Aston Martin Rust Oration

Every year I go through the Honours lists and grind my teeth at some of the scoundrels that get on it.

Every now and then, someone I know gets a gong that they truely deserve. This year two of my old bosses got gonged.

Dame Julia Cleverdon got a DCVO (she’ll soon have the whole alphabet after her name!!) She was a hoot to work for at Business in the Community, and seeing a whole boardroom full of FTSE 100 CEOs and Chairs falling over themselves to sign up to her ideas was always entertaining.

The Rev Dr Stuart Burgess – the Prime Minister’s Rural Advocate got a CBE – Stuart, who had been President of the Methodist Church, was another amusing chap to be around. He said that after a year of introducing me to Bishops across the country he was most disappointed not to have converted me from atheism – I said it was introducing me to all the blasted bishops the confirmed my atheism!

Congratulations both.

The plight of UK Security

Scanning through last weeks’ PR Week before dropping in the recycling bin - I came across a recruitment ad for intelligence officers at MI5. Good grief – recruiting PR people as spies, what is the country coming to?

What a roller coaster week it’s been in British politics! I had such a busy week at work I decided to spend the weekend with my Mechanical Therapist.. AKA ROJ.

I know I keep banging on about how big a mistake galvanising the chassis was – but it really has been a bloody pain drilling out the captive nuts and threaded mounts, especially when some were so hard to get to.

I decided to blitz the front of the car this weekend. To get to the anti-roll bar mountings I had to cut through the chassis struts – in one mounting hole I’ve got a broken tap which will take time to grind out using a diamond bit.

We’ll need to take great care when welding them back up as Zinc fumes are highly poisonous.

It wasn’t all work as it was Clive’s Birthday – he put on a great barbeque with the now legendary bonfire, where all the wood and furniture comes from each year is beyond me, but everyone loves it.

Istanbul was fabulous.

Followed the From Russia With Love trail from the Hagia Sophia to the underground cisterns, the grand bazaar to the railway station and the ferry up the Bosphorus. The only site I didn’t see was the gypsy encampment – but then I wouldn’t because that scene was filmed in Scotland.

And then of course the Maiden’s Tower was used in The World is not Enough – but again the action was all filmed in the UK.

While not fantasising about being James Bond in pursuit of the lovely Tatiana Romanova, I still managed to spot a few bits of interesting old metal lying around:

This weekend it’s back to the farm for some more of my own Scrapheap Challenge….

Paid a very fleeting visit to rust-bucket farm this weekend, but grateful for any opportunity to play with ROJ.

Drove up Saturday morning and spent the afternoon fighting with the driver’s side King pin -I loaded a crate full of scrap iron into the engine bay, and wedged a baulc of wood between the car and roof beam of the garage – so that when I jacked up the lower wishbone the damper compressed.

Much as I struggled I could not get the lower wishbone to fit – and as we had a hotel to go to I had to give up about 5.

Got back to the farm at lunchtime on Sunday and with Malcolm’s help used some ratchet straps to hold the spring in compression and that way get the lower wishbone lined up for the spindle.  By this time I was tired, and had a blister on the my thumb so could not get the thread on the spindle to engage – it must be just millimeters off. I was very frustrated having to leave it like that to drive home.

I seriously wish i could spend this coming long weekend at the farm – despite having plenty to do at home…

I do enjoy my job, I do honestly…  but after a week skiing in Austria coming back to work was just a bit tedious.

St Anton lived up to it’s reputation with some very challenging and technical skiing – and was spectacular. The snow on the high peaks was perfect, just a bit sugary at the bottom of the slopes.

The Chalet Inge was comfortable – and the service excellent, but the design of the bathroom meant one couldn’t be bashful… I would probably opt for a more traditional place next time.

Although it was great to spend the week with Angus we were fortunate to meet up with a friend of his who was staying in the chalet with his mother. This meant while the lads went off to do their scary skiing I had someone pleasant to ski with myself.

The Galzig bahn was a fascinating piece of engineering. The architects were kind enough to build it in a glass building – I could have spent hours watching it. There are a couple of cool youtube videos of it, and here

Spent Easter in Yorkshire where I discovered a great little classic car museum and restoration workshop in Batley – sadly no Astons, but one my Father might have approved of…

I met a fascinating bloke yesterday – architect, green guru and one of the venture capitalists behind the Tesla electric sports car.

William McDonough is the author of the ‘Hanover Principles’ and ‘Cradle to Cradle’, he has presented his ideas to George Bush at the White House (which he likened to an anthropologcal field trip) and more recently Barack Obama. He is also leading a project with Brad Pitt to help rebuild the hurricane devastated New Orleans.

Even more surprising is that he and I went to the same school in Hong Kong – he is however a few years my senior.

I just loved the fact that someone so passionate and inspiring about returning to a sustainable environment should have fast cars so foremost in mind. I would have dearly loved to engage him in a petrol-head-battery-head debate, but time was at a premium.

His books are well worth reading – he is far from a doom and gloom environmentalist – more what I would call an optimistic environmentalist – to him we have an abundance of free energy – with a huge nuclear reactor just a mere 93000000 million miles away, and we should concentrate on what we’ve got lots of and not how little we’ve got of something else. Sounds sensible to me.

Last week was one of the worst… really bad time at work – rushed off my feet with a whole host of political briefings – a pair of very expensive sofas that are the wrong colour and I felt, well, just grumpy…

Two days on the farm fitting brakepipe clips to the underside of ROJ, cleaning up and restoring exhaust mounts and playing with Malcolm’s grease gun – getting more all over myself than into the axle bearings – made me feel MUCH better!

This week hasn’t been too bad so far. Spent this morning in the House of Commons briefing a shadow front bench minister on retrofitting green infrastructure…

…and nothing BUT the car.

Yes, for all you Aston Martin restoration purists – no politics and no holidays, just work on ROJ.

Having four solid days off work was a real benefit. I took my time, and everything went remarkably smoothly.

Fitting the diff and axle was particularly complicated. The space (or as the engineers call it ‘the packaging’) is very tight, plus the diff had to be jacked up in stages as each drive shaft also had to be raised and supported on axle stands to remain level with the diff.

Each time I tried to jack the diff last time resulted in the whole car lifting up – so I loaded the back of the car with every piece of metal in the workshop – that worked.

I suspended the front of the diff on a 7 inch bolt, placed two axle stands under the body of the diff as a fulcrum. I removed both hanging bar brackets and jacked up the back of the diff so that it went up at an angle – avoiding snagging the bolt on the DeDion tube.

Then with Malcolm’s help – I pulled the diff backwards until the hanging bar ends were at an angle that when lowered would locate on the brackets – fitted the brackets and, bang on!.

On the left bracket the metalastic mount is supposed to be reversed – but everyone I have spoken to about this says it makes no difference – so as it was easier to fit the ‘normal’ way up that’s how I did it.

Fitting the suspension dampers and trailing arms was easier than I expected, as was refitting and adjusting the handbrake cables.

Ever the nervous type, I take every safety precaution – including tying up the diff with an old seatbelt.

So now ROJ has a fully functional rear axle.

When we stripped the car down it was obvious the poor thing had been treated to some pretty shoddy treatment. Cheap and badly done repairs original parts swapped etc etc.

The exhaust system was completely shot, and remarkable held on by four completely different brackets. I’ve pulled two off the spare car – but broke one in the process – the bracket frames cleaned up quite well.

The new exhaust system I’ve bought takes different brackets on the back silencers – so I’ve had to wld up the old bracket fittings on the chassis and have drilled the holes ready for the newer style brackets – when I can track one dowm to replace the one I broke!

After sifting through boxes for the exhaust mounts I removed the stearing rack and collumn from the spare car as I needed the centre section for ROJ – before fitting it though I really need to clean it up – so next time I’ll use the parts washer in the engineering shed.

The Snow

Remember the snow a few weeks ago? I couldn’t get to work on the Monday. The prep was the only school open so poor Stephanie had to go into work – leaving me to work from home. Well halfway through the afternoon I got bored, went to the garage and got Angus’s old plastic sled out and played around in the back garden for a while – this is how Stephanie found me when she came home.

Paddles

My friend Andrew married his lovely wife Dionne at the end of last year – not only were we delighted to be invited – but Andrew asked me to hold one of the crossed oars in the guard of honour – I felt very bad about not having ROJ ready to whisk the bride and groom from the reception at the Caledonian Club in Belgravia off on their honeymoon in Mauritius.

Dionne looked stunning – and stunned the congregation even more by being 45 minutes late! We had fun listening to the organist frantically finding fill-in pieces from his repertoire of Rogers and Hammerstein.

The reception was a Very Grand Affair with Very Caribbean Overtones – it was lovely. The band had previously played at Wayne Rooney’s wedding (I believe he plays football….) We danced, we ate, we drank and we wished them all the happiness in the world.. we then staggered home to bed at a very unseemly hour of the morning.

Pies

I organised the first pie club dinner of the year – at the George Inn in Borough high street – the last galleried pub in London, now owned by the National Trust – the company was excellent, as were the pies ( we scored the George an overall 4 out of 5). Turn out was impressive – with 15 regular members and three newcomers, but no Peers of the realm or Bishops this time.

Andrew and Dionne spent the evening gazing lovingly into each others’ pies….

Peregrines

A perk of my trade means I sometimes get to do some really intereting things.

Yesterday morning I found myself on the roof of the Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament to you and me). I had arranged for a wildlife officer to get up there to monitor the two peregrine falcons that look as if they are about to nest in the Victoria Tower. On a bright clear day the view was spectacular, and the male bird was easily visible preening himself on a high ledge. The plans are to put in a nest box with webcam to keep a distant eye on their progress.

After clambering over and around the tower we celebrated in style with doorstep sized bacon sandwiches in the parliamentary staff canteen.

The Car

Half-term approaches and I am taking four days up at the farm to finish the rear suspension – I may get the front done too if I’m lucky. I shall also be hunting out all the exhaust brackets and restoring them before fixing to the underside of the car.

I hope the weather warms up….

Yesterday evening my eighty-three year old mother heard someone kick in her front door – so went into the hall to investigate. She found a man dressed in black wearing a black balaclava. “What are you doing in my house?” she shouted.

The guy stopped – looked at her, looked round the room and said “sorry love, wrong house.” and ran out – the daft old bat then followed him out to see another man similarly dressed. Thug one yells at thug two “we’ve got the wrong f***g address and they run off.

Mater then calls the plod who turn up in droves.

Seems a gang of five had planned to break in next door and steal the guns our neighbour keeps in a safe in his study. Three had gone in through the woods at the back to the correct house, but the two sent round to the front had miscounted the houses and found my mother instead.

They didn’t get the guns – and one got bitten by the dog.

As there were firearms involved it became a serious crime scene rather than a straight forward burglary.

My Mother loved every minute. Although I did tell her that if it had been in London the masked man would have just kept coming.

I am going down to oversee installation of new security lights and a stronger door frame.