akciddento

more spannering

well....
after a long day setting up the new accounts system with my accountant (which was actually fun and exciting - which is worrying...) i settled down and watched the new spykids 3D movie with emily and lucian. it was actually alright. the spykids trilogy is from robert rodriguez, of 'rebel without a crew' fame - which is a fantastic diary/story about rodriguez' transition from struggling fil school student/burger flipper to the hottest property in hollywood and runs through the making of the original 'el mariachi'. He got the money for the original low budget production, using friends in a small town in mexico, by booking himself in for a month of medical experiments ! more recently he's made things like desperado and 'once upon a time in mexico' and also 'dusk 'til dawn' with tarantino and clooney...
interesting guy, interesting director... apparently he holds the record for the most 'set ups' (set and shot camera positions) in a day.
anyway i digress. i was watching the movie (with the red green glasses on !) and thinking how cool the cheap garish 3d graphics were and also as an aside that silvester stallone is a better actor than i give him credit for (he's the evil mastermind with the multiple personalities)...

anyhow, after calm had descended upon akciddento towers i decided that i'd better shift the race engine off the kitchen table (there is a side story to this that i might relate at some other time...) so i got out the stanley knife and spent a merry evening (until 2am) whittling the fibreglass porsche fan shroud to get it to fit over the street eliminator heads and the intake manifolds... and guess what, i think i've nearly got it right. I'm going to clearance it loads more tomorrow to make access to the spark plugs easier but i think i'm nearly there. i even figured out the bell crank throttle linkage and got that all in place... will wonders never cease ?

ollie slammedbay is coming over in the morning and we're going to pull the 1600 engine from the bus and stick it into his bay window. his race engine is not ready yet and he needs to get an MOT so motive power would be kinda helpful...

at the moment team akciddento has one MOT and one engine between two....

oops.

more later folks... :)

back from volksworld

we've just arrived back from the Volksworld Show and are settling into the comfortable surroundings of akicddento towers. A great show, a first for trading at, all round good. good good.

A massive thanks to everyone that stopped by the ak stand at the show and stopped to chat and say hello. A special thanks to everyone who supported us by giving new homes to tshirts, posters stickers and sweatshirts. seems lots of you liked the new designs!.

got a few bits of shopping for the week ahead while i was there, oil pressure gauge & sender, oil cooler blockoff to go under the new fan shroud... erm, and that's it. being on the stall all weekend meant i didn't really get to have a look round but i got news from everyone of what was hot and what was new. seems every year people pull something special out of the bag for the first big show of the year.

off to get a bath now.... more tomorrow......

night all !

sweatshop and garage..

well the kitchen definately is a sweat shop, storage area, workshop, fount of culinary delights and garage...
and here's the loveliest thing in it, i think... not too sure....

people talk all funny when it comes to cars and stuff... people talk about 'sexy' technology... i don't really understand this, i think that we've all be so saturated with marketing messages we've got confused about it all... aesthetic appreciation, yes... erotic sexual arousal..... errmmm.

no.

i don't think so.

the porsche fan shroud is a great shape. especially when i look at the cast iron pop riveted 1930's style thing i took off. but it just looks like a slightly greasy car part to me...

maybe i'm just tired..
this doesn't normally happen to me...
i've just been under a bit of stress lately...
yes, of course i find it attractive.....

all the bits arrived this morning and i've not been able to do much more than a quick test fit onto the block. Straight off it's not bad at all. will need some minor surgery around the intake manifolds and a bit of a hack to get the bell crank throttle linkage to fit properly but .... i'm hopefull.

the fuel pump blockoff supplied with the kit is much thinner than the one on at the moment and the current one fouls the base of the new generator pedestal..

i was getting all worked up about haviong to tap the new one for the oil breather pipe until ollie (who has been round here tagging and bagging t-shirts like a t-shirt bagging trooper) pointed out that it would be far easier just to take a grinder to the existing one...

a superb suggestion, not only do i not need the hassle of tapping the new one to take the threaded breather insert barb i get to play with the angle grinder!

the man's a genius !

here's a quick taster of some of the delights we have for you at the upcoming Volksworld show at sandown park racecourse this weekend.

get 'em while they're luke !

it's a sweat shop !

getting ready for the volksworld show and the kitch (already full of disassembled eberspacher heaters and a half reconstructed race engine) is now resembling a rather cold sweatshop...

all the new designs and stock are back from the printers being stock taken, embroidered, badged, tagged and bagged...

there are piles of tangering clothing EVERYWHERE...

need to get some stickers made up for the swing tags on the new sweatshirts
'warning, may contain traces of orange'

take it all apart again!

dragged the engine into the house and onto the kitchen table and started stripping all the cooling and tinware off it.

martin at TMS had phoned me during the day on friday to let me know that the porsche fan kit had turned up from CustomSpeedParts in Germany. Only two months after i ordered it.... to be fair, they didn't bill my credit card until it shipped so it's not all bad. Sadly the engine is not at TMS in Bradford anymore so martin has sent it by courier to me at akciddento HQ.

with luck i'll get the gear on monday and see how good the kits actually is. and more to the point how much additional work there is to do....

watch this space...

and here it is

and here it is !

here's the racing engine back in the bus, albeit in the load bay...
soon to have a swank porsche fan cooling conversion and a new bell crank throttle linkage with an additional oil cooler plumbed in...
if only the rain would stop..

and it's back !

after a quick trip up to bradford in my little rental Corsa the race engine is safely back in the bus, albeit sat on the load bed rather than bolted into the engine bay.
Martin taylor at Taylor MAchine services had got it all ready to pick up, and got the dyno run and mapping done too.

the damage from december's little escapade on the M4 ended up like this

damaged scat 84mm procomp crank - replace
damaged scat H beam Con Rods - replace
damaged swivel foot adjusters on rockers - replace with 1.4:1 rockers
damaged berg oil pump - machine face and replace

so the engine is back same as before apart from replacing the 1.25:1 rockers with 1.4:1 ratio rockers.
It would appear that CustomSpeedParts in Germany have charged my credit card for the porsche fan conversion kit (ordered iin January! only 3 months late) so hopefully it'll actually ship sometime soon. so i can bolt it in like it is or take the gamble and strip off the cooling tin and dynamo and plumb in the extra oil cooler to the bus (the fan conversion on the engine remove the standard oil cooler and needs an additional external one...

decisions, decisions....

BTW it's good to be back writing after a long break with the weblog not playing properly. a big thankyou to jake at scooterblog for the fix. check out scooterblog, jake is travelling from bristol to the greek island on, you guessed it, scooter and is weblogging his way there from his mobile phone.... v cool!

The weblog is back!

the weblog should be fixed now — the only thing that should need tweaking are some broken image links. please let us know if you come across any broken image links in the weblog.

respec' on behalf of akciddento,

scooterbug x