Another Trip to Normous Newark

I was gong to stand at Newark but as the last few times I have gone I haven't taken enough to cover the cost of being there, this time I went as a buyer. We still had to pay 20 quid for the two of us to get in, I can't help feeling twice as many people would go if the price was 2/3 but there is nothing that moaning will do about it.

Some nearby farmer had kindly dunged his fields in, the stench was unbelievable, a real bonus if you are turned on by the smell of cow poo, not so good for everybody else. Seriously, it was enough to make your eyes water at one end of the site, not so bad at the other.

Anyway, I had this shopping list - mirrors for the hot rod, exhaust pipe to finish the exhaust and make the running boards, under body paint,  few sundries and windscreens from a land rover defender, wheels from a Spitfire. The cost of having a custom screen made with the appropriate markings is unbelievable and you have to order at least 5 so some twat at the testing place can smash 4 of them in their destructive testing. That gives you a bill for several hundred pounds, it's absolutely crazy. Defender screens are laminated and have the correct markings so you can cut them down and use them, even that isn't cheap but thankfully all the glass in the prefect is flat so if I can find some cheap used screens it makes the job a whole lot cheaper.

I didn't find any mirrors that would pass IVA so I will have to fit some really ugly plastic things. I watch a lot of American builders on youtube, I am so jealous of them, they can do so many things that we can't. Despite leaving the EU we still have to follow all of the rules, the test is 500 quid plus another 90 for any retests, even if all you failed on was a single radius of slightly less than 2.5mm. With something like 500 pages I am sure to miss something in the manual but I am doing my best to pass first time.

What I did find was a pair of 3.5 litre badges from an old Rover, not sure which model but I thought they would look great on my car. It was only a fiver for the two so I snapped them up. I found the 40mm steel for my side skirts, the bits I got were long enough and of the correct diameter to finish my exhausts so that was another bonus. The two bits came to just 25 quid so I saved the cost of admission on that one purchase, that made me feel a lot better.

I picked up a few other minor bits, all in all it was a pretty good day although I am still scratching my head about the windscreen and side screen situation. I didn't find a headliner, didn't really expect to though to be fair. I didn't find any wheels, I did find a very nice pair of Recaro seats, sadly they were 1 inch too wide. A real shame because they were quality items, in good condition and the bloke only wanted 60 quid the pair.

I might have done better going earlier but it was the weekend the clocks changed and I had a long day doing a car boot the day before, I also can't stand lining up for 45 minutes or more if you get there really early. They won't open the gates a single second before  it's opening time, same way they won't drop the price until the clock hits 10 am. We got there about half nine and paid the full tenner each.