Leaderboard

Excellent turn out especially in this cold weather, well done lads and ladies

I'm currently grafting away on the Sizewell B refueling outage, 12 hour days 6 on 1 off, so with my day off being today I seized the opportunity to get some admin done. The list of "To Do's" was as follows. WSCC renewal - tick, and I'm still in no pain when it comes to paying the annual membership of this fine club. Diving Club renewal - tick, smarts a bit but I get value for money over the year. Talk to the boss about follow on work - tick, I got a less than definitive outlook but it looks like I won't starve this year. Oh it's all going so well...... Renew insurance on the ASBO, it was with Flux but I looked about to see if they could be beaten, that's when the headaches started, the agent from Lancaster insurance told me I'd had a non fault claim, "back in 2019 sir, so if you change your answer to yes for that question sir that will keep us right with disclosure sir" I was certain that I hadn't claimed and wasn't prepared to lie about it just to get a quote, so I went on a mahoosive mission to find out what manner of clerical error was going to cost me more money, and even more so might invalidate the tin top insurance because I said no to any claims in the last five years for that policy. After much gnashing of teeth and threats of FOI requests to all my previous insurers the nice man from Flux said "yeah I can see that claim sir, it was when you had the tin top insured with us sir, it was a windscreen claim sir and nothing to worry about sir, it doesn't affect anything sir" I replied with "oh yeah I remember that, I had forgotten about it but now I remember it, is that going to bite me in the rear if I bend the tin top?" No sir like I said it makes no difference" I asked why Lancaster were classing that as a non fault claim rather than a windscreen claim, his reply is not repeatable on here but he did explain to me how it might have come about, the lesson learned today being that some of the lesser brokers don't have and cannot access the full information on some data base thing he called Q, and as a result can cause bouts of elevated premiums, elevated blood pressure and splintered tooth enamel. Anyway ASBO insurance is renewed with Flux and now I'm going to the fridge to get a very cold one and watch a movie or two before bedtime ! Nem........

Yay! Speak of the devil, it arrived in this morning's post! I love a good physical mag to read, reading online just isn't the same for me. Thanks to all the WSCC team for all the hard work you do, I'm sure we don't appreciate it as much as we should 👍👍👍

A picture paints 1,000 words

What an amazing turnout we had this morning! John and I met up for a coffee at Ashby de la Zouch before a little run down the B roads to Mallory. Almost as soon as we had parked up we were joined by Tony, Hedley, Dale, Neal, Alex, Mark (Mark and Alex in their dailies) and Dave making a brilliant line up of Westies in amongst the classic cars and huge amounts of bikes. Dave soon followed in his beautiful Duratec engined car that sadly may be sold soon. It was a really great meet with live music, food and drink, raffles and an auction, with loads of amazing things to look at, Huggys really is a little treasure trove! Hedley was busy throughout the morning doing loads of content for social media, even interviewing us all about our cars.... I'm dreading seeing mine as I definitely have a face for radio 😂 What a line up! Despite the cold it was a brilliant morning. Great to meet Neal and Mark for the first time too (Neal I owe you a coffee at the next meet!) 👍

One week to go to the Yorkshire meeting at the Fox and Grapes on York Road, A64. I should be in my car, see you there from 7:30ish.

I quite like Thruxton but should think it struggles with high public attendance. My favourite viewing point is the grandstands at Club, although I can see these being expensive and oversubscribed for BTCC, door handle stuff should be great there.

Fair point, although quality of the sound depends on so much else these days with HD/4K broadcasts, along with the tolerance levels of the neighbours if the 5.1 gets cranked up... And my comments were definitely focused on the live viewing quality, completely ignoring the atmosphere/sounds/smells of being there. BUT, compared to a regular club racing day sat at Quarry at Castle Combe, I don't think Thruxton can match that. But paddock walks, concessions and the general "event" would definitely be a factor for the BTCC, especially if one has never been to a BTCC event before.

@fatblokestu You'll be wanting one of these then! I've been out of the trade for 15 years now - my knees are thankful for it after years of kneeling on concrete floors cutting out 100 metre square pond liners and music festival stage canopies. But I still have this industrial walking-foot and an industrial 5-thread overlocker, and keep my hand in doing random work. I've still to get round to making that half-hood, but I knocked out a spare wheel cover for our truck camper on the weekend.

Thanks for the comments all. Much appreciated. We will indeed go have a look for ourselves and now have a good idea where to head for.

Living in the SW it’s our nearest circuit for BTCC. Each to his own, but as Jon say’s we find the banking at Campbell/Cobb provides a good vantage point. Goes without saying you can’t get the atmosphere particularly the true sound of the cars on TV IMHO. Looking forward to a weekend visit for the Classic Sports Car Club meeting beginning of May. My respectful suggestion would be to go and see for yourself, just be aware it will be very busy BTCC weekend!

There is no simple way of putting this, so i'll say it how it is lol Unfortunately we will be closing our online webstore part of the business soon, possibly the end of this month if not sooner. I knew that when COVID first hit back at the tail end of 2019 that this time would come at some point as it was always an expensive endevour on our part it only just made enough to make it worth while. As you all know the costs of everything have gone up dramatically over the last year or so and therefore as a result it has been getting harder to run the webstore effectivly what with decreasing margins etc. So we have taken the decision to shut down the e-commerce part of the website. The costs of warehousing, the associated software and hardware, manpower, costs of processing, shipping etc has gone up 30% and it's apparent that it's no longer financially viable to continue to run the online webstore with all the support infrastructure that a webstore needs. We have also seen that with the recent cost of living crisis we have seen a downturn of 40% online business from this time last year which is unsustainable. So what does this mean? Well Its not all doom and gloom. The good news is (yes there is good news) that we are not closing Hawke Motorsport, we have our workshop in Romsey, Hampshire and we will still be able to supply you all the equipment that we do now, but it will be a order only basis, i.e you will need to PM, Call or email with your requirements. We will of course update the forum with specials as we do now. There are major benefits to this, for instance we will be able to keep our prices low and be able to offer better deals for the club as we won't have the overheads of a warehouse and other associated costs etc. There is also the fact that we do also have a fully functioning workshop, with in house fabrication, a precision engineering business partner (for those one off special precision parts or part runs), in house bodywork repair with paint booth and in house, ramp, tyre & garage facilities, so if you are in the area we can help you in a more practical way. We will of course remain a sponsor So not great news but not bad news either.

Hello from Huddersfield. I've had my Westfield for 2 years, but only now joined the club and I am looking forward to meeting fellow members in the Yorkshire and Peak District branches. My Westfield is a Sigma engined car, but is plenty fast and fun enough for me.

Hi all , no change to car numbers , this trip is starting to get closer , looking forward to meeting you all

Roof hoop drilled out and fitted to the clamps, just need to cut down the threaded rod a bit now. Roof bars cut down to length. I’ve put some foam pipe insulation around them which seems to work well. I’ve added a strap between the roof hoop and the roll bar which allows more tension to be added plus a bit of height. The whole lot seems pretty well tensioned now, almost tempted to go and give it a road test as it is to see how it fares. I must say, I doubted my ability to do this successfully but I reckon it will turn out pretty well now. Just need to master that sewing machine!

You've beaten me to it! As we only have a Jap bar on our car, I've been meaning to make a half-hood that uses the frame of the full hood (which we use alot). I'm an industrial textile fabricator (canvas-pvc worker/upholsterer/trimmer) by trade, but like a plumber's toilet or a mechanic's car, I just haven't got round to it!