Paging Sweller

I'm guessing that this might be eligible:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=424&item=2491749379&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

 

platypus says...

GT750 engined I see. An old mate of mine called Dave Arch had one that
he used to race back in the early 80s. Those things sound absolutely
fucking evil.

 

Yup. You need earplugs with grooves to let the blood run out...

 

I always wondered (and still do) haw racing sidecar pilots manage to
find passengers. I mean, do they canvass around branches of EXIT or
something?

 

I always wondered (and still do) haw racing sidecar pilots manage to
find passengers. I mean, do they canvass around branches of EXIT or
something?[/QUOTE]

C'mon - who wouldn't want to?

 

The Older Gentleman says...

I'd love to have a go in a racing sidecar.

 

Well, I told him I'd be up for it a couple of months ago, so get to the back
of the queue.

 

I did a hillclimb on a chair. I was approached at a Motor Club
meeting after a few pints and thought it would be an awfully jolly
jape - I mean, you wouldn't want to lie on your death bed and think "I
/wish/ I'd had a go at that ... "

My life flashed before my eyes several times just when we were
practicing on a disused airstrip FFS, and when we went up the hill and
my bloody head was this > < bloody far from the trunks of some /very/
big trees ...

I truly didn't know that the human body can hold eight pints of neat
adrenaline at the same time as blood. I found out that borrowed
leathers can hold a pint of piss though - until one rolls off the
chair at the top of the hill and it runs out, at least.

 

*lovely*

I had a mate who had a sort of semi-kneeler made road legal, with a
rally car seat bolted to the platform. I did a lap of the Island in
the chair, on wet roads, and it was a fucking hoot, specially going
road the outside of some solos.

 

I can see that being a hoot-and-a-half. I've got myself into so much
shit over the years, committing to fucking lunatic projects and then
having to follow them through because I made the commitment - I'm
surprised I've not been committed myself. I've piloted (and been
piloted in, with varying *cough* degrees of competence) some scary
machinery which has usually been homebrewed in a fucking pigshed (or
above a cow byre) and yes, I've had a lot of fucking hoots, especially
in the pub afterwards and for the next several days.

I've also spent an inordinate amount of time in Casualty and Men's
Surgical, regretting it. That's why my ankles crunch first thing in
the mornings, my back is terminally fucked and my nose is the
'interesting' shape it is. While one has the candle it seems an awful
shame not to burn both ends though, eh?

 

My "foolish vehicle" count is relatively low, unfortunately, but I
like to think of made up a little ground in the "who's stupid idea was
this" stakes

Leading, as I do, a fairly charmed life, I can't complain too much on
that score. I do of course have a passing acquaintance with hospital
food, tho.

The hot wax stings occasionally, tho, eh?

 

How many innocents have gone for a date with an "interesting" motorcycle
racer and woken up in a sidecar?

 

The Older Gentleman wrote

I know a bloke who used to do passengering. The man is a total fucking
nut case and is really only on the streets because he does not actually
represent a threat to the rest of humanity. He is a veggie and works as
a postman in west London somewhere, if that makes any difference.

 

BTDT GTT. Passengered for the late Jock Taylor one day round
Knockhill. I'd been racing a Hillman Imp engined Ginetta the previous
season and there was a rule change the following season which made the
existing engine non-competetive.

Jock was interested in buying the engine and so we met up at Knockhill
and installed it in his outfit. He didn't have his passenger with it
and so I stupidly volunteered so he could test out the engine. I asked
him to be gentle with me as it was my first such experience. Aye,
right!

Rowdy

 

Better than in a bath of ice in a hotel room ...

 

Mine is remarkably high. The Jawa Combo still rates highly, and I
*desperately* want a Piaggio Ape.

 

That's the beekeeper thing coming to the fore.

 

There was a bunch of us would get together, never in an organised way
and the membership was always in a state of flux, but we'd sit in the
back room of a pub and witter and sketch what we wanted, or what we
had lying about that we could use (or wanted to find a use for ;-)).
In fact now I think about it, this has happened four distinct times,
for a couple of years each time, in three widely-separated areas of
the country. Anyway, the acronym that always came out at the end was
"SLAGIATT", pronounced slaggy 'at and it stood for "Seemed Like A Good
Idea At The Time".

I've recounted on here the stories of converting the Series I Landy to
V8 power and recently the TR8. They were pretty mainstream, really.

There was a Ford V6 we put into a 10 foot wooden speedboat, which
enabled dragging three people in tractor inner tubes down the river
simultaneously.

There was a communally-owned Mini that we grasstracked and couldn't
get enough grip out of - so we welded bed iron (poor man's angle iron)
across steel rims, initaially perpendicular to the rim and parallel to
the ground. That was still a bastard to get off the line, but it dug
big grooves and went straight on like a bastard. Later, improved
models had extra bits of iron at angles to provide turning ability and
it got faster. When it started to shed bits of bed iron at speed,
however ...

There was a scrap MkIII Escort that we mid-mounted a warm 2.8 V6 in,
converted to RWD and crashed a lot as it was so stable it wouldn't
turn corners.

There was a plywood and rubber hovercraft built around a VW 1600
engine that sank repeatedly (frequently at launch).

There was a series of MkI Humber Sceptres and Hillman Minxes from the
60s that we put gradually more ludicrous engines in and raced as
bangers as Team Purple Emperor (they only live for one day, see) in
'orrible purple paint, illicitly beefed up with lengths of railway
line running front-to-back, in through the headlights and down inside
the wings and doors with crosspieces under the slam panel and under
the rear window. They were slow off the line, but once they were
rolling, no fucker could stop them - including the drivers.

We built a 1600cc NHS bed for a parade. It was so much fun we built
another one, then a 2000cc superbed. We raced all three to Ilfracombe
and back under the cover of darkness. None squeaked home, that night.
We walked in and then had to go back out and bury them where they had
come to rest. "Three of our beds are missing ... "


As to the "who's stupid idea was this", imagine paragliding on a
home-made sail, attached to a twin-V8-engined speedboat by a very long
rope, the boat being piloted by a pissed Pole with poor eyesight and
no perceptible sense of humour.

Or being strapped into a microlight, piloted by your boss who suddenly
remembers he hasn't put his contacts in - but you go anyway.

Or listening to your navigator while traversing a Borders Roman Road
which comprised lengthy straights, sharp hump-backed bridges and
equally sharp square corners - when he called "Flat over this one, it
goes straight on ... ". When you go airborne at 140mph and see the
drystone wall passing ten feet beneath your wheels, you just know it's
going to be trouble.

Perhaps the ultimate was entering the bathtub race across the Wear in
Sunderland harbour. Everbody else was in modern lightweight plastic
and fibreglass baths - the four of us were in a proper cast-iron one.
We'd taken the feet off for hydrodynamic efficiency and plugged the
plughole and overflow with wooden wedges, but never checked the amount
of freeboard available when fully loaded.
Not enough, was the answer ...

 

FFS stay away from Sweller - the two of you are bad enough separately.

Oh, and my ribs enjoyed the workout...

 

Like it. I think that can usefully be employed here on ukrm.