As predicted, yes getting out was a pain in the proverbial backside. Especially lacking reversing lights.
Shortly after that I did the first fuel stop since the carb rebuild and since she's been allowed properly out of town a few times. The maths says 35MPG, which is much more in the ballpark of what I was hoping to see rather than the low to mid 20s I'd seen before. I think that this pretty much confirms that the carb wasn't happy before the second clean.
The new oil in the gearbox/diff has definitely reduced the overall volume of the whine a bit, so I guess the old oil had degraded quite a bit. I did check through what had been drained out and there was zero evidence of any glitter so I'm not worrying about it being a little whiny - I reckon they're just like that.
We then had a run up to Towcester, proper out of town run, which she handled like an absolute champ. I'm absolutely staggered by how well she cruises...She's smoother than a lot of "proper" cars I've had!
About 1/3 of the way home however things went a bit awry. Not badly, but inconveniently. Absolutely out of nowhere while happily cruising along (my pace being dictated by the traffic in front) there was a godawful bang and I suddenly had no drive. Once I'd experimentally revved the engine a couple of times (you honestly can't hear it below about 55) to confirm that the bowels of the engine hadn't just deposited themselves all over the A5 I figured I'd either snapped or thrown the CVT belt. Turns out that a Model 70 without the drag from the CVT will roll for MILES! I must have gone the best part of 3/4 a mile before I got to the gateway I was planning to pull into and I'd lost about 10mph.
So, convenient gateway which let met get a reasonable distance out of traffic.
Shame the cafe wasn't open as actually just parking up in the car park would have been preferable...plus I was thirsty so being able to get a drink would have been nice.
A quick check under the engine cover confirmed a snapped CVT belt. Half hour job to change but I didn't have either a belt nor the tools to change it on me. Nor did I have a clear enough idea in my head of where what I would need brought to me was in the garage to send someone out with it. Plus I didn't particularly want to be twirling spanners at the side of the A5 in rush hour. Time to call for recovery. Last time I called a breakdown service was in 2006 so I've not had a bad run I reckon.
My view for the next couple of hours.
While a bit boring, I couldn't really complain. Breeze was running straight through the car so it was a pleasant temperature, I had a comfy seat, and there was a surprisingly large amount of interesting traffic passing by. Given I was on my own and in a (relatively) safe location I knew I wasn't going to be a priority call...despite the initially wildly optimistic estimates given. Think it was roughly two hours before help arrived which was about what I was expecting.
Then a quick ride on the truck (seriously, about fifteen minutes!)...
Had us back home.
Really surprised at how well that truck rode, though the robotised manual gearbox would have driven me spare.
We were dropped off up the hill from our driveway and I was able to just roll down the hill and onto the drive and push the car back into the safety of the garage.
Didn't take five minutes to retrieve the belt and pretty much confirm my suspicions. I reckon it was a failure waiting to happen down to a degraded old belt. No obvious fraying or anything, it's just gone suddenly at one point when the braiding has given way (the surface damage is just from where it was sitting against the still rotating pulleys I think).
I know that the belts I've used along with a lot of my spares showed evidence of having spent a long time stored in very poor conditions and I reckon that's taken its toll. We've got some NOS belts at a friend's place which have been stored better, so getting one of those fitted will be step one and should get us rolling again.
Ancient belts however I reckon are likely to be a recurring headache, especially if I'm going to be using the car regularly...and it's something I *definitely* don't want to have to worry about if I wind up doing an epic round-country trip at some point in the next year or two. As such I want to see if a modern alternative will work. The nearest equivalent we believe is a Dayco HP2020, which is slightly longer but has a very similar profile...so I've got one ordered on the way to experiment with. It's coming from Rock Auto in the US as even with shipping it was half the price of one ordered from in the UK it turned out.
So don't think her arriving home on the back of a flatbed is going to result in a huge spell in the garage, she should be back up and running by the weekend. Just one of those things which happens with old cars sometimes.
