[stephend]

The 740 is booked in for MoT: eek! Actually, I know she won't pass, because the exhaust is blowing. It's more a case of what else will she fail on?

She's been off the road more or less since last year's MoT. Trying to find where the rain was getting in, I found a rusty patch which turned out to need welding. It took time to sort that out, and then I turned my attention to swapping the knackered gearbox. I stripped everything down, but couldn't budge the bellhousing from the block. My best guess is that the dowels have corroded in. With MoT date looming, I put it all back together again for now.

The exhaust is blowing where I opened the joint between the downpipe and front silencer. I guess it just needs a bit more sealing gloop than I gave it when I refitted it. It'll fail on that, but the garage should be able to sort that out.

It may fail on my welding. I showed the garage photos of my repair as I went along, and they said it looked fine. But whether it'll pass muster when they see it in the metal remains to be seen.

And with it standing for a year, I wouldn't be surprised if the emissions are off - although I did put a fresh tank of petrol in today

But the real worry is that the car was shuddering badly on the way over. And by badly, I mean enough that I didn't attempt to go above 40 mph... I'm not sure why; my best guess is that I didn't align the prop-shaft carefully enough on refitting.

So one way and another, I'm not expecting a nice shiny new certificate this time round. Work will need doing, it's just a question of how much?