Yesterday I had the honour of meeting Sylvia and Al for a run down to the Haynes Museum, was great to meet some faces to the characters I have met on the forum
We met at the Winchester Autobarn on the roman road near my village, and had a coffee and chat about many things, I was extremely pleased that my car passed the expert inspection, being said to be in superb condition and one of the best sets of arches ever known unrestored. If only I was to know what was to befall my stoic and reliable little wedge that day...
We started out as a convoy from the Winchester Autobarn and made our way across the south via B-road, following my father's local knowledge through some lovely roads over Salisbury Plain, my speedo was somewhat intermittent but stabilised after I aimed for some potholes.
We arrived at the Museum after keeping a good convoy speed up the A303 and avoiding stone'enge (nobody knows who causes a bottleneck there or what they were thinkin') only to find the breakfast club for the Sunday, not the Saturday. Nevertheless we had a drink and had a tour of the museum, learning the story of the Man Behind the Lies, they even had a miniature model of a 480 cabrio
Over the course of the Afternoon we saw their exceedingly nice collection of cars, I think the consensus was that the best car of the day had to be the 1994 Tatra 613, a beautiful piece that everyone liked.
After that we had a late lunch, I was trying to convince Al that a twin cam Rover 220 GSi 3 door was very much not a pensioners car, and discussed how suddenly loads of 480s were coming out of the woodwork, just as we as a club started rescuing them en masse.
The time came to go our separate ways, and I navigated my way back east, going through my ancestral home of Mere, and back through Salisbury, the westernmost point of my locale of normality.
I was almost home, then it happened.
I was pulling up to a set of lights after a brisk dual carriageway section, when all of a sudden all my wipers started moving and the light washers fired, even tho the lights were down, it was a good thing I had put RainX on. I had never seen anything like this occur on a car, even when our Audi quattro was in a bad period. I couldn't help but be reminded of the public information films on how to detect a stroke.
We pulled over and found that when the ignition was turned off the wipers stopped, but the main beams stayed on, even after the key was taken out. I wish the courtesy lights had worked when the system wasn't TFFM
We found that opening the passenger door cured the wipers, but gave me no indicators, but by the time I had figured that out I was home
What followed was a very worried texting stream with Jeff and later Brinkie, the consensus being that the CEM was completely and utterly fried, or if it was repairable, it was need an expert looking at it, not the expert* that I am.
After trying the Self Test today Brinkie very kindly agreed to send me a replacement unit, which as I type is navigating its way through the Dutch postal system. Hopefully this will just be a plug in job and I will get my car back, I really don't know what else to try at this stage.
However the trip was fantastic, had a fully functioning wedge for all the best bits, and now I can wrestle with the Rover for a few days on my errands