akciddento

off to the alps

sat in gatwick airport after a start that was TOO early. watching the timer count down on the internet access i just boughtt at a kiosk....

...ah the wonders of modern technology.

flyinh out to the french alps via geneva for a week or so to hang out with my friend hubbs and maybe do some cycling. the chairlifts on the slopes are running so you just throw your bike on and get an easy lift to the top....

now that's good technology!

hubbs has spotted a few buses out there too so maybe i'll do some shopping while i'm there.

posted off the entry forms for national finals at the end of september too so all is good.

more later

what the ????

got the wierdest piece of spam today...

-----
From: ""
Date: Sun Aug 24, 2003 7:44:49 pm Europe/London
To:
Subject: Dimensional Warp Generator Needed sn
Return-Path:
Envelope-To: dan@buzzo.com
Delivery-Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 12:53:44 +0100

Hello,

I'm a time traveler stuck here in 2003.
Upon arriving here my dimensional warp generator stopped working. I trusted a company here by the name of LLC Lasers to repair my Generation 3 52 4350A watch unit, and they fled on me.
Since nobody in this timeline seems to be able to deliver what I need (safely here to me), I will have to build a simple time travel circuit to get where I need myself. While it might be hard to find parts in this time to build anything decent, I need easy to follow schematics from the future to build one which is safe and accurate that will not disrupt the time space continuum with both forward and backward capability accounting for temporal location settings (X, Y, Z,) which can be built out of (readily available) parts here in 2003. Please email me any plans you have. I will pay good money for anything you send me I can use. Or if you have a dimensional warp generator available, and are 100% certain you have a (safe secure) means of delivering it to me please also reply with a secure way to contact you. Send a separate email to me at:
webmaster@custompaintshop.net

Do not reply back directly to this email as it will only be bounced back to you.

Thank You
Brian Appel
-----

i was so intrigued i wrote back to him....

------

dear brian,

thankyou for your mail regarding availability of warp generator parts.

i have in my possession a working new old stock vintage time drive unit. the original manufacturers designation is BN4 - 86. as you can see from the photograph it is in excellent condition and is ready to install. it was originally sourced (at great cost) from a supplier in germany for fitment into my drag racing 1965 VW bus but due to space limitations and the unsuitability of the steel bodied construction for temporal travel i have been unable to fit it.

the unit is yours for the ultra cheap cost of only GBP£10. the funds will need to be deposited in my name at the central branch of Coutts bank. threadneedle street, london on a date certified to be before 1920AD.

if this is suitable i can ship internationally at low cost.

regards

dan buzzo

because...

thought i'd post this too, i thought it was such a nice image...

one of the taylor machine custom pulleys showing the additional notched wheel for the crank triggered ignition system that goes with the fuel injection

hmmm...

i spent the day trying to get the studio back into some sort of shape and throwing away all sorts of old garbage that's been in boxes since we moved back into the country... getting somewhere i guess.

ollie dwyer came over late in the evening and we chatted about his new project. his first engine rebuild. he picked up a dead 2litre type 4 motor last week and plans to take his time stripping and rebuilding it to go into his early bay camper. we got chatting about this and that and engine this and engine that and then round to drag racing and the vwdrc.

i started this whole racing thing as a project. to see what i would learn and where it would take me...
...well, it's taken me unexpected places and i've learned the strangest stuff. the effect that a prepped and non prepped track has on road tyres vs race tyres. why the bus runs faster in the mornign than the afternoon (humidity and air density dontchaknow) how a track will run different if it's overcast rather than sunny... sandbagging - dumping races ... all sorts.

i've been thinking about all sorts of stuff recently. the whole akciddento thing and where it goes being one of them. i'm going to follow the team akciddento tip for a while. see where it leads, i like the idea of being able to use it as an umbrella for all kinds of activity.

akciddento (publishing) Ltd. has a nice ring to it, doesn't it ?

talking with ollie about his bus and what he wanted to do i asked if he'd thought about racing it. hmmm.. maybe was the reply. 'i'd like to see what would happen'. with luck i can convince him to race and sort out a sponsorship deal so that he races in akciddento colours.

personally i'd like to put together a proper akciddento bus racing team for next year.

realising that made me also realise that i guess I AM racing next year. despite my protests to **ed** and jimby it seems inevitable that i will race the bus for another season at least. next year i think i'll try to get to the beach some more and do some more of the interesting side projects i've had in mind.

anyhow. i was lying in bed reading 'how to be an artist' by bill drummond (he of k foundation and KLF fame, the ones with all the great music and reputation for burning £1,000,000 in cash). it's nothing to do with how to be an artist. more of a long rambling story about the things that he likes, similar in style to the other books i've ready by him (33 and 45 respectively, written when he was, you guessed it, 33 and 45 years old) i like the chatty unassuming conversational style he has in his writing.
anyhow the book so far follows his project to sell a picture that he has by the artist richard long called 'a smell of sulphur in t he wind'. it's a moody black and white photograph of a stone circle in iceland. he paid $20,000 for it and wants to sell it for exactly $20,000 and then take the cash in one dollar bills and bury it in the middle of the stone circle in iceland. to this end he prints up 500 estate agent style signs saying 'a smell of sulphur in the wind, richard long, $20,000' and travels the country putting them up in places and taking photos of them.
the project was called' a smell of money underground'

i was enjoying all the banter in the book when i recognised something. it's akciddento spotting. the photos even look similar.
very odd.

maybe this whole akciddento thing is a big work of art. (ho ho ho) and everyone across the counrty with a sticker in their hand or t-shirt in their wardrobe is making it.

hmmm...
art, who knows.

instead here's a picture of martin at taylor machine with my new engine

i never remember him pulling faces like this but he always seems to look like this in photos...

odd that.

out with the old in with the new

finally sorted through some of the images from the trip up north last week to take the bus to taylor machine.

so out with the old

and in with the new

splitscreen flight sim...

i've been looking around for a cheap windows laptop to monitor the new engine management system on the bus...

should be a giggle, enough to keep me out of trouble anyhow.

if i run a serial extension cable from the main ECU in the engine bay up into the cab i can drive along with a laptop on the passenger seat twiddling with the engine controls - just like in 'fast and the furious' - great ;)

along with all the mapping info and controls there is a realtime readout mode that looks like a flight sim control panel...

how cool is that ? it even does something useful too!

all in need in the bus now is heating....

he wasn't kidding...

martin taylor at taylor machine works sent me some pictures ofthe damage done to the dyno while he was doing the mapping on the new engine....

when he said it made a mess he wasn't kidding !

you can see the fractured propshaft of the dyno, the damage to the dyno bellhousing and, sadly some damage to the engine flywheel...

ah well...

martin also sent me some mail enquiring about buying some of the other photographic work on my main site buzzo.com and has decide that there are not one but two pieces he wants in his private collection.

always makes my day when people like my work enough to actually part with their hard earned cash

:)

doh... and we wait...

just come off the phone from martin taylor at taylor machine works.
the mapping of the fuel injection managemnet system on the new engine is nearly done. the final sweeps to determine torque and peak horsepower haven't been done yet but martin reckons that it's making good usable torque and will be in the region of 200bhp..

but.

the engine broke the propshaft on the dyno.

he thinks that it's component failure on the propshaft. the propshaft will have to come from germany. so. more waiting.

ah well...

we were planning on going to france in the bus on monday so i guess i better make some alternative plans.

doh...

our friends in the north...

just back from the train station...

yes,

the train...

it's been a while but i was amazed... it arrived on time at leeds station (nice and new and CLEAN)and remindng me of someting vaguely european. i got a seat. the train was quiet. the buffet car has ok coffee and food and books and magazines and EVERYTHING! it was modern and the doors wer like startrek ones...

AND IT ARRIVED on time (i think...)

anyhow. the reason i caught he train is that..

just a minute, emily's rat has just wandered out of its cage onto the table by the keyboard, grabbed a biro and retreated to the cage and started to eat it...

got it back.

the bus is in martin taylor's workshop in bradford awaiting a new engine...
the engine is actually on the dyno, fuel injection, ecu, crank trigger pully, coil pack, sensors etc all in place... one or two bits to iron out (there appears to be so much lift with the 86c cam and the 1.25 ration rockers that they rub against the standard rocker covers) but it's there...

the day started at castle botch in deepest oxfordshire with a cup of tea and then off into the wildblue yonder (the M1) and a mission to use up some petrol...

--- the tv is on in the corner and i've just seen two adverts, one calling for male contestants for a new reality sho 'lapdance island' "can you watch the lapdancers without touching them ?" the other telling me that my tv uses more energy on standby than when i'm watching it... what the hell is going on with our world ? we are just plain stupid aren't we ?

so off up the m1 and into darkest yorkshire, called into sheffield to see retrosteve walker at VWRetro. steve showed off his new vehicular aquisitions including a rtaher nice 1966 mustang in a cream/beige and the thing he was most excited about, a low mileage one owner Fiat supermirafiori. i remember the TV ads from when i was little but apparently afficianados will nod appreciatively.

i took a few pictures with my phone and steve crawled under the bus to have a look at a bit of welding that needs doing. steve did all the welding on the bus a few years ago when i forst got it but there is one piece, the front main cross member that got missed somehow..

the main thing that really hit me about the visit, and i have it on camera is actually seeing and hearing steve say 'kinell, i really need to clear this place up'
priceless.

then off to martin taylors workshops in bradford.

i somehow remembered how to get there and found martin in the dyno room twiddling with things. we got down to business.

looking over the engine i was very pleased. the EFI gets rid of the coil, the distributor, changes the fule system completely. the install looks so clean and neat. it looks ,purposeful.

martin fires up his laptop in the dyno control room and walks me through the software that comes with the DTA engine management system. half of it i wont be using initially BUT it is so cool. the software can be used to make realtime changes to the ignition and fuel maps to control the fuel injector settings and ignition advance all across the rev range in 500rpm intervals. (in rather nice 3D mesh graphs no less! )
it can also be used purely as a realtime monitoring system with full data logging and recall. a screen displays lovely pseudo analogue clocks for RPM, throttle opening precentage, advance, fuel pressure, injector timing, temp, manifold pressure, air pressure, MPH, (front AND rear wheel) etc etc etc...
it looked like some kind of flight simulator...

put the biggest grin on my face. not only is it WAY cool, it actually does important stuff too!

there are hookups and routines for all sorts of extra stuff. i can hook up a small LCD monitor into the cab to display all this permanently. i can hook up sensors to all four wheels if i want and program the traction control portion of the ECU. with the line lock hooked up to the front wheels i can set all the launch control stuff and if i decide to plumb in a turbo or even some nitrous oxide injection it will control all of that too...

Full launch control, three stage revlimiting, traction control and even routines to deal elegantly with component or sensor failure with full dataloggin to see what happened at your leisure. and it will actually run the engine better, faster, more economically, more reliably and more efficiently too!

all for the same kind of price as putting in some VWre-enactment society 'godlike' 48 ida carbs...

hmmmm.....

let me just think about that for a minute.

so what do i do with the new old stock nylon EMPI race jacket i just bought off e-bay ?

i've said it before and i'll say it again,
it's wrong, it's just plain wrong. and it's a fire hazard!

ermm... forgot to tell you

my daughter and i made a deal, she wanted to dye her hair. i said in the summer holidays. she said purple, i said only if you dye mine too.

ugh, no way she said...

back to base

back to base to refuel, feed the rat, water the tomoatoes and charge up the batteries for the cameras...

and here's a bus i fixed earlier...

been filtering some of the timelapse movies i was making on thursday night of the moonrise in the mist... they look promising as source material for some stuff i want to make...

sadly, at a bout midnight a possee of london office types arrived on the campsite and started setting up, which i found much more interesting to timelapse....

i'll find the embed script and post the movies up here
(or even in the movies section!)

sunset

well, here i am, at the beach...
the visibility is about 100 meters and has been like that all day, if i could jump up about 100meters then i'd brobably break through the mist and get a glorious suntan...

spent a pleasant morning scrabbling around under the bus in the damp grass of the campsite at croyde bay (north devon) doing the valve clearances. not an impressive job but one that gives me a huge sense of welbeing...

after the tappets and a cup of tea and a bit of unneccessary waxing and polishing i decided that the dent in the front of the bus had been there long enough and was just about ready to come out....

stripped off the aluminium samba trim and there it was the dent in all its glory...

one quick tug and a little bit of gentle massaging and hey presto !
[ignoring ther obvious smutty innuendo here] nothing left to do but refit the trim and stand back and admire how clever i am...

just as well i got to it now though... the water and mud was collecting behind the bottom of the trim and the dent had cracked the paint off under neath it ....

so, it's a little rust cratered but it's clean and packed with wax that will protect it until i can rub it back and get some paint on it..

volkswagen time....

volkswagen time, that's like the 'jamaican time' of the car industry isn't it...

my new engine, apparently, will be ready next week.

so i will be taking the bus on a trip next wedensday and picking it up the following monday.

aren't i ?

volksfest, hello ross!

hello ross!

ross, who i guess is eleven or twelve, wondered over to the akciddento stall at volksfest mid morning and hovered around for a bit before asking very politely if he could take a few pictures of the bus...
...i told him not to worry and to go ahead then offered hime some flyers and stickers, explaining that i was running a wesite and was racing the bus.

'oh i know' says ross... 'i like the website'

...

after a momentary silence as i tried to digest this i asked ross if he wanted to sit in the drivers seat to which i got the biggest grin...

after i took a picture of ross in the cab of the bus with his camera ross asked if he could take a picture of me with the bus....

i tell you this to try and communicate how odd that feels...

i asked ross whihc bits of the site he didn't like and which bits he liked best. he politely said he like it all but liked the movies best..

'oh, i've got broadband'
said ross as he pocketed his new digital camera and wondered off...

volksfest london

saturday night and another lonbg drive to hang out in ANOTHER car park for the weekend...
this weekend is london volksfest at north weald airstrip, just north of london on the m11. the show is only a sunday thing but i'm travelling down with ollie the night before to set up and hang out with a few of the other people who will be there early.