14th May 2003
Before I start, an apology for the lack of pictures in this section, it will become clear why I didn't get chance to take many... those that I did take are still in the camera, so I'll hopefully be able to update it later.

A slightly leisurely start for me today, but still plenty to do to get everything packed up, and packed into the car. As ever, this takes longer than I anticipated, but by 11am I am ready to go. I swap the cars over, push the Westfield out onto the drive and tuck the Fiat away in the garage - and the heavens open as soon as I walk out of the door to get into the car! Typical. It's obviously a passing shower so I take shelter, but can't do anything about the car and everything in it getting a good soaking. Then I'm off.
I have a fairly uneventful journey over to Birmingham. I decided to take an A and B roads route rather than the motorway, as it's a little less dull when there are junctions and gearchanges to do. Fortunately I don't hit any other showers along the way other than a very brief hailstorm, but I'm helmetted up anyway, so it's no problem. Of course when I cut through the city centre, I am getting some slightly strange looks, but it's all good fun!
In the afternoon I make a quick visit to the Westfield factory, to show them the car, have a bit of a natter, and ask a few questions.

15th May 2003
Next morning is another fairly gentle start, as my first rendezvous is only an hour down the road at Hoops parents house near Much Wenlock. The weather looks much nicer today and forecast looks ok for this side of the water, but I think we can expect rain later. So I have a great run over to Wenlock in the sunshine on some good roads that I know vaguely well.
After a couple of hours of loitering at Hoops (when I arrived he and Emma were just putting the sump back onto the car they were taking on tour!), we all headed off for the run out through Wales to Holyhead. There were about 10 cars, so we split into a few smaller groups. The rest of the afternoon run was quite good, the roads were fairly clear, and the weather held off. We made it to the ferry port in good time despite having a few stops for technical hitches on a couple of the cars.
A short wait and we were loaded onto the HSS ferry and departed for Ireland. The trip is quite short at 90 minutes, which was just time for a bit of a rest before off loading and facing a further couple of hours driving on the other side to reach our hotel.
As we came into port in Dun Loaghaire we could see it was raining fairly gently but steadily, so it was a mad rush to get the waterproofs, and helmet on, and everything sealed up before we got off the ferry. I think I was the last one away from the port, and into the traffic trying to find our way to the main ring road around Dublin. This proved to be a bit tricky as the signage is not great, and the rain doesn't help. After a while I seemed to have hooked up with RobG, and we hoped we were heading in the right direction, then we bumped into some locals whilst looking a bit lost who offered to guide us onto the ring road.
Once on the ring road it was a straight forward run around Dublin, then north to Dundalk... but the heavens opened! So it ended up being a bit of a nightmare journey, the majority of which I ended up driving solo as I lost touch with Rob along the way. I was very glad to reach the hotel (at about 11pm), as visibility had become approximately zero through my visor, and I was fairly well soaked. However I had learned that GoreTex really does keep you dry, so I got away with just wet gloves/hands (my gaffa taping up around the scuttle had worked a treat and my feet were dry!). Just time for a quick beer before heading for some rest...

16th May 2003
The advantage of the longer drive after the ferry yesterday is that we only have a sort drive this morning to Belfast, to the start of the tour proper. So we set off at around 10.30am, on the hour or so trip up to Belfast. The weather has improved a bit before we set off, so even though it's rained all night as is wet, it's not actually raining when I go out to the car. I uncover the car, and am pleased that the cover seems to have done a fine job of keeping the rain out. I also decide that given the forecast is for plenty more rain, that I will make up a half door from some thick plastic sheeting I bought (just in case!) and gaffa tape it to the bodywork of the car.
As we arrive in Belfast, it starts to rain again, and the scene at the castle is not the most organised - there isn't really enough parking for all the cars, and there is wedding taking place soon, so there is plenty going on. I cover the car up and head in out of the rain, for lunch and the pre-tour briefing.
After lunch we head out on the first leg of the tour, which will take us out from Belfast on the coastal road, following the road all the way around to our first overnight stop at Limavady near Londonderry. The first roads we run on are pretty good, I could imagine that this route would be fantastic given nice weather. However we are getting fairly well rained on, not heavy rain, but fairly persistent all the same.
We catch up with the whole group who are assembled in a car park just before Tor Head. We are to be lead over this section of the route as it is mostly single track, and VERY twisty. To be honest I could easily have given this section of the route a miss, since although again fantastic roads given the right conditions, the view was not visible, and the roads pretty difficult with minimal visibility at times.
A little further on into the route and we arrived at the end of the next section - The Giants Causeway. I was very ready for a break from driving at this point, but I was not ready for the stunning experience of the causeway, and the gap in the weather we had while we were here was perfectly timed. It was a short walk from the car park down to the causeway, and I was probably the last person to go down there, and went alone, but was amazed at the countryside. At one point I stood still and could hear nothing - perfect. Anyway, I could rant on for ages about what a great experience I found the causeway, but I'll spare you - the only downside to it was that it is a little touristy and obviously there were other people around. I managed to extract the camera at this point, so hopefully some of my pictures will show the beauty of the place.
In the small group I had been driving with, we decided that we didn't fancy the rest of the route (visiting a big beach to perform donuts!), and that we would head via a more direct route to the hotel to dry out and relax, rather than turn up really late and feeled rushed again.
This evening was the first real time to socialise with everyone else, so dinner and drinks were most welcome after the days driving, and much friendly banter ensued late into the night...

17th May 2003
Morning at Limavady started dry, but rain was again forecast as the day progressed. An fairly early for this, the longest leg of the tour, at something in the region of 300 miles which will be in the order of 8-10 hours in the driving seat!
Things started badly when we managed to take a wrong turn out of the hotel! Special congratulations to our navigators for that one! : ) The first part of the route today took us on main roads back across the border into Southern Ireland - and you really do notice the roads (as well as roadside things like petrol stations, road signs etc) change as you cross the border. Once off the main routes, the road became progressively worse, which was a real shame as they would have been a complete hoot if only they had a decent surface. I was starting to find the battering pretty tough going, and the driving requiring alot of concentration and effort - we reached a mid morning break where the road dropped down some lovely (smooth) hairpins to a beach car park.
It was at this point that Hoop murmered the immortal words 'is your exhaust supposed to look like that?' ! I knew as soon as he said it that meant that the exhaust mount had broken, and my heart sank a little. Fortunately I had half predicted the failure and so it was a simple enough task to swap the broken strap around the can (it had sheared clean through!) for the spare I was carrying, and we were soon enough back on our way, but I wasn't sure how long before the replacement suffered the same fate.
By the time we reached our lunch break at ? , we were all feeling the effects of the difficult driving conditions, and the rain has returned a little for measure. But there were no shortcuts available to us today, so we had to press on to try and make up some time on the rest of the cars - there were some main road routes we could pick up on a little later on. I took advantage of the lunch break to click the adjusters down on my shock absorbers to full soft, which made life noticably a bit easier.
As we headed out on the afternoon run, after a short while I noticed (as I had rotated the passenger mirror to keep an eye on it) that the replacement exhaust strap had suffered the same fate as the first one. A short distance crawling at low speed and I found somewhere to pull over - unfortunately I'd only got the one spare strap, so now it's time to bodge it properly. Fortunately Dave Walker was soon along with some big chunky tie-wraps, and we were able to use these and some smaller ones I was carrying to hold the broken strap in position. It seemed like this would hold up better than a replacement strap, so I was a bit happier once we were back under way.
It was a long and pretty uneventful drive for the rest of the afternoon. We cut out some of the twisty sections of the route again, in a bid to get to the hotel without being too late, which was a bit of a shame but given the problems I had had with the exhaust and the state of the roads and weather, I was quite happy to get back in one piece and have some time to relax.
Upon our arrival in the town of Westport, we were mobbed in traffic by the local kids, who were all too keen to jump in the car for a ride and ask a million questions about which car was best! I was all too keen to get the car parked and covered up for the night, find the nearest shower, and have a drink!

18th May 2003
Sunday was an optional day since we were staying at the same hotel for two nights running, so there was no absolute need to be out on the move. Quite a few people used the morning to fettle cars, sorting out problems which had been incurred on the previous days driving (like cracked sumps!). I did the same, spending an hour or so dodging the heavy showers to have another go at securing the exhaust (by replacing the rubber with a bolt to stop it wobbling around so much), sorting out the headlight which has been gently filling with water, and giving the car a general check over.
I was not particularly fussed about driving today, given that tomorrow would see another long run back to the ferry and across the water towards home. So a few of us decided to head down into the town to find some lunch, with a view to go out for a blat for a couple of hours later on.
So after lunch a few of us set out on an exploratory drive of the local roads. I had Craig with me for a bike engined passenger experience on this run. Unfortunately shortly after we set out, the heavens opened in some style, and Craig was getting a serious soaking. A small misunderstanding on his hand signals saw us pulled over at the side of the road (I was a bit worried about him getting really wet!), and we decided that it looked particularly grim up ahead so turned back. This was a real shame as the road we were on was pretty good, but it wasn't really worth a complete soaking, so again the weather got us beat.
So all in a pretty uneventful day (apart from the support truck tail lift breaking with a car balanced on it!), but I was fairly glad of it being quite restful, as it's nice to take a bit of time out from all the driving sometimes. And it left plenty of time to have a great evening of eating, drinking, wibbling...

19th May 2003
The final day of the weekend tour started out nice and dry, and the forecast didn't appear to be too bad. So we got the cars fully loaded up and ready for run across to the ferry at Dublin. We had chosen a mostly main road straight run there, which turned out to be pretty wise. Everything seemed to be going pretty well, and had settled into a happy pace.
We stopped for a comfort break at a fuel station in the middle of somewhere / nowhere, and during the discussion some of us commented on how Craigs car seemed to be bottoming out a little more than normal and looked to be riding particularly lower on one side than the other. So he jacked it up to have a look, and discovered a rather unhealthily cracked deDion tube! This meant that he would have to limp on, and hope that it did not fail completely, and hopefully we could get him onto the ferry and recovered once back in the UK. So we shuffled passengers and bags to lighten the load on the car as much as possible, and had to take a slower pace.
The advantage of the route we had chosen was that the roads were actually in pretty good condition, so Craig was somehow able to maintain a decent pace on these roads. As we got to the Dublin ring road, the heavens opened in some serious style, and another real soaking was the order of the day. Anyway, made it to the ferry in reasonable time, about 45 minutes before departure.
The crossing saw some pretty grim weather and I was not much looking forward to the three hour journey I had on the other side. There was much debate as to which route to take, and it turned out that Adam and I were the only ones who were going to go for the A5 route through central Wales. We were expecting bad weather, and the skies looked pretty threatening as we left Holyhead.
However, by some miracle, we had a pretty clear run through Wales - it did not actually rain although the roads were quite wet. We seemed to be following the rain, or running just behind it. In the end we had a great run through Wales, it was really good fun! The roads were virtually empty and any traffic was pretty dismissable despite wet roads.
I got back the Halesowen at about 9.30pm, meaning I had made the run through from Holyhead in something like 2.5 hours which is pretty damn good. I was soon flaked out and asleep though!

20th May 2003
My adventure had had a couple of days tagged on each end to allow me to split the journey up a bit, with an over night stop in each direction at the parents. So today was the final leg of my tour, from Birmingham back to Cambridge, which was all very uneventful and only took a couple hours blast along the M6 and A14.
I was quite glad to be home, and took a couple of hours to unpack the car and start getting everything dried out - even all my tools and spares were soaking wet, but I guess that is to be expected given the conditions I have been driving in for the last week! The car is looking pretty filthy, and is definitely now looking like it has seen a bit of action. It will have to have a thorough clean again at the weekend, but for it's pushed into the garage and emptied.
However, it's rest is pretty shortlived, as it is the Cambridge Area L7CGB meeting tonight, and it is Rachaels birthday (and first chance to drive the 7 on the road!) so Craig and I had promised to make a post-tour appearance. Craig had been recovered by RAC from Holyhead, so got a lift with me in the 'tour spec' MegaBird! It even stayed dry all evening for us : )

25th May 2003
Having had a few days to recover, it was time to face up to the task of giving the car a thorough cleaning. This took some time as you can possibly imagine, as I needed to clean the dirt that had been driven into every nook and cranny of the car. I also gave the car a good check over to make sure everything was still intact from the 1300 miles of abuse it had received last week - I was very pleased with the way the car has held together, the only real problem being the exhaust breakages.
So I took some time to effect another, better bodge on the exhaust until I find the time to fix it properly and permanently. So I made another new strap to fit around the can, and reverted to the previous fix of rigidly mounting the exhaust using a bolt through a bit of fuel pipe.
Another thing which I had noticed on tour was that I was not really achieveing much oil temperature on the oil entering the engine (measured at bottom of the oil tank). So I have been pondering the value of fitting an oil thermostat arrangement, but for some cheap experimentation I decided that I would blank off the oil cooler and see what difference that makes.
An exploratory test drive confirms sees the oil temperature running at a generally more pleasing 80c (rather than the 50-60c I was seeing on LtL), though it has caused the water temperature to run a little higher now easily reaching 90c, but it seems to be ok when running and the fan is still able to keep it below 100c even in traffic.

30th May 2003
Not been using the car alot since Ireland, when I have used I have been experiencing the problem I had before with the steering going sticky when the temperatures get really hot. I didn't see this problem at all on Ireland, but I guess things never got that warm, whereas now we have some nice weather and traffic, so the under bonnet temperatures must be a little higher. Having spoken to Westfield about the problem it seems the only way to track it down is to get it really hot until the problem shows up, then dismantle it steering to try to work out which bit is the cause.
So I head out and get everything really hot by driving around town. Soon enough the steering goes sticky, so I head home asap to dismantle it. I leave it all running hot and keep the bonnet on as long as possible to keep the temperatures up. Then it's quickly jack the front of the car up, and disassemble to the upper and lower column. This will allow me to determine whether it is the rack, or the bushes in the upper column. I soon discover it is the latter.
So at least I have a diagnosis now, and decide that the first course of action to solving it is to pull the inner part of the upper column out of the outer part. Fortunately this can be done just by pulling the steering wheel end and sliding it right out, rather than having to remove the dash to extract the whole of the upper column. With this out, I can clean the column and the bushes at the top and bottom of the outer. I clean the old grease off and then a VERY light sandpaper to ensure they are super clean, but hopefully without introducing any play.
A liberal application of grease to both parts, and then it's a simple job to put it all back together. At this point I realise that in the rush to get it apart whilst hot, I forgot to mark where the straight ahead position is, so have to guess the orientation of steering wheel to the front wheels.
Whilst I am on in the garage, I have decided that I will try reducing the amount of oil cooler which is covered up, going to covering half of it. Hopefully this will still give enough oil temperature whilst also helping to keep the coolant temperatures in check, which are a fraction high when not moving.
Also for a bit of paranoia relief, I have got hold of a large jubilee clip which I am going to use as an oil filter lock. The clip will be gently clamped around the filter and wedged against a bit of engine block - this will stop the oil filter from undoing itself which is not entirely unknown on the bike engines due to the vibrations caused by the high revs.

31st May 2003
A day out to play today. A few of us are heading over to Towcester to meet up with some people from the BlatChat forum.
It's a gloriously warm and sunny day, so a good coating of suncream has to be applied before heading out. The downside is that it is keeping the engine temperatures a little on the warm side, but then I am being extra sensitive to them at the moment due to the fiddlings with the oil cooler.
Anyway, a nice day was had by all, and it was good to catch up and meet with some friends and have a good drive to boot. When I got home I realised a downside of aeroscreens - the all the road muck and dust which gets kicked up was all stuck to the suncream I had to apply - I was well grimy!

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