May 28, 2004
off to newquay, again
well it's friday and it's raining, it must be time to drive to newquay!
yes, it run to the sun time again....
...if you're in doubt as to how much i love going to newquay then just read last years diary entry
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'
ah.... well maybe it'll be a more agreeable experience this year, i think last year (and the year before that i guess) i was a little bit demented generally. let's see if i cope with it all a bit better this year...
NOT!
May 24, 2004
wedgiddento...
well, i rolled down to trhe jet wash bright and early this morning to give hubb's beige wedge t25 a wash before sending it for MOT and it scrubbs up rather nice.
sadly the MOT guy rang and it failed....
needs RHD headlamp lenses and it also failed on having cut springs at the rear... aside from all that it's fine... (though it'll need some front tyres soonish..)
back on the road soon!
also sorted out the dates for a mad event i've got planned for august!
hot buses, hot food and hot DJ's !
watch this space!
May 20, 2004
t25 wishbone rebuild
after a fun day yesterday pulling the passenger side wishbone off the front of hubbs' wedge van we've got to pick the wishbone up from the garage round the corner. the new bushings in the wishbone are in and set but they need a little spot of weld to stop them rotating in the wishbone.
and it's STILL sunny and warm!!!!
i've been wearing shorts for about a week now and i can't get over it ! my whole life has been transformed, i can't deal with winters here any longer !!!
the sun and warmth is so therapeutic (sp?) though i have this horrible sense opf forboeding in the back of my brain that it will all be over far too soon and it will be cold grey and raining with dusk happening at about 4pm.
remember that, it was only a few weeks ago!
May 19, 2004
attack!
after too much tea (and some other distrations we got started on replacing the bushings on the wishbone on the front of hubbs' t25...
with a bit of hepl from a haynes manual and an excellent guide from the brickyard website we were off.
we got the wishbone marked up and out in no time at all, then off to my favourite bit of van repair the grinder!...
smack the old bushings with a hammer for a bit and we're happy bunnies!...
fitted up the new bushes and ready for spotwelding them in place and re-assembly. even got an oil change in the samba done in the process!
Jake from scooterblog (the guy riding to the greek islands on a scooter) dropped by to show off his new Vespa scooter. he's off next tuesday and getting a bit nervous about what he's taken on. you can keep up with his weblog and general progress at www.scooterblog.com. akciddento are proud to sponsor scooterblog.
you should sponsor him too !
May 13, 2004
the beige wedge is back
after a winter away mister hubbs is apparently en route to akciddento acres the the 'other' bus in team akciddento. 2.1 litres of fuel injected wasserboxer beige wedge fury!
here's the beauty, sandwiched between ollies bay and the samba...
if only i can convince hubbs that he needs to race!
every time we talk buses the conversation leads round to him wanting to go faster (it motors like a small beige monster as it is !) and me trying to persuade hime to leave it well alone... down that road lies HUGE expense (though i would really like to see how fast we could make it go!)
just trucked back from the post office too. had a backlog of orders from the ak webshop that's been piling for the last couple of days that have been despatched now... :)
it's still a great feeling with every order that comes in from the webshop but it's an even better feeling packing up all the orders for despatch, a much greater feeling of fulfillment. I like the idea that people get the packages through the door and are all excited and it's a thing to make them smile that day...
maybe they get the packages and are all disappointed...
nah, i reckon they get the packages and are all happy !
also been working on some new designs and sourcing new garments and other gear, some really cool stuff! really neat designs and great quality, better than most of the stuff i find on the high street, only problem is that the prices is restrictive unless i start ordering multiple cartons of each garment, size and colour... ulp! i think that if i can make the budgets work then i'm going to take the risk because some of the new stuff is so cool, it's just a bit scary realising just how much money is invested in stock... i 've also got to get off my lazy butt and do follow up calls to some of the shops who've expressed interest in stocking ak gear...
(btw if you're out there and want to stock ak gear then drop us a line!!)
later!
May 02, 2004
more big bang
we all woke to a dry but overcast day.. the track dryers were out hoovering the moisture off the track and all looked promising... all morning to run qualifying and all afternoon to race...
off to the startline and into the staging area.....
then BANG, it hit me like a steam train... back behind the wheel, in the race suit... concentrate, listen, do all the last minute checks, then called into stage...
lining up against jimby, rollinto the waterbox, lineloc on, rev it up, spin the tyres to scrub them clean, see a satisfying plume of smoke in the rear view mirror and into stage....
yellow yellow yellow green, dump the clutch let the line loc go and give it death...
jimby get the drop on me by ten or fifteen feet and by half track the gap is the same...
into the last eighth and the bus motors on, revs rising into full power and cruise past jimby in his green oval window bug to run a low 16 second pass.
back round and do the same to a green beach buggy for a low 16.
with a bit of help and some more thinking and twiddling i roll back for another run.
conor from raceshack appears at the side window in the staging area and does the honours of walking me intio the water box and doing all those really cool looking hand signals..
i scrub the tyres, conor is nodding, all is looking good, i hold it a few seconds more just for crowd, the launch control rev limiter in the ecu making the most amazing noise (knowing that there are flames shooting out of the exhaust :) ) and off the line loc still on the throittle for a nice long smoky burnout, kink it off to the left slightly, snap it back in and get ready to stage.
the bus hooks up beautifully, i 'd upped the launch revs from 3500 to 4200 and it doesn't bog on the line, it just picks up and hurtles down thetrack, straight as a straight thing for a 15.9 pass. that's more like it, still a second or more off where it ought to be but getting there :)
----TBC
May 01, 2004
big bang 2004
it's saturday morning at big bang 2004 at santa pod, round 2 of the vwdrc.
we arrived and set up pits on friday afternoon after a monster drive, with 5 of us in the split and packed to the roof windows with tools, spares, pit stuff, food and all the stock and stuff for the AK tradestall it was a heavy drive with the front tyres grounding on the arches all the way, at every bump...
acompanied by the smell of buring rubber we decamped into the pits and got set up... with the advancing rain and darkness it looked like it was to be another fine weeekend of drizzle at the pod...
with some twiddling and checking of stuff, and with help from andy brooke (i'm still trying to convince hime to knock the race bug on the head and put the motor and gearbox into his type 25 works van) we did a 500 mile service on the motor and i had a twiddle with the laptop (if you want to get a crowd in the pits just pull out a laptop and plug it into the back of your bus !) i got a few runs in between the rain and then called it a day....