Life with a Mondial

Since selling my other car my 88 Mondial 3.2 has become my daily driver and in the last 5 weeks I have covered almost 6000kms with another 1500kms to come this weekend.
My last trip shown in the pic was a real pleasure, having previously done this trip in a Kia Sportage at the end of last year, I found I was able to make the trip several hours quicker and with petrol consumption at worst 10.8lts/100kms and best of 9.6ltrs/100kms. This best was achieved on the all autobahn leg between Switzerland and Frankfurt an der Oder where we crossed into Poland at a steady 120-130km/hr. We were supposed to stop overnight at family in Warsaw but circumstances prevented this so we did the whole journey through to Baranovichi in Belarus with just a 2 hr "snooze" as best u can in a Mondial and stops for petrol and peeing.....
The roads through Poland are a nightmare with the roughest roads and the most kamikaze truck and car drivers I have ever encountered. The car bottomed several times on normal roads !!
Where the speed of the Mondial came into its own was by allowing me SAFELY to overtake long lines of truckers and Polski Fiats (something the Kia with its 130bhp and 1650kg weight simply didnt give confidence in). And although the seats are almost rock hard, like an Ikea kitchen chair they gave supreme support with no aches or numbness even after a total of 23 hours in the car.
But possibly the best part of the whole trip was the fact that I was in a FERRARI. My stay in Baraovichi co-incided with a visit by Putin to a military base nearby and I am sure it was eclipsed by the fact that there was a Ferrari in town. Everywhere I went people would stop and stare, crowds gathered with cellphones clicking away the pics, maybe they thought with the Swiss flag and plates on the car that I was part of a UN oversight visit haa haa.
My only worry came when, after taking the plugs out and cleaning them, and checking gearbox and tranny oils levels in my F-in Laws garage, I found that I now had a VW beetle engine !!!! I had checked the gap and they had opened to 0.9mm so I closed them down to 0.6 mm (although I tried to get NGK or Bosch while I was there they were not available) so thinking it was because I had closed the gap, I took them all out and set them back to 0.9mm. Still a beetle. ****, did I knock a sensor ? pull a wire ? bugger !!!! I managed to locate a Bosch diagnostic centre and the owner ( who happened to have a brand new Hummer H2, amongst all the Moskovitches, Ladas etc, hmmmm) gave me priority over all other cars waiting. It turned out one of the plugs was not firing and upon pulling it out found the insulator was cracked all the way around. Something I had not seen as I left the plugs in the socket as I cleaned and adjusted the gap. The car had backfired when starting a few days earlier so maybe that was the reason. Panic over, they replaced it with a new A6G Champion from the tool kit.
The owner charged me 35,000 belarussian rubles (about 9 quid !!) and his parting words were "Dont come back to Belarus in a Ferrari again".
Yesterday I replaced all plugs with NGK D8EVX Platinums so I will see how it runs on the trip to Magny-Cours this weekend.
Any compaints ??????
Well maybe the lack of power steering, but that is about it.
I was able to put 2 suitcases ,a rucksack, a laptop (which i use for gps map guidance running Alturion ) and several other bags in the car without anything on the back seats.
After this last trip, the dirt dust and bugs made it look somewhat forlorn, but a few hours cleaning put it back to A1 shape, and a big smile on my face again ready for the next trip.
And I really dont care if I get blown off by the Audi "A" bunch or Family Mercs on the autobahns, they are NOT driving a Ferrari......
Image Unavailable, Please Login