Worked out how to get Mum’s car back to her: take my sister to my place and then she can do her suburban shopping errands in Mum’s car, thus saving having to drive her own (bigger, heavier & older) car & using the fuel I’ve already bought for it.

Finally dark enough to test the car’s headlights for intensity, range & aim.
They’re fantastic, the only problem is with the lights on high beam, the blue indicator is too bright. The instrument panel lighting is red, easier on the eyes than green or blue

Went into a noodle shop at lunchtime, hoping to get some Vietnamese rice paper rolls (gỏi cuốn) but they had none. Disappointed I went into a bakery next door, thinking about some sandwiches. Then I spied the rice paper rolls they made. Delicious.

Mum's car, being from the mid 1990s, has a 4-speaker radio cassette unit. In the glovebox there's a cassette-shaped audio adaptor, replicates the aux in feature. Quite effective, even better when the drive belt in the tape unit fails, there's less audio interference!

I burned numerous .aiff & .mp3 CDs to use in the now-dead Yaris, they'll all play in the newer Mazda 2.

Right now I'm syncing my iPod Nano 6th Gen (the one with the watch faces) in preparation for collecting the new (to me) car tomorrow. It has an aux audio input as one of the stereo options. There's also a USB port for charging various accessories.

Here’s a spoiler for you: The butler did it!

Had to stretch my back to get relief from that and grabbed my firearm crutch from the car and went for a five-minute hobble around a nightclub’s carpark to ease the stress on the groin injury. I’m home now and have applied arthritis cream to the sore bits.

I can’t go on yet. Been to a meeting in a suburb an hour from home. My back and strained/injured groin just aren’t coping with the drivers’ seat in my mother’s car. I’m 10 minutes from home and in agony.

@kdfrawg With the previous car I often encountered a shuddering clutch. This was dud to a slightly warped flywheel, not worth fixing until time to replace the clutch itself. This is cos you have to dismantle ½ the engine to get at it. I could usually get around the shudder by having another go at the clutch, it would bite on an unwarped section.

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