Dr Dolittle for your motor.

This is it. Dr Doolittle for your motor car.

The device itself is a blue box with various different modules.April has a few Ford machines, so she lent this one to KatMaul so that we could diagnose my little Escort Emiah.

There is a socket in most modern cars to which one of these diagnostic devices can be plugged in to. It is a useful little thing, to put it mildly.

The long story short is that the Engine Management Unit (EMU) is responsible for various events that happen in the engine. To do this, it takes readings from various sensors in the car. If one of them is faulty, the EMU can't do its job properly and the car doesn't run right.

In this case, KatMaul sat in the passenger seat, tapping away at the buttons (because my diagnostic plug hole is in the passenger foot well) and directed me as to what to do.

It turns out that it complained about the throttle pot. Yeh, that's what I said too.

Don't laugh. April found just the thing on flea bay and before I knew it, I had a fresh throttle pot landing on the door step. Apparently, it is a resistance, "pot," which tells the EMU how hard my foot is down on the, "throttle." Hence throttle pot. All straight forward when you've got a KatMaul explaining things.

Then it was down to me to fit it. Well, sort of, as Kat took over part way through when things got a bit messy, because patten parts don't always have the same twists and turns as the genuine article. Ah well. At least I can say I got my hands dirty.

Now there's only the sills to replace, the radio has decided to die, one of the rear wheel bearings is groaning loudly...