Take 2: Bachelor Party
When I returned to California, the Mondeo languished in some out-buildings on a farm in Worcestershire. With it resided the other cars to be used for the aformentioned bachelor party. The partiers, including Mr 125mph, worked quite hard on the car, with, if I am completely honest, mixed results. I liked the Motorhead logo and the Dale Earnhardt 3 on the door; however, given it’s hideous metallic green, I was unhappy with the new bumper. They had also written “BOMBER” backwards on the bonnet, so it was legible to someone viewing it in their rearview mirror; in our age of global terrorism, it seemed unlikely that most viewers would recognize the title of one of Motorhead’s albums; rather, this seemed to be Asking For Trouble as much as the whole 125mph on a weekday morning routine later would. I was told they had de-carbonized the engine too – you can never accuse Mr 125mph of doing things by halves.
Take 3: a wedding, and a slow death
The following year I was back in England for a different wedding; it seemed only reasonable to fire up the Mondeo again, now showing over 173k, almost 6,000 miles more than it had that Christmas in St Albans. Rain had seeped under the Motorhead logo, and now it looked less like the symbol of the ultimate rock and roll band, and more like the calling card of some gigantic avian creature. Back in the saddle, I contented myself with spending a Sunday afternoon with a four pack in my parents driveway, using a rattle can to paint the bumper flat black. Skilfully, I didn’t buy enough paint, so in places the hideous metallic green still showed through, like a bad memory.
The morning after the wedding, I climbed onto the roof of the car, taking care not to stand on the sunroof, and made an impassioned plea to the wedding guests within earshot:
“Friends, Romans Countrymen, at the end of this trip, I have to get rid of the car, is is fast, better it is fun, and it is hound dog reliable, do me a favour, and yourselves, and say you’ll take it on, find it a home, use it if you wish, until I next come to Britian. I’ll even buy you parts for it when it needs to be fixed”.
At first there was a deafening silence, but soon, Mr 125mph weakened – it could live on his drive.
Perhaps significantly given later events, his girlfriend – infact, it was her drive the car was going to be inhabiting – was not present.
I spent the rest of that morning visiting old haunts, since the wedding was in Plymouth, where I had gone to high school and lived as a teenager. Then I set out on the couple of hundred mile drive to drop off the Mondeo with Mr 125mph. As you leave Plymouth, there is a long climb. I will never forget doing 125mph on this piece of road with mate who’s girlfriend’s dad had a second hand car lot: on a school lunch break, in our uniforms, we took a Mitsubishi Sapporo out for a blast. As I crested the rise, thinking of the Turbo Boost gauge and brown velour of that Sapporo, wondering again if Mure had actually liked the girl, or just the access to lots of cars, I was alarmed to see the Mondeos temperature needle buried in the red; I pulled over and sat on the hard shoulder while it cooled, hoping the rain wasn’t going to get any worse. Underhood observation revealed that the belt driving the water pump had failed. I called Green Flag – free towing, doncha know ? It seemed the issue was that a pulley tensioner had failed, and the belt had thus been abraded and snapped. An easy fix, right ? However, at the garage apathy prevailed: it was a Friday evening, and the tow truck driver told me I was unlikely to get that part before Monday morning. This would not play for me at all. My flight back to the US was Monday morning. I have lived too long in America to accept defeat so easily, and did plenty of calling around, without success. It was barely 4.30, but everyone was sure I was stuck until Monday. It became very fraying to the nerves hearing yet another west country accent tell me “No we don’ ‘ave ‘im in stock my bey, if ‘e were the 1.8 or the 2.0, you’d be fine, but the V6, those is rare…..” Nobody would overnight parts to me at the weekend. Now I remembered why I had left England. Perhaps to get rid of me, the tow truck driver fitted another belt: “But I have no idea how long that will last….I mean, it might last until next year, or it might break at the end of the street….”
It wasn’t quite the end of the street, but it wasn’t far beyond. Fortunately, I was close to a hotel; I limped there and tried to check in. The hotel had no vacancies. The car could only run for two or three minutes before the temperature gauge was in the red, so having been rejected, my only option was to suspiciously hang about in the rainy car park for an hour or two while the block cooled. Only then could I limp to another hotel. This process was repeated twice more before I finally found a bed.
I used the time the car needed to cool sensibly, and had walked to an autofactors and bought the last two belts they had in stock – I had already burned through three in the limping around efforts. The Halford’s employees all knew me by now: “...that V6, rare, but fast I reckon…..” I also bought tons of carb cleaner, and soaked the pump tensioner in the sink in my bedroom, thereby giving the impression to staff and guests that I was sniffing glue. In the morning, the tensioner was not in the least bit freed; the strategy was proved to be totally inneffective.
But I had another plan. I would ride the bus back into Plymouth town centre, rape all the autofactors there of any belts they had, and visit car breakers to find the tensioner. Of course, there was no promise I could find the part; it is unique to the V6 model, as I had already found to my cost. Absurdly, I now had a co-conspirator; my waitress at breakfast happened to be on the same bus as me. She advised me of a new autofactor I didn’t know about. I explained I lived in California, but had grown up in Plymouth. She replied that she had had friends who moved away too. I asked where, and she said “Southway”, a part of Plymouth on the other side of the city.
Plymouth’s autofactors cluster around Union Street. I have read that Plymouth has more pubs per square mile than any other city, thanks mainly to the Union Street pub/clubland which has always catered to sailors, and now students too. This being Saturday morning, it felt rather “morning after the night before”. Lucky there was a steady rain washing the kebab vomit away. At Kevin Coopers they sold me another belt, and told me I was unlikely to find the tensioner with a car breaker, but at least they told me where to find a new breakers which didn’t exist when I lived in Plymouth. None of the breakers had the part. I just as well have been asking them for parts for a Maserati Mistral.
Was the only option to have the thing towed ?
Riding back out to the hotel on the bus, I realized there was one “using the ladies tights” fix I hadn’t tried. I had bought some heavy duty zipties at another place I tried that had neither tensioner or belt in stock.
I could try a real bodge fix, I could bypass the tensioner completely, and just ziptie the pump to the crank.
The more I thought about it, the more unlikely this seemed to work.
If it worked at all, I would have to test it carefully, at the revs I would need to get up to Worcester, when the engine was up to temperature. The worst case scenario would be to get out of Plymouth, only to expire irretrievably at the side of the road; it would be better to stay in the hotel another night.
Back at the car, this Heath Robinson ziptie set up survived the initial start up. Survived at idle for 5 minutes. Survived at 1500 rpm for 5 minutes. Survived 3000 rpm for 5 minutes, and in so doing earned myself stares from hotel guests and staff alike. I couldn’t believe something so simple seemed to be working so well.
Alea Jacta Est; I packed, checked out, and gingerly set off.
Over the top of the “Sapporo Hill” , all was good. But approaching Lee Mill, the temperature skyrocketed. I switched off and rolled into a truck layby. There was nothing to do but re-ziptie, and keep my fingers crossed.
Those zipties lasted to Exeter, 40 miles. The next ones lasted 37 miles. The next 42. I had forty odd zipties. So that was it – a steady 3000 rpm, staying in the inside lane to facilitate a quick dive onto the hard shoulder, and keeping a keen eye on the temperature gauge at 30 miles since the last pause.
With the magical zipties riding shotgun on the passengers seat, I became able to affect the repair in under a minute. Somewhere beyond Bristol, during one of my little stops, a Highway Patrol Mitsubishi SUV pulled over behind me. The Policeman astonished me by being totally uninterested my swift execution of the elegant fix, telling me if he saw me broken down again they would order me a tow truck at my expense.
Mr 125mph was not at home, when I dropped the car off, and I had not visited the house before, so the final adventure was making sure I parked in the right place. Imagine returning home after a day out to find a crappy old car abandoned on your driveway. I found what I thought was the right house, and watched closely by kids playing soccer in the street, pushed the only key through the letter box, and set off to walk to the station.
Back in the states, I ordered a tensioner, and had it sent to Mr 125 mph. He, however, had gone radio silent. With hindsight, it seems he had lost the one key to the car. But instead of telling me this, he just ignored me. Maybe he thought the key would turn up. You’re probably thinking “what’s the problem, just break into the car and hotwire it, then buy a new key” but that era of Fords have keys which have chips built into them. Unless the chip is present, the car’s little electronic brain won’t let it start. Ridiculously, getting a new key means fitting a new brain. Months passed; and by the time the situation was transparent to me in California, it seems Mrs 125mph was unhappy with the unmoving car on her drive. I was keen to buy a new brain, keen for Mr 125mph to redeem his lost key incompetence. However, an ultimatum had been laid down to Mr 125mph; either that car goes, or you do. So off went the Mondeo to the breakers yard, still keyless, the new tensioner never fitted. Perhaps the final irony is that the relationship ended shortly afterwards anyway.
Finally, a word about that V6: it is a Mazda unit, a Duramax. What a tough, willing, if slightly gruff animal it was.
