Wee!

This is a new "bottom end" that has been constructed this weekend. Thanks to Gareth and Jean-Claude for the hand :)

snow laughing matter

Well my place of residence is slowly beginning to resemble northern Alaska...
I know the Battle of the Bulge was fought not far away, but bloody hell; it could have waited until my winter tyres arrived...

Getting there...

Work has started on the engine replacement. I have spent a couple of hours taking all the bits and pieces off, including the surprisingly heavy bonnet. A friend popped round last night to help me get the last stubborn studs out of the block.
So soon I have to drag the 250 kilo engine/gearbox combo out before the aptly-pseudonymed "GT" builds my 'new' engine. If all goes well the replacement should kick out a few more horsepower than the original :D

Well that's it.

Following a stream of rather offensive mails, I've quit the band "Substitute".

Cyril too has decided to drop the project for more or less the same reasons.

Therefore the band is officially dead. That said; it had been in a coma for two years...

Oh yes, I have a blog...

That I don't update very often...

Well the latest erm... news is that my dear wife is replacing my practice room with a pool table, ashtray and bar.

Probably a wise choice, seen as how my musical activities have a zero pulse rate.

Now, All I have to do is find the rules of the game, and clean my glasses :)

Otherwise I will be yanking out the heart of the Triumph. It is to be replaced with a new heart, with pacemaker and a proper gearbox that doesn't whine like a three year old child at bed time when guests are over...
I shall attempt to update with photo's soon

Breakdown!

Seen as how we have marvellous weather, the cantankerous old clap-trap decided to die on me, exactly 484m from my house (luckily).

Lesson one: Do not put your trust in a 41 year old fuel pump to get you to work.

No I haven't died

I'm a really lazy sod aren't I?
Should really put a bit more effort into this blog...

I am currently replacing the dashboard of the skip. This is very slow progress, as I'm not replacing a like for like. I have to cut bits out of the hardboard and fascia panel to get all my old bits in. Still, I'm not moaning, a pleasant lad in Coventry has procured me a sound piece of Triumph that will allow me to have a glove box!

Also been busy with www.dizzygood.com there's an extract of a track on there.

If anybody reads this blog... LOL

Amazing!

I have now been married a year and a day.

My wife still doesn't want to divorce!

whodathunkit?

Happy...

The joys of relic ownership

The last couple of weeks have been rather interesting, due to fabulous spring weather and renewed vim and vigour in our social circles.
So after several barbecues, ignoring the computer completely, a trip to Ciney in a freinds nice old Porsche (that doesn't break down - this is important) and a few trips in my own tatty triumph, I finally am having little problems creep in.
Obviously, if your car is 41 years old and in dire need of restoration, it's not going to have modern Toyota-esque levels of reliability. Hell no!
So after spending a couple of hours with a friend sorting the carburettors, we noticed a timing problem wit the engine. after my treck to Ciney a couple of freinds (on who normally lives in Estonia!) popped by and sorted the distributor. So what happened next? Ah well, the electrical connections decided to go to pot. I thought I had sorted the problem with a replacement wire, so on a warm sunny evening went for a drive, to pay the lad who had sanded, repainted laquered and balanced my wheels. On the way back the car died...

Bugger.
Luckily this is a great way to meet people who have the same illness! A rather pleasant chap in Habay who has recently got rid of his Triumph Spitfire for a very nice AC Cobra replica helped me out (yes, I set off with no tools...), and I got home before the wife started worrying. :)

How do you make a car look 1000 times better than it is?

Let your wife take a photo.


Well, it was wonderful this weekend, so I hastily put the car back together and went to Insenborn. We are officially sunburned.

Love is in the air…

(Yes, yet another reference to a cheesy hit…)



Well, we are celebrating the slightly-removed-because-of-Geoffrey-Chaucer archaic right of fertility.
Obviously, the romantic overtones will be subdued on my part today, as the cat decided she’d howl at our door for food at 6 in the morning, I’ll have sat over eight hours in a boring office, an hour and a half on a train, will have a job interview this evening before rushing back home to take my lovely wife to the restaurant, to pay three-times-the-price-of-yesterday food. By the time we’re home I’ll probably be dead on my feet, so my wife’s pleas for baby making practice will fall on deaf ears until the weekend.

Such is life eh?

Other than the happy event of me being able to spend an hour with the woman I married, a friend has returned from his jaunt in the midlands with lots of bits of Triumph. I hope to pick them up this weekend. We’ve had sun all week, so by the time I get the car bolted together, we should have some monsoon weather…

Not much, but something so you know I'm not dead...

Well that was a beautiful weekend!
As well as soaking up sun, catching up a bit on my studies, getting rid of the last of my head cold, changing the oil, sparkplugs and that on the rust bucket, we celebrated the 60'th Birthday and retirement of my wife's mother.

They all decided they'd had enough... at 5am...

I can't even say I'm too old for this!

Quick update.

A bit absent due to being in extremely deep shit on the subject of the assignment I have to return to the Open university for the 31'st of January.

Anybody knowledgable in Java is welcome to my home, and will get free beer and stuff if I pass this assignment.

Feel miserable. Back soon.

Workin' 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin'....

Not that I know anybody who works those hours...



I am one of approximately 120 000 workers who cross the Luxembourgish border every day, from Monday to Friday. More precisely, I an one of the forty-odd thousand who cross from Belgium to Luxembourg and back, all to avoid the Belgian propensity of removing 50% of ones wage before it his the bank account. To put this into context, it's like the population of Norwich suddenly disappearing for eight hours (minimum) a day.

Apparently, 300 people go the other way to work... I haven't worked this out yet...

Now, Luxembourg has a small any very well maintained motorway network (unlike the rubbish the Belgian state seem to throw on the floor), which gets saturated every day of the working week with my fellow labourers, the thousands of wagons coming to fill up with cheap(er) diesel (fags and booze too...) and the pensioners who are probably paid by the state to drive in the second lane at 84 km/h and take two parking places on industrial sites with no shops. So as you can imagine it doesn’t always flow like the Danube after heavy rain.

I would like to point out at this point that I am probably the most boring driver ever. I stick to speed limits, use all the paraphernalia like indicators and lights, and generally render the passenger experience as soporific as hot cocoa and CNN on a wet Tuesday night.

Having lived in Leeds, West Yorkshire, and sitting in a major traffic jam, I know this is not a major issue, and largely replicated throughout Europe, but I was recently wondering if people’s behind-the-wheel behaviour is endemic, or if it is my notoriously bad memory painting pretty pictures.

So dear reader(s)… do you also experience:
1. Vehicles braking to overtake and then flooring it once they pull in?
2. BMW’s flashing their lights for you to get out of the way as you overtake a mile of wagons, while stuck behind half a mile of other cars?
3. “Exocet missiles” that go from slip road to outside lane, then outside lane to exit?
4. Ditherers, who pull out regardless of the vehicle beside them?
5. Brake testers, who’s only aim in life is to be in front of you, then slam on the brakes?

Please leave your own experiences, I’m curious :)

Sundays are supposed to be for chilling out...

A quiet weekend, where not much happened... well apart from a couple of friends at long last finding a house, and a night out near Rochefort with some particularly good wine.

The car is on stilts, as the wheels are being sandblasted and painted by someone who know wht they are doing (ergo, not me). I've also put the newly painted hood frame back on. I'll have to knock it off though as I have an Uni assignment to finish for the end of the month... shame, I prefer messing with the old rust bucket.

Oh yes, Dizzygood - for whom I muck around on the bass - will be playing a concert on the 19th of April in the Clausen area of Luxembourg... so if you're in the area...

Look, ma! No Plastic!

OK, it's a lie. All that black stuff is Polyvynil Chloride made flexible with Pthalates, but compare this with a modern car, and you'll know what I mean.

This is the result of my cutting up hardboard, inserting speaker, nearly stapling my hand to the table, and a quick sanding and revarnish of the capping.

Total cost 3€.

I like it.

Now I'm currently revamping the frame for the hood. I'm waiting for a delivery before the car stops looking like a skip, so that gives me plenty of time (OK, a month) to sand and paint the surprisingly rusty tubes that hold the flop-top up. The Vynil has been cleaned and will need cleaning again. Though the result so far is the same white I wish my teeth were, there's still a few blotches of ingrained filth.

But my Java course is a little bit more important, so piano piano...

Round and round we go...

I have had enough.

Honestly. I'm waiting for a major accident here. Never in my life have I seen so many people cluelessly using roundabouts. They are bloody dangerous. Over the last five years, I have nearly been knocked of my bike by women in Volvo's, been cut up by fat men in BMW's, seen young and old scream round the outside lanes of roundabouts with no regard for other road users. They drive like donkeys, and I get the impression they think they are in the right!
I assume therefore, nobody get's the basics taught to them during their driving lessons...

Well, Here is a little guide:


First, Turning right. Use the inside lane. Indicate in the direction you wish to turn. Give way to oncoming traffic.



Turning left or U-turn. Use the outside lane. Indicate in the direction you wish to turn. Give way to oncoming traffic.



Going straight ahead. Use either lane. Give way to oncoming traffic. DO NOT INDICATE until exiting the roundabout, where you indicate in the direction you will be taking.

To me it appears simple. Apparently this is not the case for everybody... Please forward this to everybody you know, especially if the are blonde with a Ford Fiesta...

Incidentally, for the alcoholics and hard of thinking, these roundabouts are mirrored in countries like Australia, The UK, Japan... where people drive on the left. Do not attempt to go anti-clockwise in these countries.

Radio killed the Video star?

Possibly not, but appalling references to Trevor Charles Horn aside, I've actually finished the speaker mounted door cards. After moocho web browsing and such like, I was hoping to get one of these radio mounts:



But they are (as the owner of this image stated) "as rare as hens teeth".
So I'll probably make my own cheap tacky, not-quite-right version.

In other news, I am not alone in this part of the world with one of these vehicles! A chap named Jean Claude has a slightly more recent Vitesse with a proper roof. He is also the organiser of the Luxembourgish Triumph scene, and will normally be bringing a nice package for me to finish my soft-top all the way from the midlands. :)

Musically, it's all very quiet (well, apart from in the Triumph). Hopefully something will happen before spring...