And the lights all went out in Hampshire......

According to Manx musicians The Bee Gees, the lights all went down in Massachusetts.
Much the same can be said in Hampshire lately, where small aluminium car ownership has proved trying at best and positively awkward at worst.
Ever since taking on the Caterham (I would say "owning" it but one never owns a Caterham, or indeed a Land Rover - you just borrow it from the next person) the headlights have turned out to be something of an optional extra where the car itself determined when this particular option might be available. The headlights sometimes worked faultlessly, other times they'd fool you in to thinking there was a problem by not turning on then, just as the driver's harness was clinked open to investigate, ta daa, headlights on in an automotive "Ha! Only joking!" moment.
The joke started to wear a little thin though, reaching transparency last week whilst visiting fellow Sevener Carrots to retrieve a borrowed windscreen, needed for some social blatting the following evening. Aeroscreens (another of those upgrades that occurred during the blog blackout) aren't appreciated by everyone, less so by girls. Something to do with hair apparently.
And front teeth.
So, upon leaving Carrot HQ, no headlights. We'd tried everything. Twiddled switches, held fuses up to the light, tapped solenoids, wiggled wiring and even stood around talking lots.
But hey, it was a light evening with no cloud cover. How dark could it get? Quite dark is the answer. Lovely sunset, but pitch black roads. Getting as far as a regular blat haunt of the Farnham 24hr BP petrol station, I finally caved in and admitted 60mph on 5watt sidelights isn't funny.
The man who drove the breakdown truck found it mildly amusing though. Great, I thought, a bloke with a low loader and a sense of humour. How little did I know at that point.
So, after peering under the dashboard and admiring Caterham wiring, Recovery Truck Man loaded the Seven on to the sheet steel of the recovery truck and headed for home.
During any journey in a recovery truck, one can learn a great many things. Things learnt during the next hour were:
Recovery drivers who are about to be laid off do not make the best customer interface.
Recovery drivers who have lost their house in a bitter divorce less than twelve months ago make a bad customer interface.
Now you'd think a phone call from Recovery Truck Man's girlfriend might improve things. Over the handsfree loudspeaker she promised to have a bath run and supper ready for when he got home, and signed off with a cheery "Love you babes", something made all the more touching when I spotted a swallow tattoo on the back of Recovery Truck Man's left hand. And just as I was about to comment along the lines of "See? Not so bad", Recovery Truck Man announced "And she's a liar too".
Great. Recovery Truck Man clearly had multiple issues going on, and nothing I was going to say would change that. The last twenty minutes of the journey were uneasy to say the least and I had visions of saying something unwittingly antagonistic and thence being clubbed to death with a traffic cone.
But atrocities carried out using motorway accoutrements would have to wait, as soon enough the Seven was off loaded and rolled in to the garage.
Further diagnosis was carried out the following afternoon, and the fault traced to a faulty relay. Once this was replaced I guessed the Seven's electrical tantrums were over.
But more was to follow......

Horny

In the bleak mid-winter, when the UK was buried under four feet of snow, the Defender, whilst not at all phased by the onset of a new ice age, developed a mystifying electrical snag where the horn, the alarm and various other bits and pieces would immediately and persistently sound off as soon as the key was removed from the ignition. This was eventually traced to the near-side front side light, and a short feed which was sending a spurious signal to the "BCU" or body control unit, a device installed to prove that electronics don't belong in Land Rovers. Even a tiny leakage of voltage at the wrong point and all hell is let loose in the micro-circuitry that governs everything from the fog lights to the rear wiper. Why systems that've survived for decades using simple elementary electrical principles need the addition of silicon is beyond me.
But anyway, since then, the air horns on the Land Rover have never really worked properly. Having replaced the mute horns with traditional old skool electrics ones a few eeks ago, I thought it was about time to see if the old ones actually worked or if it was the tiddly compressor supplied with them that had given up.
Now, in the garage I have a small workshop compressor for powering tools or pumping up tyres and since this had pressure left in it from another job it seemed like a good idea to test the horns.

I'm happy to report they still work really well, and that 40psi really is more than enough to make a noise. Lots of noise. I think I can still hear it echoing off the brickwork of the surrounding houses.

Half moon and half doors

Many great things come in tubes - Smarties, maps, Primula cheese, underground trains and so on.
One of the better things to come in a tube, or rather in a pair of tubes for double the delight, is Araldite adhesive.
Araldite is top stuff, even before you twist off the little caps. The name alone conjures up earthy robustness in the "Aral", mixed with some schoolboy chemistry in the "ite", I mean come on, you have electrolytes, sulphites, and Han Solo was encased in frozen, and possibly fictitious carbonite. So Araldite mixes Olde Englande with contemporary technology. The name also doubles as a verb. The unassuming snot-coloured goo bonds two surfaces with such strength that words have yet to be invented to describe the chemical joinery, hence the act of using Araldite becomes simply the act of "Aralditing" something.
It seems only appropriate then that this Colossus of adhesives was the solution to an irritating problem blighting the Seven since last summer...In keeping with its Less-Is-More design policy, the roof and doors of the car are secured using press-stud fasteners. Lots of them. It's a simple enough solution, obviously, the drawback being that the rivets holding these press studs in place are tougher than the skin of the car, and over a few years of happy motoring they eventually pull through and the press studs fall off. It doesn't stop there though, as the hole in the skin is usually enlarged and simply replacing the rivet doesn't work. So I turned to Araldite and one of their many variants. Araldite comes in several specialist versions now; "Clear", which is transparent, "Rapid", which is quick-setting and "Steel", which isn't steel. It does come in a stylish pastel silvery-grey tube as opposed to the Lego-brick red of normal Araldite, and I can't help thinking a name like "Araldite Platinum Edition" would add a few sales. It's as hard as steel though and can be similarly machined and worked so ideal for plugging an enlarged irregular hole in the ali sheet exterior of the Seven, drilling a small hole and then employing a self-tapping screw to reattach the errant press stud.

With all studs now in place I could at last put to use something that's been rolled up and poked away on a shelf in the garage for a couple of years (yes, years) since buying them via the For Sale section of BlatChat - a pair of half doors, which allow screen-free (and therefore by default full door-free) motoring without losing the critical driver protection from stone-flick from the front wheels.
As with all satisfying jobs on the Seven, this one was completed after 9pm, but with doors fitted, and a lazy half-moon peering down from a slightly misty sky I grabbed the keys and set off on something that's been missing for too long - a quick night blat.

With the half doors fitted, in body-matching BRG, and recently installed Brooklands aero-screens, from side on the car has a Bentley-esque look, a solid slab of automotive engineering. It seems to be maturing with age too, like fine wine, or perhaps grotty cheese I don't know, but where it once snarled and snapped it now has a fluttering purr, and the Lasham bends were all the more smooth for it. This wasn't an ambitious blat, just a refresher, so the Farnham BP petrol station was far enough. The moonlight flicked through the trees and hedgerows of Hampshire, reminding me of the giga-blat of last July when I set sail for Stelvio and cracked it in one very long but indescribably satisfying blat. On that occasion, the lunar illumination set the moody, silent Alps aglow, a magnificent scene and one I need to revisit soon. But for now, hot chocolate and a donut (of the baked variety) is reward enough.

Besides, we were being watched......

The blog is back.

Take That, Doctor Who, Tony Blackburn......they have one thing in common: In order to make a come back, first you have to go away.

And so it is that The Blog is back.

The previous entry detailed the blatfest that is the Taffia fish and chip run, and since the 2010 event has just closed, this seemed a good trigger to resurrect the on-line on-going journal of the ups, the downs, and the occasional sideways of Land Rover and Caterham ownership.

With any comeback, there's never a one-shot disclosure of what filled the gap. To do so would erase the enigma, replace the question mark with a full stop. Instead, there's the trickle of information regarding the wilderness years, a steady drip-feed of snippets giving a tantalising glimpse in to what's gone on behind closed doors. And Both My Cars Mostly Aluminium (other blogs are available) is no different.

The full detail of the last ten months will out in due course, in chunks large and small as the topic at the time dictates.

There have been near-catastrophic electrical failures, there have been broken windscreens. There has been Stelvio and snow.

Untrue Grit.

Grit belongs in two places only. At the bottom of a budgie's cage and in Westerns starring John Wayne. The presence of grit anywhere else is unwelcome.
The first example is on the A339 near Thatcham.
Carrots, Wilto and I had just finished such a lovely weekend, which may come as some surprise when one learns that we were in Wales. Despite a reputation for enhanced precipitation, the various valleys and hills failed to deliver any rain, despite looking threatening at times, and we had a top weekend weaving our way along near-deserted mountain roads and passes. I won't succumb to worn out cliches about ribbons of tarmac unravelling across the countryside, no.....I'll come up with my own version....the roads were like an unfurling piece of asphalt string, very flat smooth string at that.
Utterly fantastic despite the intentions of occasional suicide sheep, with some top company too.
In true Seveneering style we stopped overnight at a simple campsite with minimal equipment, making for a reasonably easy get away in the morning, and our minimalist approach had the advantage of giving us a good excuse to make for the nearest cafe where tea and breakfast awaited without, apparently, any sense of humour on the part of the cafe owner who looked a little bemused when Carrots joked that we wanted a table for three hundred in the deserted early morning eatery.
Making the most of our Taffian weekend we retraced some of our route from the previous day, with the Seven proving a frequent claim that when it comes to bikes it can more than keep up. Towards Monmouth I did battle with a biggish sports bike ridden by a fat bloke who blasted along the straight bits, then petered out in the bends. And his bike looked like it was inspired by Batman's iPod.
Then we gently wove our way home over more unfurled string of asphalt although being Sunday afternoon, the closer we got to London, the slower the traffic got.
Our target for the afternoon was Nelson's Diner, near Thatcham, which is showing considerable promise in becoming a favourite haunt to rival the Market Diner. Late afternoon tea in an American diner.....surreal, but great.
After the Market Diner though, the grit set in with heavy gravel scattered liberally across the A339. Utter rubbish and, typically poor slap dash road repair. It was everywhere, literally lying loose on top of the old road. And I simply cannot see how this lazy "refurbishment" can be considered an improvement. The surface is not only rougher, it pebble dashes passing cars and, for those who dare to give it some beans, the small stones give all the grip of marbles.
Once home, I de-gritted the car and with the surplus creating a small rockery in the garage.
Then on to some maintenance. heavy cornering in Wales had taken it's toll on the wheel bearings with a noticeable clonk coming from the front off-side. But this wasn't normal wear and tear.
A little disassembled investigation revealed the felt washer that seals the back of the hub had come adrift, effectively opening the innards to grit and corruption, the worst the Welsh roads had to offer. The real irony is that it was a felt seal that gave way, a wool derived product, as though the sheep of Taffialand were getting their own back.

Words don't come easy.

Words fail me, not out of disbelief or disgust, but out of the simple, overwhelming feeling that remains after a full weekend of blatting through mid-Wales in brilliant sunshine, not a cloud in the sky.

Wild camping for civilised people.

Regular readers (both of them) could be forgiven for thinking the Land Rover has fallen from grace lately. Flicking back through previous blogs entries, it features very little.

This is probably because, in true Landy fashion, it's just been getting on with the job in hand.

That said, over the past few weeks, months in fact, it's had a few little treats and add-ons to make the job in hand easier or more comfortable.

After the night time outing on Salisbury plain, when alongside Dave H's truck the 90 looked a little saggy, I set about replacing the rear springs to make it a bit more industrial. This process was surprisingly easy if a little hefty. It was simply a case of disconnecting the lower damper mounts, jack the body off the old springs, swap them with the new ones and lower the car down again. Same again for the fronts.

Now, in a strange twist of Land Rover simplicity, heavy duty front springs are rated the same as standard rear springs so overall only two new springs were required (for the rear) with the old rears going in to the front, and the old fronts going in the bin.

And although still young in Land Rover terms (at less than twenty years old) the new springs have spruced the car up a bit, albeit at the expense of a little ride comfort. The new springs are, frankly, rock hard. Good for loading carrying, as long as the load isn't someone with a slipped disk.

Other additions that have slipped under the road radar of late are, in no particular order, a ladder, security grills in the rear windows, a work light on the back, a power point for the all-important fridge, a water heater (of the type fitted in RAC vans) and the fitting of the winch that's been lurking at the back of the garage since the Defender took over from a Discovery two years ago.

All of these proved their worth during the recent Bank Holiday weekend with a trip to the Lake District. Previous trips like this, I've always felt the car could do with beefing up a bit, but this time at no stage did I think "I wish this was better".

On both the domestic and driving fronts the car is now really nicely set up, although "nice" isn't a particularly emotive word when used in connection with cars. But it's true. With the roof tent on top, the fridge fitted and the water heater.....errrr......heating, the Land Rover had become like a little compact campervan.

The plan for the weekend was to meet up with a clutch of other Land Rover people at Coniston Hall, and although less than 300 miles away, the journey took nearly seven hours thanks to those ubiquitous merchants of buffoonery, The Highways Agency, deciding the Thursday evening rush-hour leading in to a long weekend was the ideal time to polish the cats eyes on the M6, or something.

Just as it got dark I arrived at Coniston Hall Campsite, possibly the worst campsite in the world and one we moved on from after just two nights of a planned four. Lesson learnt here is never let someone else book your campsite, as an entire tented village sprawled over the untidy field as the weekend progressed. During the two evenings we were unlucky enough to stay here, gangs of marauding kids blew through the site like an irritating gust of wind, dogs wandered around unchecked and by the time we upped sticks and headed for the wilderness, the ground itself was totally hidden under a sea of nylon and canvas. The site owner was, predictably, not open to the idea of refunds, or fire safety, or rubbish disposal. Awful, just awful.

Dodgy campsites aside, once teamed up with AJ and Mrs AJ in their nicely prepped 110 Station Wagon, Toppa in his 110 Van, and James and Debs in their gloriously battered ex-military Series III, the weekend was just epic. After a damp start on the Saturday, the weather improved gradually until Monday arrived over Haweswater (where we'd parked up for the night) without a cloud in the sky.

The laning was a combination of old coach roads which are child's play for a Landy, through to a number of tricky rock-crawls that even with traction control and anti-stall proved "interesting". Although the 90 lost traction in places, the anti-stall has an eerie quality to it, where it simply will not stop with the vehicle bouncing over rocks and grappling with loose shale as it tries to make progress, seemingly ignorant to the fact that it's simply and quite literally digging itself a deeper hole.

No. Must.....keep.....going.

Once we'd slipped away from the tribes of savages and marauding gangs of the Bartertown campsite, the weekend took on a whole new identity, with a true expedition feel since we opted to camp wild. This doesn't mean not washing or running naked round a camp fire. It means camping where ever one needs to, and making do with whatever provisions and supplies are already in the vehicle. This is one of the beauties of roof top tents - they have a minimal foot print, no larger in fact than the vehicle on which they're mounted so it's easier and less intrusive to "park" rather than "camp". I prefer this approach since it relies more on self-sufficiency, and although requiring a little more effort and planning, brings with it a handy disconnect from those who cannot cope without a TV or a microwave. Things like the fridge in the Land Rover catapult campsite life forward a little though, with fresh milk for brews, fresh ground coffee and a decadent smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel breakfast. A few luxuries and comforts needn't impact on the trip though, and this is the key - the modifications and add-ons that have been installed on the Landy of late mean it's possible to make the domestics fit the overall exped, not the other way around. The other big advantage is that once everyone else has headed for their crappy campsites or twee B&Bs, we were still out on the trail, needing none of the services offered by the towns and villages we overlooked from high in the hills. It really did feel like we had the place to ourselves....