Our Bob Is An Awesome Bob!

Last weekend we again camped on H‘s dad’s front drive. We’re building up to a camp site slowly!

Also there were H‘s sister’s family and their T4 Caravelle which they use to travel across Europe (England > Spain > Romania > Hungary > England) during June and July. They very cleverly filled the area behind the second row of seats with custom made boxes as part of a false floor so that, if needed, all four of them could sleep in it. Puts the small trips we’ve made in Bob so far into perspective!

But yesterday we went to Southwold in her and we’ll soon be off camping in Devon and in Norfolk. To celebrate our excitement at this I’ve added a new page called Our Travels upon which I shall record all the places we have visited in Bob. In its own way it’s all very exciting!

With summer here (and the school holidays upon us) plans are afoot for using Bob as much as possible. The battery problems have been sorted by the fitment of a new battery which so far, touch wood, is proving to be trouble free.

As a result we’ve started using Bob rather than the Citroen or Rover. Yesterday it was to take A to archery, today it was raspberry picking.

We’ve got two camping trips lined up – to Devon and Norfolk – and because we didn’t sort out the ferry tickets in time France will be happening later. Before that we’re taking Bob to Dad’s for a once-over service, to fix the leaking washer bottle & realign the passenger door in readiness for campsite activity.

My bought Bob to use for camping and hopefully we’ll have a few (good!) stories to tell come the end of the hols…

One day shy of six months after Bob arrived and she’s finally being used as nature intended. A & his friend G are out in the back garden having a sleep-over. H & I shall be trying it out on Saturday and you never know – we might even go to a campsite one day!

I asked the question of what might be the problem on the Just Kampers forum. It was suggested to me that I would need to adjust the stop plate. So, armed with my workshop manual, some spanners and a pot of multi-purpose grease and set to it.

I have black fingernails from mechanical tinkering and I don’t think I’ll be giving up my day job just yet…

Following the advice from Just Kampers and instructions from my workshop manual I took the gearstick off and re-greased it all and tried to adjust the stop plate.

Attempt 1 : The manual was a little ambiguous as to which way you pushed the stop plate against the gear stick so I tried pushing it towards the driver’s side. Tightened it all up and went for a test drive. Exactly the same as before.

Attempt 2 : I decided to try pushing the stop plate the other way even though I wasn’t sure it would work. My thinking was that if it’s in 2nd gear and I push the stop plate towards the passenger side it will restrict access to 3rd & 4th. This was the case. Although I could get all the gears before it was tightened as soon as I did the bolts up I was only able to move between 1st & 2nd. I didn’t bother with a test drive…

Attempt 3 : I put the stop plate back as it was in Attempt 1 but re-checked everything to make sure I was doing it ‘right’. Another test drive suggests that I’ve improved things but…

Reverse – The stick does need to be pushed down to get into reverse when stationary. That’s OK then!

1st – Fine from standing, a little tricky changing down into it.

2nd – Really good when changing up from 1st but again (and this is the major issue really) downshifts from 3rd hit reverse every time, regardless of how careful or delicate I am, or if I double-declutch. The only way into second is to stop, put it into 1st, pull away and move it into 2nd.

3rd & 4th – Not as ‘exact’ as they were originally but working without any problems.

It seems then that 2nd & reverse are still more or less in the same place, even though you should have to push down on the stick to find reverse. There doesn’t seem to be much movement in the stop plate for adjustment, just 2 or 3mm.

Not sure what to do next…

I hope the picture shows how much cleaner Bob is now than she was yesterday (below) because she was washed using the sponge & bucket method and then taken to a jet washer to be finished off and to have her wheel arches/underside washed of as much road salt as possible.

We also did our first shopping trip, and found her much easier to find in Sainsbury’s car park than the Smart.

I will start taking Bob’s new found reliability slightly more for granted soon but at the moment each journey is a marvel!

(That post on what she had done to her during her last garage visit will follow soon – I keep noticing things!)

In the eighteen-or-so months I’ve lived in Essex I’ve done the Halstead to Braintree trip hundreds of times, but it never meant more to me than today’s journey.

I had to go to my new school to pick up some paperwork for when I start next Monday and took Bob. The last time I tried to do exactly the same trip in Bob (to hand in my application letter) I was left sitting by the side of the road for hours waiting for the RAC, but today…

She was wonderful! No problems at all! A joy! Driving along listening to Lily Allen’s new album without a care in the world.

And long may it continue!

As can be seen from the picture Bob’s a bit dirty from last night so I’m going to give her wash tomorrow morning – it’s nothing more than she deserves.

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. H is not happy about the thought of driving her like this, A 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.

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 H 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!