akciddento

northern roadtrip

after a hurried breakfast we're on the road, my son louie and i are on a quick blatt up north to use up some petrol. we romp up the m5 in the bus then cut across south of birmingham on the m42 then head for leeds onthe m1. we're going to pick up a new macintosh g4 tower computer i bought on ebay last week. i need it (in the way i always 'need' more computers) as a video edit workstation. its all getting too cluttered on the laptop i usually use as a mobile studio and i can do all the web editing and video on this and leave the
titanium laptop free for doodling and djing off. we take our time, even stopping for lunch rather than eating behind the wheel. witha few hits and missed we navigate our way through leeds' existential one way system and find spiritual enlightenment somewhere off the a64 heading out toward york. deal done, cash exchanged we motor on toward bradford to get a cup of tea with martin at taylor machine services.

we find his workshops without too much trouble and are give a warm welcome, the aforementioned tea and true five star treatment (wellnearly) after a brief chat and introductions we get a tour of the place. it's so organised ! and clean ! the cnc machine shop, the clean assembly room, the 'dirty' (it wasn't) stripdown room, the dyno test room, the main workshop area and martins dangerous looking 52 splitwindow beetle. full autocraft everything, beautifully finished - built to be street legal ! and with a new velour headlining!

i get introduced to my new 45mm fuelinjection throttle bodies- things of odd beauty also. so clean, minimal, functional. at first glance they look like carburettors but on even just a little more attention the difference is vast. they are no - nonsense. a product of some kind of design idea.modern. minimal. as opposed to the stupid over-complicated lumpy organic contusions of their distant cousins on a stagnant branch of the evoloutinary tree. in comparison their purposefullness makes carburettors look like some bogus makebelieve heath-robinson contraption designed to make people run away. they look like a mythical car part that douglas adams would have mechanics invent to justify their existence.

i take a load of pictures and we chat about all sorts. martin offers some wisdom and suggestions on racing and has a quick took into the engine bay on the samba, i feel naked and embarrassed as i open the greasy, oil smeared boot lid. although the oil leak from big bang is cured i still can't stop everthing getting covered in a fine mist of goop when the bus gets spanked hard on the motoway and after the caning it had coming back from newquay on sunday it's rust proof to say the least. martin nods approvingly at most of it, much to my relief and then offers an interesting opinion.

he suggests that it's acutally the breather system that is causing the leaking, to be more precise that it's the breather system that is leaking. he tells me that under heavy load over 5000 rpm the crank will force loads of oil into the left hand rocker cover and over 5500 rpm the pressure will be such that it will actually start forcing oil up the breather pipes and into the breather box where it will flow back down the other breather pipes into the right hand rocker cover. he thinks that the breather box is filling up so much its flowing out of the vents and through the little airfilters i've got on it. the cure -apparently - is a deep sump. this will allow the crank to rotate in less oil as the whole oil level will be lower and will have the added benefit of a few degrees more cooling. sounds good to me.
we discuss various engine plans and fix what needs to be done in the short term with the fuel injection setup. provisional dates are fixed and louie and i depart in the samba heading toward sheffield to call in on steve walker at vwretro.

we hammer off through the back lanes of bradford, dodging around pot holes and occasionally losing entire wheels into crevasses in the roadsurface where years of shoddy repairs have peeled away.. perhaps they have fantastic schools or hospitals up north, cause they ain't spending any money on the tarmac.... as my boy louie asked as we navigated a particularly badly cratered piece of highways dept planning...

'dad, has someone been shelling that roundabout with a mortar?

so we're rolling off down the motorway toward sheffield, a quick nervous detour when i realise that the only reason we haven't run out of petrol and stopped is because the bus is waiting to see if i notice that there's no petrol in it and at 'upper crusing speed' (defined as that area between painful and deafening) the bus draws about 3 liters of fuel per minute... if i hadn't noticed we'd have got all the way back to bristol. it's a kharmic thing i believe.

we meet up with steve just off the motorway and we try to keep up as he does his best jeremy clarkson through the streets of sheffield in his newly aquired 911... it's grubby and noisy and sports the best mildly offensive stickers seen on a porsche this year and it's steve down to the ground....

after a mooch round steves new workshop and some car chat (during the course of which he only tries to sell me two cars)
-oops , excuse me i've just spllilled beer into the keyboard-

ah yes, where was i, sorry i'm working on another machine at the same time, searching for the video footage of the bus engine being started up on the floor at big bang. funny as.... revving the guts out of it and watching it walking around the flooor on its own...

anyway, we check it all out.... a lovely contrast to the ordered efficiency at taylors. vwretro, a natural, organic garage. nothing added, nothing taken away.

then it's oof to chateau retro, in his exclusive hilltoip retreat we are treated to beers and the best takaway curry that fifteen quid can buy. me and the boy giggle and cringe our way through the 'jackass' movie while steve retreats to the cyber den and continues to wear out the keys on his keyboard...

all in all a good day!

oh btw..
steve also found this hidden in his fridge...

Posted by akciddento at May 27, 2003 09:54 AM