Le Twingo Anglais

  Finally, after a long period of slow activity on the Twingo, it has finally passed it's first UK MOT. In the last blog, an inspection revealed that the front strut tops were badly worn; and that there were 2-3 areas of rust that required plating to pass an MOT. Strut tops came via Auto Doc within 2 weeks but it took a while to find a suitable time to get the car into the workshop at my employers; so they could be changed.  With that sorted I had to get VIN insurance arranged so that I could drive the car on the road to it's prebooked MOT test. That proved difficult with several leading classic car insurers wanting silly money for cover, or were being at best extremely rude. One citing over the phone that " it's not a modern classic ". Funny that, because numerous classic car publications cite the 1st generation Twingo as being exactly that . Finally cover was arranged and a test was booked with a sympathetic MOT station in North Bristol. Cleevewood Garage specia...

Monday was a day of mixed fortunes. HMRC informed me that they were satisfied by the payment of VAT on the Twingo released the NOVA document on the car, a major step closer to being able to apply for a UK registration. However; all was not so well during the evening, I had arranged with the assistance of a mechanic friend to set about preparing the Twingo for MOT. The first step was to fit the rear fog light, and this was a reasonably straightforward process. Mounting the fog light was the tricky bit, I didn’t want drill into the bumper to fit the light but whilst the car was in the air, it was decided to mount the bracket using one of the existing torx bolt slots used to secure the bumper to the bottom of the car. The bracket needed drilling slightly to accept the bolt, but the position meets the requirement for the light to be between the middle and offside of the vehicle. The existing wiring loom to the nearside cluster was cut and jointed so that a separate feed to the auxiliar...