The Panda returns
It spent much of the summer parked up. But now Richard’s Panda has bounced back after repairs
My Panda didn’t enjoy summer much. It was suffering from what I was convinced was cylinder head gasket failure ( CCW, 4 October), so I mothballed it until cooler weather would allow me to get it to a garage without overheating in traffic.
However, the big absence of a minuscule, darty Fiat in a parkingchallenged hometown still retaining its narrow medieval street layout soon became apparent – especially once the Saab’s MoT expired, leaving me with a huge Volvo 940 estate that was about as good at squeezing into small parking spots as Ryanair is at juggling pilot holiday rotas.
Fortunately, this being Britain, temperatures soon plummeted, allowing me to negotiate heavy traffic and get the Fiat to newly-established Dawson Motors in Peterborough, set up by one of the mechanics from the recently-closed Ellingworth’s Garage where I’d been taking my cars for decades.
There, Craig Dawson had some good news. He reckoned the head gasket wasn’t the culprit, after all. His recommendation was to change the thermostat and, as I had no idea when the Panda last had its cambelt renewed, have that done and fit a new water pump at the same time. A bit of a faff, but nothing compared with renewing a cylinder head gasket.
The Panda reacted badly to this, losing all electrical power when Craig tried to move it, but some wily wiggling of wires under the bonnet got it going again, in the time-honoured Italian electrickery fashion.
The work went well enough – the Panda’s 1.1-litre FIRE engine is the epitome of simplicity. In fact the biggest problem was sourcing a water pump. The first one turned up with a damaged seal. The second had no seal at all. The third one was fine. Craig also found the fan wiring was in poor condition, which could also have contributed to the Panda’s high temperatures.
It now seems to be completely keeping its cool, so hopefully its overheating is solved. I’ll definitely know in a few days, because I have a 270-mile round trip to and from Gatwick airport via the M25 to make, and with both the Saab and now the Volvo out of MoT, it’s the Panda that will have to do it. And, no, it’s not for a Ryanair flight...
’Wiggling of wires got it going again in time-honoured Italian fashion’