How The IVA Was Won

We left Northampton at about 06:30, and went down the A508 / A5 route to Leighton Buzzard. It was fine on the slow bits, but as soon as you got on the open road and up to national limit, it was bloody RAW. I had my thermals on, two t-shirts and a rugby shirt, a scarf and a ski jacket and it was still bitter. My trick with two pairs of gloves (fleecy type under my leather gloves) didn't work either, as I couldn't feel my fingers when we got there!  

There was one moment on the way there that will stick with me for a long time - belting down the A5, I had a blood red sun rising on my left, with the full moon still fully visible on my right. It was almost like something out of Star Wars. Not that I was going to the biggest hive of scum and villainy in the known universe. Just Leighton Buzzard :-)

We got there with plenty of time to spare - arrived about 07:15, and had to wait on the entrance way for one of the VOSA bods to arrive and open the gates. 

Pauline and my mate Iain came in the “support car” which had most of my tools in the boot, along with all sorts of spares just in case. 

We had to wait once we where in - they asked me to park outside the test lane:

Then the shutters went up, and the test began.

When we where in there, we had to wear these stylish fashion statements - it being a Government site, health and safety is taken very seriously. I mean, thank God I had it on - it’d stop a runaway truck from the test station next door, wouldn’t it? ;-)

And with it being a Government site that was it for the photos - you’re not allowed to take pictures whilst the test was underway, or take pictures of the inspectors.

The actual test was itself very interesting, and the chap doing it was very amenable - after about 5 minutes the banter was flowing and everybody was laughing, despite the cold.

The car sailed through the emissions check, .5% C02 and about 400ppm HC.

The external projections check threw up some items - he wasn't happy with the rear of the headlight bracket. He also hemmed and hawwed about the slots around the nose cone - apparently they need a 1mm radius edge if they're 25mm wide. The only other thing he pinged me for was the rear reflectors - they didn't have a 2.5mm radius.

Inside the cockpit, there was nothing to really note, apart from he didn't pass the gear knob. Everything else was fine (boy was I glad I made up the panel to cover the electrics - he shone his torch in there and just shrugged and said "well, there's nothing there to check..."). No problems with the console, either. 

When he was checking, he mentioned that anything above a line he chalked on the tunnel (after working out where this plane was from the seat base) had to be checked with the larger 160mm sphere, for head strike - so whilst the 100mm may have been able to get in to touch the console, as it was above the line he used the other one, and he couldn't even get it past the gearstick and the lower line of the dash.

There was a bit of a moment with the seatbelt bar - when I had positioned it, I had triple checked the height, and added a few mil to be sure. Lucky I did, because with the tolerance it was spot on. The inspector looked at me and said "Where's your spare couple of mil then" - And then winked at me. I can only assume the rubber matting and the carpet on the seat bars took it up.

Checking the lights, he did discover a fairly major boob on my part - you could turn the rear fog on when you only had the side lights on. And the only other item of note was that the self centring wasn't really working right, even with pumped up tires.

So - it got to mid-day, and he said we'd break for lunch, and if I could rectify the issues he'd found in the afternoon, he'd pass me. 

We all jumped in to Thunderbird 2 and popped into Leighton Buzzard town centre to the little Halfords there and got a replacement gear knob and some emery paper, and then we got some lunch whilst we where in town

After we finished eating, we returned to the test centre and as soon as the inspector came back, we rectified all the issues. I sanded a radius onto the rear reflectors and radiused the edges of the front slots whilst Iain changed the gear knob. 

The Inspector seemed mighty impressed that I could take the dash off by disconnecting a couple of plugs. 5 minutes later, after a switcheroony of some of the terminals in one of my connectors, the fog light was fixed. 

"Good god - it's even neat and tidy under there" said the Inspector. :-)

The back edge of the light brackets was sorted with some rubber edging I had left over from the bonnet - we just slackened of the light and clamped it back down trapping the rubber - The Inspector then helped us re-align the lights afterwards. 

The self centring was cured by giving her more toe out - We popped her back on the lift and used the wheel skates to allow the wheel to freely move when we wound the track rods out. It did mean cutting of the shrouds I'd heat shrunk on. I did have spare ones, and I asked the inspector if he wanted me to put them on now (which would have meant winding the rod all the way out and slipping it on before screwing it back in), or if he trusted me to do when I got home. All I got was another grin in reply. 

He took it for a spin, declared it was feeling a lot better and centring as required, and told me to wait whilst he did the paperwork.

That's when it hit me that I'd actually done it! YAY!!!! :D

Got the paperwork, (IAC, copy of IAC, and all the print outs and calcs from the test) and was on the road again at 3:30ish. Coming through Milton Keynes, I opened the taps to celebrate - she felt great. I only slowed down as it felt like the helmet I was wearing was about to tear my head off. ;-)

All the way there, and all the way back engine temperatures where fine - stayed at about 80ish degrees - the fan was cutting in and out as it should - so I don't think I'll have too many issues with cooling. But I guess the real test will be this summer when it's a bit warmer.

She's tucked up in the garage, having a snooze at the moment. I think I'll leave her be for the rest of the weekend. :)

Still can't quite believe I've done it!