Turned into a long, long day for me yesterday, but enjoyable none-the-less. Well done to Neil for putting on a good day
Ok so the day started at about 5am for me, getting up and ready to hit the road just after 6. Met up with Mark + Cara for breakfast at Cheiveley services, where we were joined by Medium Phil. After Breakfast, we were joined in the car park by Chris and Andrew, quick chat and off we went down to Southampton.
This convoy turned out to be slightly more 'interesting' than planned, firstly I started getting a wailing noise coming from somewhere in the car, sounded a bit like the horn, but pressed that and it was a different noise...anyway Mark realised I was having a problem and he and Cara pulled over on to the hard shoulder with me. Popped the bonnet and Mark disconnected something (turned out to be the alarm siren in the end) and off we went again.
Got 1/2 mile down the road and Cara was sudddenly pulling back on to the hard shoulder...turned out she ran over a bit of metal on the way off the shoulder after helping me, shredded her n/s front tyre Mark whacked the space saver on and away we went again all be it a little more slowly this time! When we arrived at the meet Mark shot off to a tyre fitters and had 2 new tyres fitted. So my stoopid siren ended up costing M+C a couple of hundred quid
Right on to the rolling road...Neil was already at Regals when we arrived and we were soon joined by a mini convoy of Steve, Dave and Keith. Medium Phil was first up as I think everyone else might have been a bit nervous as I think it was the first time for a couple. Dave was white as a sheet most of the morning waiting for his turn I guess the AA/RAC jokes didn't help
Medium Phil on the rollers:
Had a good look around Spoon's VXRD retrim, it's a fantastic job, none of the pictures do it justice, it's deffo one of those you have to see in the flesh:
And the VXRD on the rollers:
Mr Nervous himself was next up...look at the paleness lol (sorry Dave ):
He still looks nervous when another car is on the rollers...Here's the mighty Thumper:
The two 2.2DTi's were suprisingly good, both pretty much standard and very close to standard 1.9CDTi 150 figures:
Andrew I think was quite relieved that his car survived the RR and looks like he's little more happy/trusting with it. Yeah and cheers for keeping me entertained too Andrew (he's a funny man (ha ha funny not bonkers funny) lol).
The VXRD got a stiffy, much to the delight of Medium Phil:
And then we came to my new little pocket rocket under a grand banger, have proof it's a banger...look it has special decals:
So my new toy whilst I get myself sorted and wait for another Vec C is a MK3 Astra CDX with the 2.0 Ecotec engine on an Auto box, bit rusty in places but it's basically a sound motor. Was a bit dubious as to whether or not it should go on the rollers, as Mark says there's not much worse you can do to your car than have someone thrash it to within an inch of it's life on the rollers. Decided to see whether i'd bought a peach or a lemon:
Well she survived and came out with a figure of 190bhp, 166.6 ft/lb torque and a theoretical top speed of 154mph
But she's only bog standard and supposed to have 136bhp and a top speed of 121mph, so the figures are slightly out, this is due to the auto gear box, think thumper had a similar reaction as well. The Torque figure should be accurate though. The main thing for me is that the car survived it easily, Chris the operator said he thought it was a good strong motor.gear box so it should last me the 6 months to a year that I need it for.
Sorry if I didn't get shots in of everybody, but i'm like a kid in a sweet shop sometimes lol and forget to take photos.
After the main event we all popped down to the local BK for some food, poor old Plasma missed out
This wasn't the end of the day out for me though, I had several hours left to go yet. After the burgers I headed on up to Hungerford. There was a band (Matatabi) that I know fairly well playing in The Railway Tavern there. A great night there, band were awesome and the crowd loved them. Eventually got home about 1am! Think I'm still half asleep and I have to go on Myspace now and do a blog and a write up for the band lol.
Bookmarks