foreverblueskies.com

Bah. No posting in over a month? Pathetic. And busy. Been too techy & philosophical to post here of late and no gigs either but I’ll break April by talking about cars; Custom cars, Yanks, classic & hot rods.

Good Friday probably has some religious connotations, so in the spirit of my faith in the Surrey Street Rodders I went on the annual pilgrimage to Wheels Day at the temple of worship that is Aldershot’s Rushmoor Arena. For those of you who don’t know the place it’s owned by the British Army and is a big grassy amphitheatre. Well, sort of…

Picking up my mate and his wife (yes, some girls do like cars) we turned up and put my “new” car, a ‘95 Subaru Legacy GT, on show in the field with all the other motors. Compared to my old Legacy this one I deemed worthy enough to show as it’s got a full body kit and nearly 300BHP under the hood. It pales into insignificance to most of the other motors out in the field but when there’s a Vauxhall Nova and a Dodge Nitro on show then a Japanese streetfighter is OK. Or as they say… “If it’s got wheels and it’s unusual then you’ll see it at Wheels Day”

The weather forecast promised rain and they weren’t wrong. We got there just before 11am and it rained until we left just before 4pm. But that didn’t put a total dampener on it; the camera wasn’t out as much as it could have been and we hid under the canopy of the bar more than a few times but other than that the faithful turned out in good numbers.

Highlights of the day were:

• Seeing all my mates although many stayed away due to the wet weather.
• Beer for breakfast,beer for lunch (Spitfire) then late breakfast (Chicken tikka sani) and bacon burger lunch before we left.
• ‘81 Ford Taunus on air (old Brit MkIV Cortina style Taunus not that crappy modern Taurus they flog over the pond)
• ‘73 Hillman Avenger
• ‘72 FD Victor
• ‘77 Ford Capri Mk II
• ‘70 Dodge Coronet Wagon
• ‘69 Vauxhall Ventora Estate
• ‘51 Tempo Matador truck
• Pontiac Enchelada (I’ve no idea what it was called but Enchelada sounded good – my mate was creaming all over it and the car won “Best of Show”)

Not been into the ‘57 Bel Air, the Cadillacs and their like this year and there were too many cool VW beetles, buses and VW splits to mention. It’s the cars of my childhood that seem to have the nostalgia factor and it was great to see the Austin Maxi and the Austin/Morris Ital van (in British Telecom yellow)

The bar was an old American firetruck, so I can only assume that the pipes and dials sticking out of the top were feeding us beer all day long from tanks that were once was used to hose down burning buildings.

Fingers crossed that we get some sunshine next year aye?

aldershot, cars, wheels day

The French carmaker Citroen has just pulled the plug on a full-page ad it placed in a number of Spanish newspapers because it features a scowling caricature of Chairman Mao.

Citroen apologized for the ad and admitted it was “inappropriate” after some members of the Chinese public mao-ned that the ad apparently insulted Mao, the WHOLE Chinese nation and purportedly “hurt their national pride”.

For fuck’s sake, people, LIGHTEN UP. There seems to be a huge global SENSE OF HUMOUR BYPASS that’s getting out of control where people get so incredibly upset when you just have a *bit* of a laugh!

Oh look, Maggie Thatcher as Hanibal Lecter, the Queen with a safety-pin (ala Sex Pistols)… who cares?!

I now expect a barrage of abuse from the Chinese, Thatcherites, Royalists and the French for not putting a silly umlaut/accent thingy over Citroen’s letter ‘e’.

ads, cars, rant

Firstly I’d like to say a belated “thanks a bunch” to the Bulldog Twyford Subaru Garage.

You see, when I booked my old Subaru Legacy in for some work back in January, I didn’t expect the response to “I have an annoyingly loud tapping sound from the engine” to be “Well, it has done over 120,000 miles!”

I am not a qualified mechanic but even I knew it was a sticking hydraulic lifter. The Subaru garage’s recommended remedy to this was an oil change and even after the oil change the knocking sound still persisted. I figured that because a Subaru garage couldn’t fix this then nobody could.

And here I am, six months later… I only wanted a CV gaiter replaced on my 1994 Subaru Legacy so I went to my friend’s nearby garage and asked if he could this job and, oh by the way, could he change the oil again please?

I actually suggested to him to run the car for 5-10 minutes until the engine was warm enough for the noise of the hydraulic lifter to die down a bit, thus allowing the engine flush to be able to penetrate the lifters. Then to give it an engine flush, which, for those of you who may not be familiar, is to run the engine with half a litre of hardcore industrial cleaner in it for a further 10 minutes. (This gets rid of all the crap in the oil system, including the gummed up oily deposits which I reckon was the cause of the malfunctioning hydraulic lifters.) Finally to drain the oil, fit a new oil filter and add new engine oil, as you do in a regular oil change.

My friend agreed that this all sounded like a perfect plan, so he did the job to the letter and now my engine doesn’t rattle as it did for the last half a year; so to the Subaru garage I say…

“Thanks a bunch”

And today, with my car requiring further work, I was given a courtesy car by my friend’s garage because they couldn’t finish the job by the time I called to collect my motor.

When seeing the courtesy car one of my neighbours said “It’s hardly a courtesy, is it?” which was echoed later on by another neighbour. And by that they meant that they too were disappointed at the… Proton 1.3GE Triple Valve.

Yeah, yeah, it’s only done 48,000 miles since 1993, and yeah, yeah, it’s had just one lady owner, and yeah, yeah, it was free and better than walking…

Actually, no it wasn’t, I take that back. So to my mate and his garage…

“Thanks a bunch”

Bloody horrible little car… I’m too embarrassed to drive it… give me back my Subaru.

cars, rant