I'm out!

As letting out time approached yesterday afternoon the pain started increasing, until 6pm when i said i didn't think i was up to going home, so ended up staying in overnight again. I was put on some anti inflamitries (sp) and this got the pain down and i became quite comfortable. The hospital then had 3 power cuts, the entire hospital went out and the emergency generators didn't kick in! Luckily 2 of the cuts were very short, but the middle one lasted about 15-20 minutes! God knows what this meant for people in theater or on life supporting machines! I did hear a nurse say that a bleep went out to all doctors telling all available ones to go to ICU, so i assume there was some panic!

Anyway, its 10am wednesday morning and i'm standing in the car park waiting to be picked up but am 2nd in line after the xmas food from marks and spencers, hence this endless wittering! I feel better than i have since friday, and fairly comfortable, and just have to watch what poitions i stretch to as that can hurt. I'm keeping myself drugged up for a couple of weeks and hope to be back to full service in the new year. A bonus is i am not on antibiotics so can have a bit of xmas spirit!
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Weight reduction plan completed!

My bid to reduce the racing package weight is now complete! Rather than spending a fortune on light weight parts for the car, or the impossible act of the driver going on a diet, my appendix was removed some time after 11pm last night. I should have asked the surgeons to take a picture so i could put it on here!

Considering everything i don't feel too bad, although it does feel like i've been kicked in the stomach by the entire premiership league and my nuts feel like they have had bags of sand hanging off them for a few hours. Hopefully this is due to the operation and not the nut job finding his way back into my room last night while i was heavily sedated!

The drugs are giving me the weirdest and most vivid dreams. As i was coming round for the first time i dreamt i was a pissed santa claus holding a bottle in a brown paper bag and falling into load of kids, and it looked like it was set in a late 80's american family film! I've also dressed Nigel Mansel in tin cans.

As long as everything stay ok i'll be going home this evening, so i'd better hurry up and get my head back down and see who else i can meet in my drug fest sleep!

Oh and i opologise for the spelling and grammer, not my strongest point at the best of times, but doing this on my blackberry with a warped mind are definetly affecting it ;-)
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All Plans scuppered for xmas!!

Well all my best laid plans for the xmas holidays and early Jan have been wrecked! I'm currently lying in worcester hospital waiting to have my appendix removed! Its been a tricky liitle bugger! It put me in hospital for 2 days 6 weeks ago, but wasn't removed as it settled down, but last friday (first day of my xmas holiday) i woke with slight stomach pains. This slowly built while at son number 2's nativity performance and a joyful visit to sainsburys. By 3 oclock i was doubled up, at 4pm i called the doctor, at 5pm i saw the doctor but the horrific pain had died down and i could just about walk crunched up. The doctor refered me the surgeon at Worcester hospital but i would have to go to A&E, on the last friday night before xmas! This really did not appeal, and the pain was still there but was bearable. I decided to ride it out hoping it would pass like last time, but on saturday morning it was obvious i would have get myself down A&E

A&E was surprisingly pleasant, and within an hour and a half i was back on the same ward and same bed as 6 weeks ago. There is only one thing worse than pain, and thats the boredom of hospitals or maybe reading my blog??? So here i am 3 days later, still have my appendix and trying to chew my way out of the hospital walls! I've been x-rayed, prodded, scanned and had severaal fingers up my bottom and have finally been told its coming out at 10pm tonight, only to be told later it might not come out! So i guess i may be enjoying the pleasures of morphine tonight, or could just as easily be still chewing the walls!

One thing that will hopefully be different tonight is the unwanted bed activity on my ward! Last night i was moved to another room with just 2 beds in it (and private bathroom), great i thought, until i clapped eyes on the nut job i was sharing with! A bloke in his 70's with mad hair, and obviously not of the best mental health. He spoke some shit to me, but i just put my head phones on and he shut up. At about 11pm he decided to get out of bed for a wander, but then tried to get into bed with me! I directed him where to go and i hoped that would be the end of it. 10 mins later he stripped off completely and tried to get into bed with me again! I told him where his bed was. A few minutes later i see him crawling round the room on all 4's still starkers, after a few minutes of this he tried to get into my bed again! I had enough this time and bleeped the nurses, they all found it highly amusing, but got him dressed and back into bed. He did try again to get in the bed, but this time was fully clothed but did managed to get his arse onto the bed before i pushed him off! Then to top it off i heard him piss the bed at about 5am, and prayed he didn't try and make another move, lucky he didn't and has now been put in a room on his own!

So roll on tomorrow, hopefully the little sod will be out and i will be home before xmas!
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Chassis Rebuild

While at work i've been thinking about the chassis rebuild. I've been playing about with the idea of a bolt on front subframe. The idea is that it will make it easier to jig and build the chassis, but also make future repairs easier, with even an option of a changing the front end in the paddock if needs must. My biggest dilema is whether i should try and frig with the geometry to improve the handling or just copy what is there. My suspension design skill is zero, so i just worry that by trying to improve it, i will ruin it!!! At the moment i have knocked this up based on the standard geometry (this is WIP and has plenty of detail still to add)

Nice rear end!

Not much to see this week, just tidied up the the cut out and capped it all off with aluminum channel. The lower rear edge of the floor/body work was at 3 different levels after the framework had been removed, so using left overs from the frame work I have built it up to the same level and capping it off with 45mm steel angle. This will finish it off neatly and also give a hard wearing edge/step. I’ve also fitted a length of steel angle as a cross brace just below the cut out. This serves a few purposes, it strengthens up the rear body work, provides a lip to fit the rear garage shelf and upper bunkbed base to and also acts as a face for the rear doors to close onto. These 2 lengths are off to the galvanisers this week and will be fitted permanently with rivnuts and sikaflex

I have cut the doors to size and shape, and by adjusting the aluminum capping before I screw and glue it to the doors I should be able to construct 2 well fitting barn doors.

The Work Begins

This is my rough plan of the interior layout.

The Yellow block is the car, the silver block is the bathroom (still deciding if i want a full shower or not), the golden block is the kitchen and the blue blocks are the sofa/beds. There will be shelves behind the rear bunk, accessed from the rear doors of the van.

First job was to set up a water proof cover and get the doors off to see what i had to work with.

I need a gap of 1750mm to get the car into back of the van. After removing the rear doors and carpet covered aluminium internal panels i could see the main internal frame of the body. To my delight, the internal framework is made of stainless steel and obviously had no rust or corrosion. The rest of the dody is made from aluminium and fibreglass, so other than the floor i have no worries about corrosion on the main body. Just to the inside of each light there is an existing upright, so the plan was to cut the entire rear section out around this frame and build a steel and aluminium horsebox type door/ramp. But after designing it and looking at the weight and cost of it it i had to discount the idea and come up with something else.

Eventually we decided upon the way to go was to chop one of the existing doors down and hanging it from the top, so there would be access to high level shelving, and having 2 barn style doors below it to allow the car in, under the shelves/rear bunk bed. The rear barn doors are going to be made of GRP skinned ply as used in box van, catering vans and some horse boxes.

After some cutting, shutting and riveting the basic idea started to come together.

The lower opening has just been roughly cut out to see what is exactly there to work with. It will be trimmed back neatly to the frame upright and capped off with aluminium section and reusing the hinges and latches from the old doors to hang the new doors and the recobbled upper hatch

I have the GRP coated ply and aluminium capping ready and waiting to make the doors.

Its bigger than I imagined!!!

A 7.2 meters long and 2.2 meters wide the bus is a pretty large van!!!! Its drives great and you forget how big it is, but getting it into the allocated place to work on it at my parents was abit trickier than anticipated!!!! It took 1.5 hours to get in position, and required the removal of a bush and some very delicate driving. Unfortunately the drive was not quite long enough to get it in and shut the gate, or be visually acceptable by my mom!!! Fortunately my dad had a cunning plan using 2 steel work benches and some scaffolding he had spare!! As you can see from the photo, it gives great access for working on the engine, but was fairly scary driving the 2.2 ton truck into position!!!