Its been a long time...

Well I haven't posted a blog for a while, but that is what three kids, a mortgage, a job and a loving / patient wife do for you!

The Norton project has been on hold for too many years, and is about to re-start. However, before that can happen the detritus of some 8 years needs to be cleared away and the garage reclaimed.

To that end, a new garden workshop is going to be built . Internally it will take up all of 30 sq m permitted by planning rules and will provide me with a great hobby space for my railway modelling and other assorted crafts. Thankfully, advances in alarm and surveillance systems mean that the workshop will be as well protected (if not better) as the house, including remote CCTV, fogger (look it up...) and some other unpleasant surprises for the un-wanted visitor. It will also enable me to clear the garage and ready it for the Norton project to recommence and - drum roll - the commencement of a 40 year old dream of building an AC Cobra.

I will break these projects up into separate threads so anyone who is interested doesn't have to read about stuff they don't want to.

My intention is to give warts and all, blow by blow accounts of the projects, and I do realise I may have bitten off more than I can chew. However, two out of three kids have now commenced Operation Escape (or is that Operation Eject...) so time is a little more on my side. 

One thing I have noticed in many such blogs is that suppliers and such like don't often get a mention. I therefore intend to make sure any products I use are listed with their supplier. I am not doing this for any other reason than to help others. I have lost count of the time I have spent trying to track down a particular component seen in a blog when a nice handy link would have saved me a lot of trouble. Okay, I won't list who I bought a De Walt impact wrench from but I will list who I bought a bulkhead fitting from, for example, or who did my paint work or black chroming. I will also, with permission, provide links to other relevant blogs where I think they might be of use / interest to you, dear reader.

So, wish me luck as I re-open the cheque book and embark on a few too many bucket list journeys!

All the best

Andy

Sticky Fox Bite Alarms Cured

So I came back to my Fox NX Bite alarms after a few months put away in their cases and they were all sticky. Okay, I thought this might be left over from the last fishing trip, but after a good clean they still felt tacky - like paint that's not quite cured.

I have seen this before with kitchen utensils and the so called "Soft Grips" and suspected that the soft rubber coating on the Fox NX alarm cases was to blame. So I tried to rub it off with the usual kitchen cleaners but to no avail. 

A quick call to Fox Customer Services didn't help. Yes, it was a known problem. Yes there had been a product recall several years ago (missed that one even though I registered the alarms). They could replace the cases at £28 an alarm but they had no NX cases left. So the suggestion was try some isopropyl alcohol and if that didn't work then bad luck. Or words to that effect. Not what I expect from the Fox boys to be honest but that's another subject altogether. Oh, and isopropyl alcohol doesn't work.

Luckily I am also a modeller. Plastic kits, model railways, Warhammer, all that jazz. In my travels I have come across a wonderful paintstripper from Phoenix Precision designed for removing paint from plastic kits without melting them - DON'T try Nitromoors or similar which will melt your cases. It's called PS18 Superstrip.

To use it, take the alarms as far apart as you want - I didn't bother but did take the batteries out. Give the cases a liberal coat of the Superstrip and gently agitate with a stiff brush. Over a period of 20 minutes or so the thin rubber coating on the cases will wrinkle up and can be gently brushed off. Clean the cases in water when all the wrinkled rubber coating has come off and give them a good dry. You may need a pin or similar to get the last bits out from around the control knobs. Try not to get the Superstrip into the speaker enclosure or around the roller mechanism. 

My alarms are good as new now, with no sticky coating. At about 30 minutes per alarm, this was a good few hours spent pre-season sorting out my gear. I do love the NX alarms, so was happy to do this. 

1952 Norton 30 International Clubman Restoration

I thought it was about time after far too many years to start the restoration of my motorbike (which was in turn my late father's bike). Here  you can see one of the better pictures I have of the bike before work started:

Now, that is not a pretty sight! The barrel and head have been removed, the mudguards are non-original, the saddle is missing, the mudguard stays need to be found - and so the story goes on. The good news is that the bike is complete and the original parts are all in the cellar, so I have been on a great treasure hunt and got what is needed. Now the long process of restoration begins and the wallet gets a lot lighter.

What is good news is that I have found out that the bike is a 100% genuine Clubman bike and was raced in the 1952 TT by a local North Eastern rider. More on that later...

I have stripped the bike down to components and the various bits and pieces have been dispatched to the required people. Again, I will update as each component or assembly is finished, along with supplier details, problems, tricks and tricks that we have found on the way, etc.

Wish me luck

Andy Viking

Snow snow quick quick snow

Well, I don't know about you but I am just about fed up with this English snow. Never enough for a proper day of snow sports, and with no drags or the like you cannot go skiing. Roll on the skiing season in France is all I can say.

What has been funny over the last few weeks is how few cars I have seen with snow chains. We have known about this snow for ages, had a bad taster a few weeks back and still refuse to take sensible precautions. When I was a lad (cue Hovis music) we prepared for the winter, with Dad changing the car tyres for winter tyres with studs in, throwing a couple of bags of sand in the boot to weigh down the back axle and a spade to dig us out of trouble. These days no one carries anything, or so I thought until today.

You see, a few weeks back I bought snow chains for the Disco, and was waiting for a wheel nut adaptor to arrive. I found out today my supplier was not going to get them in stock until the New Year, so with a new batch of snow on the way, I started ringing round. Well, either no one had any left ("sold the last one this morning mate" was a familiar story) or the 'phones were on divert as they were so busy. No option for it - jump in the car and track them down. Well, to cut a long story short I found some adaptors in Tunbridge Wells, but the point of the story is that the queues outside of the specialist snow chains shops I visited were enormous - one must have cleared over £2,500 in walk-in business whilst I was waiting. So hopefully more people will be able to get around in the latest batch of snow and not end up clogging up the roads in ill-prepared cars.

Rant over!

Logitech Harmony 1100

Last weekend, the old faithfull Philips Pronto RU950 programmable remote decided to go to meet its maker. One of the kids had managed to dent the touchscreen, meaning the resitive layers were permanently touching, so a new screen is needed. Okay, not a big problem, until Philips tell you that they have none in stock and MAY be making some in January next year if there is demand, otherwise they will wait. Not much good for an AV system having to wait four months plus...

So, after a friendly visit back to Sevenoaks Sound and Vision who built the system for me in the first place, I emerged the proud owner of a new Logitech Harmony 1100 programmable remote. Now, I could have had the latest Philips but I could not see the need to spend £800 on a remote control.

Having had the Logitech for a few days, I can honestly say it is pretty good. It is chalk and cheese compared to the Pronto to program, in the the Pronto allows a huge amount of flexibility in graphics and programming, and the Logitech is all on-line wizards. That said, the Logitech is up and running in a fraction of the time it took me to get the Pronto working as I wanted it. However, the Logitech software is pretty inflexible, and does not allow the user to add IR discrete codes for any device, which is a pain as it only repeats the keys on the remote. Great for simple systems, but when you have audio / video scalers and the like with many nested functions, it makes it a little difficult to get exactly what you want. Hopefully Tech Support can help as apparently they can add codes to keys if you ask them as they have better software than that available to the consumer, but it will only be applied to your remote and not available to the wider public. Go figure?

So, after the first few days I think I can say that the Logitech Harmony 1100 is a good piece of kit, it does what it says on the box very well and for most casual users will be 110% or more of what they need. It looks very stylish, fits in with a modern decor and if you are happy with touch screen remotes, fits well in the hand and is very ergonomic in use.

First Carp Two Nighter

Hmmm, overnight carp fishing.

You either love it or hate it and having not slept under any form of canvas for probably twenty five years I thought it was about time I bit the bullet and put a couple of nights in. Also, I have promised to take my son, James, fishing overnight so thought I could kill two birds with one stone and test drive a session. Now, by test drive I mean make sure that I can remember how to set up a bivvy (a posh tent) and all the other bits and bobs.

So, come the August Bank Holiday weekend, yours truly decides that he should get down to the lake around 8pm, giving enough time to set up camp and get the rods out before dark. I reckoned without a warm muggy evening and rain. Sweating like the proverbial, and then doused by steady drizzel, I finally had the shop set up around 9:30pm. Only problem was I was a little damp! Okay, clothes can dry out overnight. Which left me a little short of clothes for the first night, but the sleeping bag was way better than I remembered from my youth and the bed chair was awesome (I will post a review of some of my kit in the next few blogs).

The lake is located near to the M25, and I was amazed that the steady hum of traffic never seemed to abate all night. Where on earth are all these poeple going at all hours? Okay, so a lot is freight (love the French system for trucks at weekend by the way but that is another whole story) but what is the rest? Shift workers? Tourists?

Well, I unfortunately didn't catch any carp (no one else did wither which saved face somewhat), but I did catch nine lovely bream up to about 6lbs in weight. I also managed to plumb up a new swim, finding a whole bunch of features, and felt well pleased with myself. I even got a bite a 3:00am which had me scurrying about the lakeside in my boxer shorts (not a pretty sight - thank heavens it was dark!) so christened the night bite club as well.

Coming away, I am convinced that I took way too much gear (kitchen sinks come to mind) so next time I will trim down what I take. Some of my existing gear is a bit too heavy duty, some optional, but for the most part I am very pleased with what I have put together over the last twelve months for this trip. Some items as I say will be reviewed in future blogs as stand alone entries. I also have some thoughts around other tackle items I want to use, either buying ready mades or thinking of other ways of making things happen. Alas, after my father passed away ten plus years ago, I have lost the use of a workshop with lathes and mills, so may have to find another way of making my own (I made my own lightweight aluminium banksticks about thirty years ago with Dad's help and they are still around somewhere. If only I had made them in stainless steel I could have conquered the market well in advance of the Solar and Matrix boys...).

That's it for now. Keep an eye out for a few tackle reviews and further thoughts from the trip.

Cheers

Viking

iPhone 4

Wow - it has been a while since I last blogged - very lazy or very busy.

Well, I have managed to bust my old phone, so jumped into the brave new world of smartphones and swallowed the Mr Jobs hype and bought an iPhone. Long and short after a few hours is that this is one awesome piece of kit. I already have an iPod Touch, but this goes that one step further.

I am playing round with some apps at the moment, but am really loving the barcode scanner (which lets you scan a barcode with the camera and then comes back with the internet pricing from a range of sources - great for those supposed bargains we always see) and a guitar tuner.

I will try and report back soon

Oh, and the Warhammer 40K is going strong - just built a Shadowsword for James and am putting the finishing touches to my Land Raider etc