The Laws of X1/9 Mechanics

Seems to me we are battling fundamental laws of the universe, similar to the way in which Newton's 4 laws of motion govern the movement of obects on a macroscopic scale.

We should diving the Fundamental Laws of X1/9 Maintenance.

1. The Law of Sensory Exclusion: that thing you need to mess with - you can either see it, or get your hands to it. Never both.

2. The Inverse Law of Component Troublemaking: you want to get it done that Sunday, and there's absolutely no reason why not. Except that some bit of plastic that should come off between your thumb and forefinger in 0.37354 seconds keeps you sweating and cursing for half a day until you get the b*****d thing off. The more trivial it is, the bigger pain in the rusty sheriff's badge it turns out to be.

3. The Law of Infinite Substitution: You'ce seen it in the manual. You've seen it on other cars. So why is yours completely different? What happened? When? Where can you get another one of those? Who would do this to you? Why would they do this to you?

What have I missed? if we get a few more we could use this for the magazine. I mean, half a page is half a page.

We can also clear up some common misunderstandings.

1. The handrake lever is connected in some way to the back wheels. Completely untrue. its only purpose is to give you soething to hold on to for leverage while turning the front wheel into the kerb with your other hand.

2. Wipers are 2-speed. Completely untrue. There are two continuous wiper settings: (a) glacially slow and (b) glacially slow, but you feel you've tried.

3. It is always sunny in Italy. Completely true. This is why the sun visors are set to come down automatically every three minutes.

Why do I always have to use my left hand on awkward fiddly jobs when I’m right handed!