Engine Punk

This the pre-facelift C15D and is now quite rare If you want a truly recreational vehicle, you could do a lot worse than one of these. This is my 1986 Citroen C15D van, known to other members of my family as Mighty Whitey. It's old enough now to qualify for classic insurance but for the last 14 years has been my principal vehicle. During that time I've had engines, motorbikes, a lathe, a coal bunker and a Shetland pony in the back but not all at the same time. I’ve camped in it, too, visiting various parts of the UK but also France, Holland and Belgium. If I put the passenger seat fully forward, there’s just enough space for me lie diagonally across the load space. On an inflatable mattress, I sleep incredibly well in it. It’s just an ordinary panel van really but, whereas all those designer SUVs are too specialised to be useful only as fashion statements, for versatility nothing can touch Mighty Whitey. My van has acquired many names over the years. It was fleeting kno...

Last night I was making a bracket - as well as a racket - in my garage-cum-studio when I heard a very thought provoking programme on Radio 4. It was about sleep patterns and how the early risers have been favoured by society ever since we were an agricultural economy. In our pre-industrial society, our lives were ruled by daylight and the early bird really did get the worm. However, since the dawn of industrialisation, we have adopted much more varied work and sleep patterns. Our sleep patterns change throughout our lives. As young children, we tend to go to bed earlier than when we are adults and when we are teenagers we prefer to stay up late and have long lie-ins instead of getting up at the crack of dawn. And sleep patterns vary tremendously between individuals. The point this programme made was that some of us are Type A and naturally disposed towards getting up early and going to bed early. The disposition towards early-ness for larks is much greater than it would be for mo...

I'm really looking forward to seeing this brilliant band again on Friday 27th March, this time in Plymouth at The Hippo, which was The Hub. Plymouth gets by-passed by too many bands so I'm hoping The Hippo (short for hippodrome?) will be a regular draw to those of us who like both kinds of music - punk and rock. It's a new venue for me but some of my mates say it's pretty good. What we're hoping for is a great gig from SLF, so good they'll include Plymouth on all forthcoming tours. I saw them in Falmouth last summer and I've been up to Bristol to see them many times in the past so want them to remember this gig and come back. (Photo from Kev-inr's Flickr photos ) To that end, about 30 people have been enticed into going. Some of us have seen Fingers before but most of our party are coming along because they've heard so much about SLF from the rest of us. I hope there's a good turn out but it'll be a new experience knowing so many people ...

I'm curiously tempted Or it could be a UAZ-3303, a UAZ-3741, a UAZ-4909 Farmer, a UAZ-39094 or a UAZ-39265. It could even be an SBA-2M-1S with armoured protection. I’ll try to explain. The UAZ-2206 is a sexed up version of the venerable UAZ-452, Russia's interpretation of a four-wheel-drive Ford Transit. The most noticeable difference is the revised front-end styling and the addition of a “kengurin.” I can't be sure but I'm fairly certain that a “kengurin” is the Russian equivalent of a roo bar. Roo bars were originally an Australian invention designed to keep kangaroos from spoiling the paintwork of your and yer mate’s utes down under, kangaroos have notoriously poor traffic sense. Obviously kangaroos are not much of a problem in Outer Mongolia but there's probably plenty of other big wild things that could damage the front of your UAZ. Peter Tuthill has sent me a copy of the UAZ-2206 brochure and although I don't speak or read Russian, I found it ext...

I spent a very entertaining evening not so long ago with Peter Tuthill, the motoring historian. He is a terrific enthusiast for anything and everything with wheels and engines and has a vast retentive memory. When Autocar magazine inaugurated the first ever Motormind contest (like Mastermind but with much more interesting subjects) Peter Tuthill was the first ever winner. He's also a very good speaker so if you ever get the chance to see him in action - whether it's about cars, motorsport, local history or the Observer Corps - do go along. Peter's interest began at an early age with an Ian Allan ABC. This featured the addresses of the motor manufacturers so he started to write off for brochures using the headed paper from the family business in Penzance in Cornwall. Soon he amassed an extraordinary collection as he worked his way through this book and then The Observer's Book of Automobiles. The response was almost overwhelming. Peter's knowledgeable enquiri...

I've just had an extremely positive review on BookPleasures.com, the independent internet review site. Read it here! I am particularly encouraged by this coup - I had a sneaky feeling some of the humour wouldn't be got by an American reader. Either the reviewer was particularly clever and understood what I was on about or it's not so abstruse for our transatlantic cousins as I'd thought. At first I never considered how it would appeal to an American reader. People are still people wherever you go but over the years I've heard many instances of British shows being adapted for American tastes. This seems especially true of comedies but it doesn't seem to be a problem for Jaspar Fforde whose very Britishness is one of his keyways to success. Wallace and Gromit also cross this great alleged divide. The Japanese love them especially their tea drinking. It makes for an alternative take on their tea ceremony, I suppose. In case Jaspar's sense of humour ne...

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...