05.06.08Back in One Piece
Well we made it back from Cork in one piece, although only barely. I tried to keep you updated via my Twitter feed (on far right sidebar), but I’ll give you the whole story about what happened.
As I said we were delivering a little red bus, which I used to own - but decided to give it away due to the amount of problems that arose with it - such as brakes not pulling on n/s/r wheel (left back wheel!), and some ‘minor’ electrical faults.
We left our yard in Wicklow at around 7pm, to head for the N8. All was going smooth, we adjusted the brakes before we left so we could stop without being slammed into oncoming traffic. We also filled the bus to the neck with parts for down in Cork - a complete set of seats, glass and some tyres (surplus to our requirements).
All was going well, until just as we entered the N11, we noticed the batteries came loose from their cradle. A quick fix, just had to put the retaining bar back into place and lock it down. Then came the issues, about 5 miles up the road, we had a small electrical fire in the form of the stereo exploding and catching fire. Reminds me of an episode of ‘Only Fools and Horses’…
Ironically, the bus in the video is similar to the one we drove to Cork, except ours didn’t explode - we believe the fault was caused by a faulty radio.
On the way, we needed fuel, so stopped off at the Esso just at Kill, Kildare. Nothing out of the ordinary, except for the guy working behind the counter. He was from India, but had a fascination about Irish buses and was full of questions about it, and even went to the trouble of taking down the registration number!
Everything was fine until when we passed Urlingford, when the brake warning light lit up the dash. We pulled over, and found nothing out of the ordinary, we had ‘brakes’, although the word ‘brakes’ is optimistic. We knew that it was just a short in the dash.
We arrived in Cork at around 12:30 that night, and found we had no handbrake, and barely any foot brake. So we had to block it up, and park it on level ground. It was then time for a drink and then to bed! As we were up at 8:00 the next morning with intentions of buying a coach down there - sale didn’t go ahead as the owner stripped the bus bare and still wanted money for it!
The day went grand, until when we went to go home. Another bus we bought developed an injector fault and wasn’t idling right, but as we were rushing to get back to Dublin for the next morning we loaded up a Fore Scorpio that was down there - that apparently ran 100%. Well that assumption was incorrect, as before we even got on the road it began to backfire and immediately we knew the electronics were shot.
We eventually got back at 2:30 am on Wednesday morning - absolutely knackered! I had the fortunate task of finding two of my sites down upon my return, and also found the server in which this blog is hosted was having load issues.
Maybe I shouldn’t go away as often as I do…
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