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On the way home from Curborough- The JCB Academy, Rocester

As it’s April Fool’s Day, I thought we could share our favourite pranks and learn from each other’s deviousness… 😈 My favourites: I have a friend who constantly banged on about his Range Rover and how great it was, although he never took it off road. After months of listening to his drivel at the pub, I used an old trick and attached a harmonica to the front grille with cables ties. Sure enough, he was soon puzzled as to why it was making weird noises that got louder the faster he went. He eventually went to the local dealer as it was under warranty. They found it - I’m sure it gave them a good laugh. Funny enough, my friend never mentioned it, just that the dealer had “sorted it”. I was kind of irritated by that after my hard work, so the next time I had a chance, I put a thick long cable tie around the Range Rover’s prop shaft, leaving the tail long so that it slapped the floor with each revolution. Surprisingly, he took it back to the dealer again, and they sorted it out. He stopped talking about his Range Rover after that.

Another few… High school teacher had a Volkswagen Beetle. We took the domed hubcaps off and sellotaped some ball bearings to the inside. They worked loose once he got up to speed and went round and round inside the hubcaps, sounding like the wheel bearings had failed. Same teacher, we put rice down the air vents in front of the windscreen. Once he turned the interior vent fan on, he was promptly pebble-dashed. … At work one day, the whole office was having a bad morning thanks to our two 💩💩 bosses and everyone was very down emotionally, so I thought we all needed a bit of a lift. The bathrooms were tiny, single occupancy units, about 4' wide by 7’ long. Each one had a loo, a sink, a mirror and a hot air hand dryer with a rotating nozzle so you could also point it upwards and dry your hair - which no one ever did, of course. I emptied all the hole punch machines in the office and took the thousands of paper dots in a paper cup into the ladies room, turned the hand dryer nozzle towards the ceiling and filled it up. What I thought would happen is that one of the ladies would go in, do her thing, wash her hands, go to dry her hands and rotate the nozzle downwards, and all the dots would fall out and make a big mess. What actually happened (from later reports) was that the female office manager went in, dropped her drawers, sat down, and to cover the sound of her peeing, hit the button. So there she is, knickers around her ankles, interfaced with the toilet, and suddenly in the middle of a violent snowstorm. Of course, the fan is on a timer and won’t shut off for 20 seconds, so the snowstorm lasted a bit. According to her, the dots got EVERYWHERE. Next thing I knew, she flew out in a rage, leaving a cloud of dots in her wake. For some reason, she immediately blamed me even though everyone was laughing at her anger. No idea why - I’m so innocent. 😇

Few hours out this afternoon. Lovely 😊

Open Day Sat 13 May. Have to register as parking limited. I'm in.....

Few donuts in the car park then?

A good meet as usual. A few pics from me:

A few from my youth. Van de Graaff generator wired to the door handle at college. Made our tutor jump when he came in. I cooked up some ammonium tri-iodide and planted it under some newspaper in the threshold of the 6th form common room. Produced loud ‘cracks’ and puffs of purple smoke as people came in. This one backfired a bit though. Once I thought all the fun had been had, I gathered up the newspaper and put it in the bin. The following day there was a bit of a scandal as the cleaner had emptied the bin and it exploded…..other than iodine stained fingers and the shock, she was fine, but I was mortified. For the record, I did fess up and apologised to her. Converted a traffic cone to remote control and had it perform laps behind the headmaster during an important speech. From work, not much opportunity for nonsense really, so they tended to be pretty lame. When doing password resets I had a habit of picking stupid ones for certain people. In the early days of our work network running Windows clients with network cached user profiles, again, for certain ‘special’ people I’d edit the user data so when they logged in they got all the desktop colours set to black, and the origin of the main display set off-screen so nothing was visible. Again, for some ‘special’ people I’d install tweaked system sound effects. All very nerdy and mostly harmless…. Not mine, but memorable, a much loved staff member was leaving. Our site was at the top of a hill. Someone wired the horn on his car to the brake lights. You can imagine the result as he rolled down the drive honking as he went. Another one not mine but very good. A colleague was notorious for being late for work. One of his shift ‘mates’ got an exceptionally loud ‘ahoooogha’ style klaxon, hid it in his workbench drawer and wired it so it sounded when the guy came in and hit the breaker. Another staff departure, got a roll of giant bubble-wrap, cut a strip about a foot wide and 19 foot long, bundled it up above a front tyre and gaffer taped one end to the tyre so when he drove off, the bubble-wrap got pulled under the tyre. Made a fantastic noise and got the desired reaction. I was the recipient of a good one on my 40th birthday. A long time mate shot and edited an entire fake news piece about me, local footage, interviews with people, the whole works, then cut it into a real news program and finished it off with a ‘happy birthday’ message from the well known presenter. The final trick was to set up a perfectly timed replay and put it on screen so I could be called to watch it as if it was live on air. Had me going for a short while when I saw my home village and then house on the TV on what I thought was that days live news.

Having a mess around this morning.

Hi, A few of us are heading to Curborough Saturday morning 10am for the breakfast meet. Feel free to come along for a coffee 👍

I do hope that they make it work and they manage to justify the Final Edition Zetec pricing by getting the quality of the components, the kitting and the documentation to the level that justifies it. I am sure all of us who have built recently would have loved to have missed out on some experiences we wished we had never had!!

Two guys on a opposite shift to me were always pranking each other. Two stick in my mind. Guy walks to the carpark after a 24 hour shift only to find his drivers seat missing. Another time to find his car full of Flowpac, filled through to sun roof, Flowpac blowing around for months afterwards. Always just between themselves.

BMW drivetrain would make sense. Might be a bit on the heavy side but there are other 7 type cars out there using BMW engines. There's plenty about as well, just need slightly deeper pockets...

It's different to the way I do it...

Hi all , no change to anything but it’s getting close now , looking forward to it , I’m off on a track day mid April weather permitting

Sure @Stuart, I got the 16mm internal diameter ones as that is the external diameter of the metal pipes.

pity you didn't get the photo a friend got years ago in his 911 99999 miles AT 100 MPH

@DIY-Sidefinitely 13th I checked with them on Facebook

Registered - and it’s on my birthday. There had better be cake available…

Their website is now live- westfield-sportscars.

Received this update by email from Westfield-Chesil yesterday: Westfield Chesil Ltd is delighted to be able to update you on restarting production of the Westfield range of sports cars, as well as the opening of the parts shop! It has been a busy winter at our new home in Bicester as we completed the move of the parts and equipment to continue production and development. Whilst the physical move has been going on our Parts Team have been working with suppliers to set up the necessary stocks so we can build cars and supply spares in volume from April 2023. 2023 SDV Kits As before the SDV kit will be available in 2 modules, Starter and Completion. The first sends you all the bits you will need to get your donor components into a Westfield. The second is everything else you will need to be ready for the road. We will be taking orders for SDV’s from April 1st with customer deliveries starting on 1st July. 2023 ZETEC Kits Westfield has always been the market leading complete vehicle kit. And in its 32nd year we will have 32 Final Edition Zetec Kits available for sale. Available either as a complete kit, or 3 modules to spread cost and space required during the build. Don’t forget that everything required to build your own sports car even down to the Liqui- Moly fluids is supplied. We will be taking orders for ZETEC’s from April 1st with customer deliveries starting on 1st July Website, Parts Shop and Parts Hotline Whilst we have been moving the business to Bicester our parts team have been busy putting in place a modern stock control and ordering systems for the parts department. For the moment we will move online with telephone help available through Jason Ball, a long serving member of the original Retail Parts business. The Website is due for launch in early April. Westfield XI Kits Since buying the business we have had a lot of input from the XI chapter of the Westfield Sports Car Club. Between us we have come up with a 44-point plan to improve the kit, making it more straightforward to build, easier to get through IVA and make improvements to some of the components. We intend to supply 24 kits in 2024. You can confirm details about the car and place a fully refundable deposit to secure your build slot by speaking to Simeon on 01869 221154 Social Media and Website We will keep Facebook and Instagram up to date with both development information and details about how to book a production slot. The Website will be live this month and you can follow us through the links below to keep up to date. Website: westfield-sportscars.co.uk Facebook: westfieldcarsofficial Instagram: @westfieldcarsofficial SIMEON CATTLE General Manager - Westfield Chesil LTD Unit 8, Arkwright Road, Bicester. OX26 4SU

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

And another... Was just about to turn over to 99,000 miles too...

Heres one of me "at work"...