Yup, you guessed it, sunstrip has returned. This is mark 2 of the sunstrip created by a company on eBay at half the price of the original guy and made by simply looking at a picture of the last one to create the perfect colour and font match.
Good work to the guys at JandDgraphics, if you need a sunstrip tell them what you're thinking and they can do it. The ones they list as examples are for the mass markets such as Vauxhall or Playboy (I believe that there must be some law stating if you have a playboy sticker on your car, you must be a minger - the ones I've seen that applies to). They do custom ones as well at no extra price and they are good quality and fast delivery. Tell them you saw them on here.
That arrived this morning so got put on straight away. I don't like the idea of Juliette missing bits (although right now theres a lot of her not actually attached, just filling up the inside of the car).
I'm going to work through the next set of bits in the order they happened for a change and rather than relying on memory, I made the sensible decision to photo most things as they happened so here goes:
The fire extinguisher has been mounted to the passenger seat as it seemed the best place for it to go - easily reached should the need arise. As is usual with the car and plans, it didnt go entirely as intended in that the screws supplied with the mounting bracket weren't actually supplied but I have a spare few in the shed so easily fixed. The one downside that I can put with the placement is that the screws that I decided to opt for are a little longer than ideal and the side bolster of the seat isnt that thick. What this translates to is whoever happens to be in the passenger seat will be stabbed by a screw every time we hit a bump in the road. On the up-side, I think I'm doing most of the driving so that leaves Gruff maimed more than me.
CB radio was another one of the headaches we were facing as it's too big to go on the dash but needs to be easily reached. My first thought was to mount it to the gloveboxwith a couple of bolts but when we come to get rid of her, the Escort will look shite with bloody great holes through it. Happily, in my shed of various left over bits from previous DIY, I had loads of cable ties. Linked a few together, removed the glovebox, lashed the CB frame to it, and replaced it and it seems to be holding up ok at the moment. Havent got round to wiring it up yet, but seems stable.
Five star print... Remember them? yup. Well the day after they received my email regarding their abilities to print a simple sticker they went a bit overkill. We now have 8 of the buggers (albeit correct). Nice of them to correct the cock up, but would have been even nicer if they hadn't made an arse out of their original attempt.
Whats missing from this picture? Thats right - the seat base. After a lot of swearing and a little blood loss, the seat finally came out. This now frees up some much needed space and seems simple enough to replace when we come to sadly part with Juliette if the next owners want seats.
The gear knob was buggered when we got the car and we decided that it needed replacing at some point. During one of my eBay moments I stumbled across the guy who supplied this one. The retro "8" ball look was tempting but this chap will do any pool ball for any car (theres different size threads, depths & mounts - not just put a hole in it you know). The purple 4 spot billiard ball was the obvious candidate. I paid, emailed him my choice and mentioned this blog in case he wanted to see where his creation would end up. The man is unbelievable. He mailed me back a day later to say he had refunded my paypal payment. Not because he couldnt supply it but because he had read the blog he wanted us to have it free. He did advise me that my charity blagging skills were a bit shit but nonetheless, he even paid postage and listing fees so it cost him to be this kind.
If you want an interesting present look at http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Epsilon-Alpha-Gifts. The guy is pretty cool, follow the links through his eBay profile and it'll take you to his website. Take a look, tell him I sent ya.
As we were going to pay for the gear knob we put the money straight onto the just giving page so effectively he's put £8 into the kitty.
Everything seemed to be going so well that something had to give. well I wandered out the back to have a smoke and stumbled upon that sight. Puddles forming under the car. Never a wonderful thing to view. Water stretched under the decking so no telling how bad this was going to be. After a few minutes of abject panic and looking under the bonnet to see where this leak was coming from I decided to change tactic and see how far it was spreading to. If I could figure out how much water had come out, then I may be able to figure out where the source was.
I tracked the pools under the decking to the wall of my house where I may have released a couple of happy words. Thank f*ck for that - it's the house thats got a plumbing problem, not the car! :) We had a blocked drain which was causing the dishwasher waste to back up, run under the deck and under the car. Seems a bit odd really but I'm chuffed it's a major problem with my home than a hose from a cheap car.
We've ordered the full size rally tags for the rear windows, and the guy we got them from (eBay again) coughed for the postage, so thats another 2 quid on the JG site. eBay item: 290476691491 seller stickersandthings09
Whilst I'm on the subject of saying thanks to folk that have excelled for us, I'd like to take a moment here to thank http://www.lovethosephotos.com/ - Jon Hayden is a wedding photographer but undertakes many different commisions. He has dipped into his pocket without having to be asked just because he's a good bloke.
Another piece ordered today is the air induction kit. The theory behind this is 2 fold - 1) to increase the airflow into the engine which aside from a slight performance increase, will lower the fuel bills and 2) to make it sound a little meatier than the 1.6 implies. I couldnt get a cheap K&N, and the Green / pipercross were a bit lavish with the budget so I've gone for a generic ford jobby that hopefully does a similar job. For a tenner you can't go wrong eh?
Yomay be thinking "what no stereo references"? and you'd be right. I'd completely forgotten to mention them til now. I have spent hours trying to find a way get the power cable into the cabin. I even had the car jacked up , wheel off, plastic trim away and trying to thread the thing through the existing cabling but to no avail. I have given up. Honestly, I have given up. Earlier today I emailed two companies to see what they'd charge to install 1 power cable from bonnet to dash. Both companies are local to me and Im intrigued to see what prices they come back with. One is a franchise from a massive company and I think the other one is a single based company so see how they fare against each other. I've included the blog address in my email so with a bit of luck they'll read this and quote accordingly :)
Finally, I think, I ordered a machine polisher to see if I can get rid of the sun damaging at the rear of the car. It's an RAC one thats quite cheap and after a few runs over, the car is starting to regain it's lost colour. I will give it a few more runs in the next couple of days to try and get this blended.
Not much humour in this update Im afraid but had so much to cram in, hope you dont mind. I'll be back to childish next time so normal service can be resumed.
I found a new button linked into this blog system that I use, it tracks where people are who view this. If YOU are the 1 person in the Ukraine reading this, who are you? what did you type in to your search engine to find floppy throttle and what were you hoping to see?
Just checked my eBay and as I'm writing I got a mail from the chap supplying the main rally graphics to let me know with a bit of luck, dispatch tommorow... woohoo. Happy happy. I am so looking forward to these as once on, we can start laying the sponsors out and getting it spotted a bit. And once it's received thats another £20 we are putting into the www.Justgiving.com/floppythrottle kitty.
Not only are they creating the vinyl with a huge discount for the charity edge, they are doing it custom made for us with the white instead of the blue. So Mark, at Creations in Vinyl, thank you for working ridiculously late hours and mailing me - I can go to bed with a grin (the wife's going to be thinking i've been at porn all this time).
Night all.
Savage
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