24th August 2008
Time for a bit of work on the car. I am off on tour to Scotland again in a couple of weeks time, so whilst there is nothing major to be done to the car at the moment, it is sensible to give a reasonable check over. I deliberately held off from doing anything to the car after the last car, for reasons which will perhaps become clear at a later date.
So, with the aim of a good check over of the car, I started off by spending an hour tidying up in the garage! Then got the car up in the air so that I can get at it. At this point, I got distracted helping Richard swapping the diff in his Dax, so that was the end of the mornings progress.

Later on, I spent a couple of hours, starting at the back, giving everything an eyeball and spanner check, working from the back towards the front of the car. I'm pleased to report that I didn't find anything untoward. The only issue I have is that the tyres are looking a bit marginal now - there is maybe just about 3mm left at the centre of the tyre (they always seem to wear this way, despite running pretty low tyre pressures to try to overcome it), which is probably fine for about 1000 miles, but we are probably doing nearer double that. For the sake of minimal hassle/risk, I will swap them.

25th August 2008
A bit more fiddling. First job was to give the wheels a bit of a clean up as they are all off the car, and whilst they will get pretty mucky again soon, it will at least prevent some of the muck whilst manhandling them around getting the tyres done.
Then I finished off checking over the front end of the car, again not finding anything out of order, which is good. I did however decide, as I had time, to bleed the clutch as the fluid was looking slightly murky again (I think this is due to the pipe linking the reservoir to the master cylinder). This is a simple enough job, though a bit of a pfaff due to the small size of the fluid reservoir.
Another little job which needed doing was to re-attach a couple of loom ties to the inside of the nosecone, which hold the connectors for the front indicators in a more convenient location. And with that, I was able to put the car back together again, replacing the bootbox and tunnel covers which had been pulled out for access.
So, pretty much there, just got to get some tyres sorted out by the weekend, oh and I noticed that I need to bump my mileage limit up on my insurance to cover the tour. It is a bit unusual to be so prepared so early - I should be able get the car packed up next weekend ready to go!
     

31st August 2008
Hmmm, famous last words about being all ready in advance...
First job was to give the car a quick clean. I've not cleaned it since it last came back from tour, and after driving through a swarm of bees a while ago, it was overdue removal of the sticky critters. May as well have a clean start even if it is going to get mucky again quite quickly.

After that I spent a little time making up what can loosely be termed a headrest. This is just something to absorb the vibration from the engine resonating in my crash helmet when I rest my head on the motorway. A little something which will hopefully make life a little more comfortable on the forthcoming trip!
Another little job was that I noticed that both headlights were looking a little cloudy on the inside, so I took them apart and gave them a quick clean up, which made a good difference.
     
After this, I was planning to spend the rest of the day getting the car and tools all packed up and ready to head off on tour on Thursday. However, I should have known that I would never be ready so early for a tour, it's never happened before, and is usually a last minute rush to do something.
So for some reason, I decided now was a good time to start to investigate a problem I have been having with my tacho. Some time ago the tacho developed a habit of being really quite twitchy and jumping around under acceleration, but only for the first 15 minutes or so of driving. A bit strange really.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was essentially concerned that it was a symptom of something more serious, usually in the case of bike engines, a problem with the regulator/rectifier unit. So I checked the charging of the battery, and that all appeared to be behaving fairly normally. I then spent the entire afternoon swapping bits around and trying different things with it, to no real avail. The only conclusion I could reach was that it really is a faulty gauge, but that is difficult to test.

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