Off for final MOT prep at Setch MOT centre. She'll be back soon!

Some people feel like they're giving up by giving their project to someone else to finish - that it's less authentically "theirs" if they haven't done every bit of the work. I don't feel this way at all. This is this car's fifth year of being a project. It's come an awful long way, but seeing that interior looking as beautiful as it does made me want a working car this year, and hopefully this summer. That simply isn't going to happen if I only do this on my free time.

First, there's some jobs I just don't care to do. Those would be things like the oil changes (all four: engine, gearbox, transfer box, & rear diff). My excuse is that I am getting old; I'm too old to want to crawl under cars to change fluids. Been there, done that, had hair caked with grease and eyes full of whatever that is that always into your eyes when you're working on an old car. Buy me a four-post ramp and I might think differently.

There's also some stuff that I just can't do; I don't have the presses required for doing suspension bushes, and that's more crawling under cars that I don't want to do as well.

Then there's...the wiper blades! I'm weird; I rebuilt the engine on this car, but I still don't know how to change wiper blades. Also, there's a whole bunch of other tiny jobs where I just want to hand it off to someone else, receive a working car, go drive working car.

Finally, as anyone should who owns a car that has been off the road for a while, I want someone to check over everything. If you work on something enough you will develop blind spots. You want someone with a fresh pair of eyes - and an MOT-tester set of eyes, at that - to look over everything and find out if you've missed something totally stupid. That's why she is heading off on the back of a recovery truck and not under her own steam. (That and I don't want to use the fantastically fragile transmission until I know it's got fresh fluids in it.)

Onwards!