Day 225: A forest in disguise

Some time ago I made brief mention of the fact that I bought a 32 year old Volvo for use as a runabout while I am in Scotland. I, then, singularly failed to mention it in any further postings, so I will rectify the matter here.

Before getting this car I had been renting one each Monday morning from Edinburgh airport and returning it on Friday. I had thought that there must be a better way of organising all my weekday travelling needs than forking out for a hire car each week, so during a quietish time in Germany around 18 months ago I started looking through all the makes of second hand car that were available on autotrader to see what took my fancy. I only had 2 criteria: it had to be cheap and it had to be cool (i.e. not just some bog standard normal car). Oh, and also it had to be Swedish (well it didn't really need to be, but if it was it would be worth an extra 1,000 points on the deciding whether I wanted one or not scoring system). So while browsing I came accross a car called a Volvo P1800. It looked quite cool, but the front of it reminded me of a car I used to really like when I was younger and had even tried to get my Mum to by one. I had never known what the model of this car was, I just referred to it as a Volvo Sports Estate or some such thing.
So now I had a plan. I needed to try and find out what the model of the Volvo sports car was and then buy one. The first bit was the easiest - after a bit of searching I saw it was called a Volvo 1800ES and it was the best looking car ever made. Buying one was a bit harder. I managed to track one down, so rang the seller who said he couldn't say it was in showroom condition, but it very nearly was. he said it was kept in a garage and had had a full bare metal respray 7 years earlier. So I drove over 100 miles to go and see this car to find that it smelled of damp and looked like it had been painted with a brush.

Anyway after seeing 1 other car that turned out not to be all I first thought it was I managed to get hold of one with a full years mot that didn't cost a huge amount of money. I bought it in London, drove it to Yorkshire, then Scotland and then from Scotland to Yorkshire and back all in the first week. It had a few dents in it and a few bits of rust, but on the whole I was very pleased with it. Infact I far prefered driving this to the near new rental cars I had been spending my money on. I even found that someone had shoved a caristhestar business card invitting me to register the car at their site one day. I worked out that if the car lasted me for 19 weeks and then blew up I would have spent the same in those 19 weeks as I would on a hire car. So far I've had the car for 25 weeks, so in my books it has already paid for intself and I haven't been shy about going around saying how reliable its been and other famous last words such as how I haven't spent a single penny on it since I got it etc etc....

So after being told by countless people that I am tempting fate and me ignoring it completely my car now has a petrol leak. It was discovered last thursday when I picked Al up to go to the Gym. Someone had seen us drive off and noticed that I left a trail of liquid behind me as I sped into the distance. After they let me know I had a look under the car, but nothing seemed to be dripping so I took the car home on Thursday night and looked under it again on Friday morning before I left for work. There was still no sign of a leak, but when I got out of my car in the work carpark I couldn't fail to notice a line of liquid leading all the way around the carpark to my car. I imagined that my petrol tank had probably rusted through and the only option was going to be to get a new petrol tank, but I had no idea who on earth I would be able to get to fit it. I was beginnning to think that as the car had already paid for itself (compared to the cost of renting a car) I may as well just take it round to the nearest scrap yard. But at lunchtime I went out to look at it more closely and yet again there was no sign of any leakage whatsoever. So I turned the engine on and went and looked again and there was now a steady drip of petrol. I turned the engine off and after a few moment the dripping stopped again.

So at themoment my conclusion is that it may not need a new petrol tank after all, but as I know nothing about cars I guess I could stil be wrong. I have it booked into a local garage for Wednesday morning so I will post an update once they have had a look.

I think I should add, that after this post I feel a bit like a train spotter, but in reality I'm not really into cars at all - I just couldn't think of anything else to write about - so sorry, but there you go - life's like that, so deal with it.