Well, it's been a busy couple of weeks on the car front recently. Last week I MOT'd the red Series 2 XM I had as it was making a trip south to Paul as I was bringing a car back north of the border.
Following on from Paul's thread...
http://www.frenchcarforum.co.uk/forum/v ... 14&t=53051
Two years ago I bought my Dad's old XM back when I found it in Cheshire with no engine in it. Paul very kindly agreed to do the work on the car for me which involved removing an engine from my old grey XM, fitting it to this XM and then doing a load of welding on it to get it to MOT standard. I'm pleased to announce that my XM passed it's MOT 2nd time around as the rear brakes weren't doing anything on the initial test. A clean up of the calipers and a new set of brake pads cured that, and my Dad's old XM that Paul put through an MOT passed first time around!
Paul has done a fantastic job of getting the car in a roadworthy condition. He's done a huge amount of work to this car, all of which has come up great. The engine runs brilliantly and the welding he has done is nice and solid and looks good.
My dad has had a load of cars over the years, but when asking him which one has left the most memorable impression was his old XM. He was under the impression that his XM had been crushed and turned into baked bean cans so when I found it for sale I just had to buy it for him.
Unfortunately the old paintwork on dad's car wasn't of the highest standard and the door bottoms were rotten so Paul pointed me in the direction of a bonnet, wings and doors from a Mandarin car that had been kept inside and was in fantastic condition. He has fitted these for me as well. The rear quarters and roof should now come up quite well with some machine polishing.
I got the car home without my dad having a clue what was going on. Thankfully when we got home he was out shopping so I put the car on the driveway and put my XM car cover over it.
When he got home he twigged straight away that it was an XM under the cover as he could see the bottom of the front wheels under the cover. I had sorted it so the whole family were around when I unveiled his car. I started by telling him the story about how I'd travelled from Glasgow to Cheshire to get the car and then delivered it to Angelsey and that Paul had done all the work to it. I still hadn't told him it was his car. I rolled the cover back to reveal the number plate and his expression was priceless. He couldn't get over the fact I'd rescued his car.
There's a few jobs to do to the car now just to finish it as Paul ran out of time as we'd arranged everything for last weekend. I cannot thank Paul enough for all of his hard work.
Here's a picture I took of it at the farm shop on the M6 on the way home.
That evening Dad drove the car to the next village when he went for a takeaway, I went with him and the smile on his face when he drove the car made all of the effort that I've put into this worth every penny
The next day I spent a bit of time giving the car a wash and a spruce up, it's actually come up great... It met it's younger sister too when I had to get my newer V6 out of the workshop.
Then today I was taking our 306 HDI for an MOT. It failed on a coil spring being snapped. Annoyingly I hadn't spotted it when I gave it a once over. I heard a ping this morning on the way to the MOT so can only assume that it failed on the way as it was a fairly clean looking break on the coil. It's changed now and it's got another 12 month MOT. I'd forgotten how much fun the 306's were to drive. I've since spent this evening looking for a 306 GTi6
That's all for now I think
David.
