Right.
I had one more last ditch attempt to get the 460 ready for the Retro Rides Gathering at Prescott........
.......and it was a gamble that didn't pay off.
The cable from the 1.8 Mk2 S turned out to be too short. The throttle body on that car is closer to the bulkhead - on the 1.7s they're nearer the bonnet slam panel. Splicing my car's dead cable and the 1.8's cable together produced a decent bodge that meant it was drivable but only gave me about 70% of the travel. Good enough to get it home.
Here's the car it came off. It really was quite tidy, and had an MOT until January of this year. Someone's already had the N\S door mirror off it but the O\S remains and it's electric. I had the clock out together with the service history binder.
James, I will have that cable off you when you come and see Steve. Let me know how much you want for it.
Unfortunately the car didn't pass the MOT. It wasn't a bad fail - the way my mate explained it to me over the phone it sounded like the tester had done a hatchet job, but having seen the fail sheet for real it now makes sense. There's nothing unfair on it.
The trouble was, it was monster aggravation to get it to the MOT station in the first place on an even dodgier throttle than previously indicated. It ended up getting booked for a test in Birkenhead - 50 miles from me - because the tester was lenient and told me he'd overlook the b0rked handbrake.
Unfortunately, he wasn't in and another bloke did the test instead. It failed on the handbrake, a split CV boot (this is probably because of the utter murder we experienced replacing the starter motor earlier this year) and a pinhole in the back box. That last one will be remedied in September when a JP Exhaust gets fitted.
Until then it'll be some paste and a quiet word with my local tester.
I'm off on holiday for the next fortnight. See you all in a couple of weeks.