Last Modified Jul 03

I was able to afford a Revision 2 and so I had settled on a black one, we all do, T-bar power steering and ABS. Then it happened. John, me buddy emailed an advert from the IMOC of a gorgeous blue T bar but it was a little more expensive than I wanted to pay. Actually it was a good bit more than I could afford so I ignored it. As you do

John then pestered me into getting in touch with the owner because it was a Revision 3 car. Nice, very nice. SO I got in touch with the guy phoned him at 8pm at night. Now I'm in Scotland, its 8pm and the owner is sounding very dopey, very not in tune with the world. So I keep asking questions and then because its a mobile I ask him for a land line number. Turns out this guy in Australia and I phoned him at like 3am local time. That explains the dopey like conversation. He was half asleep! Poor guy and I had to apologise straight away, he was pretty cool about the whole thing. Away the car was in standard spec with ABS, PAS LSD and everything else as standard as normal. I agreed to go up that weekend and have a look at the car and all that was missing was to persuade somebody with car knowledge to come and help me look at it. Now Aberdeen is like 130 miles away so its not a quick trip round the block. John, my best buddy ;-) said he would happily come and have a look and he even drove as his car is more comfortable for such a long journey of 300ish miles there and back.

So me and John head to Aberdeen on the Saturday morning hoping to arrive by lunchtime which we did. Had the usual look round the car although the fecking alarm system did its best to deafen me, John and the owners dad. Eventually we just started the engine and kept on looking round the car. Much easier on the ears I tell you.

Agreed everything was good and straight on the car and then me and dad(owners not mine)went for a test drive leaving poor John to kick his heels for a while. Poor boy, but what a star. The car drove like magic. No flat spots surges or pulling to one side. Just fab. It had to be mine. Did the HPI check, tried to use the phone but the line was just engaged constantly. Amazingly the guy had a broadband line complete with router and wireless network so he brought his laptop down and I just logged in and filled the details in on line and got the response back straight away. Car passed fine so now onto the hard bit. Haggling the price. A bit of haggling and the car was mine. In theory anyway. Gave some cash and wrote out a big fcuk off cheque for the rest. Agreed to come when the cheque had cleared and me and John set off back down the road. I was happy but nervous cause I had just spent all my money and I mean all my money. not a penny left.

On the Monday I get a phone call from the owners dad saying the bank had told him the cheque from my credit card company was going to take upto 7 days to clear. Can you imagine? In this day and age that is just pathetic. After a scramble to get some extra cash I managed to get a cheque from my Building Society, thanks Nationwide and myself an John drove back to Aberdeen with cash and cheque to pay off the rest of the car and drive it home. Now we left Glasgow at 715ish at night and hit Aberdeen about 930. Good time and no hassles. Now when we arrived me and John thought have a nice conversation, exchange and count the money exchange the documents and keys then bog off back to Glasgow since we both had work the following day but no, it didn't happen and here's why. The guy's wife had made some fruit cake and she offered us a bit. Ya dancer thought we, and we all sat down in the lounge and had cake and drinks. Just grand let me tell you. We got round to doing the car thingy and then we headed south about 10ish

It was a beautiful moonlit night almost to the point of being able to drive with no lights but not quite. A quick check on tyre pressures and off we went taking turns at who was leading. Got to say, the stripe pattern on the speed cameras could be seen from about 500 metres away so no worries there, although neither of us were pushing much over 70 anyway. We wanted to get back home but not to the point of stupidity. We hit some road works and crawled through at about 30 side by side. Now you know what happened next............. Both in third gear and the road works end. On a dual carriage way. Yup, throttles to the floor and I immediately noticed that something wasn't right. The turbo came on alright but the drive was stuttered and hesitant and generally not quick. Afterwards John admitted he thought I had been in 5th not 3rd. Ah pants thought I. What is wrong now, on the first drive of ownership. Now the dad had put a full tank of fuel in the car and my thoughts were that he had put in some 95 Octane Unleaded. More use of heavy throttle and the engine was definitely holding back especially in the lower gears where the acceleration should have been explosive. S'ok, I do loads of miles so I burn that off in a day and hey presto load up on 98 Octane Optimax. A couple of tankfuls later, yeah the cars quick but not that quick. So it had to be fixed.

Read on as to why and how it was fixed The fuse saga