mechanics must be healthy

I read an article today which said that drinking six cups of tea a day reduced the risk of heart disease by a third. Tea is the cup of choice for us at Radlett Classic Cars as well as most other mechanics and tea breaks are frequent in garages. Although I think this is generally because the tea goes cold before you actually get a chance to drink it. The caveat in the survey was that it was undertaken in Holland and they don't have much milk with their tea, therefore there is some discussion as to whether the British tea will reduce the heart disease risk or not. In the meantime I will continue to have my cups of tea with the occasional chocolate digestive......just in case there is some benefit!

Alternator trouble

Tried to do the alternator on the Jaguar today, what a pain, took ages to get it off. To make matters worse, when I took the alternator to get an exchange unit, they told me there had been a problem with the alternators on these jags and they had been modified to resolve the problem! They didn't have an exchange unit which had been modified but are trying to get one. Luckily the customer isn't in a hurry.

Car designers - why make it so difficult?

This week has seen a variety of work, Morris 1000 engine blown piston, Nissan Bluebird starter and Jaguar Sovereign V12 shock absorber and alternator.

The Jag was the hardest, we had to replace a rear shock absorber, the lower mount was fine but to get the upper bolt was a nightmare. I am sure the people that design these things set out to make them as difficult as they can. However we eventually managed to get the top mounting bolt out and removed the shocker assembly. We then stripped out the spring with the indispensable spring compressors and changed over the new shock absorber. Then the difficult bit putting it back on the car, the top bolt was just as difficult to put back as it was to take out! Having got the top mounting located we had to tackle the bottom one. This wasn't too bad once we got the lower pivot bolt in place.

If you are wondering why only one shock absorber was replaced when normally we would always replace them in pairs, after discussions with the client it was felt that as the Jag has 4 shocks on the back and this was the only one that had just started to leak it was decided to just replace this one.

Ah well roll on tomorrow.