It all got pretty frantic - but for Neville, not so much me. We had both been pretty relaxed about the SVA date of October 31st and both felt that we would be OK. But suppliers can be a mixed blessing and poor old Neville got caught right in the middle............. I have rarely met anyone who can be so calm in a fire storm, especially since Catherine and I in delicious ignorance of what was to come pushed off for a 30th anniversary holiday. That story is all his and I'll leave it to him to tell the tale.
Neville's Tale:
TW3
The elder generation reading this may remember a satirical Saturday night program called that was the week that was…it was renamed TW3 for ease.. A fledgling Peter Cook and Dudley Moore often appeared; they went on to great comedy.. Something like the week leading up to the fury mot…
All had been going well with the SVA preparation. We had a few electrical gremlins to sort and most importantly needed to fit the screen and seat belts etc.
I spent quite a long time calculating the pulses per mile from the little gizmo id made, then tried to program the vapor speedo….
I gave up and phoned the Vapor company, reset the man said, I’ve tried I replied but it won’t. Press all three buttons he said…..it didn’t say that in the manual…..,it still didn’t work,….have you got it wired direct to the battery,? Wiring modded .., still wouldn’t calibrate, replace internal battery…what internal battery…remove dash remove speedo ,discover internal battery…flat… The local AA man arrived and had a new tiny battery on his van! Fantastic..Fit new battery replace in dash ,re affix dash board..Press all three buttons…nada..Phone firm ..Did you reset speedo by pressing little button grrrrrrrrr remove dash, remove speedo, and press reset. Replace dash … press all three buttons…nada…… grrrrrr phone firm didn’t I say disconnect from car battery… sorry…grrrrrrrr
Spent the next 2 hours going through calibration routine and finally got the sort of reading I was looking for.
Saturday morning..
Took Gloria out in the car for lunch turned on the sat nav to work as my mobile phone blue tooth thingy,,
Drove a couple of miles and uttered an expletive deletive…why didn’t I think of cross calibrating the vapor unit with my sat nav, well I thought if I had a windscreen to attach it too…..
Sunday
At Mallory Park with David Hall racing the Firenza
Monday
Waiting for the windscreen man to arrive… of course he didn’t and I spent some time removing the jubilee clips from the steering rack and modding the bonnet to clear the wings. Also Velcro’s and glued carpet over sharp edges. Finished the bonnet catches etc
Tuesday
After much phoning screen man arrives….2 hours later he departs… screen not fitted… you have to jig it up he said..What’s that I replied..You know jig it up… you could remove the body and bend it to fit the screen, I could get you another screen I could grind this one down ..I was losing my cool… it seemed an age but in the end I asked him politely to leave before I got annoyed…. There was a lot more to this but the 9 pm watershed may come into play…
Called another screen company but they couldn’t do it till the following week… called all the firms locally ,one in Guilford said bring it along.
I spent quite a time making up bits of 2 by 1 and pushed the screen aperture into the closest position for screen fitting. I then mixed up a large amount of glass reinforced resin stuff and squeezed this into the void under the screen frame and let it set overnight.
Wednesday am carefully removed my bits of wood one at a time and filled more void with glass fiber.
mid-day trailered the fury up to Guildford, can you leave it overnight…Ok says I ,dropped the trailer at the yard, picked up senior management and drove to Bath to get some MGB bits…another story…
Thursday morning took the package that arrived in the post ,which I assumed was seat belts into work (assumed ,makes an ass out of you and me)and hooked up the trailer, drove to Guildford and collected the car with screen fitted……yeeee haaaaaa.
Back to workshop and undid seat belt package, wrong… not seat belts but soft edging ..Phone seat belt firm..Seat belts with you this morning sir..Phone Glo no seat belts grrrrrr.
Glo phones at 11 seat belts here! Drive home collect seat belts, get to workshop open package.. Seat belt singular not plural..Grrrrr phone seat belt firm get one more to you next week sir..grrrr I politely explained the error of his ways and said id collect from Hastings later that day… must have worked coz he said it would be ready in an hour!…Carried on with other Fury jobs until about 2,when I said I was off to Hastings Chris, one of the other lads asked what for, I explained the situation and he said he’d get his wife to collect for me! But id still have to get to Brighton to collect from her…it’s a long story….Ok back to the workshop by 6pm,fit final belt and fit seat etc fit fire extinguisher and mirror, and a hundred other things… load up for Friday am
Friday am early start ,drive to SVA at Yeading… I’ll let Neil take over from here……Nev
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