some pictures to follow in a minute, but first a summary of the 105 mile trip home.
first 26 miles - realise I need arms like Garth for the steering, then the temp gauge suddenly shot up to red
so thats my baptism into commer ownership - breakdown man called
on inspection the bottom hose off the radiator goes to some sort of aluminium thermostat doo dah - which then goes into the engine block - attached by jubilees
the very nice repair man took off the alternator and found the jubilee clip had rotted and was only held in place with dirt. It seems our fiddling with the alternator directly above it during the fan belt change had jogged it free - draining all the water....
so the nimble fingers of mr breakdown man fixed it and he topped us up with water
about 5 miles further along the a14 the same breakdown man was waiting on an overbridge - watching to make sure we got on our way ok - he put his ambers on and gave us a honk as we passed under him.
a couple of navigational errors later i pulled over to take a bo**ocking from charlotte who was following in the support car!
oh no - the Dog wouldnt start, half a can of easy start, lots of head scratching, and then a quick call to Woolfie to call him seven shades of ****e for giving me a duff engine.... just as I was beginning the conversation and building up to my well planned tirade I notiched that I still had the engine stop knob pulled up.
Knob in and the engine started straight away - red faced I wished woolfy well and continued on my journey.
for the remaining 70 miles the Dog performed admirably - bearing in mind it had been on blocks in woolfys workshop for over 2 years!
luckily I nicked a pair of woolfies ear plugs though - cos at present it sounds like a heavily laden lancaster 10 miles from Berlin - some may call that "sporty"
I averaged 38-40 mph on the run back - purely to due to the sound of 4 rolls royce merlin engines / 1 perkins 2.5 diesel (take your pick)
I could go faster but found that over 45mph the temperature gauge started to get close to the red - didnt want to risk it first time out. At 40 it dropped to just over half way so I stuck at that.
I found gear selection to be interesting - finding neutral was harder than finding a ladies special spot! but i suppose I will get use to that / will get it fettled
anyway - im home now, first beer opened - Charlotte is in the Gin bottle so all is well with the world
thanks for all your work Woolfie - now its time for me & charlotte to put our mark on it - fit out the decor and get that engine tweaked
pictures to follow.....
The Dog is on its way....
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