Good News! We have working electrics. The short story is that the aul' girl spent the day at Square Deal Auto on Chislet Business Park (off the A28) and is now back home safe in her lock up with working electrics. I have no vested interest in Square Deal but can unreservedly reccommend them as a small company (Father and Son) who are just brilliant at diagnosing and fixing electrical problems on old cars.

The longer story would involve 2CV-Llew and I getting the car there under tow when we found her in the lock-up with an almost flat battery (and being tow-roped behind Llew at speed through country lanes and along the Thanet Way is a brown-underpants white knuckle ride). The work was done with a nice sequence of comforting "check up" calls by them to me confirming that this is what they'd found and was it alright to spend x.

Our original bodgerie had , in fact put some of our jointed wiring in the way of the fan, which had sliced through one wire causing a short (metal fan on these old cars) which had melted the voltage regulator. She is now largely re-wired in that area and has a new 6v (old Volkswagen) volt-reg'. The old guy tried to tell me all about negative pulsing and +ve wires from the field wiring connected to the +ve brush which looked all wrong but was in fact correct (see Lindsay Porter book for pics!) but that kind of stuff goes over my head.

And then, with her all fixed and paid for I had the fun of a drive home all down through Sturry and Herne back to Blean, where she lives. 40 mph flat out down the Thanet Way dual carriageway. Zzzzzzzz. Those cars are definitely more fitted to country lanes than motorways, aren't they? At least on the down-hills towards Blean you can look at 50 mph, bucketting over the lumps and bumps and potholes.

So, now we have a car with working electrics, all safe and snug and dry back in her lock up.  Thanks then to 2CV doctor, Llew, who gave up 2 (early) evenings, one to tow me down to Square Deal, one to follow me home then drive me back to Chislet to collect the "normal" car in which I'd driven there from work.

Relax