Here Be Dragons

 The SKCC Rogue Runners Wales 2020 trip started at stupid-O'clock (4.30 am) at Newlands Corner - and ended in horrible failure for me, a day early - but more of that later.

Day 1 - Surrey to Llangollen

Once again, we met in the pitch-black of Newlands corner and set off at 5am - the 2 Elises of Graham and Roger (1 more was late and Steve would catch us up later), the Quantum Extreme of Rob, Duncan's Caterham, Tony's Quantum and me. Our target was breakfast at Newport, to meet the final member of the group, Linda and her Tiger.

This year, the route was less M4 and more A roads, which was much better but slower and we got to breakfast around 8.30am. The weather was glorious and would remain so for the rest of the trip - incredibly lucky.

I took very few photos and the only video I thought I had taken didn't, so apologies for that (but you may be sick and tired of my videos by now).

After the breakfast farce of us sitting 1 table apart and waving across the room at each other (then standing inches apart in the same space for coffee and toast), we set off north, towards the evening hotel at Llangollen. We were prepared to alter our route if we were somehow forced to avoid the 2 Wales counties supposedly locked down (I was excitingly looking forward to driving through a police roadblock like a scene from Smokey and the Bandit) but there didn't seem to be anything on our route, although we were avoiding the large A-roads.

The route was an improvement on last year, with quieter roads although traffic was a bit heavier as well. I must remember to buy food at one of the petrol stops next time - I was expecting a nice cafe stop for lunch but everyone seemed happy to skip it!

The drive was wonderful - sun shining, lovely roads, great views - it all flew by too quickly (literally). We even, at one of our stops in a layby, saved a sheep that had got stuck in a wire fence! Annoyingly, my hot-starting issues continued, so every fuel stop was a battery-sapping cranking before Zedster fired up.

Sat-nav issues were, as always on these trips, numerous. I was the only person not to have a TomTom, so mine kept choosing a slightly different route to everyone else. Normally, I stayed in the middle of the pack and just followed others but this didn't always work and at some point I lost everyone and so spent the last hour or so on my own. I cannot remember how I lost them but it wasn't the end of the world - gave me a chance to just concentrate on driving and my route was brilliant - Zedster was flying. Even the last few miles into Llangollen wasn't as bad as last year and I was second to arrive at the hotel (after Tony, who had also got lost at some point). We need to recruit navigators!

The Hand hotel in Llangollen was right in the centre of town and it had virtually the only car parking space in the centre. The hotel did not reserve guests spaces, so getting us all parked was tricky but we finally managed to squeeze us all in. I went for a wander to buy some tourist tat for my family:

A few beers and then a nice meal in the hotel restaurant capped a superb day.

Day 2 - circular North Wales route

After a hearty full English, we set off on a new route devised by Duncan and it was a corker - starting up the famous Horseshoe Pass to some lake (sorry, I'm never good with names), it was an amazing sweeping road, although it is a notorious biker racetrack, so now has average speed cameras along it. However, averaging 60mph is pretty difficult on those roads, so it didn't bother me (although I await a brown envelope in the post in the coming weeks!). At the lake, my sat-nav seemed to miss the coffee stop at the lake (very annoyed about that!), I think because I was just enjoying the road too much and not looking at the screen. Tony and Rob did the same thing and so the 3 of us decided to just carry on and meet up with the others later:

Shortly after the above pic was taken, on a single-lane road with no passing places, a huge tractor appeared around the bend. We had to reverse 200m or so before he managed to squeeze on a kerb and let us past. We took turns to lead and managed to keep together as far as Llandudno, where we stopped for a coffee and a chip butty for me (why does no-one else eat lunch?!). With amazing timing, we set off for the toll road round the Great Orme just as the others pulled up behind us.

The rest of the day was a blur - Conwy Castle, Llanberis Pass (I'm told), great roads, lovely scenery, all bathed in sunshine. Predictably, I missed a turning, with Rob following me while the others went off. I should have just turned around but I HATE turning round and Rob and I spent the last hour alone, occasionally hearing the others over the radio. Later on, I lost Rob as well - I'm like a reverse people-magnet! Annoyingly, I missed the stop at the Ffestiniog (sp?) railway but the drive was just awesome and I pulled up back at the Hand, the first back, with Rob arriving soon after.

That evening, after a couple of beers, half of us de-camped to a local Indian for an enjoyable meal.

Day 3 - Llangollen to Llandrindod Wells

Today went very pear-shaped for me. It started ok, with the group splitting up and half (the ones who got ready sooner) leaving first - I left in the second group. We had a great hour or so, on a lovely road towards Bala.

Around this time, I heard an ominous clunk from my gearshift. I mentioned it on the radio and we agreed to have a look at it at the next stop. Ten minutes later, just after a hairpin bend, my gear lever went loose and there was a clank noise as something dropped in the tunnel. I rolled to a halt in a layby and took the tunnel top of, expecting to see a bolt having vibrated loose. Sadly, it was MUCH worse than that:

That is the top pole of the GBS quickshift which had completely snapped. Game over. Without welding equipment, none of us could think of a fix, so I called my breakdown company and the others left to carry on. 

Now, I'll have to admit, the ensuing chaos was mostly my own fault and I'll write it here to remind myself - feel free to skip this long paragraph. It starts with the fact that my first MOT was due on August 1st. I thought I was entitled to the 3 month MOT extension because of Covid but, no, that ran out on July 31st!!! So my MOT was due August 1st, which I discovered a week before and I couldn't get a test done before that date, so it eventually got done on August 8th or so. Unfortunately, this meant my direct debit for my road tax failed on August 1st because the DVLA system said my car had no MOT, so I had no road tax. Now, my breakdown cover is through ADAC, the German version of the AA. They have an arrangement with the AA but when they called the AA, they said they weren't allowed to come try fix the car because it was, strictly, not legally allowed on the road. All they would do was tow it to a 'storage area' until I paid the road tax. I then discovered that my ADAC cover would only allow £300 towards recovery home - AA wanted £800 to do that! So even if I got the AA to come out, all they would do was take it to a garage (this was Sunday, none would be open) and I'd have to hang around while someone tried to fix my car, for some exorbitant rate. I just wanted to get the car home where I could do the fix myself. I used an online emergency tow service and got some bloke who would recover me for £400 but he would take 3-4 hours to get to me (he was in Manchester). ADAC agreed to pay £300 of that, so I asked the guy to come get me and settled down to wait.

By this time, it was 2pm and I'd already been sat by the side of the road for 3 hours. Bored, I started rummaging through my tool kit to see if there was anything I could do as a bodge to get me moving. Thinking it was like a broken leg, I looked for a splint and bandages - Allen keys and gaffer tape, maybe? After a few tries, I had this:

And, amazingly, it seemed to work, although I had to use 2 hands to change gear - one to push the rose joint in and stop the bodge from pulling off, the other to move the lever. Just then, a guy from the RHOCAR forum returned my message and invited me to stay at his place overnight and he could fix the part on the next day. Only problem, he was 70 miles away in Tamworth. I cancelled the recovery guy and went for it...

I set off and I managed the first 15 miles in 4th gear but the traffic started getting heavier and roundabouts are a killer when you don't want to change gear. Also, gaffer tape doesn't like heat and the heat from the engine was melting the glue. Suffice to say, I had to stop 3 more times to re-do my bodge job (I ended up using half the roll of tape), although my last version was much better and felt like it would last longer:

Luckily, most of the last 40 miles were on the motorway, so I could stay in 5th and I got to Rich at 7pm. And, in a way, it was the luckiest part of my day...

Day 4 - Tamworth to Surrey

Anyone reading this from the RHOCAR club may know Rich - he is a legend. Thirty years at JLR means he knows his stuff, has a garage (the neatest I have ever seen) filled with 'stuff' and what he doesn't know about engineering 'aint worth knowing. His garage contains his immaculate, V8-powered Zero, a mini-caravan he built himself from an old trailer and an awesome hard-top for the Zero, complete with interior light and roof vents. He's the guy who made the doors on Zedster. For him, welding up my gear shift literally took him 30 minutes - I've never seen anything like it. It took me 10 minutes to get my dash off and another 10 minutes to get the quickshift unscrewed. Rich looked at it for about 30 seconds and then started drilling, grinding, welding and painting:

I was actually very useful - I moved Rich's coffee mug so it was always close to him as he scurried round. Essential, I think...not that Rich stopped for long enough to drink it. If it had been left to me, Zedster would have been off the road for months.

Moral of the story: if you have to break down, make sure you're near Tamworth.

With Zedster back together by 11am, I considered trying to re-join the others but I would just end up driving to get to the overnight stop, missing all the days route and great roads. So I set a vague route for home, skipping all the major towns and main roads.

I actually had a great drive back - there are some surprisingly nice roads just a few miles from the edge of Birmingham and the Cotswold villages are very scenic. Strangely, Zedster's hot-starting was much improved over the day and the extra weight in the quickshift means the gear lever vibrates less - result!

Overrall, it had been a fun trip, even though I only did half of it. The weather was ridiculous (I look like I've spent a week on a sunbed), the company was great and even breaking down was a useful learning experience.

Sorry this post was so long - for more detail from others on the trip, check out this SKCC post.

I do NOT need this...

 Holy Cow, what an horrendous couple of days! A couple of posts ago, I worried about changing anything in case it endangered my Wales trip, so what do I go and do...?

In my defence, it seemed innocent enough - sort out the throttle cable so it didn't keep popping out of the bracket on the throttle body and clean out the fuel filter to maybe improve the hot starting - what could go wrong?

I worked out a much better way of re-using the old plastic pieces on the throttle cable to get it running smoothly and securely - much better than it was, thought I.

The fuel filter is supposed to be cleanable, so I unscrewed it and actually replaced the plastic insert with a new one from a spare filter I had.

Now, I thought, let's go for a drive and see if I have cured my hot-starting problems. Start the engine and....Holy Feck, what the Hell?! Engine started but wouldn't idle or run unless I kept revving it, popping and running like a 3-legged dog in a bag.

Fired up the laptop and re-calibrated the TPS, no change. Re-loaded the map - no change. The Lambda sensor was all over the place, not getting anywhere near its target AFR. So many things were wrong, I couldn't work out where to start.

At worst, I thought maybe I had somehow fried the £700 ECU, or maybe introduced dirt into the fuel system while changing the filter. Most likely, given my history, was the possibility that I had knocked a wire out somewhere, maybe to the fuel injectors? The possibilities were endless...

I started with the cheap options and tried to reverse the changes I made. So I disconnected the throttle cable and actually completely removed the plastic insert in the fuel filter, as well as re-calibrating the TPS again. Now, I could get the engine to idle, just. But any small throttle input caused the engine to stall.

At this point, I noticed that when opening the throttle to half way, the Emerald software showed it just open to 17%, which was strange. I re-calibrated the TPS for at least the 3rd time but I had spent so long cranking the engine, my battery was low on charge, so I left the charger on while I got back to my day job.

After work, I reluctantly dragged myself to the garage for round 7 of a battle I felt I was losing, turned the key and.....hey presto, Zedster fired up as normal, settling to a normal tickover, with the throttle working as normal!! WTactualF!!!

So it looks like the ECU was just not saving the TPS settings properly? I dunno, it's just weird - the TPS calibration function is pretty straightforward - how could I have got it wrong 3 times but then it worked on the 4th? I didn't do anything differently. Maybe it was doing it with a fully-charged battery?

Whatever - the relief is wonderful but, damn, I really didn't need that stress.

One bonus - I went for a test drive and I seem to have 100% throttle travel because Zedster felt like a rocket ship! Seriously, I really don't remember him being that fast since I finished the build. Have I really had that little throttle travel for 3 years!!!

So, lets hope nothing happens between now and Friday morning - bring on Wales!

Feeling the pressure

 So time to try sort out my hot-start problems. Online research suggested fuel starvation is the most likely problem and the most likely cause of that is simply clogged up fuel filters.

I recently added a filter in the HP circuit and it is supposedly cleanable so I took it apart. It looked OK and I couldn't seem to get the filter part any cleaner just using washing-up liquid. Luckily, I had a spare filter (actually, it was a mistaken order), so I just took the filter section out of that and the old one does look quite bad:

...but I don't know if that is 'clogged' or just age.

I was going to go on a test drive to try it out but I thought I'd have a look at my throttle cable first - on my last drive, I'd had the Emerald datalogger running and I was again getting a maximum of 70% throttle only. Looking at the horrendous botch job I did last time (see, it seemed good at the time but, with less biased eyes, it's not), I'm going to have to work out a better solution. I'm not good at 'thinking outside the box', so I've put a post on a forum to see if anyone has any bright ideas.

Needs to be sorted by Friday for the Wales trip...

Sorry, controversial stuff

 I have tried to keep clear of all the Covid-19 issues the world is going through right now but it's impossible to ignore and I really need to vent, so my apologies for the following (and you may wish to skip this post). 

This is triggered because my Wales trip in 2 weeks is being threatened due to all the restrictions...yes, I am a selfish so-and-so.

For posterity, let me summarise - a flu mutation called Covid-19 has spread around the world since January, 2020, so far killing over 800,000 people.

Sounds horrendous, huh? And it is BUT...

• 800,000 people represents 0.01% of the population.
• The vast majority of deaths are old (65+) people who are already ill.
• In a bad year, normal flu kills 600,000 people.

So, an individual has a 99.9% chance of NOT dying from this disease, even better if you're basically healthy and under 65.

But what has the world done? Shutdown, that's what. Lockdowns, restrictions on going out, eating out, working, schools - EVERYTHING. And for what? To save 0.01% of the population, most of who will probably die in the next year anyway.

Once you are dead, your problems are over but for the millions of people left behind who risk losing their jobs, their source of income, the ability to feed their kids and provide a home, this is FAR more of a disaster than the minuscule chance of dying from this disease.

The solution is simple; everyone carry on as normal and if you are in a risk category, isolate just yourself at home. Yes, horrible for those that need to isolate BUT just them, not the entire damn population!!

I just wish someone in power had the courage to say this but they never will - it is political suicide (but they often ignore the restrictions in private, as we have seen).

You may think I am a sad example of a human for saying this - in my opinion, I am just a realist. Our entire society is based on many people doing small things - we cannot afford the damage if we prevent that happening and if it goes on too long, we may not survive that damage. 

Spock said it right, "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few".

By the way, my mum is 74 and has type-2 diabetes. She lives alone and has no friends, her only joy is seeing her grandson (my sister's son - they live 200 miles from me). I have suggested she not do that and isolate but she refuses - she would rather take the risk. If anything happened to her, I would prefer she enjoyed her life as much as she could rather than hiding away for however many years a vaccine takes (assuming that even works well - the current flu vaccination is only 60% effective).

Does it ever end?

 So I spent some time on odd jobs - cable ties in the rear bodywork to keep the high level brake light wiring in place and new foam strip round the engine bay to try keep the catches working.

A bigger job was trying to get more throttle travel. Ever since I replaced the cable on my French trip, I've had even less travel than before, which made over-taking a little hairy at times. 

The problem is that the metal end which attaches to the throttle body seems to be slightly longer now than my original cable and this is limiting how far the throttle butterfly can turn. 

I've butchered the plastic piece to give the metal end somewhere to go and it has definitely improved the amount of travel I get. However, despite recalibrating the throttle in the ECU, I get a stutter when accelerating hard, just on the initial burst - a half-second delay before the power comes in. I don't know if this is has always been there (because I have never had this much travel) or if its a symptom of my fuel starvation issue, if there is one.

I know I enjoyed building my car and voluntary upgrades are also fun but trying to fix little niggly problems is not enjoyable.

I really don't want to do anything too major before my trip in 2 weeks but I also don't want to get stranded 200 miles from home.... urghhh. I'll try a few more test drives over the next 2 weeks, see if things settle down... 

All legal and above board

 So, today was MOT day...

The main beam problem was, as always, wiring. As soon as I took the dash off and wiggled the wire on the main beam switch, it came out the stupid butt connector. I don't recall but I must have had to extend the loom wire, which I did using a butt connector...out with the soldering iron and all fixed.

Following a recommendation, I booked in with an MOT garage that has experience with kit cars. Now, I'm not going to name names here but the test was a tad...brief. I know Zedster was fine but, if he hadn't been, this test would have been unlikely to detect that. To his credit, the guy was very thorough with the bits I don't check (brakes, bushes etc) but there were a few glaring omissions I won't go in to.

Suffice to say, it was a pass and we're all legit...

Saying that, a new problem has arisen - hot starting. I switched off when I arrived and waited 10 minutes for the paperwork to get started and when I tried to restart and drive into the bay (I sat in the car the whole time, which I liked), Zedster wouldn't start. After a few minutes, he did eventually but it wasn't reassuring.

The tester suggested fuel starvation but said there were lots of possible causes - I'm wondering if I have knackered my HP fuel pump after a couple of very hot days in the Alps on my recent trip. Also, the battery was very low after 2 weeks sat in the garage - maybe it's just that? My GPS speedo has a permanent live feed direct to the battery which is supposed to only use a few micro-amps but I guess this might add up if left for weeks? I've got the trickle charger on now.

Another couple of minor fixes needed - all the extra wiring I added for my high-level brake light needs more cable ties to keep it in place; they keep dropping out the bodywork and getting perilously close to getting tangled up in the wheel. 

Also, one of my bonnet catches keeps popping up. I noticed this in France and it never caused an issue but could do with sorting. It may just be enough to renew the rubber strip I put on the chassis rails that the bonnet sits on. It's very worn in places now and compressed - a fresh set may give some extra depth for the bonnet catches to hold on, if that makes sense.

Need to do all this before my Wales trip in 2 weeks, a repeat of the trip I did last year. Really looking forward to that...