Thu, 27 Jan 2005

Fun and games in the rain

After much research amongst club members, I finally settled on an auto electrician in Slacks Creek to fix my starter motor. Some of the other recommended places that were nearer to home lost the chance to do the job because they told me on the phone that it wouldn’t be the starter motor, despite the fact that I insisted that it was. Idiots.

So, I get nice and wet pushing the car out into the street so I can roll start it. Then, as I turn on to Coronation Drive, heavy rain starts falling—and continues falling until I arrive at Slacks Creek. That’s not so bad, at least until I get to the Regatta. The wipers and turn indicators suddenly stop working. So I do this long drive in early morning traffic along the motorway in driving rain and can hardly see. Naturally, the wipers start working as I turn in to the auto electrician’s entrance, so he is unable to diagnose that fault.

Fortunately, the starter doesn’t fix itself, so he pulls it out and shows me the problem—the last person who built that starter did it wrong and the cap has come off the end and various bad things have happened. However, it’s fixable. Three hours and $165 later, I’m on my way home. The rain starts again soon after I get on the motorway and the wipers go out to lunch again, but I’ve had enough for one day and don’t turn back. Strangely, when I hit the indicator switch to change lanes, the wipers start up again. It was too hard to tell if the indicators were working, but I decided not to worry about that.

The race seat and race steering wheel conspire to hide the most interesting instruments (for road use) in this car. The seat, being required by some silly law to be attached to the original frame, is a smidgen higher than it should be; the steering wheel is much thicker than standard and, being of smaller diameter, is effectively lower. As a result, it’s not possible to see the speedo except below 40 km/h or above 200. Nor is it possible to see the flashing lights for the turn indicators. And the car is far too noisy to allow me to hear the “audible” signals. So I just manage without some of that information.

So now I just wait for the other electrical problem to appear on a fine day when I have nothing to do so I can get it fixed.

Posted at: 16:39

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