May 30, 2003
off up north again!
it's friday and i've been invited by adele who races 'striptease' in vwdrc to show the bus in a lineup of race cars at the deva dubs show in chester...
i load up the bus with beer, loads of fruit, flyers, stickers, some t shirts and enough computer and camera gear to sink a battleship...
and it's off to park up in the middle lane of the M6 near birmingham with the other ten thouand cars with nothing better to do on a friday evening...
eventually i get off th em6 and head toward north wales to call in on jony and pippa, artist friends who live in a small cottage miles from the nearest paved road in a forest in snowdonia.
i'm in no rush so of course i floor it all the way - my trusty radar detector beeping away incomprehensibly giving me a false sense of security.
somewhere past (insert a name of a town i can't remember here later, or alternatively the town of your choice!) i'm trying to catch up with a 911 that i've been trailing for 5 miles or so and all the saucepans in the cupboard start rattling. it's something i've marvelled at with all my aircooled volkswagens, trhough all the racked and din if there's one noise out of place or some tiny new squeak or rattle my whole consciousness is focussed on it until i work out what it is...
i keep checking and i'm sure that it's the saucepans. i try to put it out of my mind and concentrate on the completely childish and pointless task of keeping pace with the porsche. in my feverish imagination i picture the other driver being disconcerted to have this dented, wheezing, antique heap pacing him all the way... ha ha ha. what a sad life i must lead.
here i am - half deaf, taking my life (and steering wheel, firmly gripped) in my hands pretending that i'm bus-man master of the universe and he's tootling home from the golfclub listening to sade on his blaupunkt blissfully unaware of his sudden involvement in my tenuous grip on reality.
the rattling doesn't go away
it's still rattling.
the car and caravan i've just passed is flashing me
maybe i should investigate the rattling.
ok, so i'm embarrassed to be pullingonto the hard shoulder.
it wasn't the saucepans rattling in the cupboard.
was it?
the bolts holding the muffler on to the header had undone them sleves and i'd been dragging the exhaust for at least five miles....
apart from a large dented shiny flatspot it seemd ok. sadly along with split pins i don't carry spare bolts anymore. serves me right for getting a swank new imitation snapon toolbox, a snapnon toolbox infact, and cleaning it out.
funny thing is i didn't notice any change in the noise....
so with no bolts at hand i unhook the exhaust and head on into the hills scaring sheep and clearing the crows from fields five miles away.
jony and pippa, live in an idylic two room cottage in the middle of nowhere, behind the back of beyond. usually with some careful manouvering i can get within walking distance of their place, chuggin along old forestry tracks. unfortunately the foresters have been logging the area and it's a quaqmire. i creep along the tracks until prudence takes over and abandon the bus in the forest for the night.
kevo, i love your dragster but i bet you couldn't get it up here :)
May 27, 2003
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...
May 24, 2003
i love newquay
newquay !
all the worst things about a town, BUT by the beach!
traffic jams, over priced parking, staggering gangs of beer monsters overlooked by ugly bored looking bouncers, overpriced tat that you don't need, nasty smelling greasy fast food impacted into the pavement leaving the stench of burned rancid fat in the air. badly dodged rusting fords in bodykits, seagulls with flickknives hunting in packs, every fat slob in sight wearing their £100 mirror oakley killerloops trying to forget that they have to be back behind their desk at the estate agents on tuesday, living life to the edge with a bottle of alcopop (for non drinkers) on a saturday lunch time, fat families furiously filling their faces to make sure that they keep up with their gargantuan daily calorie intake.
'it takes hard work to have a body like moine moi loverly!'
newquay,
a long time ago someone somewhere said it was nice and it's been endlessly reprinted in the press ever since - except no one bothered to check.
ah well, perhaps newquay is good, it keeps the munters away from everywhere else. god knows what it must be like to live here. in winter it's dead, the council actually switch newquay off in october and don't take it out of storage again until the following april - just no one bothers to disinfect it before re-inflating it.
how much shoddy over-priced surf shite does one town need ?
all in all i had quite a pleasant visit. it's good to be back here again
the show and shine on sunday
after only and hour and a half the traffic had cleared enough for me to even think about starting the engine. bonus!
May 23, 2003
and they're off ! running to the sun
after a rush to get people to the station i'm off in the bus, heading south, although i'm going to a gallery preview in dartmouth i'm still in with the general flow of traffic heading to run to the sun in newquay.
i trundle through the outskirts of bristol heading for the M5 with the clash and crystal method on the stereo and the hum of the exhaust in my ears, life is good. i smile inwardly to myself thinking of all the dead bugs and buses that should be littering the roads between here and cornwall. predictably enough, as i round the corner driving through sea mills with the M5 insight the accellerator pedal twists under my foot and falls flat to the floor. after a moments panic i roll the bus over onto the side of the road and up onto the pavement - taking a chunk out of the front alloy wheel in the process-
if its the throttle cable i'm stuffed. i don't have another cable with me and its a pain in the butt job to do. i hope that its just a linkage. i crawl under the font of he bus. as i thought. the pedal arm linkage has fallen off its pivot. it's so lucky that i greased all this only last month. the grease has had a good month to pick up al the mud dust and crap that it can and now is a nasty think black gunk congealed around the parts in question just aching to nestle its way into the fibres of the clean clothes i'm wearing.
the split pin through the end of the throttle arm pivot pin has sheared and the arms has just dropped off. a simple job, lucky i brought the full tool bocks with me. sadly the one spare i don't carry is any split pins. after a bit of rummaging i find some copper wire i can improvise with. funny how volkswagens teach you that, how to improvise by the roadside. they also seem to ensure that no matter how short the jouney or how clean you are when you set off. before you get where you're going you're going to get covered in oil or grease or some such mechanical noxion (noxion, is that a word, noxion as is the stuff of noxiousness- a blob of something that is noxious???) maybe it's just to make sure that later in teh evening, in the bar, the restaurant, the gallery the exclusive soireé... wherever its is - when you go to shake hands or wave you look down at the ingrained noxion that mere soap and hot water will not remove (in fact nothing short of amputation or a major skin graft will not remove!) and are gently - playfully- reminded of the antique toxic waste receptacle without heating that's parked in the carpark waiting to freeze you to death on the journey home....
opening presents!
just got a nice big parcel of TMI interior panels, ordered from Karmann Konnection in march. finally arrived today, new door panels, kick panels and long side panel for the inside of the bus. nice and shiny, no rips, no scuffs and no foot prints! that'll last about a day !
Tim_BBB from the bristol dub foundation called over last night and collected a bag of stickers and flyers to distribute for me in newquay over the weekend at Run to The Sun. he seemed a little distratcted, poor guy, he'd been running around all over Bristol getting food, barbeques, tools and othert gubbins for the trip. I think he said he was setting off at 6am ? not quite sure why !
after unpacking there was a bit of confusion about the panels - what had been ordered, costs etc- i made the order over two months ago but , apparently, as the panels are made to order in the states it takes some time. the quality is very good, as you can see from the images i've put in the new kick panels and the fit is good too. Jules from Karmann Konnection was kind enough to call me back (in double quick time, thankyou !) to sort out the confusion on the order & pricing. all is solved and now makes sense.
the panels are good but $$$$$ EEK!
ah well, i'd only spend the money on champagne, crack and bagels anyhow...
...or buying shoes for my kids :)
May 22, 2003
we know who you are !
been checking out who actually comes here and what they look at, tracking the log files and stats. found out that the bestselling thing in the merchandise shop is the akciddento license plate surrounds !
who'd have thought it. also added the akciddento combat bear to the set of merchandise, available in army or marines uniform.... not sure about this one to tell the truth. hopefully people will see the irony in it. hmmmmm...
looking through the logs also lets me see who are the regular visitors, and there's a lot of you checking back. (you know who you are!) good to see you all. if there are things you'd like to see or want to tell me about just let me know
by clicking here and sending me some mail.
May 21, 2003
some people like it !
well, the response from users of the volkszone forum seems positive
"I like it, simple to use and looking gooood
And the diary entry for May 3rd is HYSTERICAL!!!!"
---peechiz from the vwdrc
'I'm still shocked at the prospect of sombody doing a web site about their adventures that doesnt suck, Looking foward to the next update dude !
Like the pics of the AA trucks'
TiM_BBB
May 20, 2003
more website gubbins
had a final meeting with jake from firebox about the site.
should get the rest of the code integration done tomorrow with one or two tweaks on the weblog to make searching the archives easier and the presentation a little more intuitive. i posted a link and a 'help me' question on the volkszone forum last night and had a good amount of positive feedback. looking at the stats it appears that LOTS of people are actually coming and reading about what i'm doing.
Thankyou to all our visitors !
off to shoot some test video in the bus i think.....
back later folks :)
May 17, 2003
more bus tech needed!
after a lot of reading and looking around and some uhmming and ahhing i finally bit the bullet and sent off a cheque to martin taylor at taylor machine services as part payment on a DTA electronic fuel injection system and a CustomSpeedParts porsche fan conversion. martin has promised me it can all be sorted out and mapped on the dyno properly in time to race at bugjam.
we'll see what happens....
here's to sitting in the pits in a deck chair tuning the bus with a laptop...
...greasy spanners are so last week. :)
the dta fuel injection ECU, exciting isn't it ?
the CSP porsche fan kit, also available in carbon fibre.
hmmmm. that'll really make a difference.
May 16, 2003
transferring the weblog!
after a few days of hacking and testing and playing about it looks like the new weblog software is doing what i want and looking ok too ! i'm using the new version of 'movabletype'. all singing and all dancing.
it should be easier to maintain for me and easier to navigate for you, quicker loading pages and lots more navigation options (if you believe that's a good thing!)
May 10, 2003
page one of the new akciddento weblog
jake has been busy hacking a load of sql cgi and other gubbins for me to get the new weblog publishing system into place, with a bit of luck this should all make things better and more chocolatey all round.
easier for me to administer and easier for you to navigate and read
and fatsre too !
May 09, 2003
big bang images
i love it ! this is what i was looking for !
getting ready in the staging area before round one at big bang.
May 08, 2003
video editing & more
ploughing through so much video footage, the new camera mount is working well. the footage should cut together well. i could do with a wide angle convertor in the video camera. inside the cab the angles are quite narrow.
i've also started processing the still frames i took. some of them have come out quite well. i got the feeling when i was taking some of the portrait shots that i might have found what i was looking for in this project. the stop frame movies i shot of the engine assembly and dissassembly have worked out well. more careful (ie less rushed) setup and framing will help, as will some heavy colour grading and perhaps some video filtering after the fact...
we shall see.
some of the portraiture has got something. i need to lock myself in the studio for a few weeks and ruminate with the material....
the carwash disco. it's wrong. it's just plain wrong.
and it's an obvious firehazard.
May 07, 2003
May 06, 2003
back home
after a break of writing here for a few days i'm back after the first race ever ! the big bang show at santapod raceway in bedford. i'm snowed under with material, over 800 still frames and nearly 3 hours of video! i'm working my way through it all and trying to catch up the diary as well as redesigning the site, it's getting unwieldy now. the images and the in bus video is looking good, i've popped a few bits on the site for now until i get it done properly. bear with me and keep checking back. there is some good stuff in there. i think i've found the focus for the project and i'm getting quietly excited that it's going to work out ok. spencer tramm from vwdrc posted the points last night. i'm in the points! yeah!
May 04, 2003
i'm racing at big bang!
the scrutineer passed my bus, (only just) i qualified (initially 3rd then finally 8th) , tried out the new camera mount and shot lots of video, and !
i ran my first race, needless to say i got knocked out in the first round but it wasn't the sphincter clenching humiliation i thought it would be...
i dialled in on a 19.5 and ran 19.504!
sadly i had a 0.9 reaction time, asleep at the lights... althought the run was damn good (though i say so myself) the poor start counted heavily against me and i got knocked out by 0.006 (yes, six thousandths of a second!) but as they say losing is losing...! it don't matter how much by.
after a bit of confusion on the timing and having several different people try and explain how the timing actually worked (doh, how stupid did i feel !) i kinda get it all now, not that it's terribly complicated, it's just a bit like adding two numbers together! back to the pits and wind down a bit. i watch a bit more racing. somehow i don't have much interest for the rest of the racing.
my brain is well and truly fried.
i did it though, i actually got to race!
time to drink beer and dance on the bus!
scrutineering in the morning, thanks mr. amos!
lining up in the staging area ready to race
May 03, 2003
fix what ya brung !
we wake, bright and early, too early! pack up, and roll up to the pod gates, i collect the tickets and vehicle pass. IT SAYS 'RACER' on it! that must be me !!!! we cruise through the site and pick a place in the pits. coffee then spanners out, boiler suit and gloves on and take a deep breath and start dropping the engine again....lots of people have offered to help but it's not really what you go to a show for, to help other people take greasy engines out of old buses, now is it ? -- after lots of uhmming and ahing i get the engine out and pull the tinware off, oilcooler etc... i change the seals, pedestal and oilcooler... again... lots of people wonder by throughout the day with help, coffee and advice. paul from T3D had team AMR courier up a type4 gearbox end/engine test rig so, much against my better judgement, i rig it all up and with help from paul and derek j fire up the engine sat on the ground behind the bus. a trail of cables and fuel pipes leading into the bus like it was the umbilical cords from some freakish mechanical seacow foetus....
after i got over the fear it turned to be quite a laugh, revving the guts out of a howling, half stripped down engine while it wanders about on the floor, glistening with viscous gunk, looking for a heating duct to scuttle into like the lickle thing from alien. sweet.
well, the judgement was that the oil leak looked cured so in goes the engine double quick time, scrape the grease off, run down and try and get a run on the track before they finish the run what you brung at 5pm. i try and explain what i'm trying to do as i sling t-shirts, stickers, pots, pans, bananas and tapecassettes out of the bus in the general direction of our pit area. other racers don't have this problem !
Bad luck ! they're finished the signing on for the day and i can't race... feeling bad i sneak the bus into the end of the line up and run anyway.
sat in the queue i have no idea what the bus will run, it ran a 19.01 last year. it was running badly then and with various recent mods it should be low 18s.. ah well, we'll see. anyway there are no other buses here only race cars so no one will notice if i run a disasterous time. ha ha ha!
as i get ready a very clean looking 11 window bus rolls up in the other lane. cool, thinks i. (as long as i beat him)
we pre-stage, then stage then yellow, yellow, yellow, green. I hit a red light and foul. i launch the bus off the line, it response sounding like a ducati in a blender, acceptable loud and we start rushing toward the end of the strip, only to have trhe 11 window bus streak past and dissapear into the distance. i run a 20 seconds something and find out that steve jenkinson, owner of the heavily modified, nitrous injected type 4 motored bus ran a 16... humiliation. his bus is shiny too!
i've got more windows though!
does it still leak ?
May 02, 2003
...of course it leaks!
morning comes, we're travelling to santa pod tonight and i'm not ready... i go get fuel pipe and finish the installation and tidy bits up... the breather system now vents in four places to a catchcan the size of a barn! it this leaks then there's no hope for me !
i fire it up, of course it leaks.
i sit around exhausted and despondent for a bit, then i get a bit more despondent... i talk with steve at vwretro for some moral support. i decide that rather than taking the engine out again i'll just drive to the pod and top it up in the way and drop the engine tomorrow. who knows, I may even get some help! the rest of the day is spent packing and trying to get my poor fried brain working. i collect the sticker s and flyers from the printers, at least they look good. a horrible feeling comes over me as i sit looking at the thousands of flyers. just how stupid will i look turning up to the pod with all this merchandise and publicity stuff if the bus leaks everywhere and i don't even race...
ah well, the course is set now, let's see where it goes. we set off and after four hours driving in the rain and wind get to the pod, of course the gates are now locked and we can't get in until saturday morning. we camp ion the field opposite. everyone is stressed and tired but we're here. we sticker some stuff and sleep.
May 01, 2003
and i wait and i wait
i wait all day for the courier to arrive with the new fule pump from wolfsberg performance. the clock ticks on. i start doing useless things like polishing the inside of the bumper to try and distract me and calm my nerves. i'm getting worried that the bus won't even get me to santa pod tomorrow night let alon race... i hope that the oild leak is sorted now. if it's not then i can't race. i'll oil the track down and noone will talk to me - ever again... at 5 pm i phone ian at wolfsberg. he tracks down the parcel and gives them a rocket, they send out a driver specially. at 6pm the fuel pump arrives and to my complete relief the fitting goes really well, all the wiring and drilling done etc... except i don't have enough fuel hose... of course ! i need to wait until tomorrow to get more....