Notes From the Hard Shoulder - James May [31]
This is why the so-called 'rolling restoration' of an old car never works; the notion that the car can be driven while you complete all those little jobs concerning trim, paint, interior lights, dicky alternators and so on. It's not possible, because in driving the car you will create problems quicker than they can be cured. A rolling restoration is really just a headlong and brake-less descent to the scrapyard.
And as the weeks passed, more things fell apart. The trip computer died, the back of the driver's seat fell off, one of the windows became loose, the exhaust started blowing when I clouted it on a boulder, the radio aerial jammed in the down position.
Here's where it ends. For complex reasons to do with insurance for filming, the Jag was actually bought by the production company making the programme, the idea being that I would buy it from them when we'd finished. I've now put it in their car park and run away, so it could stay there for 20 years. And then a Classic Cars journalist as yet unborn will find it and wonder how it came to be forgotten.
I still want an XJ-S, but I don't want that one. It's broken. If I'd mended the oil leak I might have stayed on top of it, but I didn't and now it's ruined. It's been filed under 'too difficult', like the letter from the video hire shop reminding me that I still have their copy of Where Eagles Dare and owe them £120. That's been at the bottom of my in-tray for at least six years.
If there's anything wrong with your car – anything – stop what you're doing and go and sort it out. Now. Same goes for your house. There's probably a loose door knob or a damp patch that needs fixing. Do it.
Do it, before the next problem comes along, or it will all become too much. It may seem like nothing more than an irritating small job to you, but somewhere, a man with a bulldozer is limbering up for the demolition job.
BREAKING DOWN IS NOT SO HARD TO DO
I've had the AA out five times in the last six months. Once for a motorcycle, twice for the Range Rover, once for the '70s Lamborghini and now for the 911. If I carry on at this rate I'll be blackballed and required to go into the club library with my revolver to do the decent thing.
Most breakdowns are pretty tiresome – flat batteries, wonky starter motors, fuel-pump fuses and what have you. And on the whole they seem to occur when the car isn't even running, which invites comparisons with the old saw about the Christmas tree lights that were working when you put them away.
But the 911's was interesting because it resulted from the failure of a small electronic sensor on the crankshaft, the signals from which are vital to the function of the little computer that ministers to the engine. So when that went, everything packed up. There was no misfiring, no clattering, no precursor of dissent from the workings of the flat six, in fact no warning at all. One moment the 911 was functioning perfectly, the next it wasn't functioning at all.
There must have been an exact point in time, yet occupying no time in itself, that divided the era when the 911 worked from the era when it didn't. It was a good, clean breakdown.
Curiously, I'd been reading Ralph Barker's excellent Brief History of the Royal Flying Corps in World War 1. Engine failures were common in early aeroplanes, especially during the full-power stress of take-off, and the correct course of action was (still is, in fact) to pick a field as near to directly ahead as possible and return to earth with the aeroplane in a reusable condition. The wrong course of action was to give in to the impulse to turn back to the airfield, which would usually result in a stall, a spin and a crash.
This bit of early aviation lore served me well on