I have finally decided on a new battery! I have sourced an Optima Red Top. OK, OK, it’s taken me 3 months (!) to make a decision, but I am happy I have got a decent battery & that I can forget all about that bit of the car. Except for the new brackets which need making up because the old battery was smaller thanb the Optima. Oops! I can now cancel my subscription to ‘What Car Battery’, ‘Which Battery’, ‘Auto Battery Digest’ & ‘Teenage College Girls Monthly’. (Eh? Steady on!).

Noticed Marcos Heritage are offering some nice looking aluminium & steel replacements to the standard Ford dash. Indicator stalks, handbrake handle & gearknob. The original Ford stuff is OK, but it’s still obviously Ford…

Car now sporting a new exhaust (geddit!). With a brief of ‘I want to make TVR drivers weep into their bucket seats!’, Tube Torque have done a splendid job. First impressions? The engine seems to be breathing a little more freely (there is certainly a lot more gas coming out of the tail pipes than before), and the exhaust note is truely sweet! I know, I know, I shouldn’t pay any attention to that sort of thing, but I can’t help it! You’d have to hear it to understand, honest! I haven’t quite got to the point of taking out a subscription to MaxPower yet though.

Am investigating dry-sumping the car as I have discovered Pace still have the Mantis Challenge kits available. Cost not prohibitive as I only need a simple two stage system, but I have yet to hear what the fitting bill might be! Progress on the exhaust front too, having been quoted a bit much by far-distant MH and received no reply from Peninsula Autos (another customer lost), I have visited the excellent Tube Torque in Macclesfield. After some discussion we have settled on a twin heavy-gauge stainless system from the Cats back, taking the bore up from 2″ to 2.5″ in the process. If I am really sad I will attach a ‘.wav’ file to this page with the new sound on… Heh! Heh!

Once again I am reminded that my Mantis was one of the first five built. The exhaust has split (hard to tell with that delicious roar coming out of the back, mind!) & it turns out that my car has a mild steel system, which Marcos ditched for stainless early on (not early enough!) in the Mantis development cycle. It also appears that I have clipped something under the car & nudged the sump guard into the sump, fortunately without damaging it. Then again, I have just lowered the back of the car so I will obviously have to be particularly vigilant for those policemen catching some zeds in the middle of our roads!

Heh! Heh! On Monday I went along to the Porsche Owners Club meeting at The Saddle boozer nr Jn 19 of the M6. It was the North West Chapter (Hell’s Angels have Chapters don’t they? I reckon that means that the POC do too…). These are the guys who I am travelling in convoy with down to Le Mans, so as I have tagged along on their organised trip, I thought I’d better meet ‘n’ greet, just as basic manners. Of course, the chance to show off my Mantis never crossed my mind, and it was the clutch that made me rev it up in the car park as I was leaving, honest! Er…
I like my Mantis, I really do, but there are some scarey blokes out there (all in Porsches it would seem) who take this car malarky VERY SERIOUSLY INDEED. I have come to the conclusion that I like talking about my car, not cars in general, so I guess I’m not a full-on petrolhead. Some of these chaps are going to Le Mans but so long as I don’t have to share a tent with them or try & pretend I know what a sub-quarter rear axle floating base sprocket adjuster is, then we’ll all get along fine. (Mental note: Must get the car serviced before Le Mans trip or I may actually have to borrow a floating base thingy and ask which way up it goes; embarassing.). The whole meeting thing brightens up considerably when someone produces an anniversary cake. Cake is good…

Arse! And double arse! The battery has assumed Pythonesque parrot status once again. All lights, fans etc definitely off in the car, but again I have not driven it for 3 weeks & it has been sub zero temps for a few days around the New year. Time to ring Marcos Heritage & ask for clues! Some suggestions from Rory, finishing off with the very kind offer to sell me an Optima battery for about six million pounds. I have checked these out & am debating whether I want to pay for something that can apparently launch the Space Shuttle. (And they come in different colours too, kids!) Also discover that Joe Cubitt has left MH to work with Jem’s son Chris Marsh on his new sportscar project. This is a major bummer from my point of view as Joe was generally a very nice chap & knew everything about the later cars. Anyway, he’s probably having more fun now, so good luck to him.

Shot off to Edale for a Crimbo walk. No snow but this probably made the driving a bit safer! The Marcos is behaving perfectly & started first time, so the battery is fine (phew!). Fantastically crisp air reminds me why I love being out with the top down in Winter, however this is slightly marred by the hyperthermia induced by my ‘Christmas special’ haircut, which is even shorter than usual (how do you get shorter than #0?). The handling is noticeably better with the fully-treaded Bridgestones at the back, so I feel smug!

Oh… and Happy Christmas of course!

Aaarrrghhh! Dead battery. No idea why. No lights left on (I even remembered to check the interior one), no fans, even the alarm is disabled when it’s garaged (it is secured by other means…) so I’m buggered if I know what’s going on here. Anyway, it jump-started first time & after a 20 minute run into Manchester was fine for the rest of the day. I haven’t driven it for, what, 3 weeks maybe? Surely the battery can’t flatten in 4 weeks? Watch & wait on this one I think.

A very soggy weekend in the Brecon Beacons is on the cards, followed by a trip to Marcos Heritage to get my cracked windscreen replaced (at last! How many months wait?!?) and also get the clutch looked at. It was slipping a couple of weeks ago, then after a minute adjustment proceeded to jump out of gear, so there is possibly something up. The car handles like a pig on the way down, skittering all over the place with a lot of surface water on the road. While I’m steaming quietly in front of a huge log fire in the cottage, someone informs me that my two back tyres are well & truely bald. A quick (And I thought it rained a lot in Manchester…) trip outside to the car revealed the reason behind the poor handing on the way down – both rears had lost their tread in the middle, with the outer tread almost unmarked; an expensive lesson about the effects of over-inflation. I add two new rear tyres to the shopping list but have already decided to try a new brand out rather than stick with the Pirelli Rossos, which I always found skittish (probably because they were over-inflated, I know, I know). Things are starting to look a bit on the expensive side, and I remember why I haven’t been on holiday for the last couple of years! Oops!

The drive out of Wales towards Marcos Heritage is ‘interesting’. It’s pitch black, I am lost (There is no-one to ask “Which way to England please?” at 4am!), and the windscreen wipers are only just winning. The obligatory leak where the door window joins the hood behind my left shoulder has started with a vengance but I am in high spirits as the windscreen saga is finally coming to a close. A couple of T junctions remind me I am still running on ‘slicks’ at the back (!) & I take it a bit easier until we hit the M4 where I can put my foot down. YEAH RIGHT! Enter the M4, stage left, cunningly disguised as the biggest car park in southwest England. Laughingly, I had been bothered about speed cameras… No problem! Instead I worry about the gearbox seizing up in 3rd, which I don’t get the chance to use for three hours… I idley wonder whether Mr Prescott or My Byers have been in this neck of the woods lately except by helicopter.

Reaching MH about 1030 on the Monday morning, Joe is not around again so I leave the Mantis with them & go for a wander in ‘The Beast’, Marcos’s old courtesy car that MH have inherited. To cut a long story short numerous phone calls back to MH elicit little or no information about when the car is going to be ready, and I get the sinking feeling that I am going to have to stay the night down here. I head for Bath to console myself with a decent hotel and twin Swedish hitchhikers who have run out of money (OK, but there was a need for some optimism at this point, I assure you), but end up stopping in Bradford-upon-Avon which is gorgeous. Not being religious or followed by strange men, a room at the inn is no problem & I bed down for the night, having sauntered round Bradford sampling the beer every now & then. MH demonstrate complete ignorance of the fact that if you are taking twice as long to do something as originally said, it’s a good idea to keep people informed. I do, however, get informed that the clutch appears OK. Then 20 minutes later I am informed that the clutch is not OK & I will have to pay for a new one.

The next morning I set off to acquire some new rear tyres. Again, MH are totally non-commital about when the job will be finished and it looks like being a long day. At least I get a great deal on my tyres, some Bridgestone Potenza S-03 Pole Positions, from Micheldever Tyres. These (well, the previous incarnation in the form of the S-02s) are fitted by Marcos as standard on the supercharged Mantis (Eek!), so should be pretty sexy. As it gets dark I head for MH anyway, determined to take my car away, whatever. Handover takes place about 1700 in the darkened skies, and the scene is set when we all discover a scratch in the glass of the new windscreen. I don’t see the point in getting too uptight about it because there are no other screens in existence, so we all know I don’t have much choice. It’s an enormous improvement over the cracked screen anyway, so no worries. The bill appears, including labour for fixing the faulty mirror MH sent me, which I point out. This is removed & I end up paying for 3 hours labour, which is bewildering (but good!) when I have had to wait 2 full days to get my car back. I leave MH with a slightly sour taste in my mouth but pretty bloody pleased to be going home. It’s cold, it’s dark, it’s not raining (much) & the top’s down – life is fantastic once again as I put my foot down & set off for the motorways back to Manchester. Time to bed those Bridgestones in…