Yellow Submarine

The plan was simple - the best plans always are. 1/2 doz blokes with open cars meet up in the early early morning, go for a drive through some scenery & eat a hearty breakfast by the coast. Nice.

The first thing to go wrong was the weather, the Met Office was forecasting three spots of rain, the most there can be apparently, but in a wide circle, outside our area-of-interest. The next problem got me up at 04:20 with shocking heartburn, but it seemed dry at least - until I sat down with a hot drink, then the precipitation alarm - otherwise known as the conservatory roof - thundered into life. I decided I'd cancel. Then I decided I fancied taking the car out, & it wouldn't keep up this level of deluge for long. I went back to bed, but still couldn't sleep, so at about 06:30 I set off for the meet point - having changed my mind back & forth at least another five times.

It was raining, so I swapped the deflectors for the full side windows, put up the roof & headed out onto the dark. Pretty quickly I realised what I was up against & just how good modern cars are in inclement weather. The Fury was reasonably watertight in kit car terms - from the rain at least. The real problem was seeing & heading in the direction I was seeing.

Aquaplaning is a scary thing & the darkness & long bonnet meant there was very little indication of large areas of standing water until the steering went light & the brakes didn't work anymore. As you can imagine, I kept the speed down & was 15 mins late at the rendezvous. So having filled the car up with fuel & still the others hadn't arrived I assumed (wrongly) that they'd left. So I deleted a few waypoints from the route - intending to intercept them before the breakfast venue, fired up the Zetec & headed off - slowly.

The gloom was lifting by now, but the hammering rain meant that large pools of standing water were indistinguishable from tarmac. I rumbled along a dual carriageway being overtaken by small hatchbacks & 4x4s, I was sure I could feel them smirking. Still being indecisive I turned round & changed my route several more times before giving up & plotting a course directly for the café.

The satnav had warned me it was on a gravel track, so when it directed me along a narrow unmettalled alley at the end of a residential road I was not concerned (except for my sump) & rumbled right to the end - where I found NO café & NO space to turn round. Reversing the Fury with a five point harness is a challenge normally, with the hood up, the side screens misted & the mirrors covered in rain, it was an impossibility, so I managed a 15 point turn & arrived back at the end of the alley, only to see a large sign saying "BLUEBIRD CAFÉ THIS WAY" pointing along the ADJACENT gravel track. A casual observer may have noticed my usual good humour failing at this point.

The new track led to a large gravel car park, at least I expect it was gravel. The parts of it that were visible above the water-level were gravel. I negotiated my way along a relatively dry(ish) bit, before being forced to take the plunge with some of the wider pools & arrived nose first at the café wall. Then - thinking ahead for once, I turned the car round to point down-hill. That way the water ran to the front of the foot-wells so it could be mopped out. The café was nice & the full house breakfast was warm & large, just what I needed. As I sat there eating the rain lashed at the window & ran down it at 45deg - and two joggers went past.

I sent a text to one of the SKCC:- "I'm at the café - where are you", the answer came back "surely you're joking". Having eaten, drunk, admired the view of the sea & taken as many serviettes as was seemly, I sallied forth. After mopping the floors, I once again attempted to navigate the wild waters of the carpark.

Making straight for home, I was now presented with a new hazard. Being much lighter (the morning - not me, I was much heavier) I could easily see the standing water, but so could the abundant 4x4s which seemed intent on submerging the fury, Time & again I had torrents of muddy water running UP the windscreen just after something had gone the other way. Also the water was no longer standing but going off on journeys of it's own, on several occasions I was following the turbid surface of what was presumably a road by looking for the regularly spaced "wakes" coming off the cats-eyes. I navigated these areas with a lot of throttle & very little speed. But to the Fury's credit, the engine never missed a beat, & the electric heated screen stayed clear in spite of the car filling with steam finding it's way in from the exhaust pod.

Finally I was on the home straight, but approaching Guildford, the traffic came to a halt, then moved a little, then a little more. After a while the cause became clear, a deep flood from kerb to kerb meant the cars were restricted to tidal flow. I inched forward with the engine racing & predictably a gaggle of 4x4s came the other way at 30 sending white (& brown) water cascading up the screen & slamming into the side windows. Nice.

I got home safe enough & pretty dry except for my turn-ups which had made a sterling effort to soak up the water in the foot wells, but I still managed to get another pint out of each.

Hopefully the car will have dried out by the next time I see it on Thursday. I'll have to give it a good coat-of-looking-at to see if it's come to any harm.

The video from this adventure is here should you ever decide that "Titanic" wasn't enough watery disaster movie for you.

At Last

Finally got out on another blat - just a short one round western Surrey.
The last two attempts were thwarted, firstly by the car refusing to start - my own fault, I'd been adjusting the headlights, which needed them on for quite a while, then to check the battery was OK I started the engine, then satisfied, I left it for a week & went to Chester. Of course starting the engine had used the last of the battery. The second fail was my own decision as my wife was tending to the damned 'orse, so I chose to stay at home to provide some parental attention for daughter the younger - & indeed we had a reasonably pleasant morning getting her homework sorted & suchlikes.

So, back at the point. It was to be a short, very local & roughly Africa shaped blat, Newlands back to Newlands, only 58 miles.

 

The meet time was set for 07:00, I set off from home & arrived at the departure gate thinking "surely that's not SNOW??" GB was already there & within a few minutes three other blatters had rolled up - without exception, as they dismounted they said "surely that's not SNOW??". It was, only a very light flurry or two & certainly nothing to stop us heading out. But at his time on the last morning of British Summer Time it was still DARK, the sky had begun to lighten, but basically it was DARK. So we rolled down the long hill in loose formation, testing the tarmac for grip & wetness. The first stop was the lights on the A246. Five fast cars, an empty dual carriageway, traffic lights on red. This was only ever going to go one way. After the opportunity to "arrange the cars in speed order", we took to the lanes, I was running second at this point, I don't like leading because I ALWAYS mis-read the sat-nav. But when the lead car went straight on when my route pointed left, I ended up leading anyway - briefly - because after about three miles I did exactly the same thing, dumping myself back to the tail-gunner position.

There were the usual SKCC "events", we rounded a fast corner, to find a Tractor cutting a hedge & COMPLETELY blocking the road - at 07:30 on a dark Saturday morning, but by dint of quick reactions & good brakes, disaster was averted & I reversed back round the corner with hazards a flashing in case anyone else should happen along, the tractor driver kindly pulled over & off we went waving our thanks.

 

Apart from another Sat-nav induced formation turn around (on the map above you can see it to the north of "Madagascar") we had a good blat. Very little traffic, good (if bumpy at times) roads, but VERY cold. Unusually we all managed to keep together in a group, & arrived to park up in formation back at Newlands just as the food shack was opening - Hurrah. As this is very much an outdoors type establishment, there are no plates or cutlery, so I indulged in cheeseburger & chips, with the largest coffee they could manage - I wasn't thirsty, I wanted it as a makeshift hot water bottle.

 

 As we stood about bantering about the run & being disparaging about almost anyone who wasn't there (as you do) some of the gentlemen of the Surrey Constabulary - having quaffed their hot beverages - ambled past, nodded at the roofless & mostly screenless cars & said "bit cold for that isn't it?" "No" I answered, shuffling into the watery early sun, "at seven o'clock this morning it was quite cold for this, now it's quite pleasant."
To prove the point I took the Fury up the A3 to my brother's house in the afternoon, so that counts as a good day in my book.

Another Cheque!!

Having been exasperated by the insurance Co.s penny pinching attitude I gave them "some valued customer feedback" in an e-mail that may well have exploded if not handled with care & I also forwarded the same to the Broker for information. I say Broker with a capital as this particular one is worthy of considerable respect. My previous experience of insurance brokers is that they are not only entirely useless, but also lower-than-a-snake's-bollo belly. However Barry at "Frank Pickles" deserves nothing but praise & has sorted out any problems I've had with efficiency & good humour. Sure enough a cheque for the princely sum of £26 floated lightly onto my mat within two days of me writing the e-mail. I know it seems a bit mean, being only £26, but I was very miffed that by prudent purchasing I'd saved them £500, but £26 had to be shaved off the labour charge because that's what a guy who saw the car in a damaged state for about ten minutes said.

Anyway, might be blatting again this weekend - hoorah

A Cheque!

The on-going saga of the insurance claim might be entering it's closing phase.

Having been working away for some weeks, it was difficult to get the necessary paperwork together, but eventually it was all sent in & guess what - a cheque arrived! To be fair, Equity did send me a cheque for the recovery immediately after my last outburst, so this was the cheque for the repairs. Hurrah.

On the other hand, from a customer service point of view it’s still not an entirely rosy picture.

Way back, an insurance assessor saw the car, took my estimate, then for some reason fabricated something entirely different & gave authority to proceed with the repair. His estimate was way over what I’d asked for with regard to parts & he’d included a figure of £224 for labour. The total payout by his estimate would be around £2000.

Before paying out for the repair, the insurance Co. wanted an invoice including receipts for the parts, so I sent all that off showing the much lower cost of parts & asking for a nominal £250 for the labour – probably only because I couldn’t remember the actual figure.

The total repair value stood at around £1500, so a £500 saving over the assessor’s estimate.

Yesterday I received a cheque for the parts - & £224 for the labour as that’s what the assessor had said. The princely sum of £26 less than I’d asked for - 10/10 for saving the Co. money, but minus several thousand for irritating the customer.

Last night I sent an e-mail detailing the time taken for every stage of the repair, & pointing out that I’m a mechanical engineer by trade & my employer charges £70/hr for my time, so the labour bill should have been £2030 - & that would amount to a 20% saving as I’m not VAT registered. Even using a more normal motor trade rate of £50/hr, the bill would have been £1450.

 So would they please pay my very reasonable request of £250 (£8.62/hr).

Of course the real irony is that it will cost Equity more than the £26 saving to have someone read my e-mail (it was deliberately quite long) & write a cheque.

 

Let's see what happens.

Back On The Road

With the situation at work not improving (I'm owed £2,500 in unpaid expenses & overtime) I decided to take a week off. This was not as productive a time as I'd hoped as there was a lot of family stuff going on. But, by the end of the week I'd finished the rear valance, fitted the headlamp trim rings & aero covers & as a finale I smeared some goopy stuff called "wunderseal" to the inside of the front wings to stop stones thrown up by the wheels cracking the bonnet.

As a reward for all this effort I went out on a car run on Sunday.It was a bit of a trek over to Kent, but it's a long time since I did a car run so well worth it. There was a P.A.M. (Puckered Ar5e Moment) when two of us were barrelling merrily along a country lane with the sun in our faces, about to plunge into a dark "tree tunnel" when an ENORMOUS tractor emerged unlit from the gloom. There was much standing on brakes & no harm was done. A little extra laundry perhaps, but no actual harm.

Grilleing

Hello good people of Blogland, it's been a while since I posted, because it's been a while since I had anything to post. But I have news at last.

In one of the previous missives I may have suggested that my job was not all it should be - well that's got worse, so I'll not mention it again for fear of this becoming a rant. I shall confine my ramblings to the car.

I've fitted a front grille, much as before it's well inside the "mouth" of the car, so the grille wires don't reduce the area for air to pass, & it's all painted black so it can't be seen. I've also almost finished the rear valance infill panel. as the GRP is so thin - less that a mm - it distorted out of shape after it was cut, so to avoid a wobbly edge where it met the existing shell, I've cut a series of vents & grilled them, so it only gets close to the shell where it's bolted. It looks like this:-


From the inside showing the grilles clamped for glueing

From the outside, the centre bay needs a little more paint

Adventures In Sub-Contracting

So how can I describe the last few weeks dear reader? It’s certainly been one of the more “interesting” months. When I last contributed to the blogosphere, I believe I was in Lanzerote suffering the oppressive heat, well on the way home a row with the elder daughter blew up out of nowhere & as I had to be up early the very next day to travel to Chester, the resulting “atmosphere” could still be cut with an axe (just – if it was a big axe) the following weekend – nice. However, relations slowly returned to normal (that’s from non-existent to merely “strained”), not helped in the least by my time in Chester being “less than successful”.

My employer’s plan was that I would do a spot of production trouble-shooting at the customer’s factory, but these things rarely work to plan & by the end of week one I had a log-on, but little else.

There were other factors, the B&B was best described as “the land the ‘70s forgot” with something of a flowery theme going on, a great many mirror tiles (not on the ceiling – not that kind of establishment) & “eternal beau” crockery like what my Mum had. WiFi was clearly not going to be an option when the standard of the wiring was set in the ’30s (round Bakelite switches & an open junction box in the shower room). But all that was OK, the irritating thing was my employers travel dep’t repeatedly asking my travelling companion & I if we were SURE we wouldn’t be happy to share a room. For a question like that, one “absolutely not” really ought to get the message across.

On to week two & straight in with the problems, no hire car. A brief investigation by my boss showed that the travel dep’t had forgotten to order one. By the time that was sorted & I’d picked up my compatriot, we were late – very late, it was just gone 16:00 when we arrived at the plant to find that no-one had booked us in with security & everyone who could get us on site had gone home. But with relations at home thawing, a much better B&B & the IT sorted at the plant things would be better yes? – well, sort of. We had health & safety presentations for all the appropriate parts of the factory, we checked our access to the various systems we’d need & then we sat waiting for something to happen – which it failed to do. Added to this the “much better” B&B only had two rooms for one night, so we had to get another B&B sorted. On the up-side, Chester is a fantastic place & I urge you to visit should you get the chance. A little like Winchester, a little like York, a higgledy piggledy mish-mash of architectural styles from Roman to modern post-brutalism, with any one stretch of buildings having most of them cheek-by-jowl.

Week three has started every bit as well, with us arriving to be told that we wouldn’t be allowed on site as security paperwork hadn’t come through. So we went to find the B&B. Actually I should say we went to find the guest house, as this week’s establishment was named after one of the royal palaces & had an attitude to match. The front door was locked & prominently bore a sign which read “our carpets are clean & pale, please remove your outdoor shoes in the porch, slippers will be provided”. We rang the bell & the lady of the hose allowed us as far as the porch, managed to remind us to take our shoes off three times while introducing us to the town we’d been in for two weeks & barred the door to the house proper all at the same time (she was clearly a professional). Having removed footwear & gained access one couldn’t fail to be struck by the very large photo of our hostess meeting the Duke of Edinburgh (about twenty years ago by the look of it). We enquired about breakfast – there was obviously to be no budging her from “breakfast is served from 8:30”, but we were offered instead cereal & milk left out the night before.

As it turned out a later breakfast would’ve been OK as the gates to our employer’s premises were still locked when we arrived at 07:15. Later that day we did get into the customer site at about 11:00, but over the weekend the PC I’d been using had become the subject of a custardy battle between my employer & my customer, it seemed I was to be denied access. This restricted what I was able to do down to just about nothing & it looks like I won’t see a PC until Week four at the earliest.

So not the best start to a contract then, but on Wednesday of week three, passes arrived, which meant our e-mail addresses got sorted, computers arrived – but were apparently the wrong type –so were taken away again. Little by little we’re getting there. Next week we’re back in the “much better” B&B where they are more used to the lower classes & so have WiFi & serve breakfast from 07:00. Maybe we’ll be able to get started on the job we were sent here to do three weeks ago. Fingers crossed.