The sat nav
As I probably mentioned somewhere my brother sent me his year old Tom Tom XL, equipped with "Hungarian Grandmother" voice (so I had two of them in the car telling me not to drive too fast
). It isn't supposed to have a map for any Balkans country so I didn't try it out until I was actually using it but it turns out it does actually cover major routes in Croatia and Slovenia - when I tested it in the car outside the house here it couldn't tell me where I was so I didn't even bother turning it on until we were in Austria. Coming back I left it on and it directed me to where I left the motorway, complained that I hadn't listened to it driving up the main road into town and then showed me the arrow driving off into a field when I left the main road 
Anyway, a superb bit of kit, once I got used to it. I know some of you have them so this is old news, but it's just like having a navigator who's always right on the ball, doesn't make any mistakes and, best of all, doesn't get into a tiswas when you mess up. The speed indicator was very useful, especially in GB 'cos my car's only got kph. I guess there's no point in having one for every day use but for going anywhere you don't know it's fantastic (btw can you rent the things? They're a tad expensive to buy just for one trip & I can imagine them being worse than useless if the maps go out of date, so renting one would be ideal)Slovenia
Ffs can they make the road to Croatia any worse? It's a knackered old track going through a few towns with a 60kph speed limit, another stroke of genius from our oh-so friendly neighbours
No matter how low they make the speed limits it still doesn't make their tiny country any bigger. And what's with the vignettes? I guess they're trying to get some cash out of all the cars that, let's be fair, are only going through their tiny country to go somewhere more interesting but, ffs, 30€ for a month's vinaigrette to drive some 90km total - they sure saw us coming 
The border crossings are a bit of a joke too, all there is are a couple of sheds under a big awning with no indication of where to stop. On the way out we stopped at the first shed and the guy waved us on, so off we went - straight past the little shed 10 feet further on where the guy shouted at us to make us stop and then shouted at us for trying to avoid him. You idiots, how much would a sign cost? Even writing "STOP" on the side of your rotten old shed in green paint would be better than that. Morons Austria.
The roads in the south are a bit knackered but then I guess they're not Germany. My wife counted 32 tunnels on the way back, it did get a bit tedious. We had to buy a vinaigrette here too, but they still charge you for going through some of the tunnels, the crooks
As for the driving, they're just nuts - Austrian drivers seem to enjoy "buzzing" slower cars - passing them within a few inches at ridiculous speeds so the backwash makes them lurch about all over the road. Keeping their distance seems to confuse them in other ways too - the car 1 meter behind you is Austrian I had one old boy with his wife in the car so close to the back of me I doubt if I'd have been able to open the tailgate. There they were in my rear view mirror just looking bored, so close that if I'd even touched the brakes he'd have hit me, so I rolled off the throttle and let the car slow down gradually and when we got to about 55kph he finally decided to overtake. I gave them a stare as they passed but they didn't even look at me, just carried on looking straight ahead with the same bored expressions. Zombies.Germany
Oh yes, autobahns - the speed limit on the sat nav disappears because THERE ISN'T ONE
When I was a lad I'd have gone bananas at that, standing on the throttle until I reached my destination or the engine exploded. And there I was doing 110 kph (that's about 66mph 
). There weren't many people driving at silly speeds, just the odd fat German businessman in his shiny silver Audi repmobile pretending he's Michael Schumacher. I didn't see many cars of note on my travels, a Mustang sounding nice as he overtook me and a Maserati. However the most interesting car I saw by far was this:
A 2010 Peugeot Pars 1.8i. I had a chat with the owner, a lovely guy with his son who were on their way back from visiting relatives in Iran. His 6,000km trip made my 1500 seem a bit lame
Especially as they'd had trouble going through Hungary and had to turn back and go through Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. Btw that car lives in London 
Most of the driving on the autobahns was pretty cool, if you're in the overtaking lane and someone comes up fast behind you they get to about 3 meters behind, then back off a bit to give you time to pass. I only had one idiot flash me up to try and get me to go faster (which I didn't) and the car was sporting an Austrian plate (of course). Lorries seem to travel in clumps so the inside lane in what amounts to a solid wall of lorries, which is a bit hard to get through from either side. They also seem to use hills as some sort of overtaking challenge, pulling out on whatever's coming and overtaking at about 55mph, no matter how many cars are waiting behind them or how long it takes
They don't seem to flash each other in either. I also had a fair few people following me for quite a few kms, then just pull out, overtake and disappear. What they're actually waiting for is for you to come to a junction with lots of cars trying to come out, then they pull along side you so you've either got to brake or accelerate to let the cars out because they've left you nowhere to go. What the f...?!!! There were a fair few roadworks, mostly on the bits where there are three lanes each way. They divide the remaining half of the carriageway into 4 lanes - two each way, with either armco or concrete blocks down the middle. The lanes aren't that wide to start off with, even narrower divided up this way - I saw a sign saying the overtaking lane is 2 meters wide, so getting past lorries is a bit of a challenge what with the lorries wandering about and the row of concrete blocks not exactly straight it feels like a video game where you have to get through a maze without being squished. For real At one point I was pontificating getting past 3 lorries when an Audi came up behind me, so I felt like I had no alternative than to go for it. After I'd made it past I looked behind to see the Audi still picking his moment to get past the first. Pussy Btw a tip for the service stations - you have to pay 0.70€ for the bogs but you get a 0.50€ coupon for coffee. A bit of a bluddy nuisance if you want to have a slash just before you leave
Luxembourg
I'd had a squint at fuel prices across Europe and Luxembourg was the cheapest, so I decided to fill up here. We were actually looking for a service station with restaurant for coffee but followed a sign that said P+R (it's got a P in it so it must be close) and soon figured out it was for a park and ride car park
Anyway, on the other side of a mini roundabout was a road with 8 service stations in it. 8!! All with the same price for diesel - 1.194€ a litre 
So in went 60 litres of Luxembourg's finest liquid gold and much better my car ran on it too. I also filled up in Luxembourg on my way back at a proper motorway service station and made a bit of a twit of myself - I couldn't see any card machines on the pumps so I filled up and went to find the shop which was on the other side of the building. Inside the shop using my almost non-existent French I found I had to pay for the fuel outside, errrr, somewhere. So I want out to search and found a woman sitting in a booth. She took my money and opened a barrier I hadn't seen. What you're meant to do is fill up, get back in your car, drive to the booth to pay (there was actually a row of these I hadn't noticed either) and once you've paid they raise the barrier and you can leave. Of course my wife, who was sitting in the car all this time, knew all this because she could read it written in French everywhere - thanks dear! I felt very silly for quite a while afterwards Belgium
Sloppy driving central - they don't actually seem to be thinking at all. On the way back we caught a few torrential showers with visibility going from clear to a few meters. Nasty. At one point I was following an Audi around an old truck (large Transit size), tucked in front of it still behind the Audi and then the heavens opened. He backed off and so did I - the rain was so heavy I could hardly make out his tail lights. Clear as anything though was the old truck, now 2 meters behind me flashing his lights
Just after that we saw a Hianddie Santa Fe that was a good half a meter shorter than when it left the factory. A few km further down the road and we stopped off for coffee and came across this guy, apparently asleep on his steering wheel:
Three of his tyres looked like this:
Where's a Gendarme when you need one? Less than a minute after I took this pic it started up and screamed out of the car park.France
It's still there. The ferry terminal at Dunkirk was a bit weird, it seems like you're heading off into waste land, the sat nav says they are roads everywhere but it's hard to see them because there's no buildings or anything. Finally, just as I was beginning to think the sat nav had gone mad, the terminal appeared.
The Ferry
I've not actually done much on ferries, the only other time I took my own vehicle on one it was the Transit I drove out to Croatia in, and then there were three of us. This time I was on my own (sort of...) and I was rather anxious. I spent two hours wondering how hard I'd put the handbrake on, worrying that it was spending the whole voyage smashing into the cars parked in front and behind it and was very relieved to find it undamaged when we got to Dover. On the way back I made damn sure it was on really hard and left it in gear too.
England
Apart from the rush hour sillyness when we first arrived I don't have any complaints about the driving; much more courteous, thoughtful and intelligent than what I am used to. No, I'm not taking the Michael, I'm serious. There are an amazing amount of speed cameras about, I know they can't do anything to me but I couldn't bring myself to drive illegally so never got flashed once. Lots of roads have changed since I was last here and the M25 seems to have gone from the world's biggest car park to the worlds biggest road works. What else? Huge supermarkets stuffed full of goodies I can only dream about here, Indian restaurants, the ability to buy anything without it turning into a linguistic challenge...
The Car
Apart from the cock up in Germany the car went really well, it's still going really well now but I have a feeling this will change the moment I put some of the sludge they sell in the petrol stations here back in the tank
On the way there I got 5 litre/100km (56.5mpg) for the whole lot, I was hoping for better on the way back with new tyres but, with all the problems, I only got 5.2l/100km. The only other problem was the washer fluid ran out, it was the winter stuff that smells awful so good riddance. Unfortunately there must have been some crud in the tank and it blocked the driver's side jet and I couldn't find any way of unblocking it as the air lines on the forecourts are the sort that don't have triggers. Fortunately it then started to rain so it didn't turn out to be much of a problem in the end.
This is what I found waiting for me when I got to my dad's:
And this is my dad's rather neat wiring job on the seat, with the switches wired straight to the motors, the power feed to the swiches and the two earths he had to solder on to the back of the switches:
All I had to do was fit the seats, wire up the connector for the electrics (which were already on my existing seats but with no wires connected to them) and Bob's your uncle.
Before:
Minus seats:
After:
The only thing that's not working are the heaters but I didn't take the centre console out so perhaps the connectors aren't pushed home enough. I'm sure it's not going to be a problem and anyway the object of the exercise was to get it all back here and then sort it out. The new Mintex front disks and pads are excellent, I was expecting them to be spongy to start off with but they were sh*t hot from the word go. I was in two minds about the bumper after discovering the main problem with mine was half the bolts were missing but I decided they'd both need repainting so I may as well take the one that didn't need repairing first:
As you probably know I was very pushed for time, I couldn't be asked take stuff down the post office so I took the whole seats down to Stu's (Waue1978) place in Andover mainly because he lives 20 minutes from a mate of mine, so anyone wanting any bits off them should speak to him
. Here's the wife and my mate out the back of Stu's:
Did they get some funny looks...
I found one problem when I had the seats out, I thought I'd have a look at this troublesome lift pump and I found:
Further investigation required
What's that red light for?
About 100km from our hotel in Regensburg, Germany, I had the coolant warning light come on the dash. All sorts of things went through my mind, including the new water pump failing, but as it wasn't over temperature I decided to check it out at the next service station. Unfortunately the traffic started getting heavy and we were stationary a few times, and this damn service station that I'd seen on the signs failed to materialise. Finally I saw the temperature gauge had crept from pointing at the 9 of 90 to the 0, so I killed the engine and coasted to a stop on the hard shoulder. In the worst place imaginable - in the narrow strip where two autobahns met. I didn't know what to expect when I opened the bonnet but I knew straight away what had happened - the bleed cap from the top of the thermostat housing was gone and there was coolant everywhere. So there I was, with traffic screaming mere inches from us and no coolant where it was meant to be. Jesus wept, I'd seen lorries swerving onto the hard shoulder many times so I was crapping myself. I know full well I should let it cool down but I just couldn't do that so, hoping that it wouldn't be so bad as tipping cold water into an overheated engine, I used one of the tyre valve caps on the housing, started the engine and poured 4 litres of distilled water into the expansion tank as slowly as my nerves could take. We then got the hell out of there. Another couple of kilometres further on the red light was on but this time there was a handy rest stop. No overheating but the expansion tank was empty again, so I tipped in my last half a litre of the wet stuff and off we went again. At the next service station we stopped, bought some more distilled water and I bled it properly. Hardly any air came out so I guess that the second drop was due to the air coming out of it. I tried to do the valve cap up a bit tighter but it felt like I was going to strip the thread, so I tried to get hold of a brass one. The service station was full of cheap and nasty tat but no metal valve caps, so I decided to drive on with my eye on the temperature gauge. When we got to the hotel, which is surrounded with tyre workshops, auto repair workshops and a place that tunes bikes, I got the hotel manager to talk to the guys in one of the workshops, explain what I wanted and he produced a brass valve cap - perfik!!!
I was still watching like a hawk yesterday, it actually waives about, moving between the middle and top of the 9. And tomorrow I'll be going to see a certain mechanic. He's a mate too, so I won't be chewing his head off. Just as long as there's no lasting damage I guess...Oh lordy, it's taken me about 4 hours to write this
I guess I'd better hit "Submit".
sounds like you had a good trip in all,i'd love to be able to afford to do a trip like that m8 both in my pug and the scoob 
), so that's on order for this week some time.