I wouldn’t normally post anything about the van, but this one deserves a mention for the insanity of it all.

At 140,000 miles the van required it’s second timing belt change, a job which is normally quite expensive but a lot cheaper when you have an Ian around. We had a rough idea of what was needed but didn’t really want to take the radiator out which was a step on the making life easier instructions. Ian’s dad suggested going even further and removing the front of the van for better access, but that looked a lot of work so we battled on. We did try to remove the fan which was getting in the way a bit, but this attempt ended with us just removing the fan cover and the realisation the fan would probably be staying put because of how it’s attached.

Everything was going smoothly until it came to removing the crankshaft bolt. I’d joked previously about Ian’s 32mm socket and spanner wondering what an earth would require something that big, unless you were working on a truck. The thing is, the van is actually a truck with a van body, so everything is quite beefy and as such, a 32mm socket was too small. We squeezed a measuring tool down into the depths of the engine, around the fan, making sure not to scratch your arms apart on the blades and measured the bolt at 37mm. We knew it would either be 36mm or 38mm, and we had a 50/50 chance of getting it right. Off we toddled to Halfords and bought the 38mm socket. It was too big. So off we toddled again to Halfords to exchange it for the 36mm version which was slightly more expensive. If anyone can explain this pricing policy I’d love to know.

The socket was now on, but how the buggery were we going to loosen it? The suggestion in the instructions was to shock it off by wedging a bar against the chassis and turning the engine over. I was honestly more nervous sitting in the cab with the key in the ignition doing that than sitting on the starting grid at Brands Hatch. In short, it didn’t work. The fan was getting in the way, and in trying a not so ingenious solution we broke one of Ian’s tools in the process (for the record I did replace it for him!).

Mid afternoon we came to the realisation that Ian’s dad was right, and the front of the van was coming off along with the radiator. Finally this gave us access to the bolt that would let us remove the bloody fan which was causing so many headaches. Once done, a bar was easily wedged into the chassis, crankshaft bolt removed and we could begin 4 hours later than planned. Thankfully everything went much smoother from this point onwards!