December 24th 2005
Improvement.
  Well, it looks like the Coke did the trick - only the tiniest bit of corrosion needed to be rubbed down on the calliper body to get the piston home. Even having to reuse the original seal (a fresh kit wouldn't have arrived until sometime January), something I hate doing, hasn't resulted in leakage (yet!). The system still needs rebleeding - I've got the worst out, but there's a definite sponginess to the pedal - but for now, the car stops. I've usually found a bit of driving helps shake things up anyway, so I'd still be having to bleed them again, even if things felt perfect now.

  All in all, a fairly satisfactory result.

December 21st 2005
Brakes Broke.
  The bodge-and-hope effort I made to de-seize the SJ's nearside calliper has finally worn off (lasted a few months, though, so I'm not complaining), and the blasted thing is now solid once again. Well, actually, it had just enough movement left to let me overextend the piston to try and clean it up, then it locked out so I couldn't push it back home. Wonderful. As I neared the final stage of the standard Abort/Retry/Get a stick and kill it method of problem solving, it became fairly clear that nothing was going to work short of stripping the calliper. Even a phone call to my old man failed to yield any clever trick to getting it freed off, so said lump of metal is now sat submerged in Coca-Cola (quite an aggressive cleaning agent, believe it or not) in a tub in the garage.

  Two things the more observant of you may have noticed: One, no pictures - My hands were filthy, and I didn't fancy dribbling DOT 4 all over my digital camera. Two, I'm not bothering with a recon calliper - the cheapest I can get it £115 (plus vat, plus exchange deposit), so screw that. I mean, for God's sake, you can get brand new four-piston alloy callipers for that kind of money! Does make me wonder if I could bully the Range Rover four-pots I've got onto the Suzuki axles with some kind of adaptor plate, but I suspect they're seized also. Ah well - The piston and bore looked reasonable, so a bit of a clean should sort things out. I'd really like to replace all the seals with new, but it may not be possible to get them in time. If not, I'll chance it with the ones already on there, and swap them out at a later date.

  Tomorrow will be the decider - will the thing clean up ok, and will a seal kit materialise from somewhere? Same bat-time, same bat-channel...

November 14th 2005
Diseased Diesel.
  Spent the weekend up in Northumberland at Will's place - took today off for coming back, so we got the whole weekend there. Nice to see his Mother and Kirsty again, also met Andy and Fridge briefly. All in all, a nice break, very few problems (although we still haven't worked out how Newcastle car parks can get away with spaces a full eighteen inches shorter than an average-sized family car).

  One minor incident on the return journey: We're coming down the M1, singing along to Big & Rich at the top of our lungs, when this white Astra van comes past at silly speeds, with something gushing out from underneath. As soon as the smell hits, it's obvious - the guy's got a massive fuel leak, and is happily irrigating the outside lane with derv. We tried to catch up with him to warn him, but he was going way to fast to safely chase down, especially with the car's tyres and windscreen liberally doused in his fuel. Eventually, we gave up (no-one else had noticed, or if they had, were not inclined to do anything about it), and just called the cops to let them know... Just in time to see said van pull onto the hard shoulder. Hopefully the worst of it dissipated before any rain managed to turn the previous five miles into a skid pan. Given the speed the guy was doing, I suppose it's lucky he didn't manage to slick up his rear tyres and spin off into someone - Will's car's gonna need a damn good wash and polish, though.

November 6th 2005
Sorely LACking.
  Ugh, today was not fun. Will, Jake & I got up bright and early to make sure we got to the London Anime Club open day in good time, same as usual. Everything was going great, until the overhead gantries started announcing that the M1 was closed between junctions 8 and 10. Following a brief debate, we decided that while taking junction 11 to Dunstable and hooking up with the A5 to London was a certain route, it might not be any faster than whatever official diversion was set up at junction 10 - so we'd stick on the motorway until forcibly ejected, as it were.

Well, shit.

  About a mile before junction 10, the traffic simply clogged up. Solid. Now being sat in a traffic jam is never fun, but at least everyone's in the same boat. Even the people who pile down the outside lane and then push in are, to a greater or lesser extent, also stuck. Today, however, there were about twenty people who decided that the basic principles of a queue did not apply to them, and that they would instead just use the hard shoulder to cut in front - until a helpful trucker blocked their passage. Oiks.

  So, the queue s-l-o-w-l-y moves forward until, after an hour, we reach the diversion at the junction... which simply turns us around to go back to junction 11. The words traffic management, piss up and brewery were mentioned, repeatedly. In total, with the round-the-houses route from Dunstable, and the continued lack of a fully-functional southbound service on the Northern Line to Bank, it took us over six hours to get from Leicester to The Hog's Head at America Square. Now that's taking the piss - it even beats the time Will & I had to drive through constant snow and sheet ice to get back from meeting with Archie Meguro, from Sony Music Japan, last year.

  While we did make it to LAC, by the time we got to the pub, we were too tired, irritated and out of it to actually enjoy ourselves. After picking up a couple of DVDs we had on hold, we spent a little over an hour there, and then had to set off for home so that Will could get back in time for his D20 game in Hinckley. Luckily, the return journey took the standard eighty minutes - anything more might well have cost us our sanity. All in all, not a good day. The picture below serves only to prove that we did, in fact, make it there at all. Hopefully, we won't be seeing a repeat of this next month...

October 31st 2005
Back in action.
  Well, would you look at that... An update. It's taken long enough, granted, but I'm finally equipped with a computer that doesn't crash every ten minutes, and so provides me with the freedom to spend more time typing than I do prodding the reset. Which means we should start seeing something approaching regular editing around here, which'll be nice.

  Let's start with this weekend's activities, then, which have mostly involving trekking down to London's Docklands area for London Expo. Kirsty (Con Secretary, when she's not being Will's sister), Andy (Tech Officer) and Angelo (Auchinawa's Treasurer) came down from what motorway planners helpfully call The North, and so began our bonding experience with Transport For London.

  Firstly, on both Saturday and Sunday, there was no southbound service on the Bank section of the Northern line, so we had to go the long way round. Then Sunday also gave us a lack of DLR service to the ExCeL centre, with buses provided instead. Basically, it took us two hours to get there from Colindale, and we weren't impressed - especially considering it had taken less time than that to get from Leicester to Colindale...

  The Expo itself was enjoyable enough, but more for being able to meet people than anything else. I got to shake hands with Bruce Boxleitner! Such a cool guy - pity I couldn't afford the £15 to get his autograph, but I was sorely tempted to spend a fiver on a John Sheridan action figure and get him to scribble on that. Probably for the best, though; that might have been just a touch too surreal.

  Speaking of expense, food prices at the centre were ridiculous. Nowhere else for miles, and designed for a captive expense-account businessman audience? That'll be £8 for a sandwich, coke and chocolate brownie, please. I spent more on lunch in two days than I normally do in a week!

  There was no shortage of cosplayers at the Expo, a few of whom are picured below. Can you spot yourself anywhere? Incidentally, Heidi, if you're reading this, please email me so I can send you the full-size versions of your pictures. The address I have for you doesn't want to play ball.

June 12th 2005
Deep brown something.
  Every month Total Off Road magazine publishes a route map for greenlaning in different parts of the country. Back in the August'04 issue, they had a route to the east of Melton Mowbray, which I also have the Ordnance Survey maps for. Having dug out my copy of the magazine, Jake and I went for an afternoon out to explore them.

  On reaching the next lane entrance, as well as there being a great view out from under the trees, our way was blocked by a small heap of soil and branches. There wasn't any kind of sign posted indicating that a TRO (Traffic Restriction Order) had been placed on the lane to bar it's use by 4x4s and so on, and the blockage wasn't terribly professional-looking, so we put it down to either someone who didn't like cars on the lane, or just people dumping garden rubbish. A half-hour or so by hand shifted it to the side of the lane, with the help of my hand winch to unstick the largest of the bits of wood. Even this was only a small log and, once free of the soil, could be easily picked up by hand. With the mound taken down just about level with the lane's surface, we crossed it and started down the track.

  Luckily for us, someone had been stuck here before, and there were plenty of bits of wood lying around to help fill up the ruts (including some old fence posts which, I must add, were already broken down and lying at the trailside when we got there. I wouldn't ever break down a fence for this myself, as it's that kind of thing that really pisses landowners off). There was even a couple of bits of old carpet which we used as traction matting over the wood. I also had a small folding spade with me, which we used to shift some earth from the central hump between the ruts to fill in the really deep bits (Never take earth from the outside edge of ruts - it just widens the track, and makes even more of a quagmire). It took about an hour and a half of work to get the jeep the hundred yards or so through the deep ruts, but we'd managed to do so without damaging the car, the trail, or any property, so I guess you could call it a successful failure. With it beginning to get towards early evening, we pulled off onto tarmac at the next junction, and headed for home.

June 6th 2005
Death of the Shitroen.
  Finally, it is gone. Like Arthur Wellesley before me, I have banished a small, unpleasant French irritant back from whence it came. On Saturday afternoon, the AX was taken to it's final rusting place at a local vehicle breakers. By now, it's probably been stuck through a frag and, barring a Christine-esque revival, I am free of it. Good riddance. I'll even get some money back for the tax disc I took off it, which'll be nice.

  I dragged Rob and Jake out with me on a green lane jaunt in the Suzuki yesterday. Beautiful evening sunshine, blue skies, just perfect. Definitely need to pencil in a some more widespread expeditions in the future - I'm going to make a point of finding some local off-road clubs and signing up with them.

  On a side note, despite the less-than-pefect Haynes manual wiring diagrams, I think that the problem with the headlights may be down to a dodgy switch. My bypass system is fine for the forseeable future, so I'll keep an eye out on Ebay for a replacement stalk/switch unit, and see if a replacement helps matters.

June 2nd 2005
Made in Hamamatsu from girders.
  Right, slight change of plan on the car front. It would appear that there are no Sierras with 2.0 pintos in them anywhere. I assume they're all sitting in scrapyards by now, having rusted to death. Ah well, such is life. In light of this, I cast a wider net in search of suitable transport, basically considering anything that seemed interesting. As a result, this weekend's scouring of the classifieds with Rob concluded with me buying a Suzuki Jeep. It might have live axles on leaf springs and a ladder-frame chassis, but it's still faster, quieter, more comfortable and better handling than the Shitroen. And I can go off-road again, which I'm looking forward to - the little beastie's already been introduced to a couple of Leicestershire's green lanes, and aquitted itself very well.

  An '87 SJ413, my new toy is in pretty good nick for it's age and price, with a good chassis and reasonable body (the usual scabby patches and faded paint). The transmission isn't overly noisy, and all the 4x4 gubbins is fully operational (it's even got free-wheeling front hubs, which is a nice bonus). Just needs a bit of TLC and a good service - the engine seems to be sweet enough, although it's not getting up to temperature, and running pretty rich, which I put down to either a jammed thermostat or a sticky auto choke, nothing I'm concerned about.

  I plan to put some time in this coming weekend going over everything with a fine-tooth comb and seeing what is in need of repair or replacement, and then the weekend after that will be devoted to servicing and fettling the thing. At the moment, all I've had to do is knock up a secondary switch for the dipped beam, as there's a short somewhere that makes the lights want to stay on permanently. It's accompanied by an omnipresent high beam light on the dash, so I'll try and scare up a wiring diagram and trace what's up.

May 22nd 2005
How Anakin got his groove back.
  Well, Episode 3 was certainly a welcome return to form for Star Wars. Grittier than the kiddie-pleasing Eps 1 & 2, it manages to tie up all the various loose ends quite happily. Most impressive is that, as a 'Wars fan you know what has to happen, and yet the film still keeps you on the edge of your seat. A very fitting end to the series, and one that is worthy of being put alongside the original trilogy.

  Speaking of which, if you keep your ticket stub from Revenge Of The Sith, you can currently get £7.50 off the box set of episodes IV, V, & VI. Given my ticket cost me less than six quid, I can't say I was reluctant to go for the offer. Yeah, I know they're basically trying to clear their stocks before the six-movie set is released, but it's still a good deal.

May 8th 2005
OMGWTFBBQ...
  Crikey, nearly two months without any updates. What's been happening? Well, firstly, I'm employed again - and better yet, in an engineering workshop. It may not pay a fortune, but the fact that I'm not stuck behind a desk more than make up for it. Feels good to be back in a real engineering environment.

  In a few weeks, I'm going to be going shopping for something to replace the Shitroen as my daily driver. Original thoughts of a Vauxhall Chavalier have been pushed aside by the option of a Ford Sierra, preferably with the good old 2-litre pinto power unit. Rear-wheel-drive and Ford pig-iron simplicity, perfect! All I have to do is find a good one, and find a way to get rid of the AX, preferably in exchange for cash.

  One plan I've had in the pipeline for a while is getting a brick barbecue built in the back garden, and this is finally coming through. In fact, I was intending to get it finished today, but for the fact that it's sunny one minute and raining the next. Ah well, no rush, I'll have it done at some point. Despite my appalling bricklaying skills, it should turn out alright - but it's a steep learning curve, with me having never picked up a mortar trowel before. I've now got the hang of mixing up the mortar with the right amount of water in it, after a couple of batches with the consistency of chocolate milkshake, and the bricks are something approaching straight, so fingers crossed, I won't bugger it up.

  Those of you who know me will already be aware of my political leanings, so I'm not going to have a rant about the general election here. There's no point. But our country's wonderful system of constituencies means that Labour managed to get 55% of the seats in Parliament, despite only receiving 36% of the votes cast. Nice. And even better, if you take into account how many people didn't vote, only 22% of the enfranchised UK population actually said they wanted Blair back. Ah well, it could have been worse. The Lib Dems could have won....

March 12th 2005
You want me to do what?
  Nothing much to report: I've been putting some details on my cars up, and doing the usual nibbling away at the unfinished pages. Business as usual, really. As I write this, things are pretty quiet in general, as a large number of people are down in Southampton this weekend for Minami.

  This month's favourite people are the agency I signed up with to get a bit of cash to tide me over while I'm looking for a proper "career" job. Now, when you answer an advert looking for people to drive vans, the company in question has the word "Driver" in their name, and they ask you to have a clean driving licence, what kind of work do you expect them to offer you? Not cleaning out bins of used, er, feminine hygiene products, then? Didn't think so. Needless to say, I turned down their generous offer...

February 16th 2005
It's a start.
  Things are looking a little less bare, now, with some activity in the Cars & Driving Section. Just adding stuff here and there as and when I feel like it, reducing the number of "under construction" messages a bit. The fact that there's no definite point at which the site will be "finished" helps, as it means that the actual amount by which I'm not finished can't be defined. The site's not complete, but it's impossible for anyone to tell exactly how incomplete it is. I doubt that'll stop people telling me to get on with it, though.

  As an interesting side note, and on the basis of "Why not, it's free?" I've set up a Cafepress store. There isn't much there to buy at the moment, but it's not intended to be a way of funding The Lifestyle To Which I Wish To Become Accustomed, it's just a bit of fun. The store's address is http://www.cafepress.com/initialdave, if any of you have a deep and burning desire to visit it.

January 1st 2005
Another year, another beer...
  Well, I've finally got around to doing something about the site. I'm sure I'll think of an excuse for why it's taken me so long at some point, but not right now. Anyway, the first day of the new year seemed like a good time to put the site up. Only the Anime Shopping Guide is fully written, but hopefully I'll be able to add more material soon. Guess the Cars & Driving section should receive attention first, as it's currently empty. Cue half-hearted padding material...

  Speaking of which, I made the mistake of buying issue one of NEO (I wanted to read the interview with Monica), and it's not that good. It's bad, in fact - I'll be surprised if it hasn't gone under within a year. Words cannot express quite how much of a disappointment this magazine is. I'll be voting with my wallet on this one.