That's a year of the XJ

Finally got round to washing the grime off. It was all high speed A1 filth from the trip up to Yorkshire before Christmas and it looked OK, really. Sort of streaked, like speed blur! But there was salt on there, so I gave the car a good rinse and then a caress with my Meguiar's wash mit.

Started the engine and number four pot doesn't fire straight away. It chimes in after a minute but there's no damp or bad connection that I can see. Suggestions please...

Spent some time on the greasy windows, too, and tidied the boot. It's looking grand for the new year. I feel some relief at having kept this going for 12 months (with a couple of lengthy lapses that annoyed a few of you). I suppose I have to keep going now. CD of the year: American Idiot by Green Day.

North to mum

Drove to Malton to see my mum. Clouds of steam coming out of the grille when I stopped for a sandwich and that ominous hot coolant smell crept into the cabin. I opened the bonnet to discover the header tank cap balanced precariously on the front of the cam cover. I'd forgotten to replace it properly when I'd checked the fluids yesterday.

Torrential rain on the way up and back gave me lots of practice at parking the wipers myself. My timing is perfect now. I will keep your instructions, though, Crispin. Do the wipers' inability to park constitute an MoT failure?

Careful when you switch tanks

Ran both tanks quite low this morning and then switched from right tank to left tank on the garage forecourt with the ignition off.

Five minutes later, the engine lost power on the dual carriageway, showing all the signes of running out of fuel. I switched back to the right tank and the problem cleared, then flicked to the left again without trouble. It's my guess that a lack of current to the changeover switch caused the tank swap to fail and left me high and dry.

Right battery at last

Fitted new Optima Red Top battery - correct size this time. It still needed spacers adding to the rods securing the battery frame because it is about 20mm shorter than the old Lucas.

Much faster turning over now, due to doubled cold cranking rate of the new Optima. Fingers crossed for winter.

Help from a follower

Many thanks to Crispin Thetford who has emailed me extensive instructions for fixing my wipers. That's brilliant Crispin. My big worry is that the work will go the way of many tasks on my list - if I manage without fixing something for a month, I might never get round to it. As long as I can time the switch right, I can live with the wipers not parking themselves.

The other thing I ought to do is set up a page of messages from visitors to this site. I get lots of fascinating emails from all over the world and need to find a way of sharing them with you all.