Toyota Celica

I am about to spend another £100 on this hateful and useless lump of scrap metal which has cost me probably about £2500 so far. And then to highlight my idiocy, a bloke at work spends £760.25 on this:

It's Japanese so will probably not go wrong, certainly not as much. It's not 70's BL and thus will not go rusty. Bits won't fall off the trim. It'll have a stereo in it. I'll be able to drive more than 50 miles a year for probably the same amount of yearly insurance. Oh how very very tempting ...

New Distributor

... will be ordered this week. The Beast started first time today and spluttered around the block and back a couple of times before going back to bed. If a new dis doesn't sort it then it's bye-bye time. And Paul, if you are still reading this crap, sorry for taking the piss with the temp loan of yours, it will be returned very soon!

Oops!

The Beast drove around to the new house without any problems (other than the usual reverse lights and overheating and spluttering). They tend to start and move a little better when the petrol is pumped from the tank to the carbs ...

Happy New Fcuking Year

I am moving house in a matter of days. I had to move the useless sack of crap out of the garage on to the drive so as to fill the garage full of assorted crap ready for the mover man. And surprise surprise, it didn't start. At all. Not a sausage. It was pushed on to the drive and now will have to be towed to the new pad. Great. The new neighbours are going to love me! Useless sack of crap. I hate this fcuking car.

Hot and Cold

I have brought the Beast to work this morning which seemed like a good idea at the time as no rain is planned and I haven't used it for about two weeks. It was very cold! Whilst spluttering and kangarooing down the road, I came to some traffic and a Chav in a dungy Corsa, which has probably cost a great deal less than the Beast to "do up", kindly and happily informs me that my reverse lights keep coming on, which I had honestly completely forgotten about!

By the time I got to work all those 1.5 miles away, the temp guage was edging slowly to 3/4, so I am not convinced that I'll get home now without either blowing up or getting nicked for dodgy wiring/switches. And I've never driven it in the dark before!

And an old MX5 was a couple of cars away just to rub it in a bit. Although the big girl didn't have his roof down!

S & S Preparations

I have just emailed them for much needed assistance. If they weren't so far away, I'd let them keep hold of it, but as I can barely get the 2 miles to work without it getting to exploding temperature, I do not think that would be a good idea.

Wiring, Thermostat, Needles and Clonking

Best part of another 2 days spent in the garage this weekend. The needles went in. I presumed that the carbs wouldn't need fiddling with again as the seats, mixture and idle screws would not have moved. I now have high revs. Although still with the choke pulled out. It's all still very wrong at low revs though. So it's the timing then? Or is it simply time to set fire to it?

The new thermostat is now in. I took Lionel home which is probably about 0.2 miles away. The temp shot up to just below 3/4 again. Even with the fans on. And with plenty of water in it. So that didn't work either.

Lionel's main mission this weekend was to get the tacho working. After many hours of stripping the trunking, exposing wires which didn't go anywhere and trying to wire up the old dashboard, it was found that: the wire from the tacho to the coil wasn't wired up; that it is never going to work unless an electronic distributor is fitted; and the SD1 ballast resistor is needed because the TR7 tacho runs off 6v not 12v; and that a brown and white wire that was going nowhere is for the oil pressure warning light.

Paul reckons that the teeth sensitive metallic clonking noise is because the rear diff has got no oil in it. We shoved it over his pit and found the diff bolt plug. It was rounded off and stuck. Something fcuked on this car, what a surprise!