That 21st Century essential accesory

 Yup, cup holders! My son recently laughed at the fact that my first few cars never had any - nowadays, its first on the check list...

I didn't want a cheap, plastic one for Zedster so ordered a stainless steel one for £17 - damn, it weighs a ton. Colin Chapman would be horrified...

It just about fits underneath the new storage unit:

I can now go out in polite society....

Radio GaGa

 Time to finally do an update I've been thinking about for ages; some sort of storage box on the bulkhead between the seats. This will mainly be somewhere to put my radio on road trips, to keep it from just sliding round on the passenger seat and to put it higher up so it might get a better signal. I can also put other odds and ends in it when I'm not using the radio.

Started with the ubiquitous sheet of ally and a scribbled plan:

Some cutting and bending later:

....and then some vinyl:

Looking not too shabby...drilled some holes and used larger 16x4mm pop rivets (to allow for the carpet) and voila!

Very solid and doesn't look too horrendous - very pleased with myself.

I bought a new mobile phone holder which is also a charger and automatically opens and closes around the phone, which is surprisingly advanced for £23. On a trip when I'm using the sat-nav on my phone, I'm always stopping and taking the phone in and out - this should make it less of a faff.

I've also ordered a cup holder which was going to go underneath that storage unit but I've got less space than I thought, so it may not go there - we'll see.

Route updated on day 1 to avoid Le Man's and to include the famous old race grandstand near Reims on the last day - seem stupid not to as we go past Reims anyway.

Two weeks to go - getting excited and a little nervous; my last Euro trip was a last minute thing which I had no expectations for and turned into my best trip ever, so this one has more scope to be a disappointment...

Sun Run

 With lovely weather forecast, went on a rare (for me) early morning run with the SKCC.

We met up at Buck Barns services:

My son tagged along in his recently de-catted (well, 2 of the 4 cats removed so still MOT legal, he is promised) C63 AMG which now sounds like even more thunder (c. 530bhp now!!), especially when starting up at 6am!! The noise from his car was greatly appreciated by the others over the morning as we hooned around Sussex for 70 miles on some awesome roads, with sunshine and very little traffic - a great morning run and well worth the early start.

Breakfast at Sumner Ponds was lovely, sat in the sun, chewing the fat (literally and metaphorically). 

I found out that our France trip starts on the same day as Le Mans (June 10th) and we go right past the track on that day! I'm actually going to change the route to detour round it - I imagine the traffic will be horrendous and half the French mobile speed cameras will be out in that area.

Planning for France is now in full swing - some of the hotels have taken my money, so no cancellations now. I've tweaked the routes (and will have to do more for Le Mans now) and Zedster is, I think, ready to go. My son has bought a radio so we can talk on the move but he says he can't hear me very well, so I may need to get a bigger aerial or add in that storage unit between the seats I've been talking about for years.

My dilemma is whether to go to the National Kit Car show on June 3rd, the weekend before - I don't want to risk anything breaking before France. I have now retired from magazine editor of the Rhocar club, so less pressure to go but I do enjoy the show. Hmmmm....

Light the fuse

 So finally got round to investigating the starter circuit problems; dashboard off, multimeter out and 0V to the aux panel, hence why my USB, horn and other buttons had stopped working. It wasn't clear why that affected my starter until I remembered my starter button got its 12v from the same source as the aux panel.

Starting with the basics, checked the fuses and voila:

My kingdom for a fuse....I'd checked a few obvious fuses on the day of my breakdown but not the 'aux panel' fuse.

To try not miss a blown fuse again, I've bought a load of LED fuses which light up if the fuse blows and replaced all of them - see how that goes.

Also had to replace my broken wiper - simple job, huh? Oh no...a few years ago, on a very wet day in France, both my wipers had gone all loose and almost flew off. So I had used thread lock on the screws...wowsers, didn't know how strong that stuff was! Could I unscrew the wiper arm? Nope...

In the end, I had to drill right through the screw and then use a screw removal drill bit (has a reverse thread) to get the darn thing off.

So, on coronation day I've CROWNED a successful garage session with a windscreen SCEPTRE...(jees, that's bad, sorry)