The Hot Rod Gazette Literary Review

In the big void in my life left by the absence of a new Terry Pratchett book, I read Fifty Shades of Grey. The trilogy of Grey books were far and away the best-selling books of 2012, outselling the next most popular author by five to one. And I expect at least 9.5 million of the 10+ million copies sold were sold to women. I read the first book over the course of a few weeks on my daily visit to the peace and solace of the dump station.I learned a few things. First is that each chapter is just slightly too long to avoid pins and needles whilst reading on the cacker. Second is that Fifty Shades of Grey is absolute, steaming tosh.

Now I appreciate that I ain't the book's target demographic, but given the old chestnut of 'If you locked 1000 monkeys in a room with 1000 typewriters for 1000 years, one of them would eventually produce the works of Shakespeare,' clearly one of the other monkeys with lower literary ambitions and a nasty case of the horn typed this bollocks and EL James is the clever bugger that got it published. Hopefully the monkey subsequently left the typing pool to pursue a career as a laboratory test subject, as it's just about the only animal in the world that deserves such a fate.

****Warning: following paragraph contains spoilers******

If you're planning on reading the book – and I highly recommend that you don't – the premise is thus. A young woman, who is nothing special, meets a man. He is breathtakingly good looking, cultured, straight, and with a dong like a cooking apple on a Pringles tube. Oh yeah, and he's a multi-millionaire. Having previously enjoyed a life of casual sex and S&M, this squillionaire falls for Miss Average after she changes him and proves him wrong, and he puts up with her shit with stoic good grace. Despite his capacious intellect, he seems to confuse her whiny neuroses with 'character' and feminine mystique. Then in the end, SHE leaves HIM.

On the back cover, in four-point text, is the word 'Fiction'. Jesus Christ, this should be printed in bright red block capitals on every page! It's a fairy story for bints, with less emphasis on ugly sisters and more emphasis on bondage and shagging. It's also been a brilliant marketing strategy for making a mucky book respectable, all the while making the Readers' Letters page of a Paul Raymond title seem not in the least bit far-fetched, and fuck my flat cap if it hasn't sold 10 million sodding copies. 

So while there are, presumably, 10 million women out there frothing at the bung-hole over this dream guy and the amount of nonsense he'll put up with, us blokes would never fall for that sort of cynical shite. Unless it's printed in a Haynes Manual. I can't get over the fact that Haynes have never been taken to court by Trading Standards just for the phrase “Reassembly is the reverse of the removal procedure.” Maybe it is, if you're working in a surgically clean, heated garage with all the tools and facilities you could ever want plus at least one assistant, and the car you're working on is six weeks old and has yet to see rain. For everyone else, the statement should be, “Reassembly is the reverse of the removal procedure, though you'll have to go out and buy new nuts and bolts to replace the ones that have stripped/snapped, you'll have to spend an hour looking for that spring or circlip that went pinging past your ear in step three, and as you've wrecked the gasket you'll have to make a laughable attempt to seal that joint using some four-year-old Hylomar that's gone off in the tube. The shops are now shut, and you've got to go to work in this car in the morning, so face it: you're knackered, mate.” Or, if you need a Haynes manual for a more modern car, why not save yourself £20 by writing "This is a complex procedure that should not be attempted by the home mechanic. Return the car to your franchised dealer" several times on a sheet of paper, photocopy it 200 times and have it bound in hardback. 

Old Haynes manuals were great, though, as they told you pretty much what you needed to know and how to go about doing it. I like manuals for cars where the entire wiring diagram fits on one page and you don't need to know every colour in the spectrum in German to understand it. The other day I had to look at the Haynes manual for the Bedford CF. Most of it was written in about 1968 when the CF was still new, and it didn't change too much until well into the Eighties. In the introduction, the author was bemoaning these new-fangled tightly-packaged modern vans, and the fact that there was far less working room around the engine than the reader may have become used to.

Jesus. What would the author have made of a 2012 turbo-diesel transverse front-wheel driver? Open the bonnet, lift the hatch from the floorpan, and you couldn't get much better access to the engine if it popped up on a spring like a jack-in-the-box. On a modern van you'd have to return it to the dealer to find out how to open the bonnet...

Then there's the timing belt. On a modern car, failure to attend to the expensive and labour-intensive timing belt at the specified intervals can basically lead to even more expensive and labour-intensive terminal engine damage, warranty voiditude and the subsequent ruin of western civilisation. What does the Haynes manual say about the timing belt on the old slant four? That it should never need adjustment or replacement. How far we've come...

Eugene

Hot Rodders from Outer Space

It's been a while since anything got posted on here, but a chance post from a mate of mine of Faecebook last night got me thinking, so stand by for a ramble.

He mentioned that he'd been listening to an interview on the radio with two people who claimed they'd been abducted by aliens on their way back from the pub. As excuses for rocking up home plastered at 5am go, that one's pretty tenuous.

But this is what got me thinking. If aliens are coming down to earth to abduct people, surely they're here to learn about humans and what makes them the highest life form on the planet, and top of the food chain. If that's the case, why do they never appear in cities and abduct a world leader, or a brain surgeon or a professor of physics? Why do they always go to rural areas and abduct some bloody hick who has spent the last 12 hours on a scrumpy bender and drunk his own bodyweight in Doctor Liverfucker's Special Reserve? And what the bloody hell's going on with the anal probing? If they want to learn anything about humans, surely they'd learn more by concentrating on the brain or the central nervous system than whatever they might find up someone's barking spider?

Alien 1: "The subject is sedated and under hypnosis, ready for the experiment. Shall we investigate the higher functions of the cerebral cortex?"
Alien 2: "Nah, let's poke something up his catflap. Pass the gloves."

No, I reckon that any alien life form concerned with the advancement of science, interdimensional contact and relations, or even invasion have reached Earth's outer stratosphere, taken a good gander and said, "Sod that. Those dumb shits are still burning fossil fuels for power, for Christ's sake. Let's head back, I'm sure I saw a nice pub just past Neptune."

I reckon that any aliens that have actually made it as far as earth are, in fact, space hot rodders, or galactic rednecks out on some interplanetary cruise or joyride, and their spacecraft is probably the space equivalent of a 1975 Camaro or a Cortina with a jack-up kit on the back. They've all got pissed up on Interstellar Artois and gone out for a burn-up, chucking beer cans at the Mir space station, mooning the moon and taking pictures of each other at the big sign saying "Welcome To Uranus".

They've happened across earth, decided to find some poor bell-end wandering around pissed off his swede, "abducted" him, stuck a daffodil up his dirtbox and taken photos of each other standing next to him with their camera-phones, then dropped the poor twat back where they found him.

Crop circles? Spaceship doughnuts.

Roswell? That happened after the cruise-out from the Celestial Street Rod Nationals, where some dude in a Mercurial Cougar tried to drift it around Venus, overcooked it and crashed into New Mexico. That "meteorite" that fell in Russia a few weeks ago? A rod thrown by come cosmic redneck giving it too much in the burnout in his Ford Millennium Falcon.

The truth is out there. And it should probably stay out there, otherwise we'd have them rocking up to some of our events. Just imagine how you'd feel, proudly telling some alien how you could run the quarter in nine seconds on treads, then him showing you the button on his dash marked "Warp Drive"...

This rambling load of old cock has been brought to you by Cabin Fever, sponsored by the damn snow, which means I can't get down to the garage. Makes me bloody honk...

Eugene

The Name's Bond...

... Windscreen Bond, and I'm an utter, utter pain in the dick.

Having tried to remove bonded-in windscreens before and only ever succeeded in cracking them, a couple of folks on the HRG Faecebook page pointed me towards some guff you could buy from Screwfix that'd work to dissolve the stuff. A trip to Screwfix, and five minutes and £3.99 later, I have a bottle of 'No Nonsense' Sealant Remover. Whether this is the stuff I needed or not I don't know, but from my description it's all the monosyllabic acne-ridden knuckle-fuckers behind the counter could find that matched my - admittedly vague - description of what I was after.

I tried it on the rear screen of a Fox Mustang notch that had suffered from a previous owner's "oh-shit-my-carpet's-wet-I'd-better-go-round-all-my-windows-with-Sikaflex" attitude, so I tried to scrape away as much excess as I could before starting. The bottle comes with a brush built into the cap, like Kurust (or, as it should be called, Doesn't Kurust But Turns It A Slightly More Attractive Colour Before Creating Horrible Blue Streaks The First Time It Rains), and the product itself is like a gel, so I painted it around the rear screen bond.

I don't know what I was expecting - maybe somebody like Barry Scott to shout, 'Bang! And the Sikaflex is gone!' - but what it mainly did, after 15 minutes, is make the surface of the bead of sealant soft and gooey. Whereupon the now-nearly-liquid layer of Sikaflex goes everywhere. All over the paintwork, all over the glass, all over me, everywhere. So a second coat of solvent went on. After another 15 minutes, the Sikaflex still hadn't magically disappeared, but there was slightly less of it and what remained was a bit softer, so out came the old hook-and-rope windscreen remover. The screen came out pretty easily and ... in one piece! Result!

This was almost a week ago. I still have not succeeded in completely scrubbing all the dissolved Sikaflex off my hands. The patches of the damn stuff on the overalls I was wearing have since set solid. The lumps of it that I scraped off have got stuck in the treads of my boots so that when I'm outside I build up an accretion of gravel and pebbles that stick to it, but when I'm indoors I manage to leave little tarry smudges on the floor. And now I have a Fox Mustang notch rear windscreen that nobody wants and I have nowhere to store. Yet, somehow, the whole operation still feels like it was a success...

Eugene

The Daily Grind

At the end of last year, I went to the Restoration Show at Stoneleigh. It was alright, I suppose, but I did manage to pick up a few bits and pieces, one of which was a box of about two dozen cutting discs for the 4.5" grinder. These are those discs that are about 1mm thick, and I thought that a box of two dozen discs would last me forever.

So, anyway, there's me advertising two Fox Mustangs breaking for spares, and one chap wants the panel that goes between the bonnet and the windscreen. He had his bonnet blow open, and it's ruined the panel. Wahey, thought I, I get to use my new cutting discs! So, finally, Saturday, a day off when it's not raining. I went down to the unit and started cutting.

They go through steel really quickly and cleanly, but Jeeeeeezus, do they wear out quickly! Mind you, cutting that piece out was no picnic - the panel itself is nice and clean, but pretty much every surrounding piece of metal is rotten. From the looks of it, you'd have thought that a well aimed kick would have had the whole box section flying down the yard, but no, it took me two days. And because I had to work in some really tight corners, I had to take the guard off the grinder. So I was working away, dodging the shrapnel and sparks, just waiting for the grinder to hit the next patch of filler and make the car look like one of Charlie Sheen's sneezes, and wondering what that strange foul smell was. Oh, I've just sliced the fingertip off my leather glove. Fortunately my fingers didn't reach all the way to the ends of the gloves (there's a joke in there somewhere...). Then I found a large patch made of ally mesh and fibreglass resin. That was a treat to grind through.

No joy, and then it got dark, so I abandoned it and went back this morning. I finally cut the whole box section out, rotten bits and all. If the guy wants the whole thing, he can pick the bones out of it. The only problem is ...

...I seem to have used up half my box of discs. This was just Saturday's tally. Today's was the same again. Surprisingly, the one on the left was the only casualty of breakage. It got stuck, and the centre twisted out of it. Overall? Brilliant tools, don't last long.

Eugene

Worthless Tools

Nope, not another rant about the government. Just a rant.

Last night I took the windscreen out of one of the Fox Mustangs I'm breaking for spares. The windscreen was chipped and delaminated, but I've had a guy mithering me (you know the sort - "Hi, I'd like to give you money for something you don't want or need" - that sort of pain) for the cowl panel between the bonnet and the screen, and you can't cut that out with the screen in place.

The screens are bonded in on Fox Mustangs, so that, coupled with the fact that the sunroof surrounds leak for fun on Foxes but everyone assumes it's the windscreen so they gum them up with silicone, meant I'd need a special tool. Fortunately, I have one. It's called a Bonded Windscreen Removal Tool.

Pretty self-explanatory, right? The little tungsten-carbide* hook cuts through the bond, and you work it around using the two handles. Wrong. I've only ever used it twice before. Once, I chipped and cracked the screen, but I assumed that was me being a novice. Last time, Chubbs used it and the same thing happened. Bad luck. Now I'm convinced that this tool is in fact about as much use as tights to a mermaid. On the instructions, it should say:
1. Jab hook through bead of bond. Keep handle at 90 degrees to the screen.
2. Wiggle it along using both hands and every ounce of strength you have until you are sweating profusely.
3. After 10cm/4", the screen will crack.
4. Carry on, because you've got to finish the job now.
5. Crack the screen at 10cm/4" intervals for the entire perimeter of the screen.
6. Remove the screen and take it to the tip.

I've been told by Wacky Mick, who used to work for Autoglass, that those special tools are in fact worthless, and only good for removing a screen that's already damaged. To remove a good screen, you need to spend hours working from the inside with a long, sharp blade and a bucket of patience.

Here are the instructions according to me, yesterday evening.
1. Wait until it's a cold day, so the bond will be almost rock solid. Ideally, wait until it's nearly dark, too.
2. Jab hook through bond. Immediately crack screen.
3. Heave and strain so hard trying to pull the tool through the tar that you are on the verge of involuntarily dropping a pound of bum-tripe in your strides.
4. Have a bright idea - a blowtorch!
5. Hunt for the blowtorch until it actually IS dark outside.
6. Use blowtorch to heat cutting tip of worthless screen removal tool.
7. Find this makes it marginally less ineffective than it was before, but you have melted the little nylon wheel that the wire rope attaches to that serves no other discernible purpose.
8. Have another bright idea. Heat up the edges of the screen to soften the bond, 10" at a time
9. Go around the screen in 90 seconds.
10. Find that this has worked a treat, except for the bottom corner bit where it seems that, instead of having the cutting hook between the screen and the surround, you actually had it between the inside layer of glass and the sheet of plastic laminate. Crack. The inner glass laminate is still bonded to the car, and you've got Bob Hope of getting that out with all your fingers intact.
11. Go home in a strop.

I hope this has been helpful?

Eugene

* - I'm not sure it is tungsten-carbide, and think it might, possibly, be chocolate.

NSCC AGM WTF?

Saturday just gone saw the annual drivers' meeting for the National Street Car Challenge. Last year's discussion got a bit heated over several issues, so would this be the same again? Would there be the beer-fuelled bun-fight we've become accustomed to? Would there be hair and teeth flying in all directions? No. Quite the opposite.

Last year, I'm sure we filled that room three-quarters full. This year, we barely half filled it, and it doesn't half come to something when Kelly is complaining that she can't hear over the noise of some Glaswegian pensioners giggling in the next room. Although to be fair they were doing some shrieking in there - were they having an Ann Summers party, or was Biff showing them his camera-phone "self-portraits"?

So where was everyone? Every year, there were people who'd come along to the drivers' meeting and I wouldn't see them again for the rest of the year. Even those guys stayed away. Is it just that everyone's skint? For God's sake, give us a clue...

Anyway, on to the meeting. We had some proposals to put forward that we just knew would cause a riot. We were thinking of having chicken wire at the front of the stage, Blues Brothers-style, to deflect the barrage of empty glasses. Full ones would be too much to hope for, I suppose.

And the objections didn't come. We suggested allowing slicks to be used at race meetings on any car that had already fulfilled the qualifying criteria of one show event, one race event and two cruises. Most people agreed. We suggested opening the entry rules to allow 'retro' front-wheel drive cars over 25 years old like MkI Fiestas and Golfs, Minis and older Jap stuff to join in. People said "Why the age limit? Let everyone join." We suggested that every car should have an MoT certificate to compete, even if it's pre-1960. We got a brief round of applause. All the contentious rules that have previously been like lighting the blue touch paper went through on the nod.

What? Who the bloody hell are you lot, and what have you done with the NSCC competitors?! The guys who could start a 15 minute argument if you said "Good evening" to them. Have the bar staff at the Manhattan put Valium in the beer? Well, they should put SOMETHING in the beer, preferably something that makes it taste like beer and not that cold tea, cat piss and custard concoction that breweries like to call SmoothFlow. Or maybe that's it - maybe the Manhattan switched to alcohol-free beer to keep things sweet? Although that certainly would raise a few questions about how Gasket got into that state...

So what's going on? Is it that everyone's finally realised that we can't afford to be narrow minded any more, and that in order for the series (and the scene) to survive, we're going to have to bin a few preconceptions and broaden our horizons a little bit? Or have people just given up? Stopped caring one way or the other? Or, rather, is the NSCC going to shrug its shoulders and accept that change is inevitable, or are we going to embrace it as an opportunity to spread the word, get some new faces and new blood into the scene, and, somehow, no matter how impractical it sounds, give ourselves a damn good kick up the arse? Watch www.nscc.info for rule changes and other such rot.

Oh, and congratulations to John Peace, the newly-crowned NSCC champion of 2012. A worthy winner, a well-deserved title, and one of the nicest blokes you could wish to meet. Good health, John.

All Hands On Dexion

Last post, I was rambling on about the need for shelving. Last time Machine Mart had a VAT-free day, I went and bought two shelving units, each of which had five shelves, and each shelf was claimed to be able to carry 350kg. That's actually THREE of me per shelf. Yeah, I don't believe it either. That's well over 1.5 tons per unit, but you don't see axle stands made out of nasty 1.5mm steel, do you?

Anyway, the two units on VAT-free day cost me £100. So when I realised that I needed more, I went on eBay and bought 10 bays of it. They were in Bolton, so on Saturday, me and ar wench took the seats out of the Grand Voyager and went to fetch it. We arrived at the shop - the shelving was warehousing shelving - to be told by the 5'0", six-stone asian girl behind the counter that it was up a long flight of narrow stairs, but there was a lift we could use to bring it down. Terrific. The lift was about five feet across, three deep and three square, but anyway, we got it all into the car.

Once I'd got it down the unit I found the old dilemma - I needed to clear everything out of the unit in order to get the shelving in. Then, while clearing a pile of mouse-eaten carpets, I found a gearbox. A FWD gearbox I didn't know I had. Damned if I know what it's from, so it's going in the scrap. I managed to get two bays of shelving up

Now, let's see how long it takes me to fill that lot with crap. Will I have enough shelves to accommodate all my crap? Will I have enough wall space to accommodate all my shelves? Will the whole lot come crashing down in the first gust of wind (of which there is a sod of a lot about at the moment)? Let's see. I my have some left over, so if anyone wants and 7' tall, 3' wide steel shelving units, let me know.

Eugene