Engine Punk

WARNING - PERSONS OF A NERVOUS OR SENSITIVE DISPOSITION, PEOPLE WITH A HIGHLY DEVELOPED SENSE OF MECHANICAL SYMPATHY, ANYONE WHO IS EASILY FRIGHTENED OR DISTRESSED OR ANY OTHER WETS, WIMPS AND DRIPS LACKING THE BACKBONE OF A JELLYFISH (NO OFFENCE TO JELLYFISHES INTENDED) SHOULD READ NO FURTHER. (AND THEY CERTAINLY SHOULDN'T LOOK AT THE FOLLOWING PICTURES EITHER.) There's been a burst of activity in the Boogie Wundaland studio recently. Quite apart from welding up tractor bonnets, at least three of my own vehicles have been through my personal industrial unit and every one of them is a forthcoming Vintage Thing that will appear on this blog dreckly. I just want them to be in finer fettle before I feel like featuring them. But first, some grotesque pictures of mechanical torture and automotive wrongs wot I have righted. This is a clutch but no ordinary clutch. It's on the point of collapse. If you look closely you can see the inner edges of the diaphragm fingers h...

Although I don't have a telly these days, when I was younger I watched a lot. And my favourite programme of all was Dr Who. In my opinion the best Doctor Who was Jon Pertwee who brought such action and excitement to the role. I remember Jon Pertwee was on the phone once to The Master, played by the brilliant Roger Delgado, when The Master tweaked a gadget and Jon Pertwee's phone cable became alive and began to strangle him - complete with sound effects from the BBC Radiophonics Workshop. Of course he escaped but I don't think Tom Baker would have managed it. He was too intellectual for me. Pertwee's Dr Who was like a time traveling James Bond. He had the the gadgets. Who could ever forget the sonic screwdriver? (I had one of those once but it gave me a nosebleed.) He had a quirky Edwardian car (a Siva Edwardian no less! - see my occasional blogs about Sivas on my Engine Punk blog ) that did more than 007's Aston Martin and could call on reinforcements in the ...

I can remember the point at which I felt four-wheel drives were straying in an uncertain direction that I didn't like. It was when I saw the Terrero for the first time (images provided by Car Styling magazine). And yet I like the Terrero. Four wheel drives trucks should look like they can climb Mount Everest. Here was one that looked like it was doing 100mph standing still. It also passed the Thunderbird puppet test - could I honestly see Virgil or Gordon behind the wheel of one of these? The answer to all three of these issues was yes. Vehma International, owned by Magna International, a Canadian automotive parts supplier, exhibited the 8.2-litre 4x4 Terrero as a highly developed concept car at the 1989 Geneva show. It was a wide-hipped, fat-flared off-road sportscar, which sounds great until you see the flush fitting glass and expensive interior, but at the time I was impressed by it. I still think it looks great and with 535bhp it could do the 0-60 dash in 7 seconds and...

I've taken to calling my shed a studio because of the arty farty things I get up to sometimes. Some might call it glorified bodging. This weekend I was sculpting in steel a new bottom edge to the radiator grille for this Nuffield 9/16 Mini tractor. It belongs to my very good friend and neighbour Andrew Snell. He bought it on eBay about three years ago with severely corroded front wheels and another of his mates converted some old Massey Ferguson wheels to the peculiar stud pattern that Nuffield used. Andrew also managed to find a spare bonnet for this tractor on eBay although the bottom lip was badly corroded. The original much-bashed-about bonnet had quite a good lip so he had the idea to make one good bonnet out of the twain. Some of mates among the local tractor owning mafia reckoned a repair in glassfibre was the solution but Andrew felt this area could be prone to damage and steel would be preferable. For some reason, he thinks I'm a better well than he is. I quit...

I am currently re-drafting the beginning of my next book and it has occurred to me how much of this self-publishing lark has nothing to do with the simple act of getting your thoughts down on paper. Or a screen. Or a digital dictaphone. Assembling these often random ideas into a coherent story also takes a lot of time but I quite enjoy doing that - drafting and re-drafting until the story has a direction that and sense of purpose that makes it almost write itself. Once I have that all important orientation in the narrative, the story assumes a kind of critical mass and I get carried away by it until it's finished. It always needs more polishing once I've reached The End but by then I can see the whole story, something no amount of planning can bring out. So that's the writing part, the easy bit. The self-publishing manuals are also telling me to do a whole lot of other things. Some of them I find easy, others I don't. And if I am to be a writer who actua...

This machine is now a mystery to me - I thought I was talking to Ryan Tonkin when I spoke to driver/constructor of this trials device but completely got the wrong end of the stick we discussed this  I've now edited the original post to read not Ryan Tonkin (he was in the VW buggy you might be able to see in the backgound)  Another vehicle that I liked at the Launceston trial was this neat VW buggy entered by Ryan Tonkin (not). Its workmanlike appearance caught my eye and it had obviously been recently painted. I noticed a couple of tell-tale scrapes along the sills and, in talking with the crew, I discovered that it had already seen quite a lot of action, despite having only been completed the previous summer. Not Ryan Tonkin bought it already converted into a buggy but substantially reworked it to make it more competitive. His passenger (sorry I didn't catch your name  - would have been worthwhile me paying more attention to whom I was talking all the time r...

One of my fellow marshals on the Launceston Trial turned up in this delightful little car. Warin Kelly has owned it for years and say the best thing about owning a special is that you can add to its specialness. This car is one of those that invite closer inspection. And the more I looked the more I saw that I liked about it. In recognition of its original builder, Warin calls it the Cattley 7 and, although he's owned it for some time now, it was originally built in the mid-fifties. Mr Cattley made the body himself out of aluminium on an ash frame and when Warin first got it the powerplant was the usual 747cc sidevalve Austin motor. Curious, isn't it, that sometimes the numbers 747 make you think of jumbo jets and at other times of tiny willing 4 pot motors, revving far higher than their designer ever intended, thanks to ingenious backyard tuning by an enthusiastic but knowledgeable amateur? However, just like anyone else, Warin wanted more power and found a ...