What another weekend off the GT6?

I had (another) weekend away from the farm and working on the GT6. This time I went over to Cambridge to catch-up with some of my relatives and then off to The Cambridge Museum of Technology to give a hand running one of the engines and see how things were there. Before leaving East Anglia to go to university and then work in South Wales, I used to be a regular volunteer at the museum and was a board member for a period of time. Unfortunately the museum has not been in full steam for the past couple of years due to boiler problems and this weekend just gone was the first full steam weekend since completion of the boiler works.

On my journey back to Wales I had a couple of interesting problems, first of all the lights went out on me, this was at about 7pm properly dark then, fortunately I was able to pull on the full beam lights whilst feathering the brakes to give some rear lights and drive into a pub car park. In the car park I lifted the bonnet, it was bit reluctant release, I soon found out why, one of the bonnet poles which act as part of the hinge had failed, damn! Anyway, with the bonnet up I had a look at the fuses and turned them in their holders to see if I could see if the fuse wire had gone. The act of turning the lowest fuse caused the light to come back on, with 20-20 hindsight I know I should have investigated the problem further, but instead I went on down the road.Another twenty yards down the road and on the dual carriageway the lights went again, this time I knew it was a reasonable distance to the next pull in, so I had to go on the verge with hazard lights on. I repeated the process of turning the fuse to try and get some lights, for a while I could only get front lights, but after a bit more fiddling I had a full set. Half way through this second bit of fiddling the hazard lights failed, just what you don't want on a pitch-black dual carriageway. After fighting my way off the verge and back onto the road I headed to the nearest garage to sort it out properly. It seems there was not enough tension between the fuses and their contacts, so a box of matches were bought from the garage and wedged between the fuse contact and the holder to increase the tension. Well it appeared to have worked and got me back home with no further problems or at least until I noticed I had lost a wheel nut somewhere along the journey, which was promptly replaced the next day and the rest of the wheel nuts checked to torque.

I had planned to post this blog a few days ago, but since Tuesday afternoon I have had no broadband access. Seems BT has got some problems as I have not been able to connect from 52 hours now, just as well I managed to find a dial-up account though - seems so sloooow now.