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!!!

A BIG job!!!

Now i should be concentrating on getting the car ready, but after the Birkett i was totally cheesed off with camping!!! For the second half of this year i'd been constantly looking at motorhomes, touble is, i can't justify the cost of a decent one to the wife as she isn't that interested in getting one as "there are better things to spend our money on", if its just for racing then i could get an older one, but they are still fairly expensive for what is in essence a 15-20 year old van. If it was an old one the wife would never set foot in it, so buying it would be a completely selfish thing. So a fully converted motorhome is out of the question. I haven't got time to do a proper van conversion, and to be honest it doesn't give me exactly what i wanted. I'd looked at converting a 7.5 tonner, but the problem is i have nowhere to store it while doing the conversion. So i had virtually settled on a dropside transit with tail lift and a cheap caravan, it meant minimal work and was a damn site cheaper than motorhome. But whilst looking for said items i came across this:-

Its a Ducato 2.5T disabled city council bus. The beauty of it it is that its wider than a standard van and the Fury will actually fit inbetween the wheels arches. The rear double axle is on air suspension and at a touch of a button the back lowers only 300mm off the floor, so with some fairly short ramps the car will easily get up and inside. Once inside there is still room at the front for a fixed kitchen and bathroom. When the car is unloaded there will be fold out bench seats from the sides that will double up as 2 beds, and i will also have a fixed rear bunk and also a bed over the cab. This means it will sleep 5 (thats a bed each for all my trusty weekend warriors), but will also be capable of carrying everything to the event without towing a trailer.

Ok, the astute readers may have noticed the rear doors aren't exactly wide enough to get the car through, but i have a cunning plan involving a big cutting disk!!!

Build update to follow!!

End of 2009

What a fantastic year!!!! Racing has changed my life, I have met a fantastic group of like minded people and made many new friends, most of my spare time is spent either at race meets or preparing for the forth coming event, even when I’m busy doing something less important, such as work, my mind is else where thinking of the next modification or the list of jobs to do. I am already waiting for the fixture list for next year, hoping and praying that it will not collide with anything I can’t get out of (i.e. sister-in-laws wedding) and planning how to ensure everything else will fit in around the schedule. I recently described to a friend that racing is like being an alcoholic for me, its all I think about, everything else has to revolve around it, if I'm not racing I'm thinking of where and when I can get my next one, the wife hates what it does to me and is convinced it will kill me.

I have learnt a lot this season, but know I have a lot more to learn if I’m to get me up the front of class C. I started as a complete novice and progressed to finish the year with a few good qualifying grid starts, several top 10 finishes and 1 trophy (3^rd at Anglsey) which now sits proudly on the shelf in the kitchen. There have been a few occasions where my car could have become rather miss shaped and with only one majorish mechanical expense (gearbox rebuild) I consider myself to be very lucky. I know this can’t last forever, but if I have half as much fun next year I will still have a great 2010!!

A big thanks goes out to everyone in the RGB paddock for the friendly welcome, advice and help, with a special mention to Andy Bates for everything he brings and puts into the formula. And obviously not forgetting a massive thanks for all the help, prepping, support and general banter from a lads weekend away from William, Dad, Dan, Steve, Jack, Miles, Sally and all the other mates and colleagues who have come along to try and watch me compete or cook a BBQ!!

ROLL ON 2010

Now the work begins!!!!

Now the season is over, the car needs some general love and attention!

The following list is growing daily, but somethings have to be done before the start of 2010

1. Front end rebuild - Andys brilliantly paddock braised up front end really has to be replaced!
2. New body work - the last 2 or 3 races saw plenty of panel damage, and i'm sure there is more filler and patches than actual body work
3. Replace all fluids
4. New tyres
5. Full geo
6. New harnesses
7. Full strip down of all suspension and replace all worn parts
8. New plugs and general engine maintenance
9. New under tray and stronger flat rear tray
10. Evaluate springs/dampers - may replace

Other than buying the harnesses i haven't even looked at the car since the Birkett other than getting it off the trailer, but plans are to get started over the xmas holidays, wife permitting!!!

Birkett 2009 – Birth of Team RGB Pups

I’d been looking forward to this for months!!! A 6 hour relay race, 6 cars, 6 drivers and 55 teams and a massive array of cars!!! Bob and I decided to set our own team up, and pull in as many of the newbies of RGB as possible, and hence the name RGB Pups. There were 3 all RGB teams entered and another partly made up but RGB cars, plus Judy in her own team, so a very healthy showing by our formula!!

Team RGB Pups:-

Bob Mortimer

Austen Greenway

James Walker

Andy Cunningham

Rob Grants

Paul Rickers

Now if you look through the list and know anything about how the racing in 2009 panned out, it would be fairly safe to assume, there was a very good chance that at least half the team wouldn’t finish the event due to one problem or another! So an exciting 24 hours was in prospect! We Had also drafted in Tim Cheney to be a our team manager, plus various other dogs bodies to help us run the team.

As it was being held on the international circuit I thought it best to book the extortionately priced test day on the Friday! I did the first 2 sessions and James had the third so he could get a taste of where the track went. I must say the international is a great circuit, and really wish the 750mc race would be held on this rather than the national.

I signed on and got the car through scrutineering on Friday afternoon to cut down on jobs to do on Saturday morning. By the evening all the team was assembled and we had our own RGB Pup BBQ, where stupid amounts of meat was eaten a sensible few beers drank before retiring for the evening. Again I could not sleep, the excitement was too high, I was desperate for a drink of water (which I had left miles away in the garage) and the roof tent had now totally lost its novelty. So at 4am I was wondering around Silverstone in the drizzle wondering if I’d get more sleep in the garage!

At 6.30am, I woke up to a horrible, dark, foggy, rainy morning! It was going to be a wet race! As we were nearly all prepared the only thing I had to do before practice was fit the wet tyres, soften off the suspension and eat bacon sarnys. We all went out for our practice sessions and were equally impressed by the shear lack off grip!!! I nearly span on the out lap, but not to be out done Bob managed did manage it!! I had seen a 7 with only 3 wheel by 9.15 am, so decided that it was best just to take it easy, especially in practice as that was all it was, it did not effect out grid position. As it was our first year at this (apart from rob) and we knew we were never going to win, we decided than rather than trying to stick out there for 40+ minute spells, we’d all just do 3x20mins and just try and enjoy it. Bob was our first man out and had the task of the grid start, by this time it was teeming it down with rain, there was standing water everywhere and visibility was terrible. I really did not envy Bobs job!! The race started and immediately the safety car was out, on the lat corner of the first lap a radical had implanted itself into the pit wall. This set the scene for the rest of the race, the safety car came for over an hour in total, most of time when poor bob was out!

By the end of the 6 hours, all 6 team RGB Pups cars where running without a hitch and apart from a few minor spins no one had to be recovered. The only real drama was when the marshal came over and told us that bob had gone off and was stuck out on track, so I was sent straight out. On the out lap I was keeping my eyes peeled to see were bob was stuck, but then to my astonishment I saw him driving round as normal a couple of corners ahead! I wondered if he had managed to get going again so waited to see if he went into the pits or carried on, he carried on so I came straight back in. The marshal admitted they had made a mistake and it was all cleared with the race steward and we didn’t get penalized.

At the end of the race we finished near the back, in both the scratch race and handicap race, but personally feel we had achieved our own goal of getting all 6 cars home in one piece. Maybe next year we change tactics, or maybe we just run the same again. The wet really does put our RGB cars at a disadvantage, and are probably the most effected cars, if it had been dry we would have finished a lot higher up.

Well done team RGB Pups (and that includes all our helpers), roll on Birkett 2010!!

Mallory 11th October 2009

The last race of the season!!! I can’t believe the year went so quickly! And have no idea how I’m going to wait 5 months to get back out there again!!!

There was only a single RGB race, but as there was an all comers race the same day I thought it would be rude not to enter!!! The weather started off dry but could see the rain coming in the distance. Qualifying for the all comers was dry but the surface was fairly slippy in places. Qualifying went without a hitch, but I just couldn’t seem to get into it and was over a second slower than when we were at Mallory last. I put some of it down to the fact I was worrying about smashing the car up for the Birkett and I had managed the entire season so far without any serious incidents so was being subconsciously conservative trying to look after the car. Added to the fact I had a lot of people coming to see me race today, the wife, 3 kids, parents, parents-in-law and grand parents plus my usual crowd so was very aware that it was a recipe for a big one!

As we were lining up to go out for RGB qualifying, the heavens opened! The session was very wet, but I felt like I was starting to push it a bit more. I seem to qualify well in the wet so kept on trying to push, until a huge spin at the Esses! There is a small hump as you change direction in the middle of the Esses, a couple laps previous I had some fairly big twiches, but not enough to slow me down, but this time it snapped out to the right which I caught but it sent the back out hard left. I was slidding on complete opposite lock at 90 degrees to the track, the back wheels went onto the grass and I slammed the brakes on to try and reduce the speed of the inevitable collision, by luck more than anything else this kept the car at 90 degrees, rather than continuing in a clockwise spin which would had definitely have sent me into the Armco. The rear wheels must have dug in and it spun me anticlockwise back onto the circuit, I did 420 degree spin and was now back on the outside of the circuit travelling backwards onto the grass towards the Armco, but luckily I travelled in a straight line until I stopped with the rear off side corner a few feet from the Armco. I was convinced during all this I was going to end up in impaled in a wall, as was my dad who was watching on the hill, so I consider myself very lucky not to have damaged the car!! The spin definitely knocked my confidence and I took it easy for the rest of the session.

The All comers race was proper wet, and with all the different machinery and larger tintops out there I felt rather intimidated. I got a decent start and squeezed past a couple a few cars but the car infront sprayed oil or fuel up up off the track infront of me and covered my visor, the first few laps were horrific, I could not see anything, wiping the visor just smeared the goo across it and I was struggling to even see the edge of the track. As the race progressed, the MR2’s, who were all a lot further down the grid after the dry qualifying, started to pass me. At first I thought I was just being an idiot, but they worked there way up the field as there weight obviously helped there grip levels in the wet. I ended up 10^th after qualifying 11^th, so was fairly happy, but just happy I it was over as it was not nice out there!

In RGB I’d qualified 10^th, 5^th in class, not as good as I was hoping for, but there was very little in time separating me from the front of class C wasn’t too disappointed. By the start of the race the track was drying nicely and the sun was peering out. I had had a good couple of hours with the family eating pork pies and scotch eggs up on the hill, it was nice they were all there but definitely not the way to set you mind up to try and race on the ragged edge!! I had a cracking start and was up to 4^th overall and 2^nd in class by the Esses! This was unknown territory for me, but it was to be shorted lived. I couldn’t get gerrards right and just kept getting passed on the straight into the esses. I really was lacking confidence after my big spin and the thought of binning it infront of the family was playing on my mind. After a few people came past I let Tony through as I knew he was in a battle for 2^nd in class B championship with Tim and was then on my own for the rest of the race, well until I saw Tony Spin off at Gerrards, marginally missing the Armco before rejoining. I finished 10^th and 6^th (last) in class. I was over a second slower than last time and miles off the pace from the other class C boys so finished the session pretty disgruntled with myself! I’m putting down to being too conservative due to what was going on in my head, and is something I must banish for the start of next season!!!

Snetterton 19th September 2009

I had to miss this meeting as my 3 year old son went in for an operation to remove his adenoids and tonsils a couple of days before. It’s the only race I was missing all season, and to be honest I didn’t really fancy the 8+hour round trip for 1 x 13 minute race. Although the race is being televised on Motors TV so I missed my chance to actually watch myself make a balls up from the outside of the car!!