I've owned it for something like 20 years. It's been off the road for about 12 of them. Can't remember what caused me to buy this one (I already had inherited another previous to it
Short summary of the 'entertainment' that this particular one has given me over the years...
Clutch release bearing siezed on me, changed the clutch in the road outside my mums house over the course of a few weeks when I was in college (it's a 2 flywheel sensor car and the driven plates that actually fit it are quite rare - though I didn't know that until after having bought one, only to find it didn't fit...)
Had it collapse onto the ground off axle stands in the front garden while I was in the middle of replacing some rear hydraulic pipes (not while I was under it - I just heard the horrible crunch/crash while I was walking to the shed to collect some tools). Damaged a sill cover, dented the floor on one side and pierced a rear door ( all replaced/repaired)
Changed the rear arm bearings in the road while I was living in Soton
Gave me my first welding job replacing part of the inner arch below the battery tray (I did a crap job, mainly because I used the wrong gauge steel)
Transit van drove then drove into the passenger side of it while I was living in Soton (still wearing the battle scar
)Main loom caught fire causing the car to suddenly shut down in smoke in the middle of crossing a junction in the one-way system in the centre of Oxford (due to a previous numpties use of uninsultated spade terminals to replace the fittings on the ABS relays under the spare wheel). Caused damage to the loom all the way from the rear of the car (ABS computer under the rear seat) through to the engine bay
Developed an annoying intermittent starting fault that, together with completely rotten battery tray eventually caused me to take it off the road (and replace it with another, of course
)Then most recently while towing it on a trailer from a garage to the barn, caught me out by jack-knifing itself and the (borrowed) Disco tow-car on a dual carriageway, ending up in a crash barrier. Disco smacked the arse end of the CX, Disco was written off, trailer had minor damage, credit card duly seriously hammered... CX has no noticeable damage
Anyway... Since being in the barn and moving it round a couple of times, the flexi front brake lines have burst.
Two Sunday's back, I went over to the barn for first time (proper) in ages, fixed my compressor and then moved on to planned job no.2 - swapping the brake flexi's:
So that I could get back to moving it without the issues associated with having holes in your jugular
Unfortunately though, it wasn't playing. Wouldn't start (meaning couldn't get it off the deck to even get at the hoses
) so spent the next few hours trying to suss out what was wrong (without any of the service manuals to hand, so working just off grey cells last called into use about a decade ago and without the help of a multimeter 
).
It's the problem it's had intermittently for ages and I never got to the bottom of, normally because it cleared within a few minutes of randomly fiddling with stuff (probably completely unconnected to the actual cause). That day, it was in hard fault mode, so at least I stood a chance...
I've always thought it was an ignition fault (having previously sorted what I found to be a fault on the wiring loom between the battery and 'Big Blue') but... Nope. Spark fine, fuel pressure fine, so... That means it's the injectors not firing for some reason.
Memory told me the injectors should had a common live feed all the time and the ecu puts them to ground individually, whenever they need to fire. Without the wiring diagram though, there wasn't much I could do.
The injection loom has never been in great shape generally (rotted loom wrap and cracked connectors) so I had re-wired one end years ago, but not got round to the other end, so I pulled that out to take it home and test/rebuild if needed.
Swapping the loom with the blue cx behind in the pics behind wasn't an option unfortunately btw - later car (single sensor, no cold start injector) so not compatible.
Also thought that maybe in the course of all this, I'll finally get to the bottom of what the loose wire lurking in this area is
(when I renewed the multi-connector in that area, I was never able to work it out) 
do I have the guts to bend the tabs, open it up and probably destroy the seal between the 2 halves of the case in the process..? 
