Kates Journal

So, this was going to be a whiny depressed post. A fed up rant at all things DAF shaped, at myself for my desire to run classic cars as daily drivers, at the world for frustrating me every time I think I’m wining. That kind of tedious thing.

Why is this? Well, because this weekend an awesome band of wonderful people descended on Slough to aid and abet me in my classic car and MZ fetish. Enablers, one might call them. They rock. Nikki and Kate and John I’ve known for many years and they are known lovely people. Kate has overlooked my initial poor first impression (If I’d've written to Points of View I’d've been ‘angry of Colerne’), and is incredibly patient for someone with no interest whatsoever in classic cars with her partner’s interest and my obsession and came to Slough for a day which would be both long and involve very little of interest to her (she was also awesome because she helped Kathryn out).

Nikki has been mentioned many times, respected EV advocate she may be, but there lurks deep in her soul a dark secret. She still likes classic cars, even if they’ve got an Internal Combustion Engine. And while she’s not quite into the quirky bizarritude of classics that I am (Is it Communist? Is it Obscure and impossible to get new bits for? I’m in!) – she gathered her cadre and brought forth a person who I’d only met once before who possibly wins in the awesome stakes, because he injured himself in the call of getting someone he barely knows mobile in a non-ev.

John, for long time journal readers is a known fine gent. I recall him ferrying me back home after I had my wisdom teeth removed and while I was still under the effects of a general anesthetic. Despite me living 45 minutes from Bristol by that time and the fact it was snowing, he took me home and looked after me for the afternoon. He came, he soldered, and he went. He rocks too.

But Adam, Adam perhaps wins for helpfulness beyond the call of duty. I met him once, and between him, Nikki, Kate and John I felt a pining for Bristol. They are all part of what makes Bristol such a good place to live, and his generosity is proof that good human nature is extant. He came and helped out for an entire day to assist in rebuilding someone’s car who he’d barely met.

Between them they bring ‘rocking’ to a whole new level.

So why the rant?

Well, while disassembling and reassembling the engine I discovered this:

And the general response from the owner’s club was “you’d've noticed if it was a problem by now” – but let’s be honest, that relied on me actually doing my research properly, and I was slack. With the engine very hot it more or less runs on both cylinders, not well, but it does. Pulling the plug from either cylinder produced an engine that ran attrociously. I should, however, have done it when cold. Or looked at the plugs from both cylinders. When I stripped the engine I wasn’t certain how so much oil had ended up in the cylinder bore. I should have thought more about it.

We needed to move the Minor to extract the DAF from the drive. The minor wouldn’t start. I suspect that the fuel pump needs priming – two weeks of baking heat have presumably evaporated the fuel. That has never happened before, though, and was frustrating.

On reassembly of the DAF, on Saturday night, at around ten PM, the engine limped and dragged the car around at the speed of a sloath. It actually required people pushing the car to get it back up on the pavement. After the very unfortunate and expensive discovery that I was on an early shift yesterday, not, as I’d thought, a late (requiring in the end 2 taxis), I came back from work and looked at the car. John, from the club, suggested that the uneven running might be that it was still firing on one cylinder. It was.

Because the side with the cracked head? It’s full of oil. I can make the car run beautifully for about 30 seconds by cleaning the plug, after which the oil fouls it completely and that cylinder becomes a display only one. The car is not immobile, but not driveable. As I contemplated the rust that needs repairing, the miriad of problems it’s had (70k miles is not a huge amount, but I think the maintenance has left something to be desired) and my (perceived) manifold failures in decision making, I was feeling deeply frustrated.

I was feeling a little better today, having at least organised supply of a replacement head for not very much, but it wasn’t going to arrive for at least a week. I resigned myself to at least another week of hire cars, and prepared to go and collect the rental – and then couldn’t find my debit card. I swore and stomped around and cursed the world. Kathryn very sweetly put up with me, for reasons I can’t quite work out, rather than telling me to grow up, which is what I really should have done.

Having found it I went and collected the card, and came back to find an incredibly nice e-mail from another star of incredible proportions. A fine gent in Ireland offered to send me a spare 44 cylinder head, potentially such that it would arrive this week. Potentially enabling me to get the car back on the road at the end of the week. If I catch the colleague from work, the welding might be done, and lo, the DAF shall rise again. Hopefully I&A will ring soon with a “the car’s ready” message and all shall be right in the world. Ish.

Kathryn and I found this stove:

kicking around on the street near where I live. Sadly there was no-one in and it looks like they damaged it a little during it’s removal. But it’s almost certainly repairable, all there, and appears to have been left out for scrap.

If anyone wants it, give me a shout and see if I can sort it :) It’s a terrible shame for it to go to waste – it’d be ideal if someone’s doing a green/eco house project :)

1) Kathryn drives much more economically than me.
2) It took me much longer than it should to work out the DAF’s MPG. Given that I think she’s still not running quite right (mixture wise), and am pondering whether there’s some clutch slippage going on, we should be able to get better fuel economy from ‘em.

The result of the pondering is that a 1974 DAF 44 returns, with an economical driver, 38mpg (which equates to approximately a CO₂ rating of 194g/km (or, adjusting for how optimistic auto manufacturers are, about 155g/km). That latter ‘adjusted’ value is disconcertingly close to a Mini One.

But the government in their pseudo-green drive are scrapping cars that are just as green as the modern ones, discounting the energy required to build cars, and essentially are propping up companies that failed to adapt to changing market conditions with more environmental destruction. Thanks Labour. Don’t think you’ll be having my vote. You’ve actually driven me to voting for the Greens. Seriously. I never thought I’d do that.

Sadly, incidentally, there’ve been some classics which were casualties of the destructiveness of this government… Anyone who said Classics wouldn’t be affected want to reconsider that answer.

Anyhow.

In other news, I’ve been continuing to ponder the construction of an EV-DAF. Slightly prompted by Mr Clarkson’s annoying take on the (probably awful, but his whining about all EVs and his belief that climate change is all in everyone-elses heads make me want to recommend it anyhow) Honda Insight Mk II*. I knew it’d been done before, albeit somewhat badly – Nikki B, of the a minor journey EV blog & appearances on EV cast waved it at me a while ago – essentially, this conversion consisted of a Milkfloat motor dropped into a DAF with some scaffold board to support it. That the owner claimed it moved at all was no mean feat.

What I didn’t realise is that it’d been done somewhat more thoroughly somewhat earlier; twice. Shell used the cute little DAF to build a Fuel Cell Hybrid (yes, seriously) in the 60s.

I wonder if the technology of producing an extremely poor energy carrier for nothing is close to maturation yet ;)

Apparently it wasn’t great – but what do you expect from 60’s fuel cell and electric motor technology? The colour choice was good though :)

What was more interesting still (although the photo was very cool) was that there were two independent companies that built DAF 44 EVs in the states (in the 70s). CHW, in Athol, MA. (who later became ‘ElectriCar’ – and seem to have disappeared) and a company called EV Propulsion. Although the DCA chap has figures for CHW’s cars (around 60 produced) he didn’t mention how many EV Propulsion converted… But that, lack of money, time, space, and plans to do it in a vague and hazy future haven’t stopped me mailing them.

Still, there’s plenty to keep me entertained on them as it is. Vixy’s off to an actual factual garage to have the brakes done, although I’m going to have a little go at mixture again tomorrow, having invested in a colortune. I’m also going to give her actual new spark-plugs. We’ll see how that whole thing goes. Her new door should arrive in a couple of days time too, just a case of spraying it to, uh, match and fitting it. I’m looking forward to her having a window winder that works :)

Jejy’s new wheel bearing is sat in the lounge too, all ready to be fitted, and I’ve got a ’source’ hopefully tracking down a silencer (or two), wheels and some clutch shoes to re-con. The new drum and inlet manifold have arrived, so that’s all shiny. Lots of work to do there…

I’ve got a quote for fetching the ‘zed from my mum’s to here. I think I’ll go make it accessible, and then get the couriers to bring it over.

Unrelated but very, very good: We were sat in the garden and one of the birds (?sparrow) decided it didn’t want to wait until we vacated the area – and hopped around a few feet from us (literally, 2-3 feet), fairly much disregarding us. It was really just incredible.

Unrelated but very, very bad: Change we can’t believe in.

* I always rather liked the look of the Mark I, although tbh I want an EV that looks all futuristic and modern, not a Hybrid. Basically I want an EV1. Yes, I’m still whining.

So, we’ve been meaning to go for a walk, and today, the weather was good enough that we could take the coats and go. A few days ago – well about a week ago – when I took Vixy out for a spin (I guess, almost literally given the state of the brakes) – I found that we’re actually about 20 minutes from really pretty countryside. Really pretty.

So today, dans le minor, we headed out into the wilds of the environs of Slough, armed only with raincoats, my FF’s (and Kathryn’s walking boots) and a camera. We came back with some pretty pictures and some nice memories.

It’s teh pretty out there.

Set here.

Be gentle, I’ve not been able to take the camera out for months, so this is the first time I’ve been out in the wild with new batteries :)

Not all car stuff today; to skip the car stuff just scroll down to where it proclaims that car stuff endeth. :)

So, today I shuffled the cars to get the Minor on the drive, and whipped off the ill-fitting exhaust, separated the 45 degree segment at the base of the downpipe (which I spent about 40 minutes attacking last time with ‘penetrating oil’, this time I got the Plus-Gas on it, and the thing just came apart. Simple as that). Then, with Kathryn’s help, we reattached the exhaust.

Only took from 11am to 3pm. I’m not very good at exhaust fitting, and having done it we drove into town and… it’s rattling against something at the back. Usually this is the exhaust hitting the fuel tank; not a soothing noise at the best of times; so that’s something to attack later.

Then I spent about half an hour adjusting the mixture. She’s been running rich and idling too high. A bit of a tweak to that and she’s now idling at a much more sensible speed and lord knows what the mixture’s doing. I suck at setting carbs up, I keep meaning to buy a colortune to aid in my attrociousness. The DAFs have a much more ‘relaxed’ carb than the HiF44 in the Minor, which is slightly worn (not terribly so, she doesn’t hunt horribly at idle) and which has proper mixture adjustment.

Still, she’s running okay, so I’m going to presume it’s alright for the minute.

Next week will be more car stuff, hopefully, in so far as I’m hoping that the brake bits will arrive for Jejy and Vixy and we can get them assembled.

Then comes the difficult decision, which of the cars to take on holiday with us. We’re looking at around 1000 miles plus whatever motoring we do while we’re there. The minor’s swivel pins are worn, but I don’t know how badly. Jejy’s a big no-no, without the new clutch drum she’s not going anywhere far (so that’s easy), but Vixy? Vixy’s kind of an unknown quantity. Unknown quantities aren’t good for holiday relaxing, I find, but on the other hand she’s been recently serviced by a garage, she’ll have new brakes, she’s got a spare pair of belts in the boot…

…and only 21k on the clock.

We’ll see.

Anyway, hopefully we’ll have less car-posts for y’all once this is done. Then we can return to the ‘house posts’

car stuff endeth here

Mind you, I ought to do a garden post because the garden is *awesome*. Kathryn spent time today breaking up soil and prepping it, then planted some of our wild-flower seeds; she’s hacked down pruned the buddleia, out the front, which officially needs to be dug up and moved into the raised bed at the front, but since the builders haven’t quoted (or contacted me) then, uh, that’s not quite happening yet. The back garden is looking really very nice; when she takes the photos off her camera and flickr’s them I’ll linky.

It is just amazing to look at the ground and go ‘my god, they’re beans. They are our beans, that we planted and they’re growing. I could get quite into gardening, I fear. It’s really lovely though, to go out there, in the nice weather we’ve been having and see plants we planted growing, and indeed growing well. It’s not like either of us is particularly ‘green fingered’, but we’ve got good soil, and my mum’s around to help and advise us (and Kathryn’s mom is available for advice too :) ) and it’s come together to be a really restful place, potentially.

And the lie and deception which is the gravel-over-concrete path appears to be working.

Anyhow, now it’s time to make dinner. So I shall scoot.