Van Dweller Archives Part 2

Van Dweller Archives Part 1



The Jet Wash

 Washing Ol' Bertie is a delicate operation, at 35 years old he's in reasonably good condition but the salty air from living by the beach is starting to bite into the body work so I have to clean him carefully. At my local garage I use the jet wash and start by using the soapy brush to give it a proper clean then the jet wash to rinse. To avoid blasting the delicate parts I do the rinse from a couple of metre's away so the force or the water doesn't do any damage.

Sleeping

I've got the art of making my bed up at night down to about five minutes or so and with a nice hot water bottle at the bottom of the bed, fleecy blankets and a couple of duvets, I can have a comfortable night. I usually have radio 2 playing while I'm finishing off messages and e-mails etc on my laptop then it's cozy on down for a good nights sleep. If I'm parked at the beach I fall asleep to the sound of waves lapping on the beach. Everyone should experience this lifestyle, it feels the most natural thing in the world to me! :)

 

Brake Fade On My Beach Cruiser

I experienced brake fade on my beach cruiser yesterday for the first time ever and it was a tad scary!

I was bombing Goodwick Hill and back pedalling to activate the coaster brake now and then to scrub speed when all of a sudden I felt the crank wind all the way around. It's not supposed to do that but luckily I'd read up about it and knew what was going on. When a coaster brake gets too hot it stops working or 'fades', which means, without a second brake your basically going to die.

Goodwick hill is pretty steep, it climbs 100 metres above sea level in 1km and when your brakes go you get up to warp speed pretty quickly. I had about 2 seconds make a decision, do I bail or try and make this side road coming up? There was a side road about fifty metres away that veers off to the left that goes uphill so I had to use all my skills to turn up it to avoid crashing. Luckily there was no traffic coming and I swung out across the road and aimed for the side road doing what felt like a bazillion miles an hour and shot uphill for about a hundred meters before coasting to a stop.

That was a heart stopping moment but I kept my head and made it. I knew my experience as a bmxer would come in handy one day. I only had to wait for about a minute for the brake to cool and start working again then I was able to carry on down the hill and along to the beach and into work. 

Propshaft Bearing

Ol' Bertie needed a new prop shaft bearing and when he was in at Pontiago's garage for his annual m.o.t. test I arranged to get the bearing fitted.

They had a hell of a job getting the old one off by all accounts so I'm dreading getting the bill but it's another job done so well worth it.

M.O.T. Test Results.

Ol' Bertie had his MOT test yesterday at Pontiago's garage and failed on four things.
The first two are related and I've been shopping around on evilbay for some replacement crystal headlamps and halogen bulbs.
The indicators went just before I went away to Shropshire but should be easy to fix. I checked the fuses and they are all ok so it's pointing to the relay box. I'll check that first and get the handbrake tightened at the same time. I've got the statutory ten days to get it fixed and back in for a re-test.
I must say I'm pretty chuffed that that was all it failed on, it seems there's still plenty of life in the old boy yet.

Camera Dolly Project

Spending the week with my son Ethan gave us time to work on a project to build a camera dolly. Ethan is going to be a film maker one day and anything that will help him produce better films is worth building.
 

The wood and metal rails came from a d.i.y. store, the dolly itself was made using a nylon chopping board we bought from a supermarket as was the skateboard.

Ethan paid a lot of attention to detail and after much tweaking and tinkering got it working perfectly.

 

Happiness Only Real When Shared

I'm spending the next eight days in Shropshire with my lovely son Ethan at my Mum's house, she's visiting friends so is away and we have the house to ourselves. My son lives in Warrington with his Mum and after I picked him up he showed me this awesome skateable tunnel near where he lives. Unfortunately I didn't have my skateboard with me so we'll have to wait till next time to session it.

I rented a car for this trip as Bertie needs the new prop shaft bearing and an MOT test so he's tucked up at base camp back in Pembrokeshire.