Woo-hoo!!

I collected PMW from storage today and drove to the Vicarage Motor Company in Barnoldswick for MOT. That was a tad nerve wracking as obviously the car hadn't been on the road since 2011.

Positives were that the brakes worked (!) and so did the overdrive even if the gear knob switch kept popping off as expected.

Not so good was  a vibration at 50MPH and the steering felt rather "loose" which didn't inspire confidence.

Anyway, made it to Barnoldswick and left it with my favourite classic friendly garage (as you can see they know about classics as that's an MGB downstairs and Reliant Scimitar upstairs). They found a few problems but fixed them for me - a flexi brake pipe was leaking, one of the headlamp bulbs had dis-assembled itself and so not surprisingly the aim was out.

No water in the washer bottle (what a pillock!) and the steering rack was "insecure" - that'll be why the steering felt a bit dodgy then. Again, even more of a pillock for not checking everything over.

Advisory that the front propshaft UJ needs relacement which would certainly explain the  vibration.

All in all though a very good result and here's the photo to prove it (even though I can't load it the right way up :-).

Should I? Yeah might as well, I know I want to!

No, not buying another car!

Spent a good day today on the 2000.

Alot of tidying up and finishing off really. Trouble is most of the finishing off isn't really finished!

I have taken loads of stuff, spares etc out of the car and brought home.This included a brand new heated front screen which I will fit in the summer rather than before getting the car back on the road - I may do this at a Pendle and Pennine meeting in the Old STone TRough car park.

Drove the car about in the mill yard and it seems fine - all freed off etc.

Thanks to Bryce had heat shrink put on the wires for the overdrive in the gearstick - unfortunately I can't seem to get the loom far enough down the stick for the switch to stay on top of the gearknob. Don't need that for the MOT tho!

Wired up the electric fan and got a headlamp working that had decided to be awkward.

Then ran the car for a few minutes and when the temparature got up hot water was escaping past the radiator cap and being pumped into the expansion bottle before escaping from there! And the electric fan didn't cut in either.

I have an MOT booked for Monday though and it's a 17 mile trip but I really want the car back at home. Now I have to decide what to do - well right now my plan is to drive it to the MOT station and just take a couple of 5 litre bottles of water to top up the radiator if needed.

After the MOT I can sort out these problems one by one on my drive rather than have a 34 mile trip every time I want to work on the car.

Start,move,stop

Nearly two litres of DOT4 brake and clutch fluid later I have bled the brakes and the clutch.

I wasn't looking forward to this as I expected the bleed nipples to snap off but all the brake bleed nipples loosened off OK - wow! No fluid actually came out of the ends though, just from where the nipples screwed in to the rear wheel cylinders and the front calipers.

I used an easy bleed to do this and just collected the fluid in a jar as it was pumped out and cleaned up afterwards of course.

The clutch slave cylinder wasn't as easy.

The bleed nipple was right up next to the oil filter so I unbolted the clutch slave cylinder and let it "dangle". Unfortunately the cylinder within it along with the spring then came out when the easy bleed was attached. No doubt an experienced Triumph tinkerer would have expected this but not me. By now the whole clutch pipework etc was full of air.

To get round the problem I put the spring and cylinder back in and used a cable tie to restrain the cylinder next time round. Success on that front so I got a good 250 ml of flluid thorugh the system and out the nipple. Then it was just a case of bolting it all back on of course.

At the end of the day I started the car, selected gears and moved it back and forward whilst stopping it with the brakes.

Starty,move and stop you see :-)