The ongoing story

[Amazin]

Every word and step of it are gospel. Most of the difficulty originated with the - from memory - increasingly less attractive 'girl' in the Moroso tax-office, without whose help the work would probably have been halved - But only halved.

Kind regards,

A

[Amazin]

Caution:

I don't drive much, generally walking if the distance is less than five miles, and it almost always is.

However, during the last two weeks I headed SE to the ultimate tip of the country, with the car not missing a beat all 13 hours of the 1200 kms there, and the 16 hrs of the 1350 kms back - I got lost around the capital, and had to execute various square-searches to find the route again. And yes, as I started at 4.15 a.m. coming back, I stopped to rest each 500 kms or so.

BUT, here's the caution. I stopped for fuel at approximately 6.30 a.m. on the return trip. My tank required only about 25 litres, and I thought nothing in particular of the fact that the garage-chap zipped my card through the groove in front of me, then went aside and wrote something and zipped it again. Yes, I do tend to be the trusting type. My generation had no particular need to be otherwise.

Imagine my surprise and disappointment therefore, some 600 kms. further north, on checking my mileage against fuel bought, to see that ticket reading 237.22 litres for 246.00 Euros. The 480 tank is for 48 litres, and mine was the only vehicle there.

Of course, I have stopped all payments on the card, particularly as I now suspect the unfathered bar steward, unhappy with his single swipe, has probably copied the card and is on his way to Bermuda. He could clearly see a sleepy old foreign dope on his way across country and took advantage. And I even left a tip for the girl.

Caution: Check your tickets before you leave.

I shall have to take my axe back there some time.

[Amazin]

Well, MoT bright and early on Monday morn, and today, at Saturday midday, I found that the garage had not changed the seat catch cable as they has so-kindly offered to do. - I had previously lost patience with it and somewhat pulled the seat apart, so presumably they had sought to soothe me.

The job was not made any easier by my having to fumble around from behind at floor-level with a seat that obstinately refused to incline. But having more or less managed it once, then having had to take it apart again just to make sure that the cable I was inserting was the same as the one I had finally just managed to extract, I reassembled it and mackled the springs back into place and then suddenly the seat kindly inclined forward. I can't imagine why, but it did.

The seat will now incline back and forth but not lock back. That is probably just as well, as I can move the latch up and down, but it does sweet effay - Nothing. There is about a foot of slack cable wafting about in there, and I can't see how the damned thing is supposed to function to move any catch anyway.

Oh well, perhaps the MoT folks won't notice.

I will add that the whole job was done - so far as it has been done - in about two hours without once seeing what I was doing, the whole process being conducted solely by touch while being somewhat claustrophoberised by being trapped in the back without a hope in hell of getting out if - when - the garage caught fire. If any feel impelled to comment, be welcome to do so in braille if you so wish in the 'how to' Manuals 'to change a seat-catch' section. I think I might well understand it quite as well I seem to have understood the task so far.

[Amazin]

Sailed through. They didn't notice. AND reimbursed me for a mistaken overcharge that they - not I - noticed.

Mind you, it IS only twenty-two years old, and it IS a Volvo after all.

And Spring is just around the corner. Ho-hum.

[Amazin]

Friday.

The car - being a Volvo and only 22 years young - sailed through the MoT last Monday, but the quandry is still mine. The new cable is correctly affixed to the pins each side of the seat at floor level just as the old cable was, and the lever knob moves up and down, but no joy, and I cannot honestly and reasonably see why there should be. The seat now inclines forward for some reason, so I can access the back from the driver's side, but the driver's seat does not lock back, which is fine by me, but may not be so fine according to M0T (ITC) requirements, so I would like to please them as they're decent folks.

How is the floppy cable supposed to activate the catch, which I have still not caught sight of?

If this can all be explained and righted, I will then only have to stitch or staple the seat cover back together. Super.



Saturday.

Well, another ninety minutes of unrestrained bad language (it's Saturday, not Sunday) and it is all back together again in shipshape order so far as a somewhat mauled seat will permit and . . . . The illegitimate sonofawhatsit doesn't function, and I'm afraid to use more force lest I break something more permanently.

Perhaps it is just that the catch needs a few squirts of oil, having been subjected to twenty years of wettest Wales, but that can wait until I have given my stomach something to eat other than itself.



Sunday.

Further to which, it required oil and THEN for the cable to be routed via a guide so that the cable-end approaches the securing pin at an angle to activate it correctly, which it now does. But oooooooooh, the complication!

Since the Saxon tendency is to simplify, I can only imagine the Latin tendency to elaborate and complicate had a hand in this seat design.

Now I only have to make some kind of connection to attach the heating element which simply will not physically reconnect without me smashing or otherwise distorting the attachment points, stitch up the seat cover I tore apart, and hide what I cut and savaged when I couldn't legitimately otherwise separate it.

But at least now I can face the MoT (ITV) folks with a clear conscience and honest smile.

Thanks again, San Jaime, for all your help. Your wife has a real treasure there, and you can tell her I said so. Mind you, I don't have to put up with a garage full of junk. Then again, my flat is already up to here in it. In fact, the photo of your shed looks exactly like most of my rooms. So all I now need is a beautiful young maiden who doesn't think the mid-seventies is too old and has her own shovel and wheelbarrow, so if any happen to read this they can take due note and apply in their best writing, enclosing photos of shovel and barrow, and a s.a.e. Thank you.

[Amazin]

So Spring has finally sprung, after a long and unusually cold and wet winter. I haven't used the black '88 1.7 ES since the long weekend of early December, except to sail it in March through the 'itv' - the local and quite stringent version of the MoT - But then it is only 22 years old, and is, of course, a Volvo. Unfortunately I will have to use it shortly to diagonally cross this fair country again = 1200 kms in about 12 hours, all being well. In preparation for this eventuality, just to be on the safe side I asked the garage to change the oil. They charged 30 euros, and promised to wash the car before I use it next, as it is gathering dust in a corner and they don't want me to let the side down by using such a car in shabby condition. I will have to check whether they tightened the hand-brake cable, as the itv folks courteously mentioned that it is at its limit, while accompanying me to their office to refund me a slight overcharge they noticed the office girls had made. Yes, much of life here is still conducted in traditional ways.

But I must remember to visit that garage again on the east coast where, infected by tourists' manners, they charged me for 237 litres of no-lead petrol when I passed the same way at 6.30 a.m. last mid-July, and I didn't notice it until I stopped for a breather 600 kms farther on my way. There will be an axe among my tools this time, with which to chide them for such discourtesy should they try the same lark again.

Greetings, O St. Jim. I can't reply to yours, so needs must here. I see you generally perform your miracles on your and others' cars "single-handed" - while, with the other hand, presumably you are marking exam results, updating your memoirs, repairing your neighbour's 480 LH rear arch and putting the cat out - What it must be to have practical talent.

[Amazin]

Well, just back from an inevitable obligatory visit to the diagonal corner of the country, 1200+ kms there, the same back, plus another 200 kms while there.

Fourteen hours of smooth driving each way, listening for the slightest cough, but not a hiccup perceived. Most others hurry on past, most illegally and mostly German metal, but the 480 just eases along at 110 kph in fifth. I don't expect blazing acceleration from an '88 1.7 motor, and I am not disappointed. Maybe she would, but I don't ask her.

While there, the passenger window slipped its cable or whatever it is, but I will get around to that when I have a moment, and if it's not too difficult I might see to the driver's window at the same time, or use that silicon spray that someone mentioned last year. When I have passed some of it under a microscope, I will even clean off the muddy rain that fell from a midnight thunderstorm just before I left to return - I fancy it's from Africa, but will see.

Complaints? - No complaints.

One might quite reasonably wonder why Volvo don't see sense and reissue this model.

[Amazin]

Having only a book to edit at the weekend, I made time finally to fix the flat spring-thing in the back of the driver's seat. Santiago frae Glasgae's information to that effect has been on hand more or less since Christmas, so I got down to it while the temperature outside the car was only 32º C, and inside the car somewhat higher, with thunder brewing both inside and out.

Anyway, after a lot of struggling and cussing, I finally got it together, to have the coiled-spring hooked end jump out again. After this had happened half a dozen times, it occurred to me to reason why - I'm really not very bright in these technical matters. The plastic or nylon thingummy the end of the coiled spring hooks into is split, isn't it. If you don't know the answer without visual proof, yes it is. So now I have a good legitimate excuse not to sew the seat back together where I tore it apart last March. Whether or not the plastic thingummy can be superglued remains to be seen, but I doubt it.

But I will tell you this, love the car though I do, I really am sure that the ornate latin mentality had a hand in its design. I could invent a car just as good and as elegant with about ten percent of the fiddly bits and pieces that this one has.

[Amazin]

The plastic or nylon thingammy into which the coiled spring hooks - which holds one end of the lumbar support of the driver's seat - Gee, isn't even describing it complicated? - remember, from the last gripping episode, it was split? - Will doddery old car-repairer even yet manage to solve the problem and avoid the peril of dislocated spine in time . . . ?

Yes, it does superglue together, further strengthened by cutting a thin slice from a used super-glue tube and superglueing it over the previous split from inside to carry and spread the load from the end of the coiled spring. - Well, it is holding so far, and the difference in 'feel' is appreciable, though I'm not going to test it to the limit. - Think I'm crazy?

[Amazin]

Uh!

Well, I went away for the weekend and, at one stage of my stay-away, I girded up my resolution and sewed up the driver's seat cover that I tore apart last winter and then left while I resolved the problem of the fiddly bit that holds one end of the lumbar support. Followers of this gripping report will remember that I achieved this after great stress and inspìration by superglueing it. I'm no great seamster, but at least the edges of the seat cover kind of met. - Well, enough, and nobody was going to see it anyway.

Returning the seventy-odd miles this a.m., arriving in town I found the road of my normal route was blocked by repairs, so I had to detour more than somewhat. Drawing up to an uphill traffic-lights, I felt - Uh! - the seat back slacken a little. I don't have to look, and I don't have to tell you what has happened, do I? But I did notice that the rest of the car behind the driver's seat is still there, so -

Superglueing is not enough. So if anyone has one of these fiddly bits still unsundered and going spare, you will find a willing recipient here - It looks a little like a simplified version of 'the crown of thorns' whatsit, which was obviously haunting its Latin designer's tormented mind when he was asked to produce. Otherwise I will just have to dream up some monstrosity of ingenuity and mackle it - maybe a bent six-inch nail would do.