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Carvery lunacy


Saabnut

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Someone descibed these as the nearest thing to being in a low flying jet..

 

Was there another one, which had two wheels and an enclosed cabin, so like a bike, but when you came to a stop two stabilisers dropped out of the side?

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Well, back home so time for an update. My phone battery is very dead so the phone worked when it felt like it, which was not often, but it limited photo opportunities. The weekend began with a meeting of Carverists at my friend Alans farm. Alan is a fairly regular feature on this very forum, in the ebay tat thread, as he is the "Gentleman Farmer£ who is reducing his lifelong collection of old tat. He still has over 300 to go though.... After the usual tea and pleasantries, a tour of the sheds followed and arrangements made to meet on the Saturday morning, although the orange Carver had to head back to Yorkshire, it was replaced with the second white one, so 5 carvers made up our group. Alan gave me piloting lessons in his Carver, and it was everything I had hoped for. Nearest thing to flying a plane on the road is a good description, the surprise was the amount of lean at low speeds. In normal mode the lean starts at 5 mph and in sport mode (the default position) it starts at 3 mph. The maximum tilt angle is 45 degrees.

Powered by the Daihatsu 660cc Turbo engine and gearbox (a la Copen) they have a top speed of 115mph and a 0-60 of 8 seconds. Over the weekend we averaged 45mpg. Driving the Carver is so very different to normal cars, I opted to be the passenger and leave the driving to Alan as the others in the group were all experienced and spirited driving is where these come into their own, and I would have only slowed things down. I have the promise of more practice for the next run. Being a passenger is interesting, your feet are up on rests, one on the door, in a stirrup position and movement once in is severely limited. As a result a stop is required every hour or so else the cramp sets in, but being a passenger with a good driver and several others to watch around the bends is probably the best way to enjoy a Carver for the novice!

Saturday we met up in Cockermouth and made our way up to Coldstream via many varied and twisty back roads to enjoy the Carvers to their best. Weather was great and a good time was had by all. We did however find the worst hotel in the known universe in Coldstream which at least gave us a few laughs.

Sunday started off sunny again, and stayed that way and we continued up via countryside and coast (and a bit of hell that is the Edinburgh bypass on a Sunday) before ending up at Moffat. Unfortunately on the final run down to Moffat (literally on the big hill on the A7) we had our only casualty of the trip when the clutch slave cylinder on the red one literally fell apart. The cylinder on these are a complicated unit and somehow managed to unscrew itself into 2 halves. We managed to get it down to Moffat sans clutch and it was recovered from there to the Carver specialist in Wales.

A couple of points from posts above, the red one spotted in Yorkshire lives in that area and is the red one on this run. The Carver Owners Club and specialist are based in Wales, not that far from DW.

Anyway, this has been far too much typing from me, a couple of really poor photos I took when the phone was working, including the obligatory pez shot at a Citroen garage with a forecourt full of  Carvers, though my transport is hiding in the shadows. A great weekend with lovely people and if anyone wants to know more, the web site is at www.cvr-oc.info

 

 

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Good man. Should be easy to ruck in the corner of your sheds.

 

As for the BMW, they were called C1 and appear even worse than the frog car that stole their name.

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To answer the questions, there was a 2 wheel roofed bike by BMW (one of the Carver owners had owned two and said they were awful) and for Hooli, planning has started! :-D

 

Ah, that wasn't what I was thinking of, it was one of these:

 

An Ecomobile, an enclosed recumbrant motorbike!!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5EtFJ6k_hY

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