50+ and proud of it.

An odd thing just happened. A while back I thought I'd shove two fingers up to Microsoft and stop using their illegal software that I'd ripped off 1 a while back ("that'll teach 'em", I thought). So I uninstalled Micro$oft Office and got a nice copy of OpenOffice 2.something. Anyway, I imported all the Outlook stuff into Thunderbird. It all worked beautifully (apart from the fact that I can't get mail merge to merge labels using a CSV file) and merrily got on with typing e-mails. Everything was lovely, except that when I pressed "Send" it kept coming up with the "Please enter password" box and then failed to "SMTP" correctly. If I repeatedly pressed "Send" eventually it would send the mail without me having entered anything. It was completely random. Sometimes it would work, more often than not, I would have to have about 10 attempts to send. The "Outgoing Server" setting was just fine, it had my account ...

So I took the Mustang up the drag-strip on my way to work this morning. That'll be the legal, fully mashalled, off road drag strip you understand, and not the 1km straight country road out of a neighbouring village. To quote the EAP Test Pilot after the inaugural flight - "Yup"

I'm really not sure how to start this one. I went to my local tuning bloke on Monday who had a novel approach to the now infamous Mustang crap fuel economy and no power problem. "Lets start from square one", he said, checking the oil, "lets see what the engine is actually telling me, rather than what the computer is. I'm not that familiar with V8 SEFI yanks by the way". Well, you're the only bloke left in the South Of England with any idea at all so, carry on. He attached a lot of leads to the engine and shoved a pipe up one of the exhausts. It looked like a scene from "ER". After pressing a lot of buttons he came to the conclusion that there was, in fact, absolutely nothing wrong with the engine per- se . He even checked the timing. "13 degrees BTDC ", he remarked "Yup that's about right for tick over", I replied, "By the way, if you remove this thing called a SPOUT connector, you can check the static timing....

The week before last I relented and "bought it now" another 106 for my daughter (don't worry, she'll pay me back...) It was one of those "why is this so cheap?" eBay auctions. Having studied the auction, I decided it was because the guy actually had no idea how to sell a car - this was his first "sell". Last weekend we toddled off to Hertfordshire to pick it up. Things went perfectly until driving through Ware high street and half a mile to go, the SatNav decided to lose all satellites. When we finally arrived we were presented with a pristine 10 year old 106. "Err, where are these 'supermarket dents' mentioned in the ad then?" "Here", he said, pointing to marks that can only be seen with a scanning electron microscope. "You said the tyres needed replacing? These have still got 3mm of tread on them, these are fine" "Oh, are they?" We paid him the £750 and rushed off into the sunrise before the real wo...

So, I toddle off in the Mustang to "Newport Imports" near me and I spent about 3 hours there with 2½ hours spent - a) drinking tea - b) waiting for a guy to come back from the station to move his car so I can get mine into garage (it was the wettest day since, well, the last one) and c) explaining that 'yes, I have changed the plugs/leads etc.'. What was really annoying was the fact that when I got there he said "Oh, we can't plug in the IDS 'cos your ECU is too early". Hmm, wasn't that why I was there in the first place? Eventually he plugged in a £1,000,000 Sun (or was it SnapOn?) scanner that said "Code 91 Left HEGO Lean". Err, didn't my £40 scanner blink its LED telling me exactly the same? Still, it's nice to know that I can still count. Oh well, no joy there. Off to BD Engineering on Monday.

I'm not normally one for quitting, but this has got me stumped. To quote from an old "Garfield" book - that's the cat, not the USA President of old - "It's not the veterinary medicine I dislike, it's the animals I have to work with..." The Mustang has suddenly started doing about 14mpg. I say "suddenly" because I really only started to notice it when the petrol price hit £1 a litre recently. So I did all the usual bits, plugs, leads, rotor, cap etc. etc. and even went as far as to check all the sensors, vacuum and HEGO's. Final straw was to change the MAF unit and TPS at $75 a pop. No luck. I even thought maybe I'd got the wrong plugs, so I found the 'correct' ones from the MotorCraft website and went to the local Ford Dealer instead of my usual part centre. Now, spookily enough, one of the chaps there has got the same model as mine. "Why don't you go and get it properly sorted by a chap whose got all the right test...