Well i haven't posted for a while as I've been mad busy in the garage the Le Mans trip went well and soon as I got back needed to recommission my 68 VW camper from its 3 year sleep in a nice warm and dry garage for a friends wedding. So just found time to sit down and report on the trip.
We set off from Preston on the wednesday morning about 11:00am to give us 12 hours to drive 300 miles to Newhaven ferry port. First car related problem didnt see us leave home for another 30 mins! You wouldn't have guessed but out of 3 vehicles a 59 Apache pickup a 63 C10 pickup and a 2005 Aston Martin the Aston had trouble first! The passenger seat had been moved forward so they could get 3 persons in the car to get to my house, then on we would have 2 in each vehicle. Well the seat wouldn't come back off it's most forward travel, no matter what we did we could not get it to move, could feel the motor twitch when the button pressed but that was it. We were losing time before we had even set off, so we decided to set off and Paul (driver of the Aston) would phone the Aston dealer for advice. This meant the passenger ( Paul's 6ft 2in son) would need to rammed in the rear seats until we get it sorted.
First stop M6 services about 50 miles, advise from dealer move the switch up,down, back, front hold up for 20 seconds, wait 10 mins and it will reset. Sounds complete rubbish, but sure enough it worked. So passenger now happy he could uncurl himself. Marks C10 was using a little oil so a top up with 1 litre (eek) of oil after 50 miles,, hmm sort of set the tone for oil use for the rest of the trip!
The rest of the trip to Newhaven was a mix of heavy traffic and 50 MPH road work sections and frequent stops to top oil up in the C10. 20 miles out from Newhaven and Mark radio's to say the C10 oil light is on and it's rattling. Arrgh , I thought sounds like the dreaded death rattle! Anyway we pull over sharpish on the hard should of the motorway and check the oil, which is low again and waited 20 mins. Now i should say at this point this is the one thing we knew was dodgy, as the bottom end is 'very' worn, but we though it made the adventure a little more exiting not to fix it beforehand and sort of give it it's last run before rebuild over the winter. Well 20 mins passed and it fired up no noise, parts of me think it could have been 'driver imagined noise' as we all do when we listen to every little noise the car makes and fear the worst, combined with a bit or fatigue. Driver that is, not the engine.............well actually a bit of both!
Well we then get going again and drive into Newhaven. Onto the overnight ferry which gets to Dieppe at 05:00hrs. We get off the ferry me first, then the C10 and about tens mins behind because we where on different car deck the Aston. So we get split up and lost, me and the c10 stop and regroup and wait for the Aston. Paul's radios to say 2 problems. 1 he is lost and 2 his back window has smashed. WTF, i say, or words to that effect!
He pull into the layby after a little radio directions and sure enough back window intact but completely shattered. so we set about with the tape and fashion a quick DIY black tinted non see through rear window.
The clever one amongst us ( Christian in orange) pondered how it could have happened. In the end decides it must have been that it was warm on the ferry decks and we came out in 1deg C temp in france and the contraction caused it to shatter. Well whilst in france and a bit of googling and phone calls it appears it's a known problem on the 2005 DB9 and happens as the rear heated window does not turn off and overheats the glass ( so Chris was nearly correct). For those keen to know the outcome Paul got the window replaced free of charge by Aston once back in the UK.
me on the scissor, Chris on the careful tape patting. We made a nice job of keeping off the paintwork. In fact once completed someone actually thought it was a sun screen to save the interior from sun damage. But it did also get a few folk sucking air through their teeth and pulling the ooh face.
Once back on the road it was 120 miles to the campsite, we stopped in a little village and visited a car shop to buy more oil for Mark's C10 and bought what we called gulp, extra thick oil for Marks truck. Well it worked, stopped the rattle and kept the 'light of death' off at idle for th rest of the trip.
we stopped for a few arty shots on-route to the campsite
More to follow i just cant type super fast!