As the sun was shining nice and bright this morning I decided to take the car in to work. 
Don’t get me wrong – it’s not that it never goes out in the rain – more that I can’t be bothered juggling the cars on the drive to get it out the garage whilst getting soaked through before I’ve even had my morning cuppa 
Get to work and there’s the usual 50/50 split of comments from people. It’s always some variation of either “car’s looking nice Stu” or “why are you wasting money on that old rusty rubbish?” 
Mind you, the latter types are also the same ones who tell me I won’t get very good mpg out of my Impreza 
and co-incidentally, they’re also the ones who have their motoring costs paid for by the company, less a trivial monthly disbursement to the taxman, so one can’t truly believe they live in the real world anyway 
Come luchtime, a couple of us stepped out to the potato salad shop for a tasty treat. Turned the engine over and nothing was happening, so gave the throttle a bit of a stamp and tried again … cough, cough, SPLAT it went as it spat back through the carb. After that, it turned over, but wouldn’t fire and I could smell the sweet stench of 95RON wafting into the cabin 
By this time, there’s an ever growing number of eyes at the windows – it’s a good job I couldn’t actually hear the mutterings of “Ha! Told you old cars were rubbish. I just turn the key in my bland-mobile and it starts first time” but I knew they were there 
Up comes the bonnet, checked everything was connected, checked the dizzy cap, got my mate to turn it over to see that the fuel was coming through the Filter King (Side Note: These things are bloody good – not just because they’re a filter and regulator, but also because you can actually see the fuel going through). 
If it’s got fuel and it’s got spark, the thing missing must be air … so off came the filter to see that the choke flaps on the carb were stuck shut. Not just stiff, or tricky to move, but decidedly un-flappy-like. Must’ve been the force of the backfire wedged them up into the layer of dirt/carbon at the top of the barrel Freed them with some gentle persuasion from a handy “adjustment device”, gave the barrels a squirt of WD40, turned the engine over and it fired first time 
Now, you may have got this far thinking “what’s the big deal?”, but to me this is still a novelty and being able to fix an “obviously dead” car under the gaze of a load of onlookers just waiting to rush out and offer to call “their RAC man” for me rather made my day 
The fisn’n’chips were nice too 
EDIT 24/04/2008:
merp0: Well done Stu.
. Knowledge your detractors can only dream of.
longboy: i get the same stu, the marmite syndrom some love it some hate it.
tom burgess: nice work on fixing the motor Stu.you sure showed them