Evening all

Well, that didn't go as well as expected. From the car actually touching the door sealing strip on both sides of my borrowed race shuttle at the same time (these Vientos are LARGE) I should have known that today wasn't going to be easy.

I went expecting a fail, but to come away with a fixed list of jobs to do to guarantee a result at the re-test. However, the car had other plans..... Having started on the button now for ages, during the emissions testing the engine just died and refused point blank to restart. Mr Tester (who was very polite and helpful) suggested that he carry on and get as much tested as he could without the engine running whilst I tried sorting it out. To cut a long and frustrating story short we found a blown fuse for the fuel pump which was replaced (with one from my towcar at the tester's suggestion) and promptly blew again. Understandably the tester was unwilling to let me substitute a bigger fuse (good suggestion as we will see later, and I may not have gotten the towcar home if I had carried on) and as the car wouldn't run we had to abandon the test. The tester was good enough to give me a photocopy of the points that he had already recorded and to make some suggestions about stuff that he had spotted but hadn't formally tested yet so as to make the re-test easier. Good line in hot tea and sympathy too. Was also very complementary about the build quality, which was nice. Quite a few minor radius issues, including the interior mirror, the gear lever surround and the reflectors. He made an interesting comment about these parts 'why do the kit car shops keep on selling you this stuff when they know it will fail the SVA radius tests ?' Only big fail so far was the front wings not being wide enough to cover the wheel and tyre directly from above. I had expected this to be fair but was hoping to get away with it as I won't be able to match a new bigger pair to the existing glass and the only other option that I fancy is carbon fibre and I was rather hoping not to have to stump up for that (though I have now "How much... for mudguards ?" was my wife's comment .

Have since found on getting home and fitting (and blowing) a bigger fuse that following replacing my steering downlink I had disturbed the wiring to the rad fan relay and that when I had reconnected (very late last night in my defence) what looked like a single un-plugged wire it was in fact one half of two unplugged wires and I had inadvertantly connected the relay output direct to earth. So as soon as the fan circuit kicked in the fuse blew and stopped the fuel pump. Still, better that than the fans not running and boiling the engine.

Re-test booked for October 14th, major lesson learned - give myself more time for the little stuff and ideally don't end up still fixing and fettling late the night before. Stuff like making up handbrake and gear gaiters and making up expansion bottles takes more time than you imagine.

Roll on October !

Cheers
Simon

Sorry it did not go to plan but you will get through next time

will post tommorow how I got round the cycle wings isssue..

Paul

to get round the issue of the cycle wings being too narrow I fitted some trim. ( think it was window channel - ) with it having two channels it made the wings a lot wider.

Paul
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