Once again, life has sort of been getting in the way & I have neglected you somewhat, dear readers.  I apologise profusely for this, but from now on I plan to set aside specific time  for blogging, I know you appreciate the effort 😉

So, my last post was over a month ago, and by god it has been one hell of a month, both in Morris Minor and ‘real’ life!

The ‘real’ life bit isn’t overly exciting, so I shall skip right to the Martha business…!

After getting her back with a new gearbox, the next thing to go was the brakes.

One evening when I went to take Jones to practice, I noticed that the brakes were jolly sloppy, and  not even as good as they had previously been (which is really saying something!).  I noticed the following morning that there was a damp patch under the drivers side front wheel, so knew right away that it was the cylinders.

That weekend, Ashley & I sat outside and had both front wheels off to fit new cylinders & brake shoes.  Unfortunately, the shoes I had been given were the wrong size, so had to be taken back & replaced, and one of the front cylinders was siezed so badly that we couldn’t get it off, but that seems to be par or the course with the old girl!

So I was on my way to Tamworth again last Tuesday, and after dropping mum off at work, I got about a mile own the road and she cut out.  Just completely died.

It was a cold morning, so I was trying my best to get her going again, but nothing was working and I couldn’t see an obvious problem.

45 minutes later, a tow truck turned up.

Now, I have to put this out there, but I was exceptionally annoyed with the service from this man who supposedly knew what he was doing.  He had no idea what it was, even tried hitting her (which pissed me right off) but she didn’t start.  He said to me ‘well I dunno what it is’  He said it could be the ‘starter’ and asked if I wanted him to take it to the arage so they coul ‘have a proper look and find out what the problem is’.

Excuse me, but should he not have ‘had a proper look’ when he was there?!!

Apparently not, he was in a big rush to get to a car that was ‘booked in for 9am’.  He was driving like a bit of mentalist on the way back, in case he should be late to pick the other car up.

To cut a long story short, after a lot of asking around, and testing, replacing the points, condenser & rotor arm, it turned out it was the coil.

The funny thing here, is on the same day mine went, Steph Holloway’s car, also Martha, had her coil go too!  Her tale is much worse than mine though, and involves some kind of renegade chappy in a white van and a landrover coil…but that is another story!

So, after all this, last Thursday I fit a new coil, and voila!  Martha was on the road again!

Mr Jones Snr had suggested taking Martha to his garage & getting her serviced & checked over to see if anything obvious needed looking at, and she was taken in yesterday.

She came back to me with lots of new bits, her brakes had been sorted out & the new shoes put on, new air filter, oil filter, she had her nipples greased (snigger), and various other routine bits done.  He also gave me a little list of things that would need looking at in the months coming up to MOT which is due in January.

One of them was the exhaust.

Which went today.

This was the result.  Noisy, huh?!

I think that this is what you call Sod’s Law…

Until next time folks!

Katie xxx