When I bought my Volvo in 2006 (almost 3 years ago now, blimey) it was already on something like 160,000 miles. I knew this was quite high in general terms but for a Volvo, only just run in. Well I've averaged 10,000 a year since then and yesterday the clock rolled over to 190,000 miles. If the car was air tight I'd be just over 85% of the way to the moon by now.
Unfortunately it's beginning to feel like it's barely able to keep water out let alone the vacuum of space, with an increasing number of knocks, rattles and squeaks. The brakes feel odd, the steering is iffy and the dampers are noticeably less crisp than they were. Nonetheless, the engine is strong and it's not that bad on fuel despite the short trips it's limited to these days. I think 200,000 miles is on the cards, at which point hopefully the government will be happy to give me £2,000 for it and I can walk away laughing.
As well as nursing my lovable gigantic Swedish barge to another milestone, I also repaired the Caterham. The parts arrived very quickly from the factory on Wednesday in the biggest box I have ever seen; it only just went inside the Volvo. I spent my day yesterday fitting the new rear wing which turned out to be a relatively painless process, albeit a long one (that's what she said). The fit is pretty decent, not quite as good as the original factory effort but then again they do have a few years more experience with such things. In any case, you'd have to look pretty closely to notice that the rubber piping is a little lose over the top of the wing and the washers I used are about twice the size of the original items.
A short 'shake down' run in the fading afternoon sunshine revealed an interesting handling problem which I can only attribute to the cone incident. Driving in a straight line, the steering becomes very light. The car is nervous and requires constant correction to keep in a straight line at speed and is much more sensitive to weight transfer. However, it's much sharper on corner entry, so as far as I can tell it's just a geometry issue (a little toe out I suspect). Everything seems to be buttoned down correctly still so perhaps after a year and a half of ownership it's time to get the setup checked and adjusted.
In the interest of further testing I went out again this afternoon and neither the rear wing or the steering fell off, which is handy. If it wasn't for the terrible bump steer I could happily live with the revised geometry. Still, not a bad weekend really, hopefully Easter will bring some more sunshine and dry roads...