Our Bob Is An Awesome Bob!

Looks like we’ll be going – exciting!

I’ve added a To Do! page to the site as a reminder and record of what we’ve to do and what we’ve done.

Hopefully it’ll be a help, and if nothing else it’s given me something to add to the site as we sit here pining for Bob…

I took Bob back to The Old Volks Home today to, hopefully, sorted out at last. It may be that she needs a new petrol tank, and if that’s the case she’s going to get one. Whatever is takes. She may therefore be with Adam at The Old Volks Home for a while but when she comes back the random cutting out will have come to an end.

The rest of my journey back to Essex was completed in a Peugeot 405 lent to me by The Old Volks Home, which was great because I’d never driven a 405 before and I love driving cars for the first time. It’ll be good to get Bob back though…

It’s worth remembering that for all her current faults she’s still Bob and she’s still awesome. She’s still fun to drive and she still gives you a great feeling when you look out of the window and see her on the drive…

Just how cool is she?

After Saturday’s successful (but now seemingly rather lucky) trip from Essex to Warwickshire and the massively improved driving experience from before Christmas I have had a nightmare.

On Sunday evening she stopped on the way back to Stratford from Alcester. Ten minutes and she was off again and thankfully there wasn’t much traffic about. Dad was with me and so was able to have a look at the engine and try to diagnose the problem. Thinking that there was a fuel supply problem we removed the petrol cap for a bit to try and solve possible vacuum issues. It seemed to work.

Monday morning came and I tried to drive her to Stratford Tyres to have the whitewalls removed, the wheels balanced and the tyre pressures checked. I didn’t get very far at all and this time when she did get going the engine dies as soon as asked for enough power to move her. Bunny-hopping (I’m getting good at it!) off the busy Evesham Road I then called Dad who again tried to work out the problem. The fuel filter was dry and the fuel hose blocked, suggesting debris in the petrol tank being the problem. The fuel filter and the fuel hose were replaced by Dad to remove them from being a possible cause.

At Stratford Tyres I had the wheels balanced and the white walls removed. The staff were very helpful and didn’t charge too much either. Bob isn’t maybe quite as pretty as she was with the white walls but she’s still very good looking and has continued to earn lots of admiring looks and comments.

Tuesday was on the whole less eventful, but Bob blotted her copybook on a massive scale returning home from snooker. Popping to Tescos on the way back to Dad’s she stopped again. A day of faultless motoring from Bob was about to cancelled out. 

View Larger Map

The map shows the route that should, according to Google Maps, take just 2 minutes but took me over half an hour as Bob cut out, refused to start, started, moved ten metres and cut out, refused to start, etc.  I aimed for Tesco car park as I knew that I could stop out of the way of any traffic and try and sort her out. At the end I was within spitting distance of the first parking bay but sat stationary in a through-fare with Bob refusing to start. To make matters worse I had been drinking Coke all night and was absolutely desperate for the loo! Eventually I jiggled Bob out of the way into a parking bay and went and bought the bottle of milk that I’d been aiming for. On my return from the shop I thought I’d have a go twice around the car park where I was out of harm’s way before attempting to get home. I managed half a ‘lap’. In despair I again called Dad who came out (at just past midnight by now) and managed to make her run enough to get home. The picture bottom-right is of Dad driving her around Tescos car park making sure she was running well enough for the short trip home. For the second time in our life with Bob I was reminded of Back To The Future, this time of the scene where the Iranians drive a VW through a car park and shoot Doc. Except for me it was a little less dramatic. Finally I must say thank you to the owners of the Lexus IS who pulled up and asked if I was OK and if they could help as I hopped my way through Stratford last night. There wasn’t anything they could do but it was nice to be asked.

This morning I ‘phoned Adam at The Old Volks Home and explained all that had happened. Following our chat it’s been agreed that I’m going to be returning Bob to him tomorrow for him to do a long-term fix on her to make sure that this particular problem is removed. A lot of our faith in Bob has been shaken. Helen is not happy about the thought of driving her like this, Alfie has hardly had the opportunity to ride in her and I…I’m not at this moment prepared even to drive her into town. She’s failed on me enough times now and the ‘novelty’ is wearing off. Adam says he will sort Bob out and I do believe him – I’m looking forward to summer camping trips on the continent even though right now they still seem a long way away.

I am tired and at the end of my tether. Rationality hasn’t yet left the building but madness is knocking at the door…

It was a sunny Sunday morning so Dad and I went out to do a few jobs on Bob. The side door runners were greased up and it now runs far more smoothly, and then it was onto the passenger door mechanism which opened and shut well but was difficult to unlock. The door panel was removed, everything taken out and the slightly worn and stiff lock was greased and checked over. The job of getting it all back in place saw the potential for much colourful language but eventually the job was done and it works better than before, if still not with the key.

Later on we went out for a drive and checked the tyre pressures again as Bob had started wobbling again. Whilst the front ones were fine the back o/s tyre had dropped to the 20s. It was pumped back up and inspected at my brother’s house. The white-wall ’spats’ had come off and so were half in the wheel-seal and half out. Clearly there was an air leak at the edges. Trying to remove it it ripped, so it’s been cut back and tomorrow I’ll take her to Stratford Tyres to have it taken off completely. I’ve just got to decide now whether to have them all taken off – I probably will as it’ll look odd, but it depends how much they charge!

I knew that it would take me a little longer to get to the Midlands than normal but…

Bob started perfectly and I was soon on my way through Essex and into Suffolk through Haverhill. The torrential rain was fine but the crosswinds were causing me all sorts of worry. Not since the Suzuki Ignis hire car we had in Hungary have |I had such a bad case of ‘rollaphobia’ where each bend or gust of wind sends shivers through me. Seeing a gap in the edge up ahead was causing anxiety as much of the road towards Duxford is high and exposed and so the winds were strong. I got onto the M11 and then A14 and decided that I’d have to stop at Cambridge Services for a break and a drink of water. On returning to Bob I considered the tyre pressures and thought it would be a good idea to check them. After helping a man find the washer bottle on his Renault Clio I set to putting the tyre pressures to 30 at the front and 46 at the back, as suggested by the sticker on the steering column. The back tyres were 22 and 29, the fronts 35 and 31. No wonder she was like driving a water bed! Tyre pressures as they should be I returned to the A14 and found, not surprisingly, that things were much better. But it was then that the roof clips came undone…

I’d mentioned to Helen earlier in the week that I thought the roof clips were maybe not up to the job, but thought they’d be OK… The back one kept rattling undone so when I’d stopped to do the tyres I’d had to re-clip it. Back on the A14 the wind picked up and I heard the back clip go. I decided that at the next services/garage I’d pull over and re-clip it. Then the front one came undone too. I was (thankfully) just approaching a slip road when a heard a ‘whoosh’ from behind me and looked around to see the roof had popped up. The wind had obviously caught it and thankfully I wasn’t going too fast. 

It could have ripped the roof off or pulled me into the outside lane.  I pulled over onto the slip road and pulled the roof down. I had to stop this happening so I pulled the laces out of one of my astro-turf trainers and tied the roof down as tight as I could. The outside clips were clipped back down but I couldn’t find anything to hold them in place. 

With the roof tied there was little chance of the roof popping back up but nevertheless it was a very tentative drive to the next garage where I stopped to look for something I could use as a fastening pin. It was an Esso garage in the middle of nowhere, and I wonder what the lady behind the counter thought of the man with no hair who came in and bought only a card of hair grips… Still, they did the job and stopped the clips coming off again – there may need to be a more permanent solution though!

The rest of the journey was uneventful and I arrived in good time to play nine holes of golf with my brother on his birthday. An eventful journey but a successful one overall. Well done Bob!

Just a quick picture update of our automotive menagerie…a report on the somewhat eventful (but actually pretty much perfect) first-long-trip will feature later!

When I was first at university I owned a 10-year-old Vauxhall Nova 1.2 which wasn’t old or tired, but I was young and inexperienced on the motorway and each trip to and from home was preceded with enormous amounts of preparation. Lists were made. Blankets were packed. Sandwiches were made. Tyres and washer bottles were checked. The petrol tanks was filled. I was going to be travelling over 200 miles and I needed to be sure that I was ready for every eventuality. As time went on though my preparations became fewer and fewer until each journey was greeted with the nonchalance of someone popping out for the weekly shop. 

This process was aided by the newer and better cars I found myself driving. A Toyota Corolla estate that never went wrong was the epitome of this, to the extent that it made me want to drive something a little less perfect and a little more characterful. 

Bob is, I think, the oldest vehicle I have ever owned. She can even trace her direct lineage back further (1950) than the other old timer I owned, a Mini Moke (1959) called Emma. (Funnily enough the Moke is the only other car I’ve given a human name to – ‘The Fridge’ for the Corolla doesn’t count.) There’s something about an old car’s imperfections that makes it feel almost human. Driving Bob isn’t at all like going for a spin in the Citroen, Nissan or Smart. Even the edgy Smart Roadster is simply being operated in comparison to the VW. You have to think about driving an old car, no matter how used to it you get. Emma drove like a dodgem-car but you had to make sure that all the controls that you normally take for granted (lights, indicators, brakes, gearbox, windscreen wipers, handbrake, starter motor, tyres etc.) were OK on virtually every journey, and each of their functions had quirks unique to the particular vehicle. I have often been reminded of Biff Tannen in Back to the Future, who knew he was the only one who knew how to start his car. It had a way that only he knew, just as if it were a human friend.

Driving around in Bob is of course going to get easier for me, but tonight I’m getting myself prepared for the first long(ish) journey I’ve had to make in her in the same kind of way I did on those early visits home from university. Considering her recent reliability issues this is perhaps not surprising, but if the summer trip to Italy is going to happen I need to start making these journeys now, and it needs to become second nature. I’m still going to have to check all those things each trip though even after countless drives, and Bob needs to give me a little more faith in her ability to take me to my destination. I’m looking forward to it, wish me luck…