Odds and Sods

I mentioned in a previous post that, I was going to be doing a few bits during the week. The plan was that I would be cutting and laying safety walk on my newly painted floorboards from KAS Racepaint. The week’s activities went to plan and they are now only short of their mountings.

The next task for the weekend was the collection of our race transport, the Mazda Bongo. It turns out that the cylinder head had cracked due to lack of maintenance. The functional fix it was treated to make it driveable, so it was driven homeward bound for a cosmetic – erm –clean. As we had taken delivery of it in the snow, neither one of us had properly spent long enough inside to see how dirty and messy it was! The Bongo was in a bit of a state. Needless to say one very long afternoon was spent giving it a well needed valet.

We also had an opportunity to test the other features of the vehicle including the electric windows! We quickly figured that the passenger side window only goes down; which was a bit of a disaster. However, despite these few teething problems, I already think that the vehicle is fantastic. Really good quality and it will serve our purposes extremely well.

 

Other good news during the week was that I was featured in Scootering, a little write up with a picture is a small step in the right direction for the team. Really proud to have been included, here is a scan of my piece.

However, the last part of this blog really wasn’t planned. After the manufacture of a crash protector for my exhaust (genuinely made from my floorboard off-cuts), I had the part tack-welded on at Replay Scooters.

Unfortunately, on cleaning up the exhaust for black paint, I discovered the mounting point was loose – no biggie I thought, we’ll just get that welded on. However, on further investigation, it dawned on me that this loose point was masking a crack on the exhaust. Bit of a problem so definitely watch this space.

However, rather than leave my blog on a negative point, I want to identify a few positives about the problem: I did find it, I did find it before painting and I did find it with a few weeks to get it sorted. I most definitely will be keeping an eye on it over the season but in all honesty, I’m not too shocked bearing in mind the treatment it has had over its short life.