Engine Punk

Here is our old school bus after it had been sold on. Don't those mirrors look small? I found this mage on the net years ago but can't find it anywhere anymore so can't give credit for the source. (Photo: TBC) Once I was old enough to go to secondary school in Newquay, I had to walk ¾ mile out of the valley up to Penhallow on the A3075. Here I caught a white and orange bus operated and driven by Bussy. His real name was Peter Harmes and he had a hotel in Newquay. While kids in Perranporth came to Newquay on green Western National double deckers, usually Bristol Lodekkas, the smaller villages inland were served by Bussy and his Bedford YRQ with Willowbrook Expressway coachwork. This coach was more of a bus really and nowhere near as glamorous as the delightful Podgy , a Duple Yeoman-bodied Thames Trader operated by Mitchell's of Perranporth, hich took us to primary school in Gonhavern. It wasn't even sign written.  FAF987L seated 45 and was and supplied n...

Team Inappropriate lurk in the hotel car park. Preparations for “Noddy goes trialling again in an Arkley SS" began some months before the 92 nd Exeter trial. After the Tamar Trial in October, I had come to notice a notchiness to the steering on the Arkley-MG . All that wheel waggling to move the front wheels from lock to lock, persuading the car to elbow its way up sections like Angel Steps, seemed to have taken their toll around the straight ahead position. The steering wheel would move freely for about a centimetre at the rim but then grew stiff. There was also the small matter of the MoT in December. I know my car is exempt but I like the peer review of my work by a professional. I ordered a replacement steering rack and discovered there were two sorts. You can have a thin one or a beefier one. I ended up with a thick one but found that the Arkley-MG used the thin sort. They’re not interchangeable. During a chat over a brew of tea at his workshop, Adrian Booth told me that ...