akciddento

yee haa !!!!!!

the fugly 412 passed its MOT. third time lucky!

now all i need is the road tax (a quick trip to the post office) and i can start blinging it up in a charity shop stylee!

i've got the new front wings and the rather nice solid aluminium US spec bumpers (though i think i need some read bumper irons) and all sorts of bits of trim. the interior does see to be rfesembling a paddling pool at the moment too so maybe i ought to tracl down the leak - my initial suspicions are the drains on the sun roof being blocked or maybe the fornt fresh air inlets... we'll see.

so akciddento is mobile again. i think i need to get some short springs for the front and see how low it goes.

and not forgetting the woodgrain effect fablon sides !

guess who came today !

Tim and Neil from top gear magazine turned up this morning to do a photo shoot of the bus. tim got in contact recently and we had a chat about the bus and racing etc. sadly i couldn't take him out and scare him witless but we had a chat and then neil took a load of images. apparently it's going in next months magazine in the 'crankcase of the month' section. last month had angle grinder man , the guy in the superhero outfit who cuts off wheelclamps for free (the man's a hero!) so i feel i'm in good company!

let's see if they actually run it! hopefully it'll get a mention for taylor machine for all the fuel injection and engine work and for paul & joss at der botcheinvolks for the new roll cage..

while i think about it, here's a moody shot of the bus from saturday night waiting for the AA, showing of the fancy new underdash interior lights! at last, i can find thigs in the dashtray at night and when i drop stuff onthe cab floor i don't need to wait until dawn to find them again...

(and with the laptop on the passeneger seat plugged into the engine management system it looks just like i'm in 'fast and the furious'
:D

broke down!

so here it is, on the hard shoulder again, waiting for the AA....

oh dear...

ah well....

saturday was a great day at the ace cafe where rikki james from the split screen van club had organised a get together swap meet kinda thing. i met loads of people from the volkszone forum and chatted with all sorts about all sorts. i had a lot of interest in the bus with lots of people looking over the new roll cage and chatting with paul and joss from der botcheinvolks who did all the work.
i did a brisk trade in tshirts and other clothing and got into the swing of it with people contributing to the 'help buy a turbo to go faster next year' appeal...

i even won a prize ! everyone who came with a van got a voting form to choose your favourite bus and i won a cup and a box of chocolates for second prize care of luke at terrys beetle works. thanks !

i packed up by about 4.30 or 5 pm and sat and had some food with tim from HSl racing, joss and botch and andy and suzanne. then off up to oxford for the night to prepare for the slough swap meet the following day. Tim at HSL had offered me part of his stall in the swap meet to sell more akciddento merchandise. it would work out ok for Tim as he usually trades at shows single handed and sadly has had too many incidents of his stock going walkies at shows this year... it was all working out very nicely.

i set off round the north circular and onto the M4 followed by paul and joss and tootled along with the traffic. as we got up the M4 the traffic was thinning and the music in the bus was working out very nicely over the whine and roar from the engine bay (did i ever tell you how LOUD the high pressure fuel pump is for the injection system ? trust me, it's louder than a loud thing...)

alll of a pudding the road was clear and my foot suddenly felt very heavy, with the radar detector set to stun we were off with paul and joss in their GSi trying to keep up...

then at about 6000rpm in fourth gear the temp gauge shot skyhigh...

not a good sign.. pull over and slow down and listen.
that's not a good noise...

onto the hard shoulder.

that's really not a good noise..

paul and joss walk up the hard shoulder.. after a brief exchange about the speedo reading in the GSi and joss standing there looking at the bus (trying to work out why they couldn't catch it i think ) guesses start at a broken rocker arm... rocker covers off.

not a rocker arm

turn it over again. scream and switch it off REAL quick.

talk some more and fix on an answer. not one that i like but an answer nonetheless. a high probability of a spun bearing on the crank... only was to tell properly is to drop the engine and split the crank case.

not good.

i'm very much in a 'oh well' sort of mood but quietly i'm feeling very embarassed and stupid inside. i broke my new toy. it's probably a mechanical failure and there's nothing i could have done about it but you never know....

i phone the AA, blessed AA and explain i need a low loader then retreat to the bus to wait.

i pop the stereo on while i'm waiting in the dark and cold of the hard shoulder and am immediately deafened by 'wake up' by rage against the machine at maximum volume...

ah... so that's what happened....

doh

decorating time

well, there should be a nice image of the door bars and front kick bars on the roll cage here but there's a problem with the automation on the server and the bath's running so i don't have time to fix it right now so just imagine a nice picture of the cage painted in l360 blauweiss to match the dashboard and all the door shuts...
it looks promising and hopefully will be done (ish) by the weekend to go to the ace cafe on saturday, slough swampmeat on sunday and a photoshoot on monday...

say no more !

bathtime !

15.11 seconds !

after a manic week with paul and joss at Der Botcheinvolks workshops fitting a complete rollcage in the bus and rebuilding the rear end of the bus we ran a new personal best of 15.11 seconds at the weekends Flame and Thunder meet at santapod raceway in bedford. I even got to do my first ever burnout. in front of thousands of people....
...with zwitter making a very professional job of guiding me into the burnout box and all those complicated looking hand gestures all was well, though maybe i should have practised somewhere first!.

with thanks to ollie for cool camera work (and excellent crew support as usual !) there are new movies online and a full report and pics of the roll cage build up in in the works.

keep watching !