England, Belgium, France, Germany
The first two days: arrive at Heathrow, meet up with Tommy, take delivery of car from Joolz, and hit the road! The only sleep we got was on the ferry, after Tommy had finished admiring the cliffs of Dover! We had a flat tyre as soon as we crossed the channel, but a very helpful Frenchman took us to his house where he had all the equipment needed. Turns out he raced bikes at Le Mans.
Spotted a very tasty Aston on the road in Belgium, and a few mad dashes (at 170mph!) later, we were in Germany, enjoying the glass-smooth road surface, and looking for our Ausfahrt.
We got to Siegen in Germany and met up with my buddy Christof and saw his Cerbera, the famous diffuser-mobile-on-steroids! Also, my warning light had come on, so I bought a serial cable from a Komputershoppen and went to a BMW dealership in the morning to borrow the allen key needed to open the ECU. A simple reset was needed, or so we thought…but we couldn’t make the buzzer or the light stop. So we turned the volume off and ignored the light for the rest of the trip, since, after our very scientific investigation, nothing seemed to be overheating or leaking or breaking or losing power or making strange noises!!! We blamed it on the traction control unit Joolz had been trying to put in despite numerous problems, and carried on.
Much, much later, back in England, Joolz had a shufti, and it turned out to be the alternator. So if you are ever stranded in the countryside and a horse ambles up and tells you “it’s the alternator, mate,” he just might be right!
