Rebellious Attitude (3)

Ted Howles asked for club members to turn up and support the CSMA in the annual challenge at Zeals, and I decided the best thing I could do would be to abandon the hedge-smashing cornfield-ploughing Scimitar and get the Rapid Rebel rolling round the cones. I had two weeks to do this, long enough for Time-Team to re-dig the Jubilee line extension.

There was no sign of exhausts in stock at Reliant, and the two complete three-wheeler systems I had were totally the wrong shape, so I cut and welded bits from old Scimitar systems to make a side-exit pipe just in front of the left-hand rear wheel, with a single Scimitar box under the passenger seat. That took a Saturday afternoon, and I decided that Sunday morning was the ideal time to fire up the engine and go for a spin before the Simmonds' turned up with the secretarial equipment. (June had volunteered to become the new secretary for the CSMA Salisbury Group, some people should be protected from themselves!)

I had been assured by the previous owner that he and his dad got the engine running, but it had been a bit rich (maybe I misheard him and he meant it had been a bitch?). After making up a new HT lead from the coil to the distributor, resetting the points to half the gap, retiming the ignition to where it should be, and cleaning 3 of the spark plugs, I was still unable to get a cough from the engine. Only three of the plugs? One was stubbornly refusing to budge. Finally, at lunchtime, after heating the three plugs up with a hot-air gun and using asbestos gloves to screw them back in, the engine coughed into life and ran, and I had to cough and run outside.

Half an hour later, with the tune-up analyser giving me some hints, I was a lot happier, and the car seemed better for it as well. Less than half a turn of the mixture adjustment screw was swinging the CO reading between 2 and 10 percent, it had been more than just rich, positively creosote. I drove the little car round and round the industrial estate trying to dodge the potholes (open-cast mines really), and keep the exhaust system in place on the car - I had no clamps or mountings that were small enough to bolt it all together. I also had no battery small enough to fit under the bonnet, so two jump leads emerged from the rear of the bonnet and curled round into the opened passenger door window, to a battery wedged behind the seat (which was still in rapid-removal mode). I made June come over and drive the new toy around, which she reluctantly did until she went straight through the largest pothole and the exhaust fell off. Paul Simmonds also refused to drive it when he turned up, but probably because he felt it was beneath him.