Thursday 24 August 2023

The Recovery Truck of Shame

 Yes, for the first time in Zedster's life, he came back on a flatbed...

I was driving back from a work lunch down some small, country lanes when suddenly, the steering went very loose and didn't seem to be doing anything. My first thought was the steering rack had dropped off or something but i noticed the front n/s wheel wasn't...er...upright:


A closer look and it looked like the top ball joint had somehow dropped out of the wishbone:


Scarily, I was stopped on a blind bend, so I had to concentrate on directing traffic around my car. I called the police and they eventually arrived about 45 minutes later but I still had to help out as only one policeman turned up - 3 hours of arm waving was hard work!

The recovery truck finally arrived and brought us home. On the truck, I was able to straighten the wheel and push the ball joint back into the wishbone (it is supposed to screw in! Where has the thread gone?!) and drive Zedster off the truck into my garage.

So looks like I'll need new wishbones (I'm going to do the other side as it might be in a near-failure state as well) and I'll look to fit some sort of pin through the wishbone to prevent this happening again.

Wednesday 9 August 2023

Deep, man....

 The terror of MOT time came around and despite my supposed economy map, Zedster failed initially on emissions. However, only on the lambda figure (not sure what that is) and the kit-car owning (in his past, not current) garage owner decided that the emission figures (determined by the 2017 reg) were too harsh for a 2005 engine, so he was able to reset it to use more realistic figures and Zedster sailed through.

A few days ago, while bored at work, I played around with a sticker design (I do like stickers on cars) and came up with something funky to go above the rear number plate:

The wording is all my own - Plato, eat your heart out...