Up at 5:45 after a bad nights sleep, and straight over to James' before heading up the road to cuckfield. We then set off for the SVA centre at 6:30, leaving 1:30 to get there. We blat up the A23, then get stuck in traffic. Its a nightmare clutch in traffic, but i just about survive! I can slowly feel my driving improving as i get used to the co-ordination of paddle shift and get to understand the drive train / clutch / etc. its pretty brutal, up and downshifts are hard to get right and its not at all forgiving. That just makes it more satisfying when you get it right! On the way there we get a wave, a thumbs up, and LOTS of looks! Shame it spat with rain all the way. On the last couple of miles the clutch starts slipping when i boot it in a high gear. Feels to me like the clutch needs adjusting - there's no dead point in the pedal, its clearly applying pressure without your foot doing anything. We fill up with petrol, whip off the bonnet and pedal cover, and adjust it. Thats much better :)
Once we arrive, we drive around to the inspection bay and the inspector comes over. He's a temporary inspector usually based in newcastle, seems a nice guy, fairly young. He does lots of paperwork and then gets stuck into the bonnet - poking around and pulling at things. No point in guessing whether he's impressed or not, we'll find that out later! After an hour he guesses our anxiety and tells us that we've got nothing to worry about, hasn't found anything serious yet, and he prefers to go through detail at the end so he doesn't lose his flow. He goes through lights, protrusions in & out, and lots of other things. I have to take the tunnel cover off so he can check handbrake balance bar.
We move onto the emissions test and i completely fail to hold the car at 2500 revs. We give up and go for 5000 instead, still pretty hard! The exhaust headers are actually glowing red as it runs at 5000 stationary ... poor engine. Machine whirrs away and has lots of 'FAIL' messages everywhere, so that looks a bit worrying! Turns out our CO2 and Hydrocarbons are fine, but Lambda fails. I told him that we can adjust it there and then, but he won't let me, so we move on. We're beginning to suspect its a fail and he's found something.... then he tells us. Its the seats & harness mountings. The harness mounts through an eye on the back rail of the chassis, then goes up about 1" before going downward. Apparently this is above the level of the mounting so therefore the seat is officially the seatbelt mounting. Therefore he needs evidence it is strong enough. His advice is to fit smaller seats "and you can do what you want after the test". How odd, these are standard Westfield items!! Now we know its a fail. bugger.
Next we go for speed test, so on the rollers and he attempts to drive it. Clearly never ridden a bike or used a sequential box, he's clueless! A bit of tuition and we get the car into third and blatting along. Speed at 50mph seems good and that's good enough for him even though he's supposed to do 70.
Next we drive forward to the ramp and the car goes in the air with me inside. He gets me to do brakes, steering, etc whilst he does his usual banging, poking, pulling about for ages. He lowers the car and gets me to cable tie a couple of headlamp wires up. Then we do the headlamp tests and again he allows me to adjust the light with the machine sitting in front of it.
The next test is the brakes test and I tell him about having a Limited Slip Diff, and how i've heard it can damage it. He declares a 15 minute break, we have a mars bar, and he investigates! I use this as an opportunity to call Westfield about the seats... I discuss it with them, but they need to speak to Mark who they can't get hold of.
On his return, he doesn't really know the answer on LSDs so he doesn't chance it. Instead he decides to drive the car. He goes left to right and checks the steering self-centres. Then he locks th
