Fitting the CB

* With thanks to my wonderful boyfriend, Tom, for doing most of the work here while I made dinner! *

Just we did like in Scarlett, we decided to fit a CB radio into Poppy. It was fairly easy with Scarlett so we thought it'd be just the same this time 'round. How wrong we were...

Unlike in the Mk2, the MK1 radio mount is fiddly and in an extra hole in the boot so, while swapping the aerials round wasn't too bad (just watch your paintwork!), screwing the aerial cable on to the base of the aerial was a bloody nightmare. In the end, my little fingers came in handy in doing this bit but it still took us a good 15 minutes!

That done, we attempted to remove the radio/clock cubby and radio to have a look behind and swap in the CB etc. Sounds simple, right? Yeah...or not. Firstly, whoever had the car previously and fitted the remote locking had glued the clock cubby back in and that was, frankly, just a state. Secondly, as photos to be uploaded soon will show, we got the clock out and...wow. Well, I've never seen wires THAT messy. Tom was pretty worried about the safety, too. There was a ridiculously long, curled up, cable in the space too - I'd found a disconnected end of a cable in the boot that didn't seem to go anywhere after my MOT anyhow and we'd not been able to work out what it did. It did, it seems, nothing as it connected to the metre of cabling behind the radio that ended in yet another unconnected connecter. Er, what? Tom reckons it was once a CD changer but was now a complete waste of good space. Took the wire cutters to it, anyhow, and successfully removed 2 metres of utterly pointless cable. Weight and space saving too!

The black box confused us for a while - transpires that's the immobiliser. For anyone wondering, it seems that disconnecting the immobiliser from its cabling to fiddle around behind the radio is perfectly safe and the car will still start after! Nonetheless, with that in the way, the CB was never going to go in so I left Tom trying to move all that to the back in the spaces while I got on with dinner.

A little later, when I wandered outside to check, it transpired that the radio was pretty much jammed in, too, so we spent 10 minutes or so fiddling around with screwdrivers trying to press down the metal spokes on the side to get that out - eventual success (though putting it back in later was as much of a hassle again!). It also transpired, with all these bits out and the wiring tidied a little (Tom wants to put some real work into that but last night wasn't the time and we didn't have all the equipment we needed), that my CB has the aerial cable coming straight out of the middle. This is fine. Except that my car has a metal brace straight down the middle of the radio slot - that's going to need a bloody big hole drilled in it! CB doesn't quite fill up the hole either, although, admittedly, neither did the clock cubby: I suspect that this was why it had been glued in.

Not to worry - we still need to order a new Mic for mine as we only had one lying around the house. Possibly with a couple of adjustable/angled aerial mounts - both on the MX-5s are off at a slightly jaunty angle! So...lots to do, but we're getting there :-) Having a CB in the car should be a laugh, especially as Tom and I are planning a cross-Europe road trip in September with both cars and a couple of friends. Fun fun!

Powered by Badgers...

So, Poppy is now powered by Badgers. As it happens, Tom doesn't believe in Badgers (whole different story...) so, when I saw Badger stickers at Hippy Motors, I just had to get some for my car!


Apparently, her name is Andrea the Rocket Badger. She's rather loud. My car is not.
I may have also found a cute spider (his name is Boris)...

Fixed!

After last week, when I wrote about Poppy's MOT fail, it became pretty clear that she needed some work on her. Admittedly, this was mostly because the MOT tester told me so...but nonetheless it made me realise that I hadn't been giving her enough love of late. I said before that I have two loves in my life - Tom and Poppy. Of late, only one has had the attention they deserve! That won't change but we will both be spending some more time with my car, I think.

So, she got her coil springs, shock boot and track rod end boots done last week, plus MOT retest, for a total of £345. Not as cheap as I'd hoped but there we go. Needs must. Tom wasn't up for doing the coil springs and I have no idea where to start (we will learn for Bluey's sake but I needed my car back asap!) so bit the bullet and paid a very friendly mechanic in Newbury, Carl Day, to do it all for me. £345 all in could have been a hell of a lot worse. After all, he doesn't make enough to charge VAT, which brought the price down! It was all done at Dallas Autos in Newbury.

So, on Friday evening, I heard that she was all done and MOT'd, and we picked her up on Saturday morning. She's sitting a lot better now and is a much happier car. I was just happy to have her back after 5 days of not driving!




By the by, Tom brought me a "stress ball" style ninja back from InfoSec last week. Frickin' awesome! *sneaks in a ninja-y way*

(I suck at sneaking. Seriously)

It was all going so well...

So, yesterday,  Poppy went in for her MOT. I wasn't massively hopeful as she does have a crack in her windscreen (oh, ok, two!) but I wasn't expecting how badly she was going to fail.

It transpires that she has a cracked rear coil spring, so really needs both of those doing, as well as the boots on both track rod ends and the o/s front upper suspension boot being dead. Not ideal and three fails on the MOT, not including a whole host of corrosion-related advisories (hey, she's 23 yrs old, what can you expect?). So she's going in to be fixed by a nice local mechanic on Friday (MOT runs out tomorrow) before a retest. Poor little lamb!

Poppy's curious structural integrity aside, it's a bit of a blow to the bank balance - £345 in total inc. parts and labour, which is a damn sight better than the £700 quoted by another mechanic, but nonetheless not ideal. Oh well, at least that'll be coil springs and boots done for a few years I suppose :-)

Poppy isn't noisy, honest...

Just a quick one for today but I had to document today's entertainment.

I was in town this morning for an interview (of sorts) and, on returning to the car in a rather large, busy car park, I started my engine. Suddenly, I heard one hell of a wailing and just could not work out what was going on. Then it clicked. The car parked next to me had its alarm going off. Why? Because the physical *noise* of Poppy's engine starting was enough to make it think someone was breaking in. Oh good god! I giggled and drove off before anyone could accuse me of trying to break into it or anything.

I guess I can't deny that my car is a LITTLE bit loud, now... :-)

Continental adventures

Last weekend, the lovely Tom and I took his little '5, Scarlett, to Europe. We were considering taking Poppy but I'm such an utter wimp when it comes to driving abroad (well, never done it...) so, er, yes. Probably should have done, in hindsight, as Tom had to do all the driving. We could have shared it in Poppy at least! Oh well, next time for sure.

Anyway, we got the ferry to Calais, stayed there on the Friday night, drove to Breendonk (concentration camp) and then, via the Netherlands for a quick geocache, on to Bruges for Saturday/Sunday. It was utterly wonderful - we got to see some beautiful parts of the world, picked up some cool bits and bobs, got caches in three countries and just generally had lots of fun. Tom had a great time too :-)

As it transpires, MX-5 boots make brilliant tables for on-the-go French bread & cheese lunches. Yum!

A very productive Sunday

Yesterday, the 1st of April, we woke up not quite as early as planned (I think I only got up just after 10 - oops!) to a sunny, chilly day. Perfect for some lid-down working on Bluey, the new race car ( ), which we did. And very successfully too! Now, on stripping Bluey's doors down - taking the handles and door cards off, in order to put some silicone grease down into the runners to get the electric windows to stop squeaking, I suddenly realised that Poppy had a similar issue. So, once the doors were duly rebuilt as was, albeit with the addition of lots of grease, I went over to poppy to do exactly the same thing. If you need to do the same, due to squeaky or slow windows, you'll need: a flat headed screwdriver, a Phillips screwdriver and some silicone grease. Firstly, remove the little cap at the end of the armrest handle and unscrew the screw inside. Unscrew the two below the handle and remove the whole armrest and handle. Don't lose the screws! Remove the screw that's just by the latch, pull up the handle as if to open the door and slip the back part of it off. Prise off the speaker cover and set aside. You'll then need the flat headed screwdriver in order to slip round the edge of the door card and pop out the little poppers that attach it to the door. Be careful not to break them. Once these are off, the door card can be removed by lifting it off the top lip of the door and setting it aside. Wind the window down. Spray silicone grease down the inside of the runners (use lots) and down the edge of the window seal. Wind the window up and then down again and repeat. Now wind it up and down a couple more times to make sure it's running smoothly. If not, add more grease to the runners and the wheel in between them. Once complete, replace the door card and handles etc. Easy peasy :-) and good fun too. Car maintenance has been more than I'd hoped for so far!