davidfowler2000

Experiments. Videos to follow.

Required rest day swap at work achieved. Thanks Stevie. Thevie.

Just a couple of proper camera pics from the latest trip. Just a wee one nighter at Invercaimbe Camp Site near Arisaig. Pre-flight checks The Rest and Be Thankful, A82 Invercaimbe Camp Site and silver sand coral beach Notes for my own future reference: Trailer hubs fit neither 50, 51 or 52mm caps. Had to get a 50-51 and flare it out a bit with the help of a heat gun. Trailer NS suspension has drooped giving the trailer a noticable but not too significant lean. Suspension units are Knott Avonride 550KG Extended Shaft C77102.003/004 cheapest from Western Towing. Solar power peaked at 207W on the Friday. Peak generated was 470Wh on the Sunday. Trip was 421 miles from my parents' just outside Glasgow, to my house, to WOMAN_df2k's house in another bit of just outside Glasgow to Invercaimbe (towing) to Mallaig / Invercaimbe (not towing) then back to WOMAN_df2k to my house back to parents'. Average mpg was 43.9. The route north was wiggly - Glasgow - Dumbarton - Loch Lomond - Faslane via The Haul Road - Garelochead - Arrochar - Inveraray - Connel Bridge - Fort William - Invercaimbe. Southbound was much more direct via Fort William, Glencoe, Crianlarich and Tarbet. ---ENDS---

1) Sunny Jim - off site - Sunday Breakfast 2) Binhoker668 - Both nights camping - Sunday Breakfast3) HillmanImp - Both nights camping - Sunday Breakfast4) Ghosty - Both nights camping - Sunday Breakfast5) HorribleMercedes - Both nights camping - Sunday Breakfast6) Jim Bell - Off site - No breakfast7) MondeoBlues - Saturday night camping - Sunday Breakfast8 Catsinthewelder - Both nights camping - Sunday Breakfast (1 to 4)9) Aldo135 - Both nights camping - Sunday Breakfast x410) AnnoyingPentium - Both nights camping - Sunday Breakfast - TBC11) Brownnova: both nights camping plus square breakfastage12) Captain_70s - Both nights camping, Sunday breakfast13) cms206 - two nights camping, all of the food14) julaars - two people, two nights, all of the food15) Talbot - all of the everything16) DaveQ + 2 Davelets - two nights camping17) Back_For_More + Boy - two nights, all of the food18) Flat4 - two arriving for Sunday breakfast 19) EightMegs - Two nights, Sunday Breakfast 20) davidfowler2000 - Friday night and Saturday night in the trailer. Friday scran. Saturday scran. Sunday breakfast scran. ALL THE SCRAN. Saturday breakfast provided by SVM Catering as usual. ***Limited supplies***.

This free leccy from the sun is quite good

Invercaimbe camp site

Minor holiday. Inc Mr @juular

They moved it 6 months? The bastards. We'll need to keep an eye on that next year so we can get a club stand going again. Chodmondogley was always a great day out.

21/22 is my preference but I can see if I can get the 14/15th off

Holy crap Batman! A FoD on my long weekend off!!!

Wednesday ramblings mostly consist of the 740. As mentioned above, it had oil leaks noticed from the MoT and Ron Sealey inspection. It was duelly taken back to Kilmarnock engine services with the following list from Ron... Cam main rear leaking Dizzy / Cam rear leaking Suspect crank front leaking Suspect cam front leaking Sump gasket leaking Injector seals leaking (letting in air) So they said they'd take a look at it. Also when taking it to them, they said they never done the injector seals as part of the engine rebuild. It's literally 4 bog standard O-rings. After they had it for a month (they lost my phone number then I went on holiday) I phoned them to see what the script was. They came back with... Crank rear bone dry Dizzy / cam bone dry Crank front not mentioned Cam front not mentioned Sump not mentioned Injector seals replaced Rocker cover gasket leaking at the rear and pouring oil down the back of the engine making it look like cam and crank rears leaking. Also a choked PCV system. New rocker gasket fitted. The car was picked up and booked back in to Ron Sealey to get re-tuned. It had been tuned for leaking injector seals to get it through the MoT emissions test so it all had to be reset now the injector seals were sorted. He also said on the phone he checked the crank rear via the access panel and it was wet yet Killie said it was dry. Hmmm. Anyways I did the brake clean test to make sure they had actually done the injector seals this time. I also asked to check for oil leaks again. Ron came back with... Crank rear dry Dizzy / cam rear leaking Cam front leaking Crank front leaking Rocker cover gasket leaking (yes the new one) Fuck. Sake. Sooooooo it won't be going back to Kilmarnock again and I will not be recommending them to anyone. Ron will get the work to do the leaky seals. It's not pissing out and it's no worse than any other red block of it's age but considering it's had money and time spent to rebuild it, it should be dry. In Other 740 News... The brakes have devloped a shudder and after a bit of heat, a constant squeek when the pedal is released so today I did an investigate. As usual I fetched far too many tools for the job... No photos of the work. Everyone knows what brake pads look like. Off side pads were welded to the carrier with rust and shite. Near side pads? Ehhhhh.... Well at least one of them is alright. The inner one is considerably thinner and not exactly parallel with the backing plate. These weren't as tight either. All pads got a flap disk to the ears that hold them in place, copper grease and refitted. Long distance test to be carried out this evening. In Computer Failure News... The AI on my phone detected this picture as "Historic Building" and optimised the settings for ancient architecture ---ENDS---

A wee Scandi Noir...

I don't think I've ever been to Shropshire. Or actually I have. Either way, it sounds like a great idea.

If we do any more trailering with that V70 I'm going to have to get Autoshite.Recovery.Shiteshifting.Etc. decals made for it

Update time I suppose, eh? The 740 The 740 is the most recent post so let's catch up with that. MoT fail points:- The horn : Fixed. Dual tone Fiamm snail shell horns fitted. Emissions: Injector seals leaking. Mixture adjusted to JUST scrape through the test. More on that in a bit. Rust near rear suspension arm: Fixed. 20p sized hole within 30cm of a suspension arm. Headlight aim: Fixed. MoT advisories:- Four new tyres fitted. Alignment checked but found to be in spec. Must have been old wear on the shoulders of the tyres which have then not been put on in the same place when the wheels got refurbed. Sooooo the biggest issue... Oil leaks: Crank rear main seal, distributor (which is also the cam rear) seal, sump gasket, also suspect crank front and cam front seals leaking oil. Injector seals leaking so ingesting too much air. Kilmarnock Engine Services will require phoning. I've been busy with a family death and other stuff so will hopefully get that sorted soon. 4000 miles and pissing oil from almost everywhere is not a good look and before anyone asks no, it doesn't have mega crank case pressure from blow by. I took the oil cap off at idle and it actually has crank case vacuum. While on the subject of Killie Engine Non-services, I noticed when going to Festival of The Unexceptional last year that even though the timing belt had been sorted, it was still a bit... flat. Seeing the distributer is on the back of the cam, a timing check was done with the assistance of @captain_70s and @juular. It was found to be running static timing of 8 deg before top dead centre. Spec for that engine is 12 B-TDC so guessing Killie retimed the belt without checking the ignition. These are pretty rookie mistakes for any mechanic never mind an engine builder. I kept the Captain's timing light in the boot for further tinkering seeing as modern fuel should handle more advance I could tweak it here and there. First advancing it to 14 then 16 deg B-TDC. It now runs better and more economically on E10 than it does on super. Go figure. Seeing as the timing light was in the boot, this also led to a Scotoshite group chat series of pictures titled, "Tony's Timing Light on Tour": Great Yarmouth: IWM Duxford: Cannock Longford House: Glasgow Central Station ScotRail Car Park: tl;dr: MoT passed with repairs. Killie Engine Services useless. To be phoned. The 205 Nothing much to report here. It was last fuelled in October and it's not been used much since. It got used a bit while the 740 was in for MoT but it got quite damp inside during the heavy rain over the winter so it's been living in the lockup mostly. I did manage a new indicator relay and wiper stalk while the cowling was off for the ignition barrel replacement so at least there's that. I'm going to have to re-time the injection again. Mr @Talbot done it another degree or two at the last Field of Dreams I attended and I reckon we've gone a bit too far so it needs backed off. It's far too crackly and bogs down when cold. Needs to be kept at high RPM until it warms up to counter the high degree of advance. The V70 Not hellish much here either. It went for underseal after the 205 was in for it's annual check up of the same. I had been under the back and noticed the spare wheel tub looked a bit crunchy so I booked it in. The man said he was shocked at how crunchy it was for a 12 year old Volvo that had spent most of it's life in the far south. Usual script - needle scale, steam clean, rust converter, Dinitrol underseal and this one also got all the welded seams treated with a seam sealer. All in, £840 but it's much nicer now. The Chrailer I found last year between Shitefest and Field of Dreams that I am very heavy on the leccy in the trailer. Luckily Shitefest had a mains supply I could hook up to but the FoD doesn't and even with tactical switching off of the fridge overnight and not using the heater, I still didn't last my full visit without draining the leisure battery. The battery had two charging methods - mostly through the towbar electrics when driving or via the hookup. As an addition I decided to add a solar panel to the roof. Sizes and details were queried with @juular and I decided to go for a single 230W panel from craigsolar.co.uk at £170 and a Victron 20A MPPT bluetooth charge controller. I also added a Ve.Bus bluetooth dongle to the order so I can talk to the inverter via the Victron app on my phone. Some re-jiggery of the electrical box on the trailer was required to find somewhere to mount the charge controller: The big black box is a fuse panel direct to the battery via the isolator switch. It has a 100A fuse for the inverter and 4 x 30A fuses for the 12V and I'm using Wago 221 blocks for the 12V DC charging from the car. Two wires come from the car through the 5 core cable to the split charge relay and 12V system which then go through 2 wires to the fuse box. A third wire goes to the solar charge controller and the 4th with 20A inline fuse goes to the 12V DC bus in the trailer for the lights, USB and 12V outlets. I chose to mount the panel to the roof bars mostly because they are there but also it will allow air to circulate around the panel to keep it cool. The panel uses standard solar MC4 waterproof connectors and the place I got it also had wiring kits with pre-made conections at one end down to bare wire at the other. I got a 5m kit which was enough to run the cables down the outside, through the tailgate seal, under the tailboard and up through the floor. I also added a second isolater switch to isolate the solar supply as the charge controller would prefer battery connection before the panel but said controller is capable of charging a battery that has been drained to 0V so it shouldn't matter too much. I'll need to get Sikaflex or something to stick the wires to the outer parts of the trailer so they don't drift loose. With that it was time for a test. The Victron app immediately found the solar charger and dongle for the inverter. As is the way with modern life, both of them needed a firmware update so that was completed. On an overcast day in February at ~1400hrs, the panel was putting out ~30W of power. A lot more than I was expecting for this time of year. I also ran the wee electric heater to put a draw on the battery so that any power the solar did generate would all be utilised. 39W 'cos it brightened up a bit. Then the sun almost came out for about 5 mins. Still masked in by some thin cloud cover though... 75W! In February. Under cloud. That's quite impressive. 5.4A going in to the battery is more than some cheap smart chargers you can get. I shall conduct experiments when the sun is significantly stronger round about March / April to see how much I can expect to get of the rated 230W but I reckon whatever it gets, it'll be more than enough. My compressor fridge draws 60W at full power or 30W in eco mode... and it isn't always running. It cycles on and off to maintain the set temperature. The little electric heater draws about 50W from the inverter so I'd guess that's probably 60W from the battery. I reckon the heater will discharge the battery over night but if the sun is strong enough, it should easily charge back up during the day.

Calendar has done an arrival

My observations of the lack of shite is that it's drying up because cars have all became so homologous and, dare I say it... good. Good at being AN CAR anyways. 15 years ago, a 15 year old car would have been from the early 90s which itself would have probably been an evolution of a 1980s or potentially 1970s design. It made them more interesting but not up to par with modern stuff for handling, economy, safety etc etc etc. Nowadays a 15 year old car is from 2008 and let's face it, there are still some cars being made today that were in production in 2008 and have barely changed. Also cars today are all just the same. Styling is dictated by regulations, handling and performance for every day cars has pretty much reached it's pinnacle. There's not going to be any major innovation or leap forward for a while so a car of today is just as good as a car of 15 years ago (bar all the annoying electronic toys). Plus with the current automotive production climate with fuck all being manufactured either because of covid or other world events, people are holding on to their cars for longer. I heard on the news recently that the proportion of cars on the road today over 10 years old has never been higher and perhaps the lack of supply of new stuff for anything less than silly money is making people realise the worth of their current car or even better, making them realise that a new car isn't going to do anything more or better than their current steed. Add in other factors like the rise of dealer focused serviceability, the lack of old specialist computers to diagnose faults, soaring scrap prices, LEZs, scrappage schemes, general awareness of environmental concerns blah blah blah... etc. I reckon there will always be a supply of autoshite but it's becoming scarce.

At err East Kilbirdie

Remember folks hold Shift+Return to stop the double carriage return chodweaver - x2 Popsicle - x1 Sunny Jim - x1 rob88h - x1 95 quid Peugeot - x1 gm - x1 MorrisItalSLX - x1 adw1977 - x1 AnnoyingPentium - x1 Matty - x1 I_am_Diesel - x1 castros_bros - x1 Rust Collector - x1 Macscrooge - x2 Six-cylinder - x1 dozedustan - x2 chaseracer - x1 sutty2006 - x1 brownnova - x1 loserone - x1 ProgRocker - x1 Wibble - x1 RobT - x1 grogee - x1 Wilko220 - x1 quicksilver - x1 Cookiesouwest x1 Zelandeth x1 Garycox x2 Red5 x2 Catsinthewelder x1 Chuck Buckles x1 wesacosa x 1 RML2345 x 2 davidfowler2000 x 1 Dan302 x 1 sporty-shite x 1 andyberg x 1

I'm sure we did that one year. Someone put all the photos on to an online calendar service and put the project link on here so anyone who wanted one could click the link and order it. Also let you see it before receiving.

When we looked up the SVR online and saw the £25 day ticket and £4 parking we thought it was a bit steep but it's a cracker setup. The Scottish preserved railways are just as expensive but only offer about 20% of what you get at the SVR. Myself and Mr @juular both agreed today that we should try and do more of the big preserved lines in England sooner rather than later.

Good to see all folks this weekend... @chaseracer, @Inspector Morose, @hairnet, @Floatylight, @Lankytim Apologies for not sticking around at breakfast but trains were to be had. Myself and @juular along with the WOMEN_df2k&juular did the train the full length of the line, the wee museum at Kidderminster, back to Highley for the bigger museum there before back to Bridgnorth and home. Got back to Glasgow about 2200. A good weekend had by all.

Scotland will be having dinner at the Beefeater in Cannock next to the hotel. Table is booked at 7pm for 6 peeps so there's a few extra spaces for local shiters. Let me know here if you're attending in case I need to bump the booking up a bit. Beefeater Longford House Watling St Cannock December 31st 2022 1900hrs

What is the format for this version of Midlands Massiving? Do we meet for brekkie at the trucker's on the morning before heading to the railway? What time are we heading to said railway? Presumably the Bridgenorth end? Also seeing as there are now 2 Scottish parties attending, would anyone like to meet for dinner / drinks on the 31st?

A hotel room has been booked