six_old_cars

T's grandfather was born in Buenos Aires. That was a long time back, of course, and the house where he lived up to age six no longer exists. But T wanted to visit the site anyway, so we got the hotel receptionist to call a reputable local tour guide driver. After all, the road in question lies in Barracas, which is a rough area declared "too dangerous for tourists" by our guide. Still, we drove out there and found the spot. It's rough and run down, and full of "occupas" (squatters).

We also found, and looked around, the Methodist church where T's grandfather was christened. Or rather, the church that was built around the end ow WW1 to replace that church, which was in the way of progress (a road bridge needed to be built, it seems).

After that our guide took us to La Boca, to the new tourist area. It's very colourful, though the bright colours are not traditional according to our guide; the duller, more subdued ones are how it should be. He then drove us through what used to be the tourist area, full of Italian restaurants, until about 18 years ago. Now it's another "unsafe" place.

And now we're back at the hotel, and our tour guide for the main trip, Gustavo, has just arrived to meet us. We've already met one other of our group, Nick, and just met Laura and TK.

... in the journal, that is. I wrote some notes when not near a WiFi point, so here they are:

Madrid airport, Saturday, 11:30pm local

So the flight announcement boards at Heathrow seem to have a bizarre idea of
time. My flight was supposed to have a gate allocated and open by 17:55. At
17:59 this changed to "Please wait". At 18:20 it changed to "Delayed"... but
only by ten minutes. Ummm....

The gate finally got allocated at 18:45, five minutes before the scheduled
departure time, and they were still estimating only a ten minute delay. Err...

Anyway, we finally took off about an hour late. This was no problem for me, as
I was expecting to be waiting at Madrid for the best part of three hours. But
the young Chilean lass whose connection was only supposed to be 55 minutes was a
bit worried.

Met a nice Yorkshireman who is going to visit his daughter in Buenos Aires, but
couldn't get a direct flight from Madrid so he's changing in Chile. But not on
the same flight as the ex-pat Chilean gent who's visiting family for Christmas.
There are just so many flights available these days that what was considered an
astonishing adventure only a few years back is now almost commonplace.

Hotel Splendid, Buenos Aires, Monday 00:45am local

The flight got in to Buenos Aires fairly well on time. I ended up moving seats
because the chap next to me swapped with a spanish lady who was (as she told me
several times) pregnant, and my aisle seat was thus more convenient for her.I'd
only picked it for the extra leg room (not much) so I was happy to swap; it
certainly didn't seem to warrant the effusive thanks ("you saved my life") that
it received. But then I'm a very logical, unemotional Englishman, not a fiery
Spanyard.

Customs at BA was conventionally slow, but baggage reclaim was efficient and the
transfer driver to take me to the hotel arrived promptly and drove... as well as
most drivers here. Lane markings are clearly not intended to mean anything in
Argentina. And I got to the hotel shortly after P and T, while L was taking bags
up to the rooms.

December 6th is a special day here, so there were parades in the streets; people
dressed in traditional costume, bright military uniforms, carnival costumes;
lots of flag waving and drumming. We spent the afternoon wandering around the
Sunday market resisting the urge to buy anything (much easier for me than for
L). Then we met up with the rest of the group P, T and L had been with on the
Patagonia trek. They seem like a great bunch, all going their separate ways now.

Then after a rather absurdly late dinner, it was back to the hotel for bed, but
not before changing rooms due to the air conditioner not working (and I suspect
having unsafe wiring in the plug).

I had a bit of a false start this morning when Tessa refused to start. I ended
up having to jump start her after only four days idle, so when the guy at the
long-term parking commented that he would only have a problem "if" the battery
went flat, I just knew he'd not accounted for old car-ness. Still, the way she
cranked over once I'd hooked up the jump leads suggests that her outrageously
slow cranking is probably due to the battery being worn out (not actually flat
or dead, otherwise she'd never manage to start, just worn out). A new one is
probably in order when I get home.

But hey, that's a LONG way off! Here I am at Heathrow with a rather ridiculous
three hours before my flight. Once again the journey down was smoother and
faster than expected despite the "serious delays" on the M4. And Q-park seem to
be moderately competent so no hold up there either. I expect a more experienced
traveller would have left home quite a bit later. Baggage is checked in, seats
selected, boarding passes in my bag (actually printed off last night). I don't
actually know which gate yet, and the flight hasn't even appeared on the boards
yet.

I should probably try to do some of that writing I talked about...

I always get the heebejeebies about whether I've forgotten anything. But I think I'm about ready. I got to the end of the packing list without seeing any glaring omissions. A came and collected all his stuff today. Parking is booked for Tessa, and I've printed off some notes on her quirks. I did wonder whether Spike would have been more sensible, until he failed to start for me on Tuesday (he floods very easily and doesn't recover). So now I need to tidy up around the house a bit, re-check the packing, and sleep.

L says her digital camera's playing up (which, coincidentally, A's did when he and C did their big world tour) and she's taken to using the film one. I've got lots of 35mm film but it's all old - A had it surplus from... err... well. I'll take it anyway, but I probably should get more. I've bought a Canon IX200 digital compact to replace my practically useless Fuji (works as well as it ever did, but that was never good), but I shall take the EOS too. And I should probably take my USB hard drive so we don't run out of SDHC cards.

Ho hum, better get on...

I think I've nearly got everything organised. L cross-checked my packing list with hers before she set off, and I've been through and ticked things off as I pack them. The big bag is fairly full and likely quite heavy. The small backpack ("hand luggage") is still quite empty - just cameras in there as yet, but there's not that much else to be added. Obviously tickets, passport, other documents, and so on will be in there, along with "esther" the baby laptop. I'm hoping to get some writing done on the plane, or while sitting around at Madrid airport for three hours. It would be handy to put things like sunblock and insect repellent in there, but that would just be asking for trouble with airport security!

Meanwhile A's project is less ready for him to collect than we would have liked. I fixed several stupid bugs in between packing today, but there'll be a fair bit for us to do tomorrow. Oh for a few more hours in the day...

For some time now my GT6 has been running really badly. Not misfiring like the PI does at low revs, nor falling into a big hole like the PI does on hard accel. Nor was it sounding rough. In fact it was quite smooth and refined. The trouble was it had no go; it was totally gutless. It ought to be the fastest of my fleet, but it was the slowest - even slower than the Toledo.

So today I drove it into the village for my weekly shop, and this afternoon I decided to sort it out. First I checked the distributor for a seized advance mechanism, but that was fine. Then I checked the base advance, which was a little over-advanced, so no problem there. Then I checked the carburettor dashpots, which were fine. The mixture is a pig to set because it has the late type Strombergs, but it seemed to be fine.

OK, one last check, I thought. I'll make sure the throttles are opening fully. So I sat in the car and pushed the pedal while watching the carbs. The easily visible rear throttle was, indeed, opening fully. The front one wasn't moving. At all. Sure enough the clamp bolt on the front linkage was loose.

And the result? Wow! That car is really quite sprightly when running on its whole engine ;)

Zechariah is dying, slowly but surely.

In case that worries anyone, I should point out that Zechariah is one of my computers. Specifically an Athlon 1GHz box I picked up from a former colleague about four years ago, diverting it from a journey to the great compute farm in the sky, because said colleague had upgraded "to something that would run XP". Since joining my network, Zechariah has been running Gentoo Linux with QVWM (now unsupported), IceWM or XFCE. In that configuration, it has proved an order of magnitude faster for some things (running Python games) than a 2.6GHz dual-core running Vista.

Today I tried an update ("emerge -ua --deep world" in Gentoo speak). So far this has required seven attempts: most ended with the machine totally locked up, but two failed with segfaults in GCC. And the login manager can no longer select sessions properly. That last looks like an incompatible change in SLiM, but the others all scream hardware fault. It has had a recent habit of powering down without warning (and needing a mains disconnect before it would start up again) and the DVD-ROM drive hasn't worked for a while. So it's probably time to send it on to where I rescued it from.

It's only taken me five weeks, but I've finally got my Toledo's engine back together. The poor thing suffered a loss of compression after completing the Club Triumph Round Britain Reliability Run. After some investigation I concluded that the problem was most likely valve seat recession - a well known bane of older cars. The engines were designed to run on leaded petrol, assuming the lead would provide lubrication and protection for the exhaust valves. On unleaded they gradually erode the seats until the valves never quite shut properly.

Anyway, it took a ridiculous amount of effort (including the brutal use of my welder on maximum to free up a stud) before I could get the head off. Once I'd done so I took it to Cambridge Rebores to be converted for unleaded (by fitting hardened exhaust valves and seat inserts). When it came back I was short a couple of head studs (because I'd had to be brutal with them) which took a while to arrive.

Then today I finally had all the bits I needed, and set about fitting the head. Part way through I discovered that the gasket set I'd bought a month back was missing one! So I drove off to TRGB, who know me quite well by now and provided the missing gasket without hesitation. They probably remembered that the set had been opened when I bought it, which they'd figured to have been for a different gasket. Once home I put the rockers on and tried to do a compression test. Tried. And failed.

Why is it that things that aren't being used fail while you're repairing something else? The starter system had been fine on Spike, but once I'd bolted the head back down the solenoid was utterly dead. Nothing doing at all. Luckily I had a spare, though not of the right type - my spare was a pre-1970 one with manual override, whereas Spike should have the later type with ballast resistor bypass. But the early type will work for now.

And so I was able to confirm good compression on all cylinders, refit the manifolds and carb, and finally, just before it got too dark to do anything more, fired the engine up for the first time since getting home from the RBRR.

It's been quite a while since I posted anything here. Not since last year, in fact. I've mostly just not been on LJ due to not having nothing else to do.

But I joined the picowrimo challenge again this year, albeit a little late, and the community is quite important for the support it gives. So here I am again. Wibble.

... so my LJ user name is now suffering an out-by-one error.

This morning a colleague and his brother came along with a trailer and took away the millstone around my neck that was my Triumph Stag.

I bought the Stag in 1998 after writing off my then daily transport, a 2500S. The Stag was for sale locally to where I lived then, and claimed to be in very good condition. The asking price was £5100 - about right for a condition 1 Stag. Unfortunately it wasn't condition 1, and I knocked the vendor down to £3800, which was still over the odds, really. In fact it was horribly over the odds, because the MOT ran out before I could collect it (the vendor hadn't admitted that) and when I tried to get a new one there were several issues, including both front brake calipers being seized.

Over the next few months it proceeded to suffer overdrive problems, then a gearbox failure. When I took the hardtop off I discovered the hood frame was broken in two places, making it a two man job to put the soft top up. Then the starter motor failed. In early 2000 one of the front suspension bushes ripped out of the chassis rail. Then later that year I entered it in the Club Triumph Round Britain Reliability Run. We made it... just. The driver's door catch locked shut (neither handle had any effect), the alternator packed up, the power steering leaked, the overdrive became sluggish, the engine misfired all the way, the cooling fan stopped at one point (easily fixed) and the rear subframe became detached from the bodywork.

The final straw was in 2003 when it needed new floors for the MOT. I got the work done, then as I was refitting the rear seat I put a finger through the rear wing. Basically, the "restoration" it had received under a previous owner was a total joke. It was really a condition 3 car dressed up as a better one.

So then it sat in a barn under a tarpaulin rotting away slowly. Until this morning. Good luck to P and N in restoring it. They probably got a bargain - I wasn't going to even hint at asking above the true value when selling to a friend - but it's going to cost them a lot of both time and money!

A recent comment on altariel's journal got me thinking about what makes a good SF story.

Recently, I've found that I'm not enjoying Analog magazine as much as I used to. There are too many stories that are basically political masquerading as SF. And not good political either - I mean I enjoy "The West Wing" as much as the next man... probably more. But these stories are more "Commander in Chief". The characters behave in offensive and deliberately destructive ways for no apparent reason other than to be baddies.

The typical form of these stories is this: The hero (or heroine) is in charge of some (pseudo-)scientific project that deals with some grand goal of physics, and has to battle against the odds to keep it on track. This, of course, makes it SF, and the author reckons it makes it "hard" SF because the fictional project refers to some real (if esoteric) theory of physics. But the project doesn't suffer from technical trouble, or unexpected scientific discoveries. No, all the troubles faced by the protagonist are in the form of petty minded politicians trying to shut the project down. And their reason for doing so is, as often as not, entirely unstated. Or it's because they belong to some wild religious cult.

What makes it even worse is that these so-called "hard" SF stories quite often exhibit a total failure to check up on the simpler laws of physics in case they get in the way of throwing in a random (and irrelevant to the plot) piece of "sexual politics", like men being chauvinist jerks and getting caught by women listening to a radio receiver that works by complete magic (since the men aren't actually transmitting any radio signals).

I don't mind soft SF. I'm quite happy reading (or, indeed, writing) space opera and overlooking the lack of science behind FTL travel. At least that's an honest suspension-of-disbelief, and it's quite clearly only used to enable the story, it doesn't claim to be central to it then let the reader down.

Words, that is. I joined the picowrimo challenge again this year, after last year's success. Last year I set a target of 6000 words and actually did just under 12000, so this year I set a target of 12000. I reached that early yesterday evening but carried on a bit tonight so that I reached a quarter-nano.

Now I need to go back and edit them a little before submitting my four new complete chapters to CWIL (one at a time, of course).

Wikipedia tries very hard to make sure the articles are verifiable. Rightly so, for we wouldn't want inaccuracy. Ah, but there lies the rub.

On their page on verifiability they explicitly state that it is not the same as truth. In fact they define verifiability in terms of cross-referencing other articles "that are easily accessible". In other words, on the web, because having to find an obscure book shop isn't "easy". And they won't allow "original research", which is perfectly reasonable... except that ultimately that's the ONLY truly reliable source of verification. All else is just "taking someone else's word for it".

So if I make an assertion that happens to be absolutely true, and demonstrable by a simple repeatable experiment (the foundation of all science) or by reference to a physical object, then wikipedia doesn't accept that as verifiable.

And some people now seem to think wikipedia's definition of verifiable is a good way to discriminate fact from bluster. Where would the world be if Isaac Newton had relied on citation of experts (the Greek philosophers) instead of formulating his laws of motion by good scientific observation?

So Top Gear decided to "test" some 1970s BL cars to "see how bad they were". What a bunch of arses.

First, they found some knackered and abused old wrecks. Then they compared them against a Datsun 120Y... in pristine preserved condition. It must be the only one left in the country - I remember those things all having fallen apart by the mid 1980s. Whereas the Triumph Dolomite was at least solid enough to survive some abuse.

They set a lap time in the "underpowered" Datsun - 69BHP from 1170cc was actually remarkably good for the time - with their tame racing driver at the wheel. Now bear in mind the Datsun was built of tin foil and weighed nothing. That's why they all disintegrated so quick. And then they sent the worn-out and abused British classics round in the hands of the presenters. Somehow they managed to get within 6 seconds of the time - that's not bad.

Meanwhile they described the Dolomite as having "advanced" double-wishbone suspension, and the Rover SD1 as having "suspension designed in the 50s". Excuse me? Both cars have live rear axles on trailing arms with diagonal braces. They're almost identical. Admittedly the Dolomite's front suspension is double wishbone - carried over from the 1965 1300FWD and using parts from the 1959 Herald. The SD1 uses MacPherson strut, as fitted to Ford Mondeos.

They wittered on about how Japanese cars had taught us that we could expect them to start in the morning. Bollocks! Back in the late 1980s I had a 22 year old Triumph Vitesse, and my neighbours all had three or four year old Japanese cars. Mine was the only one that started without fail on frosty mornings.

Quite how Clarkson failed to even get the SD1 onto the 1-in-3 hill I don't know. What I do know is that Hammond's Dolomite should have held if it wasn't a knackered, worn out and abused wreck. All four of my Dolomites had excellent handbrakes.

After that it just got silly. The pave test would have been failed by any of the modern cars they've tested this season. It was just an unreasonable test. The Datsun, I note, didn't have to do it, and I can suggest a reason why - it would have crumbled into a twisted heap.

And what on earth is filling the car with water supposed to test? These cars had DRAIN HOLES for goodness sake! You don't put the passenger in a sealed airtight cocoon - they've got to be able to breathe - and if somebody accidentally empties their wellies inside the car you WANT the water to get out.

The whole thing was an exercise in bashing the British and perpetuating the myth that we never built anything good.

Took a couple of days off to work on my main project car, Toby. The big plan was to get the rear axle on, which needs, first, the differential to be replaced. Unfortunately I didn't get the half-shafts built up because the UJs were being a right royal pain and refusing to go in. So late last night I gave up on that and decided to leave it for another day. The diff was still scheduled, though, because I'd ordered the replacement and booked to collect it.

So I came over to mum's (the car is near there) this morning without the half-shafts but with a new water pump and some other bits. L came over too and we made very short work of getting the old seized diff out, then fitted the assorted other bits. If we'd been slightly more determined we could have got to Coventry this afternoon to exchange the diff, but we decided to stick with the original plan of going up there tomorrow.

What this does mean, is that I'm not going to need all the time on Toby, so I can spent some time helping little bro with his Nanosphere project. It also means I've found a bit of writing time. Yay.

Thanks to altariel for side-tracking me to this:

Came across this via an f-list of an f-list. It's a rather USA-centric test but seems to have got my politics vaguely right.

You are a Social Moderate (43% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (18% permissive) You are best described as a: Democrat (18e/43s) Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

A few weeks back my friend L and I took a few days break for a trip up to York. As it was about time I collected my GT6 from its summer sojourn at mum's, and L lives "beyond mum's" from me, I took the Vitesse over and we headed up in the GT6. Our route up was... indirect, taking in the edge of the Peak district and following minor roads.

Now the thing with minor roads is they're often not very smooth. And the thing with a GT6 is there's not much suspension travel. Add to that a slight fault mine has developed with the tailgate catch...

The first time I remember the tailgate popping open was years back before the restoration, in Banbury. After the rebuild it mostly stayed shut OK, unless I did something extreme. Railway level crossings or hump-back bridges taken too quick would pop it, though. However, on the way up to York we found enough pot-holes to do the catch in completely. The striker plate is made of plastic and after 35 years and several bodged repairs it had pretty much had it. We ended up driving back from York with the tailgate open because even those painted strips approaching junctions would pop it.

Anyway, once home I bought a replacement catch plate and took a look at the bodywork where it fits. The restorer had not bothered to fix the very dodgy bits round there, so with the captive nut plate now unusable and the box it sits in effectively not attached, I ended up welding new ones in. Amazingly I managed to do so without wrecking any of the visible paintwork, even though I was welding the edge of the aperture. So now the tailgate stays shut, as I proved by going for a test drive.

Just before I set off on my test drive, I heard scurrying from the left hand sill area. Then as I was closing the garage doors I saw a mouse run out from beneath the car. Well, I say run, it seemed really quite nonchalant about it, more of a stroll, really. So then I got in the GT6 and drove off up the road. And saw another mouse. This one was casually strolling out from under the passenger seat and towards the footwell. I don't know where it was heading - perhaps into the engine bay (which would have been uncomfortably hot by then!) or through a drain hole onto the ground (at 60mph, that would have been a bad choice).

The odd thing is, I've not had any sign of mice in the kitchen this year. The last few years it has been quite common to find the mouse trap by the washing machine "occupied" up to three times a day at this time. But the kitchen mice all seem to have died out, or learned from their deceased predecessors' mistakes. This year they're all taking up residence in the garage or the car therein. Or in the loft (or between my bedroom ceiling and the loft floor) judging by the noises I hear at night. I don't want to put a snappy trap in the loft or the garage, though, because I wouldn't check it every morning and night, and three-day-old dead mouse is not pleasant.

Mice, though, are not too much trouble if they stay out of the house. The big rat I saw wandering across my drive the other day isn't welcome anywhere near.

Here's a good'un.

We all know summer time (or "daylight savings time") is a nuisance and causes hassle. Some computer OS's need to reset the clock twice a year to deal with it, while some keep the clock always in GMT (aka "UTC") and merely present things in local time. However...

My freeview box has a lot of timers. It also has a nice feature where the clock is kept accurate and in step with stuff like summer time. Unfortunately whoever designed it managed to make all the timers lock to GMT (but display in local time). So when the clocks went back last night it changed the clock accurately... and moved all the timers forward an hour. D'oh!

It's that time of year. The time when three of my cars need MOTs within a few weeks. Oh Noes! I hear you say! Well, not really.

As it happens, my 34 year old estate car has passed first time each year I've owned it. And this year was no exception. Perhaps they could have failed it on the headlamp main beam repeater (which hasn't worked since I got it) but they never spot that.

The 40 year old Vitesse has not managed a 100% record, having needed a spot of welding a few years back. However, last year it passed first time a week after returning from the Round Britain. And this morning it passed first time again.

So now I need to retrieve the third from its summer hibernation and get a fresh ticket on it too.