ah well….

saturday was a great day at the ace cafe where rikki james from the split screen van club had organised a get together swap meet kinda thing. i met loads of people from the volkszone forum and chatted with all sorts about all sorts. i had a lot of interest in the bus with lots of people looking over the new roll cage and chatting with paul and joss from der botcheinvolks who did all the work.
i did a brisk trade in tshirts and other clothing and got into the swing of it with people contributing to the ‘help buy a turbo to go faster next year’ appeal…

i even won a prize ! everyone who came with a van got a voting form to choose your favourite bus and i won a cup and a box of chocolates for second prize care of luke at terrys beetle works. thanks !

i packed up by about 4.30 or 5 pm and sat and had some food with tim from HSl racing, joss and botch and andy and suzanne. then off up to oxford for the night to prepare for the slough swap meet the following day. Tim at HSL had offered me part of his stall in the swap meet to sell more akciddento merchandise. it would work out ok for Tim as he usually trades at shows single handed and sadly has had too many incidents of his stock going walkies at shows this year… it was all working out very nicely.

i set off round the north circular and onto the M4 followed by paul and joss and tootled along with the traffic. as we got up the M4 the traffic was thinning and the music in the bus was working out very nicely over the whine and roar from the engine bay (did i ever tell you how LOUD the high pressure fuel pump is for the injection system ? trust me, it’s louder than a loud thing…)

alll of a pudding the road was clear and my foot suddenly felt very heavy, with the radar detector set to stun we were off with paul and joss in their GSi trying to keep up…

then at about 6000rpm in fourth gear the temp gauge shot skyhigh…

not a good sign.. pull over and slow down and listen.
that’s not a good noise…

onto the hard shoulder.

that’s really not a good noise..

paul and joss walk up the hard shoulder.. after a brief exchange about the speedo reading in the GSi and joss standing there looking at the bus (trying to work out why they couldn’t catch it i think ) guesses start at a broken rocker arm… rocker covers off.

not a rocker arm

turn it over again. scream and switch it off REAL quick.

talk some more and fix on an answer. not one that i like but an answer nonetheless. a high probability of a spun bearing on the crank… only was to tell properly is to drop the engine and split the crank case.

not good.

i’m very much in a ‘oh well’ sort of mood but quietly i’m feeling very embarassed and stupid inside. i broke my new toy. it’s probably a mechanical failure and there’s nothing i could have done about it but you never know….

i phone the AA, blessed AA and explain i need a low loader then retreat to the bus to wait.

i pop the stereo on while i’m waiting in the dark and cold of the hard shoulder and am immediately deafened by ‘wake up’ by rage against the machine at maximum volume…

ah… so that’s what happened….

doh