Bloody French cars!

Well after a great Christmas, and a good new year Kate and I decided to take a drive up the coast on New Years day. That’s all well and good normally as I’d be in the Jaguar. However when I go to visit Kate, I always take my other car, a ’96 Renault Clio as I don’t feel secure leaving the Jag parked in a street overnight.

Now I know the Clio isn’t the best car in the world (I for one really don’t like it), but:

•  it doesn’t get stolen as no one wants to nick it
•  it’s normally mechanically sound as I do all the work on it myself
•  it’s cheap to run when compared to the Jag.

Now that I’ve mentioned the good bits I’ll mention the bad:

• it’s made out of recycled biscuit tins, the metal is uber-thin
• it leaks water from about every seal on every door, even after they were replaced
• to change the clutch you have to take the entire engine and gearbox COMPLETELY out of the car
• dealer parts are in some cases more expensive than Jaguar
• it’s one of the worst built cars for working on. Renault gave no thought when they were designing it for people actually being able to work on it. For example, taking one part off requires that you take about 100 other parts off first. Not cool.

So after all that, there we were driving back down the coast on the single carriageway that runs along the beach. There was a puddle in front of me in my lane, and a car coming in the other direction. All I could do was drive through the puddle (not fast I might add). Well that was it, the force of the water splashing on the underside of this garlic-loving-frog-mobile was enough to tear the exhaust clean off the manifold.

“Bugger” I say. Dodgy looks from Kate are coming in abundance at the spine tingling, ear piercing screeching coming from the exhaust grinding the tarmac.

So the Clio surrenders to the side of the road to try and assess the damage. Due to the exhaust being in the dead centre of the car, and the fact it’s fairly low, I had no way of doing and kind of makeshift repair. So sadly I had to resort to phoning the RAC. Literally 5 minutes later the RAC man was stood next to my car. Best service yet!

At least I had all my thermal gear on!

After jacking the car up, then tying up what remained of the exhaust with some steel cable I was able to be on my way. Having no exhaust drew some startled looks from pedestrians due to the fact the car sounded like a stock car!

All I can say is stay away from these cheese-eating-surrender-monkey cars as if your life depended on it!!

Carbon fibre RC parts that I make

  

I haven’t really mentioned much on here about my hobby of racing 1:8 scale RC cars, so thought this post should change all that  

I’ve been racing 1:8 scale buggies and truggies for about 3 years now. I got back into RC whilst in hospital, as I’d buy kits on eBay and have them delivered to my room for me to build. Once I was back home I could then take them out and about to local BMX tracks with the help of my friends. After getting stronger, and bored with just driving round BMX tracks I decided to start racing. 

I’ve raced several seasons in the Midlands, and also a couple in the south. Most of my racing was at my old club called NRX in County Durham. I don’t really get the chance to race as much as I’d like due to work commitments. However as there is a new track opening near Naburn in York, I should get the chance to race regularly again  

As well as racing I also moderate on one of the best off-road RC forums in the UK: http://www.maxbashing.com/mbfourm/ I find this site to be a wealth of information, with very helpful members and staff. If you haven’t visited the site before it is well worth having a look! 

I designed a new set of carbon fibre shock towers for the buggy in my spare time using AutoCAD. I had several prototypes cut and tested before going with the final design you can see in the photos. Due to quite a lot of people asking me if I could make a set for them, I decided to put them into production. Therefore there will be a website called http://www.nitrocarbon.com going live in the near future. 

 

For now a pair can be purchased from the advert on the Maxbashing forum found here: http://www.maxbashing.com/mbforum/showthread.php?t=794 

My custom Losi 8ight-E with pro airbrushed shell

 Here is a little gallery of some of the photographs of this particular car, toghether with some actions photos at the old NRX track. Please feel free to comment :) 

Brafferton Christmas

Well today I’m at a gathering of Kate’s relatives in Darlington. It’s a beautiful house with such great views.
Kate and I are both a little nervous as there wasn’t enough room for the whole family to sleep, therefore we have been allocated a room in a neighbours house whom we’ve never met. We have a key… Feels a bit weird to me, but hey ho!

Up to now we’ve enjoyed some witty banter and a good glass or two of mulled wine

Everyone is playing Rummikub at present, however I bowed out to check email and such. A wise move in my opinion. Board games are not my specialty. I mean where on earth do you plug in your keyboard and mouse?!

A quick look so far….

Well after balancing on a ladder, struggling to see fishing wire that is only about a micron thick, and wrestling some bloody heavy models to the ceiling (which is 18 foot at its apex) I have what you see below:

It still isn’t finished yet. I have quite a few more models to go up. I’m waiting on the arrival of my glamorous assistant/girlfriend to get through the snow to my house. Then she can hold the bottom of the ladders so I can reach the apex of the roof to hang the others.

There is also a picture in the gallery of my wine cabinet that is now a Star Wars cabinet. These are just the odds and sods out of my collection that either didn’t warrant wrapping up and putting away, or I had more than one of

More things to hang up with fishing wire…

Well I got a few presents in the post this week after hammering eBay:

First off was an Episode III ARC-170 fighter:

ARC-170 Star Fighter - Clone Wars Colours

This ARC-170 is in the clone wars colours. Looks really good in the flesh, the nose decals are of a Hoth Wampa head which is a nice touch.

Second up in another ARC-170 Star Fighter, this time in Episode III colours:

ARC-170 Star Fighter - Episode III colours

 Next up was, yes, yet another ARC-170 fighter, only this time it was a “shadow” ARC-170:

ARC-170 "Shadow" Star Fighter

One of the largest ships I’ve had recently is the Clone Gunship (mine being in Episode II colours). This thing is fantastic! It’s huge, and I needed to use 23lb nylon to hold it up!

Clone Gunship - Episode II

Yesterday I also received both the Anakin Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi Jedi star fighters. These are awesome little ships and really complement each other:

 

Obi Wan Kenobis Jedi Starfighter - Episode III

Anakin Skywalkers Jedi Starfighter - Episode III

To finish with for this week I also bought a TIE Fighter

TIE Fighter (Hasbro)

The car hunt…

The weather is awful at the moment, it’s Christmas, the economy is buggered….. Ideal time to be car hunting!

I have been set solid for over a year now on what I was going to replace my Jag with. Another Jag. Just this time I wanted a 2006/2007 model XJR with the 4.2 litre supercharged V8 in it. Yes it drinks juice faster than a uni student with a free beer pass, but hey, it’s worth it!

Now I really was convinced that this is the car I would go for. It had everything I wanted and more, all in uber-comfort. It could go like a stabbed rat when you needed it (0-60 in 5.5 sec), yet cruise like you were on a buttered magic carpet. So yes, that was that, I’ve just been looking out for the “right one” ever since (black, oatmeal leather, walnut fittings, factory privacy glass, all the electrical toys like front and rear cameras, sat nav, air con, cruise etc). Up to now the search has only thrown up a few cars, all of which have either been high mileage, or stupid money…

Then I decided to think outside the box. I asked myself, what do I like in a car? It needs to go well, look awesome without standing out, be a real drivers car, reliable, good to work on, V8 engine, rear wheel drive, and be a real street sleeper. That is when I came across this:

The Chrysler 300C SRT8. This car is a freakin’ monster. It runs a 6.1 litre Hemi V8 that puts out 425BHP as bloody STANDARD!! It has a 0-60 of under 5sec, and can reach 174MPH on a track. That’s quicker t0 60MPH that a Lamborghini Gallardo!! It ticks every box in my list, and to me really has the “awesome factor” that I’ve been looking for.

My search is now focussed on the 300C, I can sense much time ahead will be spent rooting through the pages of eBay and Auto Trader

Well I finally started a blog!

Well I’ve finally decided to get off my soap box regarding blogging, and make one myself.

In fact this only came about through boredom, I’m pretty much snowed in up here where I live, and my girlfriend is snowed in where she lives 80 miles away with a car that won’t start!

So I had no excuse regarding the lack of time to make this blog!

You’ll find plenty of updates regarding the general going ons of what I’m up, what I find interesting and what is on my mind. So expect lots of drooling/wishing over muscle cars, quite a bit on Star Wars and whatever else is on my mind