October 31, 2004
bullet biting time...
after a pleasant but half hearted afternoon tinkeing on the racebus i've had to face facts, the engine is going nowhere as it is and there's no point me cleaning it any more. it won't magically fix itself. although this contradicts the universal laws governing kharmic maintainance i think this is one anomaly that will benefit from a proper rebuild..
getting the motivation to lie down in the mud and decomposing leaves and struggle to pull the block and live with in on the kitchen table for a month is a different matter....
ah well.....
October 26, 2004
swiss cheese time !
my new holesaw set from ebay (£2.99!) turned up today. with luck it won't be made of toffee and i can now start spending a few pleasant hours swiss cheesing (is that a proper word ? cheesing ? ah well, it is now..) - swiss cheesing the bus!
what bliss
October 16, 2004
meal time
**ed** and ollie and jake and bo and emma called over for supper last night...
tales of this seasons racing, dumb expolits and future plans consumed the evening, alongside a long running and rather bizarre thread of conversation about giant tortoises and naked exploits....
the big revelation of the evening (for me at least) is that Bo is a complete petrol head, a born again girl racer.....
who'd have thought it ?
October 11, 2004
more hammering!
after a few days of looking at the panel van in the rain i decided that i ought to get a move on and on sunday arvo trooped down to the local halwits to pick up a set of spark plugs, a new distributor cap and a rotor arm and some other bits n bobs...
got the plugs and the cap, so one two out of half a dozen isn't bad for the people who lost out to the cadbury boost bar...
back at akciddento acres it became quickly evidednt that the battery is kippered and it looks like there's a water leak from the engine jacket on the wasserboxer on number one cylinder and it makes quite a kinda grinding racket when you crank it over...
...which was nice.
anyhow, the upshot is i didn't get it started but it's not all bad, i started ripping out the existing airsystem. air box, piping, valves, ducting and all manner of plastic junk in a nice heap in the yard. most satisfying.
not really getting anywhere with the engine and feeling a little disheartened i decide i ought to finish off the last bit of bulkhead that i didn't rip out last time....
cue large hammer and cold chisel and a merry half hour of splitting welds and generally sitting in a large steel drum going deaf.
half a kilo thrown onto the pile in the yard...
then my attention turns to the dashboard, a hunge expanse of rather fetchingly fleck coated steel filling half the cab.
it's got to go...
unfortunately i need to open the doors to get the outer screws out. the dash folds round the middle of the a posts and is screwed in but with the mobile breadbin parked next to it in the yard access is only throught the back door...
doh...
so another merrry half hour ensued unscrewing everything in sight and adding it to the pile... during which i came upon a discovery that had been bugging me. the heater control are illuminated! (must fix the bulb in the other van) though the ones in the panel van aren't any more... primarily because the heater control are now sat in a wheelie bin on the kerb outside my house waiting for the bin men to collect them at dawn tomorrow.
although i wanted to get the bus up to raceshack and put it on the scales to get the correct original weight (too late now!) the documentation i've found indicate that the wedge weighs in between 1395kg and 1740kg. so i'm taking the bottom of the scale and saying that the panel van weighed 1400kg(3086lb) to start. the target weight is 2000lb (907kg) so i have to lose 500kg from the bus...
about the weight of a small car.
easy.
btw, the street weight of the samba was 2964lb (1344kg) .....
(picture of big piles of plastic to follow tomorrow)
October 08, 2004
and captain botch said...
so chatting on the phone with captain botch down at der botcheinvolks and it seems that paul and joss have just turned out the third split screen bus with a roll cage in.... it seems that the original design that they did for the samba still works fine... the latest bus is a '56 with safari windows and apparently looks a dream.
anyhow, chatting about this and that and the progress of the wedge and capt. botch informs me of the bus to watch out for next season....
apparently theres a hot baywindow double door panel van in the works with a big full race spec turbo engine....
... and it's captain botches...
its his old panel van and the old race motor out of the 'air express' dragster he used to run, add in an 091 gearbox and a dash of botcheinvolks insanity and hey presto a bus that will run nearly as fast as the new ak race wedge ;)
October 04, 2004
how much !?
after a conversation with co-conspirator Mr. Jimby at the weekend it appears that he's been busy with the spreadsheets again...
after racing over the weekend was almost washed out (again!) he got to thinking just how many runs people actually get on the quarter mile at a race meet. apparently most people only got one qualifying run on saturday due to the inclement weather...
so he sat down and went through the records and looked up how many actual qualifying runs people have got running in VWDRC this season. He added to this the point that half the field gets knocked out having only done one run in the first round. then use this number and the standard race entry fee, currently £85 per round, to give you the cost per run over the course of the season. This obviously goes up and down depending on whether you actually run all the available qualifying runs, don't have any breakages or if you win several rounds.
anyhow, the basic figure he worked out was £33.50 per run!...
yes, that's right. although the racers in the pits laugh at the people paying £15 to do run what ya brung at race meets when there's open track, even if they only do ONE run they are paying less than half and if they do four or five runs for their fee then it starts looking even sillier....
of course there are differences, for racing the track is prepped, there's all the work of the marshals, the support staff, the start line crew, the safety crew etc but it makes you think doesn't it,
basically its about £150 per minute, or £134 per mile...
so i sent jimby a text saying,
"ok, so what about the complete costs from mile/minute for a season, fuel, race fees, race car, license, safety gear, food etc ?"
you really don't want to know the answer that came back...