Life, sometimes

[Suff]

Has it in for you...

I went up to the Highlands to sort out my car (Mrs S had it) and then come back down south, head for France, get stuff done in the house and, generally, be prepared for going back to work.

When I took a commissioning course in the TA, after having left the regular Army, one of the first things they taught us was: "the first casualty of battle is the PLAN".

Quite!

So, I arrived in the Highlands and found the injectors I'd bought were the wrong one's. OK it was only £25 down the drain so no real issue.
But when I looked at replacement injectors (I decided to get 4), the best cost I could get was £500 with £120 back when I sent them my old injectors. After the company tried to charge me £30 extra to deliver to the Highlands and lost me another day, I decided to get them sent to Lincolnshire, head south, meet up with them and take them to France where I have almost a full workshop of tools and facilities at my disposal.

Between the ordering and making the decision to head south, I decided to get the tooth out which was causing me pain. Which left me suffering and eating Solpadine (3 at a time not 2) for the next day and a half. That was Sunday/Monday.

Tuesday, I headed south. I had to put the car back together (I’d ripped out the wiper assembly and half the stuff over the engine), then use cold start to get it going and head for Lincolnshire. I stopped in Grantown, changed my address at the BOS (been meaning to do that for years), put fuel in the car (not too much as it was damned expensive) and got on the road.

I stopped at Tesco, South Queensferry (at the Forth Road Bridge), for fuel. Gave the engine some more cold start and it failed to start. The Starter motor had died. 4 Hours waiting for the AA to get a local garage to me to jump start me as it had been flooding and people were washed out all over the place.

The recovery guy tried to start me and we agreed that if we tried any harder the starter motor was going to burst into flames. So, he towed me and the car started very easily.

Great, back on the road. The A1 was closed at Berwick for about 20 miles. I did the short detour and then had the A1 almost totally to myself till Newcastle. The road was like a ghost town, I haven’t seen it that empty since about 30 years ago in the dead of night.

Going great, down just past Leeming Bar services when the engine warning light comes on. I turn the radio off and hear a sound rather like a blowing head gasket. I lifted the bonnet, had a look, could hear, but not see anything, so I decided to keep driving but only at 45mph. I got about 1 mile and the engine dropped dead.

Great. Nearly 11pm. Call the AA again and tell them to just send the relay as the engine is dead. They relayed me to Leeming Bar and left me for 2 hours. When I was picked up and dropped at Ferrybridge services. Just enough time to go to the toilet and call the AA and find out that I had 5 minutes to wait.

Towed to Sleaford and arrived at 07:30 just in time for my daughter going to work.

So, there I was. Dead car, totally knackered, decisions to make. I got up at 15:15 and started looking for either an 807 or a C8. We’d just spent £500 on tyres and I was damned sure I was putting them on whatever I bought which meant a limited set of choices. I found 3 possible, one in the £800 range and two in the £2,200 range.

Back to bed.

Called Mrs S today to discuss and wound up with “do whatever you want, I don’t know”. Roughly translated meant “if it goes wrong it is your fault”. Being a long-suffering husband, I translated that to “buy the cheapest and if it goes wrong the disaster is smaller”. Well that was my take.

In the interim I’d been told by the Injector refurb company that they were “having difficulty fulfilling my order”. I asked them to cancel and they agreed… £500 back in my card via PayPal..

I got my Grandson to take me to Grantham and I took the train to Stockport to see the £800 car. It was kind of what I expected. Ex business, no rear seats, front seats very badly damaged and the trim interior pretty hard used. However, I have a whole broken 807 sitting in Sleaford. So, I bought it with my debit card.

Driving it home was interesting. It’s a bit rough around the edges but I’m pretty certain someone has chipped it. It is the only explanation for the sheer power of the engine, the way it’s behaving and the fact that it’s doing about 10mpg more than I would expect for the driving I did to get it back.

The car has done 146,000 miles. Not excessive for a PSA diesel. Not insignificant either. However, I was ruminating on just how it would have been driven, given that it was a business car. These thoughts were interrupted by the fact that the cars following me down the A628 to Barnsley were lighting something up on the rear window. The shadow of some letters which had clearly been removed.

Reading the words, one word suddenly became very clear.

Funeral.

Well that explained the very dark glass in the back. It also gave me an idea as to how the car might have been driven.

All in all, with the money back from the injectors and the £200 - £300 I’ll get from the “we buy anything” guys, the car is virtually free. Well compared to fixing the already existing problems with the old 807. It’s a year newer, higher spec (executive) and drives much better. Needs some work including setting up the vehicle parameters because they removed the radio which has this built in. Then again Mrs S has a broken C8 in France which is also going to the scrap and I’m going to have the radio out of it before it goes. I’ll keep the one in my new (to me), C8 though; it has Bluetooth on it.

Could have been worse. Could have been a LOT better. We’d just spent €1,900 on service, tyres and a high-pressure fuel pump, just before Christmas. Today I got the phone call from the ex-company. Contract to sign (signed today), start on Tuesday. Well I didn’t want to go back but Boots in Nottingham only called back for an interview (apparently, I was the most interesting candidate), 2 hours after I signed the contract….

Next order of business. Sleep… Switch stuff from car to car including wheels and tow bar and probably, interior door panels. Get the new car into a very deep Valet. Go to work and then head to France the following weekend to get the wood in for the boiler, pick up a returns parcel I forgot and, generally, sort a lot of stuff out including my main computer.

Maybe life doesn’t quite have it in for me. But it certainly felt like it for a while. Jury is out on the surgery on my jaw. I can feel the broken root and the jaw is still painful. Well there’s time to think about that anyway.

Sorry if it was a bit long. There’s been quite a lot happening.

[saundra]

Suff you should writs a book I like reading your adventures such details
Good luck with the car and job and it's only January

[JanB]

Berlimey Suff, when things go wrong, they really go wrong

Best of luck with the job and the ex-tooth xx

[JoM]

Blimey Suff!

[Kaz]

xx

[meriad]

Crumbs Suff

good news on the job front, glad you got the car sorted (well sort of), but do me a favour and get that tooth seen to sooner rather than later

[Suff]

Ria I've suffered more pain in a dentists chair than I have with toothache. Whilst the toothache may have lasted longer, at least I can feel when it is fully numbed by injection before they pull it out.

This time the Dentists tried virtually every trick to try and NOT take out the tooth. I had to ask 4 times for more injections and the last time I had to direct where it went. Even then I still had sensation and there was still an ache as she tried and failed, to take the root out.

Honestly if I can live with that is left in there, then I will. The same tooth was taken out on the other side when I was 15. He gave me one injection, which did nothing, then proceeded to tear the tooth out in parts, one side at a time then tore the root out through the side of my jaw with a hooked instrument. It bled all night and all over my pillow.

My experience of the dentists chair is that you don't know, for sure, that the injections have worked, until you feel the drill biting into the nerve.

Funnily enough I come out of the chair tense with knotted muscles and I am, oddly, not keen to go there...

[Kaz]

All very well Suff, but you run the risk of infection there

[Suff]

Very true Kaz and it would have much more weight if it were not for the fact that at age 15 it took 3 months for my gum to heal and during that three months and for the next 2 years, broken bits of root kept on emerging from the gum...

Due to the antibiotics I was given, the existing infection is now gone. We'll see how the ache goes..