Saturday 18 June 2022

A Day Of Farewells

 Firstly & most importantly I waved goodbye to the Quantum. I'd had a number of enquirers, most seemed to just talk about the car, then on Thursday a text held promise & the guy came to see the car that evening. The quantum is a good car, I couldn't manage it & the Stylus but I didn't want it to go to someone like it's last couple of owners who just let it dilapidate.

Matt has never had a kit car, but has had several classics - so I expect he'll be disappointed by the complete absence of rust - he seemed to like the car straight away & a brief test drive cemented his enthusiasm, a deal was done & he collected it today.

He gave me a little more for the car than I paid in 2020, but in the mean time I have spent over £4,000 refurbishing it. but it was never about the money, I bought it to keep me sane at a particularly dark time in my life & it achieved that. So the drive's looking a bit empty now.

The other goodbye was a more pleasant one, I said farewell to the really awful handbrake on the Stylus. The handbrake cable runs round a pulley on the trans tunnel & back through the side wall to the the inside of the tunnel. There it was doubled back & clamped around the middle of a length of studding. At each end of the studding were two nuts clamping two more cables in a "balance bar" arrangement which was way too short, so really only one brake ever came on. My fix was to have the loop pull on a "yoke" which pulls a Harrier flying control pulley & add a new rear cable in one piece, so the brakes are pulled on equally no matter what. Having been out for a swift test, the handbrake still isn't brilliant, but I can no longer push the car along with the brake set. I have a few ideas to improve it further over the winter when the car's down for having the rear chassis refurbished.

Also mended is the SatNav mount. I'd printed one which had worked OK, nut just before (luckily) the road trip it broke where I always thought it would & I'd cobbled something together out of a TomTom cradle, a Ram mount, a couple of bolts & a tyrap - it worked though. With the Quantum going I had a spare TomTom mount, so I cut the suction end off one & glued in a modified motorcycle mirror Ram mount. so the SatNav is back in it's rightful place.

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