Twang!

Well, it had to happen. My carefully fettled repair to the car windows broke. The sequence was "Up - Down - Up - Down - twang - Down - Down - Down".

Not good. Fortunately I was at home, and performing stress tests on the thing, and so we weren't stuck any where. So I regrouped, did some thinking and now I can present my infallible "how to fix the windows on Rob's car" guide:

1. Remove entire door panel, whilst muttering to yourself under your breath that "You didn't think you'd have to do this again, darn, darn, darn"
2. Remove window winding mechanism and note that the cable has come out of the handy homebrew ending which you made out of an old terminal block and which turned out not to be strong enough. Reflect on how poor your forward planning was.
3. Take entire assembly into garage and ponder on how to improve matters.
4. Decide to double loop the cable around the block to produce an unburstable and solid fiting which cannot be removed.
5. Do this.
6. Find that you have not threaded the cable through the outer sheath and spring fitting prior to fitting unburstable end.
7. Say a naughty word.
8. Remove the fitting which cannot be removed, lacerating one finger whilst doing this.
9. Refit the irremovable fitting again.
10. Reassemble the drive cables and find that you have put the outer sheath on wrong way round.
11. Say another naughty word. Twice.
12. Find that you can't get the cable through the sheath any more because you have bent it about so much that the end is frayed. Lacerate thumb whilst doing this.
13. Get out wire cutters to make clean new end.
14. Remember that your wire cutters don't actually cut wire. They are just two pieces of crushed up silver paper which are labelled wire cutters.
15. Reflect that you don't get a very good 100 piece toolkit for 10 quid.
16. Recall that the next door neigbours, from whom you borrowed the wire cutters last time, are now in Amsterdam.
17. Finally cut the wire and fit everything together. Lacerate other thumb whilst doing this.
18. Put the entire thing together and make the window go up and down successfully twenty times.
19. Refix door panel, and put a small wedge in the glove box so that if everything breaks when we are out I can always wedge the window up.