Our Bob Is An Awesome Bob!

So Bob was back on the drive overnight and I used her to drive to school the next day. Reverse came easy as I backed off the drive, and I discovered why as I drove off. It seems you no longer have to puch the gear stick down to find reverse and so it and second gear are more-or-less in the same place. Nice.

Those who have seen Little Miss Sunshine would have recognised me trying to pull away from junctions in third without holding up the traffic too much or burning out the clutch.

I dropped her back off at the garage on the way home from work and she’s still there.

Ho hum.

Bob’s back. As posted before gearchanges were becoming either difficult or impossible, and so I booked her in again at MOT Services Halstead.

They diagnosed the problem(s) and ordered the parts from VW Heritage, keeping her over the weekend whilst they waited for delivery. Bob now has two new gearbox bushes and a new gear coupling. She’s going to need a new gear stick ball joint at some point too but that can wait for the time being.

Hopefully now we can get a few weeks of Bob-use under our belts without any problems or trips to a garage.

Fingers crossed…

So I drove into work today and had no engine related problems with Bob.

What did happen though was the previously-awkward downchange from 4th gear to 3rd became a currently-impossible downchange. When it played up before holding it in neutral for a while or double-declutching worked but today it just wouldn’t go in gear regardless of what I tried.

Some research on the JustKampers forum came up with some ideas and after speaking to my Dad it seems that we’re going to try changing all the gearbox bushes. I’ll see if MOT Services Halstead are up for doing it and if not we’ll either have to get it back to Stratford and do it ourselves or take it Superbeetles. Whatever, it needs to be done sooner rather than later as the Smart’s up for sale and so I’ll need Bob to get to work until I get another car and I don’t want to drive it too much with the gearbox as it is.

Tomorrow, after five months away, I shall be returning to work. And I’m getting there in Bob.

After all that happened last year and all the issues we’ve had with Bob, that an amazing statement to be able to make.

Once the snow had left us and I was able to drive Bob and concentrate on her more than the conditions I noticed a few things. That as I drive her more the over-cautiousness of last-November has passed. That the feelings of anxiety over our Italian trip are fading. That there’s an increasingly loud and worrying grinding noise coming from the front wheel…

A trip to MOT Services Halstead then, and the noise was diagnosed as a failing front wheel bearing. Their suppliers didn’t have them in stock so I agreed to drive down to Essex Bearings & Transmission in Maldon to pick up the necessary bits.

The work is being done on her tomorrow morning, and then when we get her back I’ll go over her carefully and do that list of all the improvements she’s had done over the past month.

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.

This picture was taken last night from my office window when I finally got home. What a journey – it’s forced me to come over all tabloid for the post title!

I set off for South Mimms Services (where I was meeting Adam to pick up Bob) at just before 6pm. It had started snowing slightly but was nothing at all to bother about. I had the heaters on in the 405 and it was a very pleasant journey until I hit the M25. I can only presume that there had been an accident because the traffic quickly became stationary. I decided to jump off at Junction 26 and suing my rudimentary knowledge of Hertfordshire headed to Junction 23 via A-Road. I’d never been to Cockfosters Tube Station before! Eventually I rejoined the motorway and it was clear for the final section before South Mimms. I have no idea whether it was faster than sitting in the jam but it was more interesting and I arrived in plenty of time.

South Mimms is apparently a hot-spot for deals involving drugs and guns so I enjoyed sitting in the thickening snow looking suspicious waiting for Adam to arrive. When he did we swapped cars and we went over the things that he’d done to her over the past three weeks (I’ll write about them in another post later) and I set off home. By now it was about 8.15pm and it was still snowing.

It should take about thirty minutes to get to Birchanger Services from South Mimms. Nearly an hour and a half later I ‘phoned Helen to say I was considering booking into the hotel for the night. The snow wasn’t that deep on the M25/M11 but it was very slippy, really only possible to drive in the grooves made by other cars, and full of cars and wagons going at such speed so as to make it difficult for me to drive at the (much lower) speed I wanted to. I know that as I drive Bob more I’ll get used to the steering vagueness and body roll but at the moment we’d had possession of her for such a short time that I’m not there yet. Throw compacted snow, wind, poor visibility and massive trucks at speed into the equation and it was almost too much for me. I’ll happily admit to being scared for much of the journey, and not in the rollaphobia way mentioned before here, but in a very real way. I just didn’t want to have to drive so fast, but when you’ve got an articulated lorry inches from your back bumper that’s not easy.

I skidded around Birchanger Services and parked up (pictured right). Called Helen, bought some food and a magazine from WHSmith and went to drive around to the hotel car park. I didn’t really want to stay there but… When I got to the hotel car park a BMW was sliding backwards down the slope up into it. It was then that I decided that I’d just have to go for it and try and get home. If it meant driving at 30 all the way then so be. Another BMW was in front of me on the roundabout leaving the service station. Pulling away slowly the driver got it completely sideways at no more than 5mph. Nice.

I wish I’d had a someone else in the car as I drove along the A120 at 30mph following the rapidly snowing-over tracks of the car that had passed by ages before. The line of cars behind me seemed, from my snowed up mirrors, to go on forever but it’s says something of the conditions that in that 20 mile stretch only three of four cars risked overtaking – the outside lane was just thick snow. As I got closer to Halstead the roads became less snowy and the drizzle had turned the covering to slush. I arrived home at just before 11pm (To Helen’s surprise – the last she’d heard I was staying at the hotel!) and spoke to Dad who’d had similar issues on the A14 in Cambridgeshire.

Last time I wrote about an epic journey in Bob the reasons were all Bob but this time she was faultless. She drove beautifully, didn’t miss a beat despite the conditions or the way I had to drive her, and generally did herself proud.

Roll on better weather, and more Bob Adventures!

This evening I’m picking Bob. Adam from The Old Volks Home is meeting me halfway between here and Rugby to swap the 405 and Bob over. I’m really looking forward to having her back and with her fuel tank having been flushed hopefully the sudden stopping will cease.

I’m looking forward to my confidence being restored…

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…