The time is March 2011.
HTU35K has been languishing in the garage for over 5 years since arriving in Lincolnshire and apart from starting up and asthmatically shuffling around the place it’s not had the care and attention it deserves.
We have had a cold winter with temperatures down to -20C at times and when the thaw came I realised that the old anti-freeze in the engine hadn’t been good enough.
There were puddles underneath the car with hoses sprung loose, the otter switch had been forced out of the radiator and a core plug had pushed out of the engine block.
It didn’t look good.
Oh gee, this is a mess.....
Spanners at Dawn.... time to walk the talk
But thankfully the plugs appeared to have operated as intended and despite the mess everywhere, both the radiator and engine block were sound.
The brakes had seized, even at low speed the steering doesn’t feel right and worse of all, the paintwork has deteriorated.
The combination of hot summers followed by prolonged sub zero temperatures and my rather silly idea to cover the car in a plastic sheet when the roof was leaking a year ago has resulted in blisters in the paintwork.
It's looking even worse.