Re-equipping

Perhaps not re-equipping, but re-grouping.

After replacing our old home with a new one, I had the opportunity to set up my workshop in the old home.

With setting up the new one, most of the inevitable "stuff" that needs moving around went into the old workshop until I couldn't actually get in the door!

Now, I have access again and am clearing the new place, too. I knew I'd find things long in storage, but what a great thing it is to root through one's old stuff.

I found photos I thought I'd lost, drawings done years ago and presumed thrown away and bits and pieces that will once again make life easier.

But why does it take SO long? I seem to be satisfied with opening and investigating one box a day. A friend has suggested it's all part of growing older and I dare say he's right, but I will not go easily into that dark night. I think it is a lot to do with mental plans for how it might look when finished and the assumption, almost certainly false, that things will go swimmingly once finished, without having the slightest idea how to ensure that happens. Consequently, one ambles along not knowing quite what to do next, until the light has suddenly gone and another day comes to a close.

Then I read that my 30 year old son, feeling unwell, has looked up his "symptoms" on the net and found that he is suffering from something called "old". At 30!!

I told him to wait for the next 28 years and resolved to get this new workshop sorted out with renewed vigour.

Amongst the many fascinating things I rediscovered whilst re-equipping/grouping was this old instant photo of the very first job I ever did as a modelmaker in the car design industry.

It is a model, full sized, of the engine cover for the then new, New Beetle. I didn't take the photo as I would have been sacked for doing so and rightly, but an engineer took it and left it laying around, so I kept it. It was made first in clay, then a quick glass fibre mould made over the clay and a moulding made in the mould. Usual processes.

Then it's fettled and filled till it looks smooth and fits the space allowed (not always the case despite CAD drawings!)

Finally it is sprayed from a distance with satin black paint to have that grainy look of much moulded plastic and the name cut out of aluminium sheet and polished. A stock VW badge was added and presto! It took two days to do, I got an instant reputation for working well on my own and being quick. Job done. The fascinating thing was that when I'd had a weekend home and went back on the Tuesday morning, the cover had been laser scanned and working CAD drawings produced and pinned to the wall behind my bench!

Without setting up the new workshop, I'd have completely forgotten about this photo and almost forgotten the job.

I went on to do any number of fascinating jobs for VW, Toyota, Renault, Audi, SMART, Ford, Volvo, MG and Prodrive over the next few years until I was told that computers had replaced model makers and I was too old to re-train at 47.

Skills lost to the world are rarely replaced.

More attacks on our freedoms

My son has recently decided to get his "project" going. He has a Triumph GT6 Mk1 chassis and all the original running gear, registration and log book.

He just wanted a body of a 50s style to put on it.

It was when we ended up with a superb GRP Austin Healey 3000 body at a great price that we realised we're not allowed any more to build a car without the permission and controls of the "powers that be"

We, in the car game call them the nazis. Pettyfogging busy bodies and nosey Parkers whose only grip on real life is to spoil it for the rest of us in the spurious name of "safety".

I have built cars, my father built his own cars as did my uncle (see earlier blogs entries) and my son spent nine years restoring classic sports and racing cars to the highest level. Cars worth millions of pounds.

So are we to be told we need the permission of some faceless job'sworth on a fat salary before we can touch the rough and ready, poorly designed and executed Triumph chassis with our magic?

Alas, we have no choice. If we touch the chassis with a saw, grinder or welding torch we lose the registration and have to be regarded as a new car and pay them £540 for a short examination, which, if we fail on the slightest item , we have to pay again for a retest.

So by way of the huge middle finger to all these nazis, we are leaving the precious chassis alone and modifying the body which they don't care about. We are moving the front wheel arch back 8 1/2" so it fits the Triumph chassis. As an ex modelmaker for the car design circus, that is not a big deal for me. But for those who do not have my experience it could prove a stumbling block too far.

So all we need to wonder about, having, as my Dad would have said, "shot them up the arse",

is what do we call it? A Trealey or a Healumph?

Blogger doesn't work any more!

It's a pity, but this lovely blog template is no use to me since the facility to move photos to where you want them has disappeared. Without being able to contact blogspot direct to ask what's happening, I can no longer use this blog, after so much work.
If anyone knows the answer or how Blogspot can be contacted, I'd love to know.

End of an era...for us

This weekend we appear to have sold our boat, which was also our home for some time.

After a week of timewasters it looks like we've finally found this fine old boat a sympathetic new owner with the energy to finish the restoration we started.

For us this is the best news. We were concerned that she should find a good home and we priced her accordingly. Ok, we won't be getting back a fraction of what we spent on her, but I always say, "Everybody's got to live somewhere...do something" and, of course, everything costs just to live.

We had some great times on her and at the yard where most of the work was done. We met the sort of fascinating "real" people we would never have met otherwise. We saw places and did things we would never have done otherwise, so how do you value those things?

It will seem strange to not see her when we get up in the morning and retire to bed. She's been a major part of our lives since 2003. We saved her from almost certain destruction by British Waterways (hereafter correctly described as "the Enemy").

Because monies were owed to them for licensing they were prepared to take her away and put the dredger's shovel through her the week after we bought her. A fact of which we were unaware until some time after we bought her.

That a Public body should commit such an act of vandalism is an obscenity. And one which only the people who enjoy our extensive canal system would be aware of.

And so, by cruising her after a bit of a tidy up and spending all our money and time restoring her we have at least saved this most historic of vessels for the future generations who will see her and see a properly restored example of a type of canal boat so sadly neglected today.

We and a previous owner have compiled a long and detailed history of her from launch day to the present which is there for those future generations to call upon.

We were never more than custodians of her. At least we saved her from corporate vandalism and her new owner is acutely aware of that. Indeed he has saved a few old artifacts himself in his time.

And so to pastures new, whatever they may be.

We look forward to some time on her again when she is newly afloat again in her proper element.

The pictures should be placeable, but no longer are for some reason.

Apologies on Google Blogger's behalf.

"Hear the Lark and harken to the dog Fox..."

Forgive the reference to Pink Floyd there, but we have taken posession of our little car and it must be said, it hasn't all been easy going.

It buzzed along well enough on our way home from the garage where we bought it, near Snetterton. It allowed us to stop for fish and chips too.

Then it developed a bit of a raspberry nearer home and the exhaust had clearly started to blow.

So, over to my son's driveway and he crawled below for me and attached a premade repair patch in Gungum, sardine can and Jubilee clips.

All was well on the way home. The next day the Reliant 3 wheeler forum had organised a day at the Nene Valley railway and since that ain't so far from us we thought we 'd give the car a shakedown by attending.

Well, all went well over there, but half way back there was a terrible knocking noise and we freewheeled to a stop near Peterborough.

I thought it was something terminal in the clutch area. After being towed home on the end of a strap by the son-in-law the little car was picked up a week later by the sellers on a trailer and carted back from whence it had so lately come.

A week later it was ready. It WAS the clutch. The whole middle spring section of a brand new clutch had simply ripped out.

I went over to pick it up and drove it home again. Again the exhaust started to blow. Again a bigger, better repair with two sardine cans. It should be said that sardines cans are used instead of the traditional bean, because sardine cans don't have that annoying corrugation which is not helpful when bending a can round a very small pipe.

Alas, the car then refused to start or even fire and so the sellers came over again a week later and went through electrics, replacing coil and checking the fuel system, blowing through the whole pipe and replacing the old in-line filter at the tank end.

It seemed to work at last and they got it going nicely again, but said it needed a new ignition switch which they would send. Oh they'd also replaced the indicator switch because all the way home from the clutch debacle I had people waving and flashing me. I thought they were being friendly to the funny little car, but no, my indicators were on, but not flashing.

In the meantime of all this I had resolved to repair the rear nearside corner which some clown had started to cut about following a bump.

To cut a long story short, that was done by conventional means for GRP work and sprayed the colour we have decided upon for it, a nice pale green like Hillman Imps used to be.

Capping it off, I drove four miles the other day to get some aluminium (of which more anon) and on the way back it died again and we had to be towed home again. This time it seems to have been a failure of the previous repair to the fuel filter.

At present, it is running rather well, but the raspberry is back and I feel that something more permanent than a sardine can or two is needed!

Ah!...harken to the Jackboot...

Have you ever belonged to a forum?

Or a Yahoo special interest group?

Have you ever felt the need to have a go at sections of society that get your goat or make a perfectly valid comment on the world wherein you are showing your completeness as an individual?

Oh dear me. I said it, didn't I? Individual. Oh Lordy, the "I" word. The word that differentiates us from the crowd, that makes us independently who we are.

The one word you must never get close to on a Forum...Or they'll come for you. The sad little men whose miserable lives are given some semblance of importance by their having been "elevated" to the internet peerage of MODERATOR. Oh the glory!...oh the respect at the Parish Council Coffee Mornings! Oh!, the admiration of those poor also-rans who aspire, but have never managed to, lick enough derriere or cowtow and forlock-tug to the "right" people in such a way as to be asked to spend the rest of their hobby time lording it over people with a point of view and a sense of humour.

For mentioning how, if you told a kid in the street to pick his litter up these days, you'd probably get a kick in the nuts, I have been strongly censured on a forum called RMWeb, the biggest model railway forum. My posts were doctored by a man whose avatar is a fantasy reptile!!

I imagine, when he retires at night, that he checks for any under his bed.

So, I am not to say what everybody else on any forum that I've been on would say with complete impunity, what every journalist, letter writer, vox pop member of the public is saying about modern life on our streets. But say it in an overly precious and self important model railway forum and you are held as "likely to be inflammatory". What, tell me, is inflammatory about the truth, about something which is on the lips of everyone, in homes, pubs, clubs, offices, on the streets...everywhere!

Perhaps I should make a small model scene of a street full of council houses in which an old lady is being knocked off her pavement scooter and and a still active old chap has come out of his house to find the local yobs have up-ended his Reliant Robin for the third time. Would Lizard Man stop my model being shown on his forum?

Yet I know of exactly those cases having happened recently in just such circumstances. Truth, you see?

Ziegheil, little Lizard Man. it all starts like this.

Let the Fox see the chicken

Having been carless for a while due to having lived afloat for a while, my wife and I decided that perhaps we could risk a little money on getting mobile again. Just a bit of independence from having to borrow our daughter's car.

It was necessary to have a car which was at the lowest tax point or even tax exempt, but equally important to have one with low insurance (i.e. Classic Car insurance) and to be very economical.

Our original plans to use an Austin 7 came to nought when the Ruby project fell through and another could not be found, so a bit of lateral thinking came up with..... the Reliant.

Now I'm fine with the idea of 3 wheels, but Chris couldn't get used to it, so a four wheeler it had to be and when I asked around the Reliant firmament, a Fox was offered.

A rugged, simple, 848cc, 12" wheeled, pick up with a lift off van body. All in fibreglass with a galvanised steel chassis.

We went to see it, Chris loved it and now we await the little gem having its MOT test and some tidy-up.

Our plans for it are to paint it in a nice rich mid-blue called Sapphire and to detail it in very pale blue and aluminium, me being a keen basher of that metal. It sits in beige at present and, like golf, I hope I am never so feeble as to like biege.