Review
Eva-Dry E-333 Review: 333 Cubic Feet Is the Whole Story
Thirteen ounces of moisture, 333 cubic feet of air and half a day to recharge. Enough for a cabin or a cupboard, nowhere near a garage.
3 min read
Fix 7 · Ugly 3
Classic Car
Problems specific to cars built before the electronics took over.
Start here
Classic Car Winter Storage: What Goes Wrong
What actually kills batteries, tires, brakes and paint over a four-month lay-up — in order of how likely each is, and what genuinely prevents it.
Collection
The First Drive After a Winter Standing Still
Standing does more damage to a classic than driving it. Five things that find what changed while it sat, before the first drive of the year finds it for you.
5 min read
Guide
Carburettor Cleaning and Re-Tuning
Most faults after storage are a blocked passage rather than a setting, so tuning first chases something that is not there. The order that works.
5 min read
Guide
Keeping a Classic's Interior From Cracking
The damage happens while it is parked, not while it is driven. And on a car whose dash top cannot be bought, prevention is the only strategy available.
5 min read
Guide
Reviving a Fuel System After Ethanol Damage
The carburettor gets cleaned first and blocks again within fifty miles. Everything upstream of it is what re-contaminates it, so it has to be done in order.
5 min read
Comparison
Original vs Uprated Brake Components
Braking is a system, and upgrading one part of it moves the balance rather than improving it. What uprated parts genuinely change, and what they quietly cost.
4 min read
Guide
Chrome Pitting: What Can and Cannot Be Saved
Pitting means the plating has already been breached, so polishing is working on the wrong layer. How to tell staining from pitting before spending anything.
4 min read
Guide
A Classic's First Inspection After Long Storage
Do not turn the key. What to check before the engine is asked to run, in the order that stops a stored car destroying itself in the first ten seconds.
4 min read
Guide
Mothballing an Engine for Multi-Year Storage
A four-month lay-up and a four-year one are different problems. What changes when the car will not be started, and the decision to make before anything else.
4 min read
Comparison
Contact Points vs Electronic Ignition on a Classic
Electronic conversion removes the part that wears and the service that nobody enjoys. It also removes the fault you can fix at the roadside with a nail file.
4 min read
Guide
Documenting a Classic for Insurance and Value
Paperwork is worth real money on an old car and costs nothing. What to record, what to photograph, and why the valuation question is best settled before a claim.
5 min read
Guide
Finding Parts for a Car Nobody Stocks
The part exists more often than the catalogue suggests. How to identify what you actually need, and the four places worth looking once the obvious one has failed.
4 min read
Guide
Rubber Seals on a Car That Barely Moves
Door and boot seals fail faster on a stored car than a used one. Why compression set is the real failure, and the dressing that makes it worse.
4 min read
Guide
How to Stop an Outdoor Car Cover Becoming a Sail
A cover that lifts and flaps in wind drags grit across paint all night — tie-downs stop the movement, which is the part that actually causes the damage.
2 min read
Guide
Covering a Car for Storage Without Trapping Moisture
A non-breathable cover used long-term can do more harm than leaving the car uncovered — it traps condensation against the paint instead of shedding it.
3 min read
Guide
Tires on a Car That Barely Moves: Age Beats Tread
A tire that rarely rolls stops replenishing its own ozone protection, so it ages out years before the tread wears down — and the date code says when.
4 min read
Guide
A Classic's First Drive of the Year Checklist
Cranking a sitting battery, driving on flat-spotted tyres and trusting brakes that rusted over winter are the mistakes behind most first-drive problems.
3 min read
Guide
Reading a Fault Code Without a Scanner on an Older Car
Many pre-OBD2 cars can flash stored fault codes through the check engine light itself. The method is genuine, and it is also brand-specific, not universal.
3 min read
Guide
Add Bluetooth to an Older Car, Keep the Radio
An FM transmitter adds phone audio to any car without removing the head unit. Where an aux adapter beats it, and the frequency problem nobody mentions.
3 min read
Guide
Ethanol, Stale Fuel and Storing a Classic
Modern pump fuel does two things to a stored classic that older fuel did not. What a stabiliser actually fixes, and the one problem it cannot touch.
4 min read
Guide
Classic Car Winter Storage: What Goes Wrong
What actually kills batteries, tires, brakes and paint over a four-month lay-up — in order of how likely each is, and what genuinely prevents it.
7 min read
Other things that might be annoying you
- Warning lightThe light is on and nobody can tell me why.
- A long drive coming upSix hours in the car and I have not thought about any of it.
- Wi-Fi that keeps droppingThe PC is upstairs and the router is by the front door.
- The desk is set up wrongThe screen is too low, the chair is too high, and I have never changed either.
- A screen that is hard to look atGlare across it, or text I keep leaning in to read.
- Stuck at the roadsideSomething failed away from home and I had nothing useful with me.
- Taking a handheld awayCharging it, filling it, and getting it there in one piece.
- A PC that will not startIt was fine yesterday and now nothing happens at all.
- A car that barely movesIt sits far more than it drives, and that is its own problem.
- Nobody can hear me properlyHum, echo, or a microphone that picks up every keystroke.
- Losing work to a power cutA flickering supply, a failing drive, and no backup worth the name.
- Dead batteryThe car sat for a month and now it won't turn over.
- No garage spaceThe car fits, but only just, and nothing else does.
- Car clutterEverything I own is loose in the trunk and rattling.
- Dirty interiorThe interior has grit in places a vacuum cannot reach.
- Bad lightingI cannot see what I am doing under the hood or under the car.
- Lost toolsI own three 10 mm sockets and can find none of them.
- Loud PCIt sounds like a hairdryer the moment a game loads.
- PC runs hotFrame rate drops after twenty minutes and never recovers.
- Cable messBehind the desk is one knot I refuse to look at.
- Cannot drillI rent, so nothing can leave a hole or a mark.
- Nowhere to put itThe flat is full and there is nowhere left to put anything.
- Bag will not closeIt all went in last time and now the case will not shut.
- Everything needs chargingFour devices, one socket, and a flight in the morning.