I had been so lucky with the people I had found to help me up to this point, but unfortunately I did come a cropper when it came to the mechanics, I thought, hoped, I’d found a brilliant local garage I could trust with dealing with the huge job of sorting out Daisy’s mechanics, but it wasn’t to be and they overcharged for work badly done and not done at all. I had a wedding to get to that was reasonably local and the idea was that at this point – August – enough work had been done for me to be able to safely and happily drive Daisy to her booking with no need for a trailer.
We set off, and the nearest garage to fill her up with Diesel was in fact the one that she had just been to for the ‘mechanical overhaul’ as I drove her onto the forecourt she stopped!!!
The mechanic who was there fiddled and twiddled, I suggested they needed to check what they had done as I’d had no problem with her going prior to their involvement and I was told it was my fault for letting the diesel run too low! As I lived half a mile up the road and that was the total distance she had done since leaving them I wasn’t convinced, then they said the only diesel expert who worked there was on holiday!! I had a wedding to get to, whatever happened I couldn’t let my Bride down. The fabulous Ranjit took my emergency call on his mobile on a Saturday and sorted out a local trailer to come and collect me and Daisy to get us to the wedding. While I was waiting anxiously a man drove in to the garage to get petrol with quad bikes attached to the back of his car and his son in the back. The Garage cashier casually said “he’s a mechanic you should ask him”, so I did!
He immediately said oh it’s a Bedford CF conversion I’ve done those, but obviously he wasn’t about to encroach on another mechanics apparent territory, so I accosted him a bit more and got a phone number.
Fortunately he knew Bedford CF1’s and was willing to take on the initial work.
In the last 2 weeks Daisy managed two runs to Oxford and back 120 miles, and then after a bit more work and she got to a wedding in Cambridge and back and coped with doing 50mph!