Apologies (again) for the lack of recent updates, flat out getting the car IVA ready… I may have left it to the last minute!

The speedo problem was pretty easily fixed – the nuts securing the sender to the bracket had come loose. However, before I found that I’d investigated calibrating it and realise the dash only supported up to 12,000 pulses per mile. With 195/50/15 tyres, a 4.1 diff and reading four points per revolution, I was generating 15,071 pulses per mile. I thus fitted two small magnets and backed the sender off so it would only read those. I used threadlock on the nuts to ensure they wouldn’t come loose again.

I also spent a lot of time adjusting the steering geometry to try and get some kind of self centring effect. In the end I went to pretty much the maximum toe out I could and found a very small amount of self centring at 8psi! Obviously I couldn’t drive like that so I’d drop the pressures at the test if required.

I took the car to another MOT on the Monday and the brakes and emissions passed fine. During the emissions the engine was held at 3k rpm for some time and the coolant stayed steady at 97 degrees. Phew!

The monday evening was thus spent creating a notch in a 7/16 box spanner to make a headlight nut adjusting tool for later and stuff like remaking a few electrical connects which seemed a bit suspect. On Tuesday I fitted the nut covers required for the IVA.

The weather for the IVA looked about as good as I could hope. It wouldn’t be raining during the journey there but the roads would be wet as it still would have been raining all night.

Surprisingly, I wasn’t particularly nervous. I didn’t expect to pass, so I guess it would be pretty hard to be disappointed!