OK – calm down, deep breaths…

Today has been ‘interesting’, kicking off with a visit to AutoClassica, who I thought were in Wakefield (close to work), but have moved to Knaresborough (NOT close to work). The chap at AutoClassica, Andrew, is meant to be a bit of a Concours prep guru, so I went to talk to him about my options for the Mantis & this year’s shows. Apart from buying some Swizol stuff off him (I WILL beat Phil Ward one day! Honest! I’m not too proud to cheat!), I enquired if there was anything that could be done about the stonechips on the bonnet, which have started to mount up. It was then pointed out to me that the bonnet (which had been resprayed as a condition of sale from the dealers, Optima, when I bought the car) had been done in a slightly different colour green to the rest of the car! Argh! Now I have had the car for 18 months & never noticed this, but now it has been pointed out to me… You know what I mean! Obviously(!) AutoClassica recommended a respray to do the job properly, but I most definitely can’t strech to £££ at the moment, however creative my accounting! In the meantime we agreed I would return the car to them after the Stoneleigh show for a couple of days polish/wax, & then maybe get the bonnet done sometime this winter. Oh well, at least I got the cleaning kit, which looks quite cool. Andrew did a quick demo on a patch of my bonnet & it was looking pretty nice after about 5 mins work! Shame about the rest of the car!

So, why ‘interesting’? (apart from discovering that I have a 2 tone car!) Well, what has ***ked me off so much is that, for the first time since I’ve had it, the car wouldn’t start this morning, straight out of a dry garage. Then, having established that turning on the A/C knackers all my dials (see previous diary entry), I discovered that it also disables the windscreen wipers (in driving BOOM! BOOM! rain at 80 mph on the M62…). Finally on the way back home tonight my Speedo just died for no reason. Mileometer stopped too. I now have quite an impressive list of things to be fixed when the car goes into the garage on Thursday!

I can take it though! Bring it on! Grrrrrr……

Woohoo! Finished building the shelving in the garage yesterday! Two days of slog to produce something with the structural tolerances of a Hurricane Shelter! (Now I am beginning to wish I had my own garage instead of having to borrow other peoples… Unfortunately that is £££££ round here.). If only Marcos had taken my approach to engineering I wouldn’t have things dropping off a five year old car left, right and probably center (but I haven’t spotted it yet). Then again, the Mantis would’ve had a cast iron body shell, a traction engine power plant and a 0-60 time measured in phases of the moon! Couldn’t there have been a half way point somewhere between us?!? Ah well, too late now! The benefit of this new garage (& the shelving which allows the Mantis to fit in) is no more full lock (x3) every time I have to try & get the car in or out – should save on the tyres a bit. And it’s only 500 yards from my house, which should save on my stumpy little legs a bit too!

My delight at my (somewhat limited) prowess with a hammer & saw was slighted dented when I discovered that turning on the air conditioning religiously blows a 20A fuse every time, which rather bizarrely then kills all my dash gauges with the exception of the clock & rev counter. Some prodding around the fusebox reveals the fact that the fuse layout does not bear an enormous resemblence to the one illustrated in the owners manual. Allegedly the fuse I am blowing with the A/C is the main ignition circuit. I think not… To add insult to injury I also discover a short somwehere in my front fogs circuit, which blows a 15A fuse on demand. Wow! All these ‘undocumented features’!

The postie also brought the diagnostic lead & software that I have been expecting from Racelogic, the manufacturers of my after-market traction control system. I am looking forward to plugging everything in & finally ascertaining whether the TC is working properly or not. Excellent!

Result! Well, sort of. The starter is fine, the fault eventually being traced to a connection below the motor from the battery. As I understand it, the main lead from the battery is connected to the starter via a ring connector held on by a threaded nut & bolt. This nut had worked loose & the contact had started arcing onto the bolt, thus destroying the thread giving the nut even less to hold on to etc etc. To fix it, the bolt was re-coiled & another nut fitted, with the exotic addition of a vibration-proof washer to stop it happening again. Sometimes I wonder how Marcos produced such a beautiful car, charged £50K for the pleasure (worth every penny!) and then skimped on seven pence for an extra washer. Aaaargh! Anyway, it’s working again, and I am thinking ‘Phew – that nearly cost me a bucket load for a new starter but in the end it only cost me £xxx (censored) to get it fixed’. Is this how all Marcos owners end up thinking? Expect the worst & when that doesn’t happen you feel much better about ‘only’ spending some more money. Stupidly, with all the problems I had a few weeks ago not being able to start the car due to the dead battery, I had forgotten that I can bump start the car even without a starter. Instead I forked out for some guy to trailer the car in to the garage – Doh!. To make myself feel better I went out for a mega blast by myself; I had been pining for that lovely V8 burble for the last few days – and it was still sunny!!! A string of ‘Cor’s and ‘Wow’s from a gaggle of schoolboys make me feel much better about life! Thumbs up all round!

The sickening click of a dead starter motor greets me this morning. A flying visit by the auto-electrician confirms the diagnosis, and I wonder if it is April 1st. A combination of unseasonably warm temperatures & bright sunshine make me want to go out and DRIVE BABY! However, a sheepish call to my local garage is what actually happens, and I enquire when he might be able to ‘fit me in’ – again. We are both reminded of the fact that a sump plug has been on order with MH for the last six weeks, so how long might a new starter motor take? Erk! Visions of missing Le Mans & the various car shows this summer loom… A glimmer of hope in that the starter might be repairable, but this will require more investigation before a verdict is forthcoming. Nothing I can do but wait, fingers crossed, wallet whimpering.

Ditched the idea of dry sumping the car for the foreseeable. Any spare funds look like disappearing into the car anyway.

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…