Bones, balls and sweat

 Pretty quick fix for me, although it was hard work...

So looking at the parts before I removed them, they looked corroded but not too bad:

It took me a few days to get hold of GBS because of the bank holiday but the new wishbone and ball joint arrived next day and then the state of the old ones is more obvious:

Consensus is that the lock nut somehow got loose and the ball joint rod has been vibrating in the wishbone for gawd knows how long; long enough to wear it effectively smooth and so it popped out on a small country lane.

Getting the old ball joint out was much easier than I expected, as was getting the wishbone off - access to the bolts is pretty easy.

However, after that, it went a bit pear-shaped...I thought I'd better check the ball joint screwed into the wishbone - should be simple, yeah? Oh no....

After clearing powder coat at the end, the ball joint initially wouldn't screw in at all. By sheer luck, I had the right size tap for the wishbone thread (M18x1.5) and I ran that down the wishbone. There was some resistance but not much and after that, the ball joint started going in, although not very smoothly. I got about 2/3 of the way down and it stopped. This wasn't far enough down for what I needed so I started putting a bit more effort in (holding the ball joint in my vice and using the wishbone as leverage to turn it). This was, I soon found out, a BAD idea. I tried unscrewing the ball joint but no joy - it was stuck fast!

At this point, I gave GBS a call, to check I wasn't doing anything wrong. I got through to Matt and the first thing he said was, "yeah, we get that sometimes. The thread in the wishbone isn't long enough - we have to chop 5-10mm off the ball joint rod". Well,  thanks a fecking lot...now you tell me.

So I had obviously reached the end of the thread and tried to go further, jamming it in good and proper. I went back in, using a hairdryer and lots of WD40 to try unwind it. After about an hour of sweating and swearing, it finally came off but it was butchered:

I was planning on sending it all back to GBS and insisting on a free replacement as it was their fault IMO but I have a Wales trip in less than 2 weeks and a show on Sunday that I was looking forward to, so on the advice of the SKCC Massif, I had a go at fixing it.

That damaged thread on the ball joint rod was, coincidentally, about 10mm from the end, the amount GBS said I should hack off anyway. The wishbone thread looked like it had some damage in it but the tap went down it OK, so I hacked off the 10mm, deburred it, copper grease to prevent future corrosion and it just went in far enough to match the other side of the car.

After that, it was fairly simple; bushes in (repeating one of the first ever jobs I'd done on Zedster 7 years ago!), wishbone back in, ball joint in the hub, all tightened up and job done:

You might be able to see how badly mangled that lock nut is from being held in my vice while I tried to get the ball joint out.

I've left that IVA cover off and used paint to mark it so I can easily check in future if that locknut gets loose.

The other side seemed pretty solid, so I've left it alone, except for removing the IVA cover and painting the locknut.

Test run tomorrow and hopefully it will all be OK.

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.

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...

Goodwood Breakfast club

 I've heard about the Goodwood breakfast club but I thought it was a members only thing, so never considered going. However, looked it up and, in fact, not only is it open to all but it's also free, which is amazing for anything to do with Goodwood. So I booked in for the July 30th session...

Since my France trip, I've fixed my bash plate by making use of Matt's work:

And I also had one of my trip photos mucked about with to make this:

Looks great and I've put it on a t-shirt and a mug.

So off to Goodwood - and almost didn't; after 6 weeks of no use, Zedster's battery was almost flat and it took a while for the starter to kick into life.

A great, sunny drive with loads of other enthusiasts out; had a play with a Toyota GR86, then an Evora flew past me with a very non- stock exhaust, a Maserati GT, couple of beemers - great fun.

I expected the breakfast club to be just a car meet; couple of fields of cars parked up - I should have realised that Goodwood doesn't do things by halves. Queues of cars going in to the public car parks and the cars going in to the circuit? Wowsers...every classic you can name and many you can't:

Some proper weird ones:

Austin A90 Atlantic:

Some French thing:

An Ogle (based on a mini):

A Trojan - old and very basic:

Some sort of Citroën:

Some real beauties:

And an incredibly rare Lambo Silhouette - only 2 in the UK and 57 in the world:

All round, a great few hours (although £8.50 for an egg and bacon roll was a tad painful).

Beauty and the Beast Tour, 2023 - Epilogue

Let's start with some stats:

Total mileage:     2,200 miles

Hotel costs:         £470 (7 nights, some with breakfast)

Petrol:                 £560 (£990 for the Beast!)

Tolls:                  £29 (we didn't use them much)

Food:                 £200-£300 (tricky to tell, my son paid for some).

Things we learnt:

1. France has so many beautiful roads but the French don't seem to have as much of an interest in cars as Brits do, which is ironic considering they still have a car industry. Apart from a Citroën Traction Avante club, we saw very few interesting/exotic cars - it was mostly Dacias and boring French models. Very rare to even see a Porsche...

2. The French are very law-abiding when it comes to speed, sticking to 50mph max on empty country roads. But that may be because...

3. There are a LOT more speed cameras in France, even on roads out in the middle of nowhere and they're not obvious either, unlike our bright yellow ones.

4. Speed bumps! What a PITA....

5. The French Riviera is not a fun place to drive.

6. Petrol is expensive in France - I paid between £1.60 - £2 a litre.

Road trips are not for all, they are about the journey and not the destination which non-car people don't get at all. They are my favourite holiday and made even better to have done it with my son while I still can, before I get too old and he gets into the drudgery of kids and family. We had a great time over the radios, commenting on scenery, other cars, me giving him history lessons, dad jokes - the whole shebang. He is very precious about his car (understandably) and you may notice that in all the parking photos, he is parked on the end of a row with me next to him as a sacrificial lamb in case of a bad driver getting anywhere near. I countered by pointing out to him the few other Mercs we saw that were taxis - did he want to pick up any fares?

It was fun...

I've said it before, so I'll say it again; the star of the show was Zedster:

A parts bin special, hacked together by a computer geek (ish), thrashed around the best roads in Europe for over 2,000 miles in a week, chasing a car with 3 times the power that had been designed and built on a multi-million pound budget? Nothing short of outstanding...

Hopefully, there will be another trip and the Nurburgring has been suggested...although I'm not sure if the Beast could actually complete a lap without needing a slowdown? But I've heard they do allow taxis on there, so that should be all right. 

And if it gets bad, Zedster will be there to give him a tow...

Beauty and the Beast Tour, 2023 - Day 8

 North of Dijon to home - 390 miles

With some sadness, we set off on our last day from our farmhouse:

The first 50 miles or so were, by congested SE England standards, a brilliant run as we found the last little patch of green on the map and we had our last hoorah through the trees.

A brief stop for brunch at a small town patisserie:

...before the last excitement of the trip; the old grandstand at Reims:

The Beast did a couple of Le Mans starts for the gaggle of petrolheads filming and we got talking to a guy only a few years older than Jake who turned up in his Ferrari 360 on a dream trip to Italy. His car sounded great, like a V12 but was actually a V8 - not a stock exhaust, we think.

By sheer luck, there was a Lamborghini club there as well, in the grounds behind the stands:

I do love a Countach...

We pulled away (the Beast in a cloud of tyre smoke) and headed for the autoroute and the last 170 miles to Calais. We arrived early and managed to get on a train an hour earlier than booked.

On my last trip, England welcomed me back with a thunderstorm of biblical proportions; this time, it was a 14 mile average speed zone before an accident that closed the motorway - our 1 hour return took us 2 hours!

Map of the route:

Video of the last 2 days:

Beauty and the Beast Tour, 2023 - Day 7

 Annecy to north of Dijon, 200 miles

To make the route home more interesting, I wanted to do more of the Jura Mountains. Last time, my run through a bit of it had been brilliant so I'd taken more time over the route this trip.

The D991 up through the Jura Mountains was superb; a smooth mix of tight and gentle bends with minimal traffic. The 50 or so miles we did through here was sublime, me trying to catch up to the Beast and failing but loving every twist and turn.

We then took a great cross-country route up to Dole; bad name, pretty medieval town which we spent some time wandering around (we'd made good time and were well ahead of schedule).

We zig-zagged our way past Dijon, which I had planned to stop in but the heat (30 degC) and the thought of slow town traffic put me off. It was so hot, we stopped at a supermarket and wandered the aisles for 20 minutes just to enjoy their air-con and get some food for our stop tonight, which was a quaint old farmhouse in the middle of absolute nowhere, about 15 miles north of Dijon:

A great day to say goodbye to the wonderful roads we've enjoyed on this trip, with a relatively dull day tomorrow, except for a final twist...

Map of the route: