just back from the train station…

yes,

the train…

it’s been a while but i was amazed… it arrived on time at leeds station (nice and new and CLEAN)and remindng me of someting vaguely european. i got a seat. the train was quiet. the buffet car has ok coffee and food and books and magazines and EVERYTHING! it was modern and the doors wer like startrek ones…

AND IT ARRIVED on time (i think…)

anyhow. the reason i caught he train is that..

just a minute, emily’s rat has just wandered out of its cage onto the table by the keyboard, grabbed a biro and retreated to the cage and started to eat it…

got it back.

the bus is in martin taylor’s workshop in bradford awaiting a new engine…
the engine is actually on the dyno, fuel injection, ecu, crank trigger pully, coil pack, sensors etc all in place… one or two bits to iron out (there appears to be so much lift with the 86c cam and the 1.25 ration rockers that they rub against the standard rocker covers) but it’s there…

the day started at castle botch in deepest oxfordshire with a cup of tea and then off into the wildblue yonder (the M1) and a mission to use up some petrol…

— the tv is on in the corner and i’ve just seen two adverts, one calling for male contestants for a new reality sho ‘lapdance island’ “can you watch the lapdancers without touching them ?” the other telling me that my tv uses more energy on standby than when i’m watching it… what the hell is going on with our world ? we are just plain stupid aren’t we ?

so off up the m1 and into darkest yorkshire, called into sheffield to see retrosteve walker at VWRetro. steve showed off his new vehicular aquisitions including a rtaher nice 1966 mustang in a cream/beige and the thing he was most excited about, a low mileage one owner Fiat supermirafiori. i remember the TV ads from when i was little but apparently afficianados will nod appreciatively.

i took a few pictures with my phone and steve crawled under the bus to have a look at a bit of welding that needs doing. steve did all the welding on the bus a few years ago when i forst got it but there is one piece, the front main cross member that got missed somehow..

the main thing that really hit me about the visit, and i have it on camera is actually seeing and hearing steve say ‘kinell, i really need to clear this place up’
priceless.

then off to martin taylors workshops in bradford.

i somehow remembered how to get there and found martin in the dyno room twiddling with things. we got down to business.

looking over the engine i was very pleased. the EFI gets rid of the coil, the distributor, changes the fule system completely. the install looks so clean and neat. it looks ,purposeful.

martin fires up his laptop in the dyno control room and walks me through the software that comes with the DTA engine management system. half of it i wont be using initially BUT it is so cool. the software can be used to make realtime changes to the ignition and fuel maps to control the fuel injector settings and ignition advance all across the rev range in 500rpm intervals. (in rather nice 3D mesh graphs no less! )
it can also be used purely as a realtime monitoring system with full data logging and recall. a screen displays lovely pseudo analogue clocks for RPM, throttle opening precentage, advance, fuel pressure, injector timing, temp, manifold pressure, air pressure, MPH, (front AND rear wheel) etc etc etc…
it looked like some kind of flight simulator…

put the biggest grin on my face. not only is it WAY cool, it actually does important stuff too!

there are hookups and routines for all sorts of extra stuff. i can hook up a small LCD monitor into the cab to display all this permanently. i can hook up sensors to all four wheels if i want and program the traction control portion of the ECU. with the line lock hooked up to the front wheels i can set all the launch control stuff and if i decide to plumb in a turbo or even some nitrous oxide injection it will control all of that too…

Full launch control, three stage revlimiting, traction control and even routines to deal elegantly with component or sensor failure with full dataloggin to see what happened at your leisure. and it will actually run the engine better, faster, more economically, more reliably and more efficiently too!

all for the same kind of price as putting in some VW re-enactment society ‘godlike’ 48 ida carbs…

hmmmm…..

let me just think about that for a minute.

so what do i do with the new old stock nylon EMPI race jacket i just bought off e-bay ?

i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again,
it’s wrong, it’s just plain wrong. and it’s a fire hazard!