Having spent the last few weeks on the Ascot, doing everything I would do to it if I was to keep it myself, I finished the final job yesterday. That was removing, soldering and heat shrinking the connections in the footwells that used to go through the pretty green and hairy multiway connectors. At that point, other than waiting for the original stereo to come back from being refurbed at Clarion, as far as I was concerned I'd finished the mechanical and electrical work (just need to persuade BPSM to take a trip down to deal with the cosmetics now) and it was spot on. Everything, and I mean everything, now works exactly as it should.
But ideally, it needed a bit of a test. Daughter's Toyota MR2 has recently developed an evil wailing from the RH rear wheel bearing but a press is needed to remove the old one and press the new one in. Not too much of a problem as a mate has a workshop with a suitable press but he's only there during working hours. So I would need to remove the rear hub and get it down to him at a time when he would be there. As the Ascot was now sorted, I swapped cars with her last night confident that it would get her to work and back for the next couple of days and give me the time to pull her car to bits and get it back together again. At 8:50 this morning my phone rang. I've broke it, she said. She'd managed all of 50m from her driveway to the end of the road, the engine had died and now the message centre was telling her she had a gearbox fault, a traction failure, an ABS fault and the engine wouldn't restart. Got there and found that everything looked normal when the ignition was switched on, it was only when the key was turned to start the engine that the starter did nothing and the dash went blank. The negative battery terminal was loose. I can't remember when I last had the battery off but I obviously didn't do it up tight enough when I put it on. Tightened it up, jump started it from mine, checked that it was charging and she went off to work (and so far, hasn't broken it again).
What I don't understand is why then? Over the last few weeks I've used it a few times to run around in just to see if everything was working as it should. I've done a couple of hundred miles in it and never a problem. I've started it and had it idling for ages while doing other jobs and not once has it shown any signs of a problem. So why is it that the first time a woman used it, the damn thing dies?