Bank Holiday.

Bridgewater Show, Sunday 23rd, was cancled due to a bad weather report.


Not good for Meagan and Molly, but....








Instead we arranged to take Molly for a walk around the open land at the back of Grandad's house. I dropped Mum and Megan off at the stables to get Molly ready and I took Dolly to Tescos for a half tank of Diesel and a something to eat on the way round.





When the key snapped in the ignition I knew we wouldn't be going to Grandads, let alone off Tescos petrol station for a long while. :-(





The stub of key wouldn't pull out or push in, and definitely wouldn't turn on and the steering lock had the wheels pointing dead ahead. The only thing for it was to somehow remove the ignition barrel, switch and lock. Mum Got a lift to Tescos with some tools and we removed the shroud off the column exposing the ignition unit, this was clamped in place with smooth headed bolts - A nip next door to Halfords for a hacksaw and the bolts and casting were eventually cut through!





Using the Landy, Mum towed Dolly back home.





Grandma whisked a tearful Megan off for a bit of an impromptu house party to keep her occupied whilst the surgery continued.





Dolly is a 21 year old Iveco Daily 35-8. She was manufactured in Italy in 1986, then the chassis/cab was converted to a horsebox by Lambourne ( now Olympic ). She's never been thrashed by a "White-Van-Man" or mistreated on a building site, but she is Italian from an age when Italian automotive companies built thing's their way, not necessarily the best way. in the early 90's Ford went into partnership with Iveco and brought the build quality on in massive leaps and bounds.





After a few calls to scrap yards we located two likley sources: The first was a late 90's pickup. end the second an early 90's van. The guy with the old van didn't know how to get the gubbins out, so I went to see the Pickup. The unit was 'kind of' like the one I'd removed, newer and slimline - no way of knowing if it'd work without trying it. After being given a detailed guide on how to remove the ignition unit without damaging anything, they couldn't find the matching key - STRIKE ONE!





The Van was a more modern that Dolly but not fully "Ford" like the Pickup. The Ignition unit was the same - just the wires were not the same colours. £40 changed hands and after 30mins work with a chisel I walked out with it under my arm.





Re-fitting was easy, after I changed the headless bolts. ;-)





Re-wiring was a nightmare! The old loom had 4 wires: Red, Black, Brown and Blue with a black stripe. The new switch had Red, Green, Green with a Black stripe and Blue with a Black stripe.. Not being a practiced 'Hot-Wire" car thief's, It took me and Mum the rest of the afternoon to figure out what wire went where!





Result = No trip out, no ride for Megan, no visit to Grandad, loss of skin from hands and fingers and £40+ spent. :-(

Big thanks to Mo and George for running Mummy around . :-) XX