Engine Punk

I am very interested in Infra Red photography and the haunting images it provides once converted to black and white  Engine Punk began as a means of promoting my writing but this blog has grown a life of its own. The Vintage Things and Fire Drakes that I've happened across are noteworthy and I want to share my enthusiasm about them at a very personal level.  Steamers at Boconnoc. I believe we will one day come to think of the internal combustion engine as fondly as we do those that are external. They are even making new steam engines sixty years after destroying so many! There simply aren't enough to go round. Engine Punk is also a record of my low budget motorsport activities. There have been so many of them, they become a blur, a blur not through speed but from confused memories over a surprising length of time. I discovered across the Pontsarn viaduct one frosty moonlit night, appearing across the valley as I crested the hill. Actually, it was late summer but you get the pi...

Mad Max and the last of the V8 Interceptors Somebody asked me about this the other day. A sound bite response would've been good but I couldn't think of one.  So... Engine Punk is the joy of making, expressed in metal, composites and tyre smoke - a tribute to accessible technology - an indulgence of finely engineered excitement - high-octane works of imagination, fantasy and mech-anarchy. What a beauty! Marcel Sylvand's Zoomster. Photo : Nitro Engine Punk is nostalgia for the twentieth century and a celebrations of all the freedoms we had. Note past tense (unfortunately) Engine Punk is Steam Punk with a go-faster stripe.  Engine Punks talk the torque and race the race.  Form over function - a motorcycle conception by Zero Engineering (like there's a lot of engineering actually, actually) Photo : Zero Engineering Engine Punks are openly retro-sexual, speed celebrants with a chequered eroticism (but not that bloke who has sex with his car) The fast...

Occasionally, I get enthusiastic about a steam locomotive of some sort. Internal combustion Vintage Things are more my sort of thing as they are easier to take home with you and lightness enhances their performance but there is something fine about a steam engine. Steam engines, though, need weight to supply traction. As they are usually made of iron this not often a problem. A friend of mine is Professor of Ferro-Equinology at the University of Andover and I accompanied him to the Great Dorset Steam Fair this year. Unfortunately, he is not quite as "locomotive" as he used to be due to a gammy leg so had to install himself in a cider tent for health reasons but he has first hand experience of operating steam engines. Some steam engines have appeared as Vintage Things before now but that is because they represent 200 years (and counting) of Cornish motoring. I think it's time Engine Punk becomes a little Steam Engine Punk in its outlook occasionally so every on...

Hallo - I'm back from Le Mans and will be posting my thoughts about this fantastic event on this blog dreckly (good Cornish word). There were loads of Vintage Things that Ill share with you soon. This was just one. I didn't travel down to the Sarthe circuit in it but a whole bunch of other people did. This Bedford TK was parked in the campsite hard by the Porsche curves and I really its livery. There's an obvious London Transport influence and those who know anything about graphic design will know what a towering contribution Harry Beck and Edward Johnston made to simply catching the eye. Applied to a classic British lorry, the effect is highly pleasing and not only recalls the home city of many endurance spectators at Le mans but also reminds me of the wonderful support vehicles and racing car transporters of yesteryear. There were some models of theses I haven't just got back, I've been making the most of what has so far been a brilliant summer here in Cornwa...

Just look at this beauty! As a Vintage Thing it's practically over-qualified. This gorgeous 1000cc JAP v-twin powered, wideline Norton Featherbed won best competition bike at this year's Calstock Bike Show and when they fired it up in the tent there were huge grins all round. It sounded like a racing Morgan trike, which isn't surprising since they use the same engine - really crisp and nothing like the "potato, potato, potato" of a Harley V-twin. These engines also went into Brough Superiors and many Shelsley specials. John Bolster used two of them chained together in Bloody Mary and went on to use no less than four of them in the ultimate Bolster hillclimber. However, the resulting 4-litre eight cylinder monster proved too difficult to start. Without electric starters, bumping it was the only way to do it and if one engine didn't catch it just right, the shocks to the chain transmission system would snap the links easily. As for the frame...

Definitely a Vintage Thing At risk of sounding blasé , I've had fan e-mails before now. However, last week I had my first ever real piece of fan mail and I'm very excited about it. Here it is and what a good choice of subject for a postcard. I know it's not cool but I still get excited that some complete stranger has enjoyed my work. And thanks to it being a postcard, my postman must be pretty impressed as well. I think this justifies the funny feeling that I've had for some time. I seem to be creating ripples on the internet and in people's minds. Sometimes the ripples reach the far shore and come back to me. Meanwhile, I've been trying to drum up some local media interest but so far it hasn't happened. (That's why I haven't been blogging for a while, that and Blogger not accepting blogs for a bit.) So far the ripples haven't come back to me but I have that funny feeling that if I splash around a bit more they will. In the meantime,...

Definitely not a Vintage Thing When my washing machine went wrong I thought no problem – if I can fix my old cars then a washing machine will be a mere bagatelle. But I learnt that I have no enthusiasm for mending washing machines. They don’t have engines or wheels and all look the same to me. To cut a long story short, I bought a new one after having got as far as taking the back off to confirm that the belt wasn’t broken. On principle, I would have liked to have fixed it but do I want to spend my time doing something I don’t enjoy when I could be doing something more fun? Well, would you? Now it’s incredible – but true – that some people view cars and motorbikes in the same way. They treat them as domestic appliances or fashion accessories that say something about them as a person. There may be someone somewhere who feels about washing machines the way I do about things with engines and wheels but frankly I doubt it. You can’t go on holiday with a washing machine. They do...

There's a plate on it but it's not much of a clue It was some of my neighbours who coined the term Vintage Thing and this is the, er, Vintage Thing that prompted that remark. They were having a garage clear out and this emerged, metaphorically blinking in the sunlight. There's a tightening ratchet on the shaft on the right that pulls a shaped block up against two feet It's a special tool of some sort made by Churchill, serial number 18G227C. Nobody knows what it fits but somebody somewhere is probably, at this very moment, crying out for this Vintage Thing. To throw it away would seem to be a crime so I took pity on it and it has now come to live with me at the Cornish Repository for Unwanted Vintage Things until it can be re-homed.

Occasionally, I enthuse about a Vintage Thing. So far there's been Pete Low's Ginetta G21S, Adrian Booth's Hobbsie Special (which was special only because it was such a lash up) They appeared on my book publishing blog along with the occasional motorsport event but don't really sit happily among all the literary stuff, even it's about horsepower whispering. So now we have the Vintage Things series on this blog. I predict the Tata Nano will be a future Vintage Thing so that makes 3 so far. Now that they won't get overwhelmed by publishing news, more are bound to follow. Only things that interest me or enthuse me will be featured. Sometimes they can be a bit odd, oftentimes they can be very ordinary. Rest assured that they will be hand picked Vintage Things, hand picked by me. And maybe one day I'll gather them together in book form if there's enough interest. That's a kiss of death if ever there was one. Having virtually guaranteed th...

David Hockney made a fortune out of doing photos like this Hidden away in the steep sided combes of south–western Britain, concealed behind unremarkable facades in market towns and sleepy hamlets, tucked deep down into wooded valleys or crouched against the elements on wind blasted heaths and moors, something is stirring. This is Britain ’s crumple zone against the Atlantic and, against very long odds, Cornwall is still home to an ongoing automotive tradition that has been quietly surviving for over two hundred years. If someone announced that they had written a book on Cornwall ’s motor industry, a very slim volume would probably be the result – not so much a book as a pamphlet. Being able to produce over 150 well illustrated A4 pages initially seems nothing short of remarkable. Having read Cornwall ’s Motor Industry by Peter Tutthill, it’s clear that he has unearthed a wealth of material and some fascinating insights into a surprisingly varied cottage industry. I am also...