Having completed all the repairs to the car, we decided it would be a good idea to give it a long run to see if any other problems would surface. As we had finished the repairs by 5pm on Saturday, we thought we could run it up to Wales to stop with my family for a couple of nights. 112.5 miles to Aberdovey is only about three hours drive, and about 1/88th raise distance but we've got to start somewhere. So we loaded the car up, dug a map out and set off. First we had to get some fuel for our shiny new fuel tank, so we tootled off to Harborne. Things were going swimmingly until we hit a bump in the road. Well not really a bump, more of a slight undulation, but still enough to cause us some problems. We heard a grinding sound as we drove over the bump and a few other times as we cornered, braked and accelerated. We assumed this was just our slightly oversize tyres rubbing on our slightly loose front bumper. Not to worry the noise would go away along with the edges of the bumper.
We pulled into the petrol station in Harborne and filled up. Just as the pump clicked off I looked down to see petrol pouring out of the rear wheel arch. When we replaced the tank we'd not made sure the filler pipe had enough clearance from the tyres and the wheel had eaten straight through it thin plastic corrugated pipe. So we pushed the car to the side of the forecourt and sprinkled sand everywhere. We also jacked the car up and took the back wheel off so we could try and save some of my new fuel which was running everywhere. In case you hadn't guessed this kind of a problem isn't really sortable. Not at 5:30pm on a Saturday. So our long distance trial was over. We had covered the awe-inspiring distance of 0.5 miles. For those of you with poor maths thats 1/20,000th race distance. This was an unimitigated disaster, a real failure, a big kick in the guts.

The evening wasn't made much better by the constant stream of sniggering chavs, who seem to hang out round the petrol station as part of thier saturday night build up.
Well at least Rich had AA membership, so we waited for two hours for a nice AA man to come and tell us what we already knew. He couldn't 'fix' the pipe, it must be replaced. He couldn't even tow us home, the best he could do would be to follow us home with the promise that he would leap out with a fire extinguisher should we burst into flames.
After wishing us luck with the rally, our chuckling Knight of the Road drove off into the night. We were left to drown our sorrows, with a couple of bottles of lager and three bottles of wine. Nice though the wine was, it couldn't shift our sense of failure. Oh well, tomorrow would be another day...
Today was another day. A day characterised by storming hang-overs, raging thirsts, stinging eyes and closed Fiat Parts Desks.