akciddento

accident - oh

just found this...

----
ac·ci·dent (?k?s?-d?nt, -d?nt') Pronunciation Key

n.

1.
a. An unexpected and undesirable event, especially one resulting in damage or harm: car accidents on icy roads.
b. An unforeseen incident: A series of happy accidents led to his promotion.
c. An instance of involuntary urination or defecation in one's clothing.
2. Lack of intention; chance: ran into an old friend by accident.
3. Logic. A circumstance or attribute that is not essential to the nature of something.

Oh....

national finals timing data

just grabbed the timing data from those fine folks at eurodragster for the national finals and here is a breakdown of the best run for the samba.

DAN BUZZO 
V.W. SPORTSMAN 
VW SPORT 97 
dial in 15.50 
reaction time 1.114 (oh dear, asleep at the lights!)
60ft time 2.077 
330ft time 6.251 
660ft time 9.849 
660ft MPH 69.20 
990ft time 12.843 
1320ft time 15.548 
1320ft MPH 85.83 

timing sheets!

here we are after round one, jimby, ollie, ed and cath...

comparing timing sheets and giggling like school children...

although i got knocked out (for a disasterous reaction time (i need to practice more with the line loc and launch control)) by chris kouzaris racing his wifes daily driver stock 1500cc beetle. Chris was on the numbers all day and ended up winning the sportsman class !

sheltering in the rain

after qualifying on saturday in brilliant sunshine we were all called to the staging area just after 9 am on sunday for the first round of eliminations.

then it started raining. and raining.

i ended up with a bus full of racers sheltering from the rain in shifts between braving the weather to buy styrofoam cups of tea. (amid protestations from certain racers girlfriends of 'it's nice this is, why can't you race a bus?')

the rain and cold weather meant that there was a delay of nearly four hours while the track was dried and prepped ready for racing. luckily while i was waiting in the staging area behind the start line i pulled the curtains and pulled out the bed and got another half hours sleep in the back of the bus.

15.54s

after a fantastic weekend at the national finals at santapod raceway we're back at akciddento HQ...
the bus behaved itself and even got home ok after running a monstrous 15.54 seconds over the quarter mile on its first run out.

its on a standard gearbox & mounts and still needs to be tuned...

how happy are we ?

:)

the people have voted

tonight its time for this weeks evictions from the akciddento sock basket. and YOU, the public have voted.

and the nominations are

LONG BLUE SOCK

SHORT BLUE AND WHITE

BLACK WOOLLEN GLOVE

and here is the blacl woollen glove waving goodbye as it goes off to the great sock basket in the sky.

----

on a different not, after doing more diagnostic on the new fuel injection and analysing all the data logs fom the main ECU it looks like the air temp sensor is faulty and is causing the ECU to have spurious reset errors... basically making it panic.
martin taylor at taylor machine is sending a new opne to plug in and with luck (ha ha) that should be that :)

drag racing ? a sport ?

there's a poll running on the BBCTV top gear website about dragracing

you can vote on whether you think it's a real motorsport like circuit racing or a 'real-motorsport-like-darts-is-a-sport'

' What is drag racing then? Well, you drive for a quarter of a mile in a straight line. Even its detractors would have to admit, it's a sport that adds up to more than the sum of its parts.

With top-fuel racers pushing out 5000bhp, drag racing can be a visual and aural assault, even if the whole thing is over in a matter of seconds. But does drag racing have a point? Is there any skill involved? And if the novelty value of all that testosterone and tyre smoke wears off, are you really left with anything? We want to know if you're a fan or not.'

the options are
'for - it's spectacular and enjoyable'
'against - it's pointless and dull'

i was tempted to vote for the 'pointless and dull' option but wimped out and voted 'for'.

to be brutally honest if it wasn't volkswagens and actually racing my bus i think i'd have to say that (despite huge respect for the racers and crews that compete) it's actually pretty pointless and dull. but then again i think that most motorsport falls into this category...

oops, the cat's out the bag now....

what do you lot think.... ? comments please ?

wonderful brain...

just saw this post on volkszone forum...

Try this one it really does work.................

just read it and dont look at the words and try to work them out ..................
It helps if you read it out loud too!




Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae.

The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.


Fcuknig amzanig huh?

does this mean i don't need to go and sub-edit/correct all the awful spelling and typing in the weblog ?

can you guess

what i've been up to today ?

this is (apart from the engine) the biggest nastiest mechanical bit i've ever removed from the bus...

..you could kill someone with this.. :)

if you used it properly.

finally got the driveshaft out and stripped the CV joint on the end. I forgot that one end is a beetle CV joint and the other is bus one (because of having the beetle gerabox IRS conversion) so off to german and swedish car parts for new bus CV joint gaiters and one with the show...

here's all the bits from a CV joint...

and here it is cleaned and waiting to be greased and reinstalled.

after much swearing and drinking of tea it's all back in (at least one side is... i'll do the other tomorrow)

bit of a problem tho....

i was going to change the front gearbox mount so i loosened off the two big bolts holding the engine cradle into the chassis horns so that it would all slide back a bit to give room for changing the mount.

that's all fine.

but coming to tighten them back up one of the bolts seems to be going in 'on the piss' as it were. i have a horrible feeling that i've damaged the thread. the bolt thread is fine which means that if the thread is damaged i need to recut the thread in the chassis itself... visions of trotting into a machine shop with the whole bus tucked under my arm come to mind...

ollie slammed bay came over to say hi and couldn't resist crawiling under the bus to have a look.

he agrees that it's not happy.

oh dear.

who gets evicted tonight ?

ok,

after an odd but semi productive day of too much coffee, interleaved spreadsheet mayhem and lots of crawling about under the bus halfheartedly changing gearbox mounts and attempting to disassemble drive shafts and CV joints i've decided not to write about the joys of crawling under a bus on a foam mat (very comfy) or how beatiful it is under there (for those that don't know it's a bit like being a giant in the caves of lascaux) i'd liek to take some big panoramics under the bus, so far the test shots haven't been quite what i hoped for. i think i need to experiment with lots of different lighting and lenses....

anyhow what i did want to ask was this ....

who gets evicted from the akciddento sock basked tonight ?

some of these socks have been waiting months for their partner to come round in the wash and tonight it's up to you, the public to decide who gets put out to pasture in that great sock drawer in the sky...

read up on the opinions and comments on the volkszone forum here and vote for your eviction favourite on the AK forum here

other people claim that some of the socks in the picture are theirs. maybe i should set up 'socks reunited' ? kind of a cross between ebay and friends reunited.

a lazy sunday...

captain venners called over to finish off the welding on the fugly so while he got stuck into that i did some quick electrical shopping at maplins...

ten minutes later and i've got enough cable to plug the laptop into the ECU brain on the fuelinjection and secure the laptop into the harness on the passenger seat so i can monitor what it's doing in real time as i'm driving around!
how cool is that ?

what i've been trying to track down is an 'episodic' kind of thing. after a time of driving the engine loses power, if i try and increase revs the engine chokes up and power drops off. switching the engine on and off restores normal service and off we go again so i've assumed it's an engine management thing.

after dumping the logs and checking the diagnostic with martin taylor at the weekend it seemed that the air temp sensor was giving wierd readings (120 degrees c!) so the compensation effect of that was switched off but it's still doing it...

after blatting about and checking everything (even dumping the log files into a spreadsheet and making very pretty 3D charts and graphs with the data) it seems that the ECU is behaving as it should and also that it is unaware of what the engine is doing....

which leads me to suspect the fuel system..

paul venners suggested a chat with ritchie webb who runs the DTA injection system in his VERY cool wheelie standing 11 second cabriolet beetle.

ritchie was very helpful and suggested the fuel system also, with much more clarification and some useful anecdotes about potential problems. number one being inadequate venting of the fuel tank causing a kind of vacuum lock in the tank

(the fuel injection runs a fuel circuit out of the tank and back into it so that the fuel rails passing the injectors are always supplied with LOTS of fuel -if i remember rightly Martin told me that the system runs at 60PSI !- )

ritchie told me he's seen racing fuel pumps like the one i'm running collapse beetle fuel tanks where the vents got blocked... also he suggested checking that there's adequate power the the pump. under full load the engine needs LOTS of fuel. at bug jam i used 20 litres of fuel (about five gallons) over the weekend in qualifying and eliminations. i covered a total of about ten miles...

YES i'm not kidding !

that is about TWO MILES TO THE GALLON !

so, a blast up the m32 with the fuel cap off the tank. let it cool and repeat with the fuel cap on.

no difference.

doh!

ah well, twiddle with some more stuff, clean some bits. scratch my head some more.

at the end of the day i'm not much further toward tracking the problem but i have a much better understanding of the whole system and potential issues.

i did get a few other jobs done though, i mounted the new AFFF fire extinguisher i got from jimby kellas (the old dry powder extinguisher i had is illegal to race with and very messy), i fixed in the rear seat back with some velcro and even fixed the passenger side windscreen wiper spindle so it no longer slops about like some useless broken appendage!

MEANWHILE back at the ranch...

mr. venners finished the welding and has made a rather good job of it. although i've got a busy week ahead with luck the fugly could be MOT'd and running properly by the end of the week.

oh happy day !

success!!!!!

After consulting the DTA ECU wiring diagrams i know the proper pin connections for the serial cable i need to plug into it...

and after sopme twiddling i'm successfully running windows 98 as a virtual machine inside virtual PC on my mac laptop. sadly i doesn't have serial ports, only firewire and USB,

so...

i'm using a serila adapter and emulating a serial port on the mac and trying to convince the win 98 virtual machine that it is a com port....
AND!

after some snipping and twiddling and soldering i have the correct lead

AND!

it works !

i can see all the diagnostic stuff and the maps and everything!

BIG BAD TECHNO BLING BUS

WAH!!!!!!!!

more later :)

bringing them up right!

My twelve year old daughter just wandered into the studio and picked up a copy of the new UltraVW magazine and read the strapline about the mad porsche powered samba in the US

''is this the ultimate samba?'
...ha ! NO because ours IS!'

bless her, she's a star.

some tlc & more tyres !

getting my head straight after the vwaction show at the weekend and after a quick call to peter englezos at cogbox about the spec for a new transmission it's off on a shopping trip in the bus, first stop protyre in bristol for MORE tyres.

they're nice people, helpful and have got a full lazer alignment setup. helpfully they confirmed that the back end of the bus is 'on the piss' as it were, unfortunately they were somewhat reluctant to actually realign it.
however a quick call to paul miller at harry harpics (who did the original IRS conversion) came up trumps. paul has promised to sort it all out ASAP. unfortunately paul is in southend. so, a nother trek across the country to use up some petrol.

i might be able to combine a few jobs in one go however. i have some interior & trim parts to pick up from karmann konnection and might be able to combine with a call into peter at cogbox to finalise about the new gearbox & transmission setup.

for those of you that are interested i think it might end up with something like a Rhino case with similar ratios to the current 1303s box in the bus, heavy duty/race driveshafts, superdiff or similar, 181 CV joints & all the rest. PLUS lots of strapping to hold it all in place. peter said to talk more tomorrow after he's had a think about it. i'll probably just go with what he recommends.

oh, nearly forgot.
while i was there a REAL dragster turned up, it even said so on the side...

here it is, in all its glory.

off up north, again, again!

off early to the train station with a bag full of stickers and t shirts and a head full of anticipation and apprehension.
i'm taking the train to Bradford to taylor machine services to collect the bus.
Martin has had the bus there for the last two weeks installing and plumbing and wiring and theoretically it's all done and ready to drive.
the plan is (ha ha) to pick up the bus, make a clean getaway, hook up with steve from VWretro in sheffield and cruise down to VW action at herts showground in the evening.

arriving at taylors i found the bus up in the air on jacks with martin giving the new powerplant a final diagnostic on his laptop.

the new engine was built by Paul Hamilton of VW Speedshop and was specced as follows;

2332cc Engine (84mmx94mm)

* New AS41 racecase,bored for larger cylinders,drilled and tapped for
full
flow, clearance for 84mm long stroke.
* Case fitting kit.
* Scat 84mm forged chromoly crankshaft,8 dowel,counterweighted.
* Bearings for above.
* Scat "H" beam chromoly conrods with "ARP" 2000 rod bolts 5.5".
* Webcam 86c clearanced camshaft.
* Scat straight cut steel cam gears.
* Scat lightweight cam followers.
* Scat 12lb chromoly flywheel.
* Scat 38mm flywheel gland nut.
* Full flow oil system,Berg relief cover.
* Berg full flow oil pump.
* Mahle forged stroker piston and barrel set 94mm.
* Ported polished street eliminator 44 x37 cylinder heads, dual springs, chromoly retainers.
* Scat 1.25 pro ratio rockers.
* Engine bearings,seals,wide mouth pushrod tubes,gaskets, double thrust cam bearings.
* Cylinder studs 8mm chromoly.
* custom cylinder spacers.
* Manton chromoly push rods.
* Kennedy Stage 2 2100lb clutch cover.
* Scat deep sump 2L.
* Teflon piston pin buttons.
* Full stainless 1 3/4 header.
* full stainless 3" Magnaflow Muffler.
* Bosch 009, Petronix coil /ignitor, Scat leads,chrome clamp.
* Full set tinware,no heaters/Doghouse oil coolerand bracket/ Rocker covers Special breather tube /New fuel pump and filter,welded fan,new pulley, oil cooler,oil hose.
* New weber 48's with matched tall manifolds,Berg linkage.........

the carbs and distributor, ignition & fuel system has been stripped off been replaced with a full electronic fuel injection system featuring DTA fast engine management system feeding 45mm throttle bodies, bosch injectors, a Taylor custom crank sensor unit & pulley, full hi pressure fuel circuit, sensors for head temp, ambient air temp, fuel pressure, throttle position, voltage, crank sensor and lambda sensor. also installed is a Hurst linelock which has been wired into the ECU top provide RPM launch control, a new external 8pass oil cooler & electric fan setup and an autometer oil temp gauge on the burgeoning bouquet of instruments springing from the dash.

there's probably much more that i've forgotten so i'll try and get it right when i update the tech pages on the main website.

anyhow.

as i turned up martin was doing last minute twiddling anbd ran me through all the diagnostics and control setups on the software. to monitor or change settings on the ECU just plug in an old 486 windows 98 laptop and fire up the DTA software. you then have conotrol of everything and if i put in some more sensors i can do even more dumb, flashy tech stuff. like with a front & rear wheel sensor set i can set proper traction control ! all the stuff you get on an S class mercedes except heating !

after some more twiddling, brake adjusting etc i took the bus out for a spin with martin in the passenger seat.

onto the open road and foot down.

a most satisfying throaty roar and the bus LEAPT UP and off toward the horizon. the bus wasn't a slouch before but the difference was immense...

...a brief moment of hesitation came over me as i realised the brakes needed bleeding a bit more. in a standing-bolt-upright-with-both-feet-on-the-pedal> kind of way.

after final twiddling and more cups of tea I load the bus and depart for the motorway in the dark. Poor martin, he'd been pulling late nighters all week to get the bus done and still had work to do on lil' woper, his mad-fast vw engined fiat 500 race car, which he was taking to show at VWAction.

i head on out the the motorway. pausing only for fuel and food. I'm excited and quite apprehensive. there's a LOT of new stuff and buckets of technology that's been installed and the quick jaunt that martin and i did in the bus earlier is the furthest it's even been. ordinarily i wouldn't dream of doing the journey ahead on something completely untested but what the hell. and anyway, i've got no choice.

keeping careful eye on the temp gauge, although the engine is pretty much all run in it's still a little tight and the heads are kinda mad for a bus and not renowned for their magnificent cooling ability, i eas e the bus onto the M1 and head south. cruising at about 70 the bus is mild and running fine. as a BMW M3 passes i give the pedal a gentle tap to see what happens and within moments the bus leaves the Beemer in its wake. much to my delight and the consternation of the passengers of the shiny german executive motor...

...aha, thinks i. it works then.

:)

the journey was long and largely uneventful, nothing important fell off and aside from a quick bit of twiddling with the plumbing on the fuel rails all was fine. there does seem to be something that needs tracking/altering on the ECU fuel/ignition map. it's doing a kinda 'episodic' power loss that an on/off of the key seems to reset. i'll chat with martin over the weekend and see.
i know that it will take a few weeks to shake all the bus out of the system but the prospect of having SOFTWARE problems in an antique microbus makes me giggle almost as much as feeling the g-force.

oh yes, by the way, although the final sweeps haven't been done yet Martin tells me the torque & bhp are somewhere in the region of 180ft/lb and 200 bhp.

i'm looking forward to getting it into the strip and seeing what it will actually do

return trip to akciddento -£589

a worthy contender from timBBB and friends in newquay!

curiouser and curiouser

you remember the spam email i told you about, the guy looking for parts for a time machine....

well.......

on the auto-ping feature of the movabletype weblog software i use, some guy called OzGuru in australia picked up the story and commented that i'd replied to it but ALSO included a link to someone that has been tracking this. apparently the guy is serious and has been spending LOTS of money trying to locate parts for his time machine....

we're back !

after a week in the alps without web access, computer and at time electricity we're back at akciddento HQ and raring to go. the months has started well.

we have a 'post an akicddento' winner for august. Carol from London who posted a magnificent tag of the top floor of the eiffel tower. despite suffering from near paralysis due to vertigo Carol persevered to let the people of paris know that in - true akciddento spirit, it's not about doing it well, it's just about actually doing it

its the annual VWaction show this weekend. after a chat with martin at taylor machine it appears that the bus might be ready on friday. so perhaps a trip up north then a fast blat down south to VWaction the home on a low loader ?

hmmmm.... we'll see.

lots to do this week, maybe i'll get some of it done.

:)