Kates Journal

I promise, it’s not all car stuff. Skip the first 3 paragraphs to skip the car talk.

It has, by my standards, been a while since I updated. This is because I’ve been busy and/or tired – having come off nights my body’s been rebelling; not wholly unusual, but not that common either. We’ve singularly failed to achieve the positively huge amount of work we needed to do on the house this week; but Jejy is sporting a new front wheel bearing and her exhaust is only leaking a bit now; Vixy has been to the garage and returned with new wheel cylinders. Vixy’s also sporting two brand new spark plugs, it looked like she was running ‘a bit rich’ – so that’s been tweaked (the new gunson fuel-mixture-doojit has been tried out – and as someone once said to me ‘the mixture screw’s really not very fine adjustment on a DAF’; 7 screws in (more lean) and it was continuing to show a pale blue flame – which is what it ’should’ be – but it said that when I started adjusting it; the plugs said she was running rich, so I made her run more lean.

I think she might be a bit easier to start. The huge, vast, enormous hole I discovered in her exhaust does worry me a bit. I slathered half a tin of Gun-Gum on it, and that was no-where near enough. I’m still holding out for the DAF person on my mobile to message me and proclaim he’s found one (or two) silencers. That would help.

Jejy continues to burn the output of OPEC. The parts for Rebecca’s gearbox continue to be MIA and ESM still list king pins as ‘hopefully end of may / june 2009′.

Anyhow.

What we have done, or at least did do, yesterday with our week off was spend a day in London. This was, of course, not because we had a sudden desire to spend the day in London; but instead because my allergy clinic appointment was due. I’d expected that, as usual when I go off anti-histamines the day would be spent with me having streaming eyes and nose, and being fundamentally miserable.

It was not the case.

I’ve been more or less the same – itchy eyes – a bit more sneezy, but not desperate. That’s pretty much been the case all this year; I’m not quite sure why. Pollen counts may be lower… anyhow. So rather than waste a travelcard on a simple trip in and out we decided to head into London for a bit of a wander. First up we hit a shop I’ve been dying to take Kathryn to, it’s a chocolate shop which has an incredibly good reputation; since reading an article on Boing Boing last year – we’d made it to the door – but he’d been shut that day and we could only gaze at the temptation within.

Anyway, this time we made it in to Paul A Young Fine Chocolates and well worth it, the trek was, if I say so myself. I’m not a big chocolate person, in fact, I generally don’t buy it myself; I buy it for Kathryn because I know she adores it. I don’t eat much dark chocolate because I’m a heathen, and so for me to recommend a chocolate shop it’s got to be pretty damn excellent. The chocolates were delicious. Dark chocolate and delicious, words I do not commonly put in the same sentence. We had dark chocolate truffles; and I got Kathryn some seconds, which she’s not tried yet (and therefore I’ve not tried either).

Comes highly recommended.

Anyhow, then we headed over to Borough Market – down by Guy’s Hospital (where the allergy appointment is). We could have spent so much there.

We ended up having Pie for lunch (PIE!) from thePieminster stall, fruit juice from another stall; coffee and tea from two further stalls, buying artisan baked bread to bring home (and some fruit beers (from belgium, I think)); and resisting the temptation to spend more simply because it would have to sit in a warm hospital for a couple of hours. It is always delightful to spend time in these markets, around people who care about the food they produce and sell, who know their products, and who aren’t just in it for the money.

The coffee was excellent by the way.

Despite being close we didn’t go to Neal’s Yard Dairy. This is probably fortunate. I didn’t even buy any cheese from the many cheese retailers, because I’m very good. And it’d've got spoilt.

Having munched our lunches sat on the grass by Southwark Cathedral we headed off to my appointment to get jabbed with pointy pointy needles.

The interesting (and very surprising) upshot of which is that I’m going to have immunotherapy to try and coax my immune system to stop overzealously attacking pollen, but it appears to only be pollen I’m allergic to. The other thing I’m potentially allergic to, or which is exacerbating somewhat my allergy symptoms is, rather worryingly, my medication.

Oops.

I’m hoping to organise a trip to my endocrinologist, and we’ll discuss if I should change my meds, and whether it’s worth trying or not. It would be nice not to be gunky all year round.

After we left, and because the clinic was running somewhat behind (it’s okay, I’d brought my copy of The Fifth Elephant (spoilers) which I picked up from a charity shop, an unsigned first edition!), we thought we’d head to the Tate Modern; unfortunately we arrived just in time to see it close. Having decided to stay in London for the evening we uhm’d and ah’d and at the possibility of seeing a play at The Globe. Eventually we decided to at least see what play was on (since three were listed as currently playing) and found out that it was The Comedy Of Errors – which sounded entertaining, unfortunately they were sold out. Fortunately, they informed us that the person sat over there has two tickets to sell. Please buy them outside the theatre if you do want to buy them.

After some more debate, we plumped for forking out the 30 quid for the seats, and watched a very entertaining Shakespeare comedy before eating out at Pizza Express. Thanks to not realising that Blackfriars tube’s shut (uh, ’til 2011, so we decided not to wait) we unfortunately missed the last train back to our little local station, leading us (well me) to curse First Great Western’s lackadaisical approach to transporting people on their trains (and don’t get me started on their ‘replacement bus services’), which was a bit of a shame after such a pleasant day…

…and meant we got home at one am. And now I feel old, because a few days of late nights and I’m comprehensively tired…

DAF pictures are here.
Food pictures are here and here.
Garden birds are here.

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, nights are bad. They stress your body, they stress your mind, they leave you drained and overtired. I find that I get into the ’swing’ fairly quickly, for the most part; but I’m not quite there yet, and was feeling undeservedly pissy at the vehicles. Mostly because despite throwing most of a tin of gun-gum at Vixy she was still clearly blowing a huge amount. Ironically, Jejy seems much quieter – most of her exhaust now consisting of gun-gum.

However, a moment’s tired contemplation reminded me of the unreasonableness of this. Between the two (DAF) cars and the motorbike I’ve spent around 1k over the year. For that we’ve acquired 2 MOT’d, Taxed vehicles which – while not exactly show-winning and certainly requiring more work – are being cajoled, poked, prodded and coaxed into being vehicles we can used daily.

The fact that they have some reliability issues, and some of the flakey 30 year old parts are disintegrating is not really unexpected in cars being run on a budget appropriate for push-bikes.

So. That in mind, I spent a little time laying under Vixy with the gun-gum this morning – and found that the exit from the silencer appears to be…mostly gone, and is now mostly gun-gum :-/

Really I think I need two complete exhaust systems – but we’ll patch it up as long as we can, eh?

As a side point, this made me want to build my classic EV again. I even poked at ebay.fr to see if there were any cheap left-hooker DAFs on there, but I think I really want ebay.nl. Hey, it was 3am, I can’t afford it, don’t have the time or space, but I can imagine eh? CVT EV DAF? Got to be done.

…but this seems a little unfair.

I’d been hoping to ride Cherry (Red ‘zed) until the tax ran out, the MOT expiring shortly afterwards. The slight and occasional clatter from the top end telling me more than I needed to know about how sick the engine truly is (‘cos she’s had a top end, less than 5000km ago).

Another week and I’d've been happy.

And I’m used to random bits dropping off a ‘zed. It’s normal. Usually they’re retrievable or they’re easy to replace. But today she had to show off. It’s easy to replace, if you’ve got the time, being only a bolt. Probably an M14 bolt. Only, it’s a specific length, and I don’t happen to have one spare. It’s also the bolt that holds the exhaust on.

Thankfully she opted for dropping the exhaust less than a mile from home, and with some careful propage I could ride home, albeit somewhat noisily.

I guess it’s time to retrieve and wire up Charlie. Lord knows when I’ll get the chance to do that. Soon, though, I hope. Because the fleet is rapidly diminishing in size.

Well, I think I’m getting better at this staying up before nights m’larkey. I read some of my exciting Minor Injuries book (although I’m still reading about how Nurse Practitioners need to tread a fine line between nursing and not-being-doctors) – it’s kind of scary actually. Suddenly my ‘you should’ve gone to the GP’ lecture would be redundant – were I trained enough to be an NP. I’m not, though, so you can still expect that if you come to the ED with your 6 month old ache because ‘I was just passing and thought I should get it checked out’.

Yuh hu.

Anyhow, so I’ve just finished reading Trek (by Paul Stewart) – apparently it’s a slightly inaccurate rendition of an attempt to cross the Sahara in the trusty Morris Minor – I admit, while I’d've probably been intrigued by it, it’d've probably not made it on to my big-ol’-list-of-things-I-want had it not have featured a moggie. At any rate, in reality it is only the small car nature of the Moggie which really features, it could have been any 1950s small family saloon; the book itself is really about the people and the challenge.

It’s interesting, in a way, too, because it features the Empire, that which has disappeared from view and to me (and possibly most people my age) is something so distant and unrelated to the modern world that it’s hard to imagine. It’s funny to think that I have been on this Earth longer than the ‘British Empire’ ceased to exist before I was born.

The very idea of a British Empire seems faintly absurd, we’re tiny, after all – and while I joke about countries which ‘used to be ours’ and the concept that ‘we used to own that’ – as I kind of marker for many strange things in the world, I somehow forget that the joke is based in a really quite disturbing reality. That as a nation Britain did some really terrible subjugating of other countries. What is also interesting, however, is reading the flip-side of the history. The presentation of which makes Britain seem like less of a terrible empire builder, at least, in some ways.

Anyhow, the book doesn’t need an interest in Minors to make it interesting; it does require a suspension of disbelief. I am going for ‘fictionalised around real events’, either that or Peter’s diary was way more detailed than the direct exerpts suggest. Nikki did say to not look too deeply, and I’m not.

In other news, I’m continuing to watch ‘The Wire’, season 2 of which is proving interesting too; it’s silly of me to choose to watch it, I’ve got rather a lot of work to do, and tomorrow – prior to work – needs to be a paperwork day. I have also realised, somewhat unfortunately, that Trek, being newly purchased (but second hand, I promise!) doesn’t really fit into our overburdened bookshelves. Capacious they are not. Carefully organised they are, at least since we took ‘em down and put ‘em back.

And in other, other news, okcupid continues to send me ‘friend matches’ and one, possibly two, of them look like interesting and not vastly non-local people (London, unsurprisingly). I have mailed one, as part of a whole raft of ‘being nice to people and making friends’ ideas.

But now, since it’s past 3 in the morning I’m going to fall into bed. Wish me luck on the ‘morrow, for I return to the place of work where I can look forward to 12 hours of hard slog…