Driving home

The scimitar is an amazing car to drive, the 3L ford "Essex" V6 is slow and powerful, making it a great long distance tourer. Mine came with the Borg Warner 3 speed automatic gearbox. On reaching Southampton I gave the car a quick once over and went for a test drive, the automatic gearbox behaved well and changed up and down smoothly enough on the test drive, the engine sounded amazing and pulled strongly at all speeds. I parted with my £550 quid and set out for home.

Thanks to Google images for the map

As you can see, its a long journey (7-8 hours) in a 30+ year old car that I haven't driven before and have no idea whether it will make it in one go. To avoid stressing the car more than necessary I avoided motorways and used A roads which took even longer.

It turned out that the car was in quite good condition, the only problems that occurred immediately were that the Speedo had a mind of its own, I thought I was doing 70, my girlfriend (now wife) confirmed that it was closer to 90! and had trouble keeping up with me. The other problem was that the battery kept boiling over (voltage regulator knackered) this was fun with boiling acid spraying over the engine bay which meant stopping every half an hour to let things cool down. Luckily the car was fitted with a battery cut out switch so that once started I could run from the alternator only. This was fine until it got dark and I needed to use the lights, every time I switched full beam on everything went off for a second.

Despite the boiling battery and no idea how full the tank was we made it back up north where the car was laid up until I got the electrics sorted out, see "first jobs".