I am getting to know the underside of my car quite intimately now as I seem to spend the majority of my time underneath the dam thing.  I feel a little like the little Dutch boy sticking his fingers in the dyke. In my case in dyke read spark plugs, exhaust pipe and oil tank. As regards the oil tank it was a case of literally sticking my fingers in the dam thing to stop the oil coming out.

Since I have changed the spark plugs and changed the oil the thing is now going like a three legged donkey and no matter what I seem to do it just gets worse. The joys of working on a 28 year old car.

I concluded that I had put too much oil in the thing so I decided, in my wisdom, to let some drain out. I took the car to a large empty car park ideal for working on the car without anyone running over your legs, and got to work. As I lay on the ground wedged under the car as far as I can go, I delicately unscrewed the oil nut to let some oil dribble out into my oil catching receptacle I had made. It was a small box with a bin liner inside, simple and effective and…..light. Just as the oil started to dribble out, the wind picked up and blew my box, from under the oil tank and luckily got stuck by the wheel, otherwise it would have been on the other side of the car park in a second.

Now the oil was dribbling out but it wasn’t falling down straight onto the floor, the wind was catching it and flicking it all over the place. I had do bend double to retrieve the box with my hand whilst being super careful not to let go of the nut with the other hand in case it came out of the oil tank completely and then there would have been a river of black gold all over me and the floor. I managed to fish the box back and hold it up under the escaping oil. All this while sand started to flick up all over the place.

Note to self…never change the oil when it’s windy. It never says anything about that in the manuals.

"You are not changing my oil in this wind"

I managed to slowly get the job done albeit a bit messily. I jumped in and took it for a test drive. 3 ½ donkeys. Well that’s an improvement. Until I heard a “pfut..pfut..pfut” from under the car, I stuck my head out of the window as I was going along and heard it again yes “pfut…pfut…pfut” coming from the exhaust pipe.

“Now What?”

The exhaust pipe was coming loose. So back to the shop for some exhaust paste and then back to the car park to rectify the problem. It was difficult trying to find a clean area. Some idiot had left oil all over the place. Another hour under the car patching that up and then with the sun setting it was time to go

…and it worked. Now to find something to keep the whole pipe thing from falling off the motor.

I celebrated with a cool beer and some Caracoles (snails) in a spicy sauce. They are in season now and you get a little bowl with miniature snails in a clear hot consommé.  Everyone was eating them and they do go well with a cold one especially when you get half way through and chomp on half a chilly!

"Hmmm...some snails I think"