Car'd out

 Wow, it's been a busy 2 weeks for car stuff:

Aug 21st - British Motor show

Held at Farnborough airfield, this was a surprisingly good event. My son pulled a sickie and joined me - lots of current cars, classics, customs etc. Best of all, other events have finally cottoned on to what makes Goodwood so great - cars running. This event just had a big arena for some supercars to drive round but its just great to here a Lambo up close, even just idling. I'd rather see and hear one Lambo than a stack of static car displays. Best was the DeTomeso Pantera (excuse the spelling) - man, that was loud and blew my sons mind (and ears).

Aug 28 - Stoneleigh

Later in the year than usual, the show was reduced to 1 main hall with only a handful of the usual manufacturers in attendance but there were a decent number of kits outside and quite large crowds - hopefully next year will be better. 

Aug 29th - CarFest South

Our second time at this event and it was great - a reasonable number of cars and quirky stands (vintage caravans for example), some great music to sit and chill to and a small track for cars to blast round (sensing a theme?). With so much to do, we plan to take our caravan next year for the whole weekend (although it's damn expensive). 

We were there until 11pm listening to the music - a great (but exhausting) day. 

While at Stoneleigh, Zedster wouldn't start, a problem I thought I had fixed, so I took the opportunity to ask cleverer people than me to have a look. Their opinion is that it is a sticky solenoid on the starter motor and banging it with a spanner did indeed eventually kick it back into life. 

So today, I took the motor off in an attempt to remove and 'clean' the solenoid. Unfortunately, looks like I have a motor with an almost sealed in solenoid so the entire motor will have to come apart. I've asked (on a forum) if anyone thinks this attempt is likely to make any difference or if I should just buy another starter motor. 

A productive day - while removing the nosecone, I fixed one of the smaller indicators that was hanging loose, noted one of the bolts holding the nose on had vanished and fixed a loose wire that was ocasionally causing one headlight to not come on.