A sad day

[Lazy-Ferret]

The Fuzzmobil went today...

She put up one hell of a fight not to go though..

They came this morning to look at her, and said they would be back between 5 and 6 this evening to collect her. That gave me the rest of today to get all the stuff out of her that I wanted, and to be honest, she had become a bit of a shed over the summer, with some bits from the caravan that we do not always need being stored in her, and some stuff taken out of Suz's car when it went for it's MOT, that never made it back into her car.

I started her up for him, and she started first time, even though she had not been started for at least 2 months. To be fair, she has had a smart battery charger connected all the time.

So I re-started her later in the morning, and moved her onto the drive, so I could get all round her, and set to work.

6pm came and went, and they were nowhere to be seen, so I started her up, and parked her back in the corner of the drive, and put the Jeep back in front of her. 7:15pm, a very apologetic guy knocked on the door, his day had gone to pot, but he was here now. Showed him round the car, and a few of her idiosyncrasies, then went to start her....

Dead battery... I jumped her from the Jeep, but she would not start... Remembered the "shut all doors, lock and then unlock" trick, and she started.

Guy got less than 2 miles away, and apparently she just died on him. When he went to start her, the battery was dead. They tried bump starting, but nothing. He called me, and I ended up going to find him, to jump start her again.

Nothing...re-connected her to the Jeep, and she spun over a dream, but would not fire. Tried the locking the doors with the remote thing... still no go... tried locking the door with the key... nothing.. Now the flip key decided to disintegrate, timing!! Fortunately, I had given him the original key, so I managed to put the innards back into that, and tried again, Still nothing.

By now I am getting desperate, and I said out loud "Come on old girl, this is not like you" just as I turned the key again, and she bursts into life, much to the guy who bought it, and his sons amusement.

The problem was, when they blipped the throttle the car would rev up ok, but when settling back to tickover, it would stall. While connected to the Jeep she would start again no problem. We decided that it was last filled with Diesel and Veg oil, just before Christmas last year, so maybe, it was a bit stale, and not helped by the cold night, so to drive it without just dropping the throttle, and sort of slowly bring it back down to tickover, which seemed to work OK.

It also looks like the main battery is not holding a charge, but I did tell him it was an old one, and would need changing, I was just expecting it to hold a charge for a bit longer than that though. Fortunately, the Jeeps massive alternator gave it a good charge while I rebuilt the key, and then we put the second battery in parallel to the main, as that seemed fine.

Got a text later to say that she made it back to their place with no more adventures and the stalling stopped as soon as she was up to temp, so they are going to fill the tank up with fresh diesel...

A sad day, made worse by the fact I don't think she wanted to go..