Engine Punk

I've just signed a petition to reduce the rate of fuel duty . A few years ago there was a plan to abolish the road fund licence and put it all on fuel. Politicians really liked this idea so they increased the fuel but FORGOT to abolish the road fund licence. This is my way of reminding them but they are so forgetful, it's more than likely they'll forget again. At least I will have tried, though. I believe we should do what we can to protect the environment but I am appalled by the government's cynicism in raising revenue on environmental grounds and then not investing in its protection. I retaxed my motorcycle yesterday. Last year it cost £62 - it's a BMW R100GS, the big trailie, an air-head not one of those new fangled oil heads. This year the reminder was for £64. Except it wasn't £64, it was £66. In some good-natured repartee with the lady in the post office, she pointed out a disclaimer stating that the price might change, well go up. No chance of a...

I think the computer gremlins might be working on my side now. We fell out of favour with each other and it may be tempting fate to even the voice the idea but I think the latest pdf is not only in the right format but also the right size for my chosen paper size. The problem with earlier submissions was that everything looked okay on my screen but wasn't producing the expected result on the Lightning Source system. To complicate matters I was submitting not only the revised textblock for The Horsepower Whisperer but also the textblock for The Wormton Lamb. Both used the same template and both were either too small or too big, never the right size. And there was nothing to indicate why. This was particularly galling because I had successfully uploaded the textblock for The Horsepower Whisperer using this method before Christmas. Something had changed during the interim. I posted a query about this to the Yahoo! Self Publishing blog and the response was that I was using the wrong so...

As you can see, there weren't so many people at Blue Hills this year. This was because it was so bloody cold. No. 43 Colin Bentham on his 350 Ariel/Triumph looks quite alone as he prepares to re-start on the final section. A warmer reception in both senses would be more usual. I turned up with some of my mates but even enthusiastic types like us couldn't bear the gale blowing in from the Atlantic for the whole afternoon and went home after only half the entry had gone through. At least astride a motorbike the entrants had something hot underneath them. The smaller crowd meant we had no difficulty getting a good place to watch but after sitting still for three hours things like fingers and circulation generally weren't working started to not work. I turned blue at Blue Hills and am not ashamed to admit it. It took a long time to get warm again afterwards. I haven't spoken to many who were actually competing yet but it seems they had plenty of weather to keep th...

Tomorrow I'll be in my old Easter stamping ground, at Blue Hills near St Agnes to watch the Land's End Trial. The weather forecast isn't brilliant but the usual reprobates will be there. Ed Holloway is marshalling this year and is in charge of the Widemouth Control. Say hallo to him when you're there. His MZ ride on the Exeter Trial was completed but without going up any of the hills. His gearing was all wrong and the weather was foul. Adrian Booth isn't in it this year either. A coolant house came off the engine of his Peugeot 205 on the Exeter, unfortunately taking some of the thermostat housing with it so he dropped out. During 2008, he's going to concentrate on classic Ford sidevalve stock car racing. I'm really going to have to get along to one of their meetings. But Rob and Dave are competing in Dave's BMW318 Sport. Here they are last year on the way to a Gold and ultimately a Triple. There'll still be loads of us watching them agai...

The cutaway gives any idea of how few moving parts the GKW engine had. It had 3 coils through Following VT 10 about the Mercedes-Wartburg, I tried to find some more information about the DKW engine that was the basis of the Wartburg motor. The Deek also sired the early Saab and Auto-Union two-strokes. There's still quite a following for these little cars. Wartburg's and Trabants have a kind of retro-Commie Cool but I couldn't find the technical info I was after. However, in the course of my latest investigations into Trojan engines, I found a slim volume in the Anarchadia Publishing research library, entitled The Two-Stroke Engine (bit of a give away, that) by K G Draper, published by Foulis. Not only did it have a schematic diagram of the Trojan engine but also a cut away of the little Deek - DKW stands for Das Kleine Wunder, the little wonder. You can clearly see the seven moving parts - 3 pistons, 3 conrods and a crankshaft. This elegant design was first ...

Cut away engines seem wrong to me but are pretty well essential in understanding the workings of the normally aspirated Trojan split-single two-stroke. This the view from above. A mate of mine sent me this illustration of a cut away Trojan engine the other day. This was in response to my earlier post (VT 4) about a supercharged Trojan engine. Well, I still know nothing about the blown sort but here's a pic of the common or garden variety. Although it looks like a twin, the Trojan was a split-single. Yeah, I know, it's a contradiction in terms. Think of it as a saimese twin then. And they weren't split-singles, either. They were four cylinder split twins! Still with me? Some people call split-singles twingles so what would the quad-twin Trojan be - a quin? But why bother with split singles, or twingles, in the first place? The big problem with two strokes is spent exhaust gases mingling with a fresh incoming charge of fuel into the cylinder. Two strokes don...

On the long drive home back from Bristol after the Stiff Little Fingers gig, my mate Gary and I wondered when the term "mosh" came in. As far as we know, there is no Latin verb "to mosh" and reckon we've both been doing moshing before it was called that. I checked this morning and it seems that it is a US term derived from the word mash. The learned Wikipedia entry suggests it derived from the pogo in the hard core punk sub-culture during the early eighties. People have died from it but it's usually okay in small or well run venues like the Bristol Acadmey. Slamdancing is the most violent variant where the whole point is to hit people. I may have done this but only by accident - I didn't mean to slam dance! I hit someone in the face once at a Flaming Lips gig - quite by accident. About a dozen gas-filled beach balls had been released onto the audience and I was trying to punch one of these up to the ceiling. I succeeded but hit the bloke next to me as w...

A friend of mine has ordered my book through Waterstones and is keeping me informed of his experience. To respect his privacy let's just call him Professor Peter Yarlett, lecturer emeritus in ferro-equinology and semi-retired head of the faculty of yeast culture and sandal making at the University of Andover. Professor Pete ordered it on 6th Feb. This took twenty minutes because it was only the second time that the lady had ever ordered a book from a small press before. He still hasn't got it yet, which is a shame because he's going into hospital this week and we both want to test the medicinal properties of The Horsepower Whisperer. It is a feel good book after all. I said he would have been better off ordering it from Amazon but since he's a pensioner he's got to watch the pennies and is particularly conscious of postal costs. Prof Pete tried to get Watersones to order some for stock. It's a little joke between me and my Andover mates that Andover and Dover ar...

They're still burning. Stiff Little Fingers celebrate 31 years of punk rock this year and they're just as good as ever. I know because I saw them last night at the Bristol Academy. It's a bit of a trek up from Cornwall and I find it advisable to take a day off work afterwards because I don't get home until 0200 hours but Stiff Little Fingers still play with such conviction they keep me turning up at their gigs. Their live performances are consistently superlative. I know most of the words as well and if you don't go to church or have no interest in football like me, the opportunities for community singing are somewhat limited so I need bands like SLF. "Fingers!" I went up with my mate Gary and when we arrived at the venue, two little girls had been sidelined by the door staff since they'd drunk the best part of a bottle of whisky between them. Gary and I had arranged to meet up with Gary's mate Dave from Gloucester so, as we were waiting,...

It failed the clear the section at Warleggan but raised many smiles. And a little outrage On Easter Saturday 1992 I was marshalling at Warleggan on Bodmin Moor, during an MCC Classic Trial, the Land’s End. This includes motorcycle combinations and trikes and these run in the motorbike classes that precede the car classes. We still had many bikes to pass through the observed section when through the woods and around the lower corner came a high revving Allegro. Oh no, we all thought, somebody’s skipped a few hills and is too far down the running order. However, as the car went by some of it seemed to be missing… This was my first acquaintance with the notorious Weeny Leaper. It failed the section, along with many others, and I had a quick chat with the driver and constructor, that affable automotive anarchist, Ed Holloway of Bexleyheath in Kent. Entered as Number 66 and running in the Class D for three wheelers, he told me that he had only completed the car that week and had ...

I am delighted to announce that the Search Inside The Book facility now works for The Horsepower Whisperer. It's a bit like browsing on line and about as close as you can get to seeing what the book is like without actually having it in your hands. The only thing you can't do is see the back cover, which for most people is the second thing they look at after the front, so here's a picture of it on my blog. Amazon needed the whole book plus the front cover as a pdf and it took about a week from me uploading it onto their system to it appearing on the Amazon page for The Horsepower Whisperer - go on! Click on this link! You know you want to! I know I want to - I still can't quite believe that I've got a cover image on Amazon let alone See Inside The Book. You can read for yourselves about my glorious struggle to get this far in my earlier blogs. The final result is just a small portion of what I submitted but I like what they've done with it. The text b...