Archive for August, 2012

By way of introduction, those who have not already done so are invited to partake of part one of the saga, in which our hero builds an assortment of cars and tries to race them. After which:

Having had a reasonably successful year campaigning a road car, I was ready to step up to the world of real racing cars, but what type to buy? Having previously driven a Lotus 7, and a Lotus 7 rip-off, it seemed logical to move into Clubmans. Started in 1965, and still active today, Clubmans initially catered for people who wanted to convert their Lotus 7 into a racing car, or those who were mad and skilled enough to build their own machine.

The rules were simple enough. Front engine, rear wheeled drive, and the beast had to be wide enough to theoretically hold two people, although the passenger area was typically covered in and full of tubing. Most popular, and most expensive, were the cars from Mallock, this example is a Mk 18 from the mid-1970s, still running in classic events:

Richard Crawford Photography on Flickr

My funds didn’t run to a Mallock, instead I found a seven year old Phantom, built in a garage by a man called Chris Greville Smith, and if that isn’t a name for a twisted engineering genius, I don’t know what is. I hired a van and drove from Aberdeen into deepest England to pick up the chassis, and to another, equally deep, part of England to pick up a racing engine and gearbox. Mr. Greville Smith kindly sent me some notes on the car, which turned out to be four pages of hand written engineering complexity, very little of which I understood. Still, I put the engine into the car and stood back to admire my investment.

The son, wondering why there is no money in the house for food.

It was not very impressive. Yes, there was also a bonnet of sorts, and a nose cone which could best be described as “floppy”; but it was all a little scruffy. Still, it was almost the end of the season and I had to give it a try, so I entered it for a local event where it failed to even make the track. The problem was oil pressure, or lack of it.

A road car has a sump under the engine where oil sloshes about until it is picked up and re-injected into the engine. The G forces in a racing car make this impossible, the oil pickup would be sucking air as the oil was pushed against the side of the engine during cornering and braking. So instead there is something called a dry sump, in which the oil is sucked out of the engine block, through a tank, cooler and pump and then back into the engine. This involves a lot of piping which my small brain had obviously failed to get to grips with.

The silver object on the right is the oil tank. The three humanoids above it don’t have the slightest clue what is wrong.

Nothing daunted (OK, slightly daunted), I took the whole mess home and started again. First job was to strip everything back to the chassis. This involved drilling out several hundred rivets which held the aluminium panels to the spaceframe. This took me many hours, although not as many as it took me to rivet everything back together again afterwards. Then I sanded down the chassis and hid the rust by painting it with rust inhibitor.

Then I hid the rust inhibitor by painting everything black.

Then all I had to do was tidy and re-paint the body panels, affix them with a zillion rivets, insert the engine, install the electrics and figure out which oil pipe went where. And the end result was:

Very smart, now let’s go drive it into a wall at high speed.

The final step was to acquire some new slick tyres. The tyres of choice for hillclimbing were Avon Formula 3 qualifying tyres. They heated up quickly, which is what you needed, provided masses amounts of grip, which is what you needed, and were worn through to the canvas after very few miles of usage, which is what Avon needed. Credit card in tatters, my racing car was finally complete, time to go and race it.

I have to admit, you do feel a little special being a racing driver, even on a part-time, very amateur basis. The fire-proof overalls proclaim that you actually drive one of these things, and you can strut around the paddock looking cool. If you are ugly, like me, you can wear a fire-proof balaclava, so you can impress the girls with your status without putting them off with your looks. Worst case, always wear your helmet.

But I had never drive a real racing car before, and all the feelings of being cool evaporated when I clambered into what was known as the cockpit, but I began to consider might better be named “the tomb”.

Right in front of me were a pair of Weber carburettors, perfectly situated to spit petrol and flames back into my face. To my right was a pipe routing hot water from the radiator at the back of the car to the engine; just one split… The radiator itself was right behind my neck, just waiting to soak me with boiling water in the event of a rear impact. And then there was the flywheel.

The design of these cars meant that the gearbox sat right next to my left leg. Between the engine and the gearbox was the flywheel, not normally a concern. But racing flywheels have been machined down so they are lighter and are less of a drag on the engine; and they have a tendency to shatter at 8,000 rpm with the bits flying outwards at whatever speeds 8,000 rpm can generate. And of course, to save further weight, my car had a thin magnesium flywheel housing which would do little to hinder the shards of the flywheel as they severed my legs above the knee. Not that I would notice, because I would be too busy dealing with my eyebrows being on fire from the carburettors and my neck and back being scalded by radiator water. Happy thoughts, and I hadn’t even started the engine yet.

Still, once I started the engine, all these worries evaporated, to be replaced by new ones. What’s that fucking noise?! And the vibration, sufficient to initiate orgasm if I was in the mood, which I definitely wasn’t. And the smell, of oil and fuel, and probably a desperate little fart of panic from yours truly as he realised that racing cars are nothing like road cars. Find a gear, hope it is first, and then gingerly let out the racing clutch; which is designed to handle the power, whilst in return being either completely disengaged or completely engaged, all within the space of a millimetre movement of the clutch pedal. Naturally, I stalled it. Naturally, I stalled it a second time. I was glad my face was hidden by my helmet; even though there were no girls around.

Finally, me and the car staggered to the start line. Moment of truth.

I can still remember the first few seconds. Loads of revs and the rear wheels spun a little before the car rocketed off the line. More power than I had ever had before, in a car weighing half the weight of anything I had owned before; experienced from a supine position enveloped in a violent mix of noise, vibration and aroma. I recall the overall feeling being one of “fuck me”, followed closely by the feeling of “get me out of here”.

Calm on the outside, total panic on the inside

But I was committed now, and soon second gear followed first, third followed second and suddenly I was at the first corner. And it was clearly too late, I was going far too fast and I was far too close; this was going to be a massive accident. I was almost certainly going to die.

Pointlessly, as a last futile gesture, I stood on the brakes. The car stopped. I don’t mean it slowed down, it actually stopped. Racing brakes and huge tyres just stopped the flying death machine, about fifty metres before the entrance to the corner. I am sure I saw the marshals laughing. I looked down into the bowels of the machine and pretended I had experienced a technical problem; whereas the only problem I had to deal with was in my head.

The rest of the run was equally rubbish, but allowed me to discover that the Formula 3 tyres gave the car impossible amounts of grip so you could go faster and faster through the corners; until the point that the tyres lost interest and gave you no grip at all and spat you off the side of the track. This was going to be fun.

Note the photographer with the impact resistant orange jacket.

And it was. After a few events I began to get to grips with the enormous performance difference. I was in a class where there were serious men with serious money, people who had this year’s chassis and an engine that had many more horsepower than my rather tired old unit. But it was fun trying to beat my previous best times, and I picked up a couple of class position trophies, and even won an event outright with the much coveted “fastest time of the day” when nobody else turned up. Trips were made south of the border to Harewood House, and the classic Shelsley Walsh, where everyone wore a bow tie and spoke like they were in an episode of Downton Abbey (the upstairs bit), apart from me. But it was Doune in Scotland that was always my favourite; dangerous but immensely satisfying (see the first part of the story for a video of a run up Doune).

And so, after a season with the car, it was fitting that my last event was to be at Doune. My company had made me an offer I couldn’t refuse to move to Holland, and someone had agreed to buy the Phantom. All I had to do was not wreck it in this final outing.

No problem, it was just Doune, the most demanding and car-destroying track on the calendar, and the weather was playing along by raining hard.

Along with the car had come a set of spare wheels which looked like they were at least ten years old, fitted with a set of grooved wet tyres which looked to be a similar vintage to the wheels. The rubber was cracked and degraded, all the better to soak up the puddles I reckoned. I had no idea what pressure to run them at; but as they seemed to visibly deflate as soon as they were pumped up, it was probably best not to worry about such details.

It’s Doune. It’s raining. The tyres are shit. Oh dear.

My opposition was the usual collection of rich boys but most of them had turned out to be pretty good guys, always ready to chat and help Spike, comfortable in the knowledge that nothing they told me would make me any more competitive. But one was particularly arrogant, and was being extra-obnoxious this particular weekend by telling everyone how his model girlfriend with endless legs had just bought him a new engine, for a sum of money that would have purchased my car, engine and trailer, with money left over for a weekend for two in Barbados, which was coincidentally just what the two of them had returned from (so he told us, loudly). Git.

The morning practice runs did not go well, especially when one of our racing class found a way to launch his car off the track such that it fell down the hill through a forest. Most concerning, especially as we had not realised before that there was a forest conveniently located nearby that you could visit in a flying racing car. His car hit a tree backwards at a point twenty feet off the ground, and totally destroyed the car; something the very lucky driver was telling us in the paddock afterwards until the adrenaline wore off and he was taken away in an ambulance to spend the next week in traction.

I hadn’t hit anything, but I hadn’t enjoyed my practice much either. There were wheel wrenching puddles, visibility was appalling, and the rain was coming straight off the tyres onto my crotch, sufficient to initiate orgasm if I was in the mood, which I definitely wasn’t.

At the end of the practice I was closer than usual to the pack (the rain meant that it was harder for them to get their huge power advantage onto the road), but I was still slower, and fancy boy with the model girlfriend was out in front; a fact he was happy to share with everyone over the lunch break. Git.

In the afternoon you get two attempts, the fastest of which counts in the final results, and I screwed up my first one with a missed gear and a subsequent slide, fortunately without hitting anything. And so it all came down to the last run of the day, and my last ever drive in a racing car before handing it over, hopefully still in one piece. I gave it my best shot, and then climbed out of the car with the usual adrenaline shakes and an unusual mixture of sadness and relief. Spike the racing driver was no more.

Just the prize-giving to attend, which everyone did, even if you had won nothing.

What’s that you say? You want to give me this?:

Twenty eight years ago, and I remember it as if it were yesterday; especially the look on the leggy girlfriend’s face which said “I am sufficient to initiate orgasm if I was in the mood, which I definitely am not”.

You can keep your F1 World Championship; there is nothing better than winning in the rain at Doune against faster cars. Good times.

Almost seven weeks since I made my pledge to attend the windsurfing club at least three times a week, and I am pleased to say that I have fulfilled the conditions every week, apart from this one where I have only been twice so far. But it was agreed (by me) that four hours walking round Chinatown qualifies as an alternative to a visit to the club, but I might go sailing tomorrow anyway, just to ensure that the presiding committtee (my conscience) can’t raise any objections.

It hasn’t always been easy. There have been afternoons when there has been no wind and it has either been stinking hot or raining; and the last thing I have felt like doing is driving all the way to the club and then paddling a SUP for an hour down to the marina and back, in waters that are currently containing more than their share of jellyfish. But I have found myself doing it, because of the pledge I made.

Yesterday was the day I realised I had made something of a breakthrough, helped in no small part by this:

It’s called a Serenity and while it is classed as a windsurfer, it is actually a very small personal yacht. It’s longer and narrower than a normal windsurfer….

… and it has a yacht shaped hull and a sodding big fin:

I bought mine about mine about five years ago and they have long since gone out of production, but it is a very special piece of kit. In light winds you stick on a big sail and it just takes off like nothing else on the water. You stand on the deck, admiring the gorgeous wood finish, as the board (boat?) slices through the water at a ridiculously high speed given the state of the wind; just an amazing feeling.

But it can also be a bitch. Swell throws it off course, it is always changing its mind as to where it thinks it should go next; and it is quite happy to throw you into the water with very little provocation. As a result, even in light winds, sailing a Serenity take constant involvement and a fair degree of energy.

Which is why I was surprised to realise that I sailed it for over an hour yesterday without a break, and only stopped because the wind died. And once I had finished, I still felt fresh enough to carry, wash and stow all my gear without needing a sit-down, a huge change from seven weeks ago.

Mind you, once I got home and the adrenaline had worn off, I felt completely exhausted; but it was a good type of exhaustion, the type where you feel good and all your body is humming, rather than the type where you feel like you are going to vomit and then die; or the even worse type where you actually do.

And today I felt fine and was out again on the Serenity, and a smaller board when the wind picked up. And I wasn’t thinking about getting through half an hour of torture, but just going out and enjoying sailing, like I used to before frozen shoulders and a rampant thyroid screwed me up.

Happy days. Thank you Craig for making supporting noises, and thank you Serenity for being you. I feel like a windsurfer again, which at my age is something to be grateful for.

Some more shots from my walk through Chinatown in Bangkok. All taken with the Olympus 75mm lens, which is great for capturing people; but maybe less good for capturing a sense of place; although hopefully some of these do both.

Typical small business owner, watching over his employees and ready to do a deal. Striped shirt optional:

Keeping an eye on business

The latest beauty treatment on the streets involves caking on some powder and then rubbing it off with thread. There were several women in a line offering this service:

The powder and thread route to beauty

The streets of Chinatown are crammed with small traders, all trying to make a living from whatever they can sell:

Fruit preparation

Trading in Buddha amulets is big business in Thailand. This man was checking a potential purchase for his stall:

Checking the goods

Heated discussion

I read the news today, oh boy

Street cat

Hawking food around the pavements of hot and polluted Chinatown must the one of the harder ways of earning a living. This lady looks like she has had enough:

Dreaming of a better life

Checking the financial pages for the state of plastic hairgrip futures

You often see Thais with these inhalers, perks them up a bit and prevents dizziness. Sleeping with one up your nose is not good for you, but at least he knows where to find the cap when he wakes up!:

Inhaling dreams

Another meal sold for 25 baht

Even with a longish lens, sometime you get caught in the act of taking a shot….:

Buy my lights; or else

Substantial toothpick

Time after time

Fried everything

Two hats are better than one

We all worry about our children. At least, I know I did.

As The Son lay in his cot, talking bollocks and filling his nappy, my first concern was “hope his mother arrives soon to change it”; but then I thought about him growing up. Would he become an accountant with a mortgage and responsibilities and a heart bursting with civic pride, or would he end up on the floor of a Bolivian brothel surrounded by crack whores whilst being sought by police in five countries. As he grew up, I must admit I sometimes wondered which of those two outcomes I would prefer for myself, let alone him; but in the end all we can hope for our kids is that they remain healthy and find a sort of happiness in this fucked up version of reality we are condemned to dwell within for an approximate number of years.

In the absence of any strong evidence to the contrary, I hope the The Son has achieved that, and last week I sought to add to his level of happiness by sharing this with him:

It’s a video for some “music” by a Korean pop artist named PSY. Unlike most male Korean pop stars, he is not handsome and so sells himself via humour. The hit count on the video indicates he is rather successful with this strategy. There were 37 million hits when I first caught it a couple of days ago, now it is over 40 million. Watch it, the music may be an acquired taste; but the dancing will make you at least smile.

Of course, The Son had already seen it (he is always ahead of me on the social curve). As an aside he mentioned “The dances he does are surprisingly hard to emulate, too.” Naturally I was shocked. I imagined my son, chained to a computer, advancing the barriers of the gaming industry, and not cavorting around his living room going “woop, woop”. Next he is going to really let me down by telling me he has decided to be an accountant.

Still, there is a bright side. I am on a constant mission to embarrass and annoy she who must be obeyed in public; don’t ask me why, ask The Son’s lady, she will tell you it seems to be in the genes. Yesterday we were in a crowded restaurant and I struck an appropriate pose and shouted out “Gangnam Style!!!” Went down like a lead balloon with added ballast, must do it again soon.

Finally, although it is easy to forget, we should remember that our children are sometimes human too. I am sure my son worries about me from time to time. Am I sat in my chair drooling at the sunset like all good pensioners do; or did I spend twenty minutes in front of a mirror this morning with my hands on my hips trying to emulate that dance at the very end of the video?

Next time he visits….

Gangnam Style!!