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The forecast is.....expect cake to be served, the weather is looking good for this so we will go for a run out afterwards 🏎️🏎️🏎️🎂🍰

Having tried this once, see here…. I thought I could improve on it if I tried again. Main problem was it was a little too high, reducing the gap between steering wheel and my somewhat sizeable thighs, and also the back support wasn’t great. I could do a much better job with a second pair of hands, but that’s not possible currently, so this is where I am. Having been reassured last time that pouring the whole lot in one go wouldn’t fill the garage with foam, I went for it! I taped the bag up as high as it would go, to cope with any overfill, and poured it all in. Sparing you all the detail, it basically went well, filling up behind my back and around my shoulders very well, although ironically this time leaving a bare patch under my bum which I couldn’t manage to fill. At least I was low enough this time! I trimmed up the excess from the top and sides, cut the hole for the harness, put some foam over the bare patch, glued it to a thin piece of ply to give it some rigidity and then taped the whole thing up. Finally, I added some vinyl to make it look a little better. Beautiful it still isn’t, but it probably looks a bit better than the last one. More importantly it sits me lower in the car, giving me better clearance between wheel, hands and knees, and also has better shoulder support. You can see from the shoulder width that I’m not really built for a narrow Westfield 🤣. Having seen @Andrzejseat with the narrow shoulder support, I simply wouldn’t fit in there! So, I think this one will do me for a while, it’s comfy and secure, and gives me a better position than the previous version.

Glad you are enjoying the Yorkshire area @Martin Bell - (Bellyboy) East Anglia AO some good roads round ere and plenty of farm animals as well 🤣

Excellent idea ! The club has a few of these torches left for distribution at future events via @Marcus Barlow - Show and Events Co-ordinator 😎

Our friends have already arrived in Reims. 33C apparently 😲

The assertion was that BEV was useless as transport, no argument about costs, demographics etc. I pay 7p kWh when I pay anything at all. Most of the time I run on solar. When I don’t I run on stored cheap rate. I’d love to have a quiet word with those responsible for giving away our oil wealth though. We should have a bl**** massive sovereign wealth fund. Instead, we have a bl**** massive debt and a small bunch of obscenely rich a********s.

Safe travels @Quinten

Not as much fun as a Westie in the mountains perhaps, but 300hp E-Transits at 2000m altitude are a very surreal experience honestly!

Is Norway a fair comparison? 1.3 times the size of the UK with only 5.5m population. Lots of cheaper hydro-electric power too - c. 13p per kwh. Awash with North Sea oil cash not busted like we are.

Appreciate the 'support' Mike. I'm not an EV evangelist - I get they don't suit everyone but I was starting to think there wasn't anyone here who had even tried an EV. I only recently went EV myself for the daily driver. Previously I had a PHEV which convinced me that a full EV would do me just fine. I confess to a huge sigh of relief when the PHEV was gone. No more obscenely over complicated ICE to fret about. I'm perfectly happy with the Zetec in the Westy and the Busso in the Midlana (until it sells) for my ICE fix. For the daily drive, I'm more than happy with the quiet, comfortable, nippy (4.2 to 60) acceptable range (300 real world miles) car I recently bought. And I bought it used, not new, and intend keeping it a long time, so I didn't even get the buyers remorse I got with the PHEV, despite keeping that over 8 years.

I wish there was a stronger 'like button', I couldn't agree more! As you say, many people can very successfully charge at home for daily use with 3kW, never mind 7.2kW. I've driven big distances even in poor aero EVs (think Transit sized) and it's far more about the infrastructure, trip planning and technology aids than fundamental limitations of the EV itself in most cases - and that's improving monthly, not yearly.

For Christmas my son gifted me an entry ticket to the Spa 24 race. And because we both like driving, we planned a whole holiday around it. I set off today to Folkestone to stay in a hotel overnight to work around the thunderstorms tonight and will meet up with my son at the Eurotunnel tomorrow at 7. From there we will drive to Reims to meet up with a couple of friends who will join us for the trip. I’ll try to update the thread regularly 👍

That's @the stoat', drove it down from deepest darkest Wales (ok a few metres across the border). I nearly went on Sunday checked the traffic and it did look reasonable. Like you I think I'd have been stuck on the way out too.

Norway doesn't appear to agree with that assessment. A typical EV may not suit YOU, but they could suit a lot of other folk. Average daily mileage in the UK is still only 20 miles. 20 Miles!! Motorway warriors need not apply, although plenty do have BEV and manage just fine. The Guy Martin thing was a clear expose on the lack of charging infrastructure and how that impacts long trips. Not BEV ability to do long journeys in reasonable time periods. Plenty of real-world evidence that a BEV can do long trips (1000km) in sensible times (9 hours), including charging. The caveat being that there is adequate charging infrastructure. If you like spreadsheets, have look here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1V6ucyFGKWuSQzvI8lMzvvWJHrBS82echMVJH37kwgjE/edit?gid=15442336#gid=15442336 The reference is an ICE that did the trip in 8:35, the next best was a Mirai at 8:40, using hydrogen. Kind of impressed he was able to refuel it tbh. After that, lots of BEVs starting at 8:55 without using battery swapping. Technology & chemistry moves on at pace as well. Although it seems like nothing more than a gimmick to appease the "I can refuel my car in 2 minutes and absolutely refuse to acknowledge that I often stop for a pee when refuelling" brigade, BYD have introduced 1MW charging that can add 249 miles in 5 minutes. I spent that long trying to persuade 17l into the tank of the Westy this morning. The chance of building thousands of 1MW chargers is minimal though, and the strain on batteries can't be good. Looped house supplies have been a problem long before EV came along. Electric showers can be 10.5kW, an electric oven & hob, similar. Maximum load on a single phase EVSE is 7.2kW - the difference is that a car will be charging for hours, not a few minutes. It's also highly likely that a car will be charging at cheap rate, so I'm not convinced about the arguments against installing EVSE to looped premises myself, particularly if you add some intelligence to the EVSE so it can throttle back if other demands require it. To address the 'rare earth metals' issue, lots of manufacturers are now adopting LFP chemistry rather than NMC. LFP has some issues, though most can be dealt with easily enough. And, all the above against a backdrop of increasingly complex, expensive and unreliable ICE, mainly due to emissions regulations. Again, BEV isn't a perfect one size fits all solution. Neither is hydrogen, even if we dismiss the fact it can't be produced in volume at the moment. Fuel cells and hydrogen storage tanks have finite lifespans the same as batteries & ICE do. None of the complaints about any of the ICE alternatives mean we shouldn't try to make best use of them.....but we won't, because we are stupid, venal and selfish.

Can all those planning to join us at any part of the route, let me know via whatsapp (or a PM on here with your mobile no.) and I'll create a Whatsapp group for the day to aid finding each other etc

Living on a 1980s housing estate 2.3.4. bedrooms mostly with drives for 1 or 2 cars does not help with off street charging either , all the semi detached houses and some detached in the estate are being refused permission to connect 7Kw chargers as the houses are wired in a system referred to as loop through . a cable from the road goes to house a and is then looped inside the houses to house b . The connection is deemed unsuitable for two chargers so a new cable has to be run from the road to house b before either can be allowed a charger . Speaking to the survey engineer he also mentioned that when gas boilers are banned that a lot of streets will have to be completely rewired with larger underground cables and feeds to individual houses upgraded to cope with heat pumps , chargers and more electric cookers and showers. He also mentioned that they are getting more requests for three phase to cope with bigger heat pumps and a couple for larger chargers

Was there with the wife last weekend (Sunday) to (mostly) have a look at his Car collection - there was also a field laid on for classic and Performance cars owned by the general public visitors - which was very good too.... There were quite a few 7 type cars there also - mostly Caterhams, but did notice a couple of Westfields. One caught my eye - an orange one reg ending YUX with a 'Xflow Inside' sticker. Anyone off here? Great event, spoilt by taking 2 hrs to get out of one field - 3 hrs before the event finished......will not be going again unfortunately! Mart.

Is that a pocket torch in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

There are those who say replacing Guildford with that might be an improvement. /not me, of course //although Coventry might work ///or Luton

@Marcus Barlow - Show and Events Co-ordinator can you please pass a spare one to me(Next Tue?) and I'll pass it to @LoneWolf when he's next in the UK? He's a regular visitor.

Thats's a question above my paygrade but anyone involved in the Kit Car Show planning should point you the direction! Look up previous posts about it and see if someone pops up

Removed from my car and sat in the garage. Includes LED main bulbs (not legal) and normal halogen bulbs. Usual age related marks, missing the bottom nuts. £40.00 plus postage.

Who should I bribe to have the pocket torch 😁

Just going back to my last point about the size of the solar farm required - I needed to see how big 14000 acres is... if my maths is correct (excuse mix of measurements) it's about 7.5km x 7.5km... which if you need to see graphically is roughly the box around Guildford here..... That's for ONE 288MW turbine that (dodgy maths again) could power something around 200,000 to 250,000 houses. 3-5 Guildford sized towns.

Happy birthday julie