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Hi all, just thought I’d give you an update after a bit of a wait .. the Westy has passed its MOT today as a non cat vehicle using the engine specialist report I got and emails from DVSA! You should see the smile on my face and a great day for a blast! Thanks to all for your help and advice with this!!

And now sorted! THANKS

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.

Came out of Wales yesterday. Far too many 20mph restrictions for me. It’s just so slow.

Just finished getting my car back together with its new radiator and intercooler so we will be there.

I think we agree on your use case. 600+ miles a day sounds like purgatory to me though. Sadly, there are a lot of unreliable engines out there these days. Wet belts are sadly very common now, and just as problematic in many brands. MB even managed to cram one behind the flywheel on their A45 engine. Even Honda use them now. And the engines that still have chains? Ingenium anyone? But they all seem to suffer chain issues to some degree. Direct injection WILL lead to clogged inlet ports that need cleaning. EGR clogs, NOx sensors failing with expensive regularity, DPF clogging, low tension piston rings leading to early engine demise. The list goes on. The majority of these issues arise from the ever increasing demands for reduced emissions and increased efficiency. Many are aggravated by short trips. Proper servicing can help, but not prevent all these issues. Some actual stats on engine lifespan would be interesting. There is a vague claim that ICE lasts 150 to 300k miles…but I suspect there won’t be many achieving that figure, particularly Ford and JLR….oh, and BMW with their appetite for big end bearings. Not sure when ICE peaked in terms of longevity. Maybe the 90’s? GDI & EGR started the rot imo.

As many of you are aware. Our East Anglian area is very flat indeed and the only thing that we look up too is not mountains but carrot tops. After just completing malvern kit car show, 3 of our cars are embarking on a trip to Robins good old Yorkshire for 5 days. We will be visiting many places as well as tasting the local cuisine from the 10th -15th june. Our aims to have some fun and do some spirited driving at times plus not get chucked out of Yorkshire. We will be based in Pateley Bridge and go from there on. We will be updating our progress as we go and hopefully the weather will be nice. Watch those ferrets Robin. The carrot crunchers are coming to town.

My nephew damaged his Caterham in a similar way and the insurance company wrote it off. He bought the bits back and rebuilt it with a new chassis from an independent. It didn't actually take him long to do the rebuild but it was admittedly quite a while before he started as he lost heart and kind of fell out of love with it for a while. I guess I'm saying that it's a rotten shame for you but it's by no means the end of the world. Take the money and buy something new or do the rebuild. They're both reasonable things to do. But decide what's best for you.

Count me in please 👍

Funny 😂😂

I doubt if anyone will be going in the museum. We will start relaxing with a nice coffee/food, sit and chat to allow other cars to arrive, then we will go outside to have a look at all the cars and chat with their owners. When everyone is ready we will go for a run out, as it is Spare Seat Pete's birthday we will finish at the Bakewell Tap Room for a zero alcohol beer and pizza. (Riverside Brewery, Buxton Road, Bakewell, DE45 1GS) If you want to go around the museum, I suggest you go straight in (it opens at 9.30) or come back in the afternoon on the way home. @Tony H there are 2 petrol stations in Bakewell 😁just sayin'

I think that used to be the case but now I think that we've just reached the point where it's really hard to hit increasingly stringent emissions standards without badly compromising reliability.

I think that it's more than that - I think that it's a resistance to forced change - especially when it's badly thought through change. BEVs definitely have a very good use case; for some things they're great but they're very obviously not a universal answer. Yet the sale of ICE and hybrid alternatives are getting banned. 15 minute neighbourhoods are a great idea but instead of encouraging small local businesses they try to do it by banjaxing the road system instead. An increase in the use of public transport would be great but encourage it by providing that public transport regularly at a sensible price, not by taxing us our of cars. It's politicians that need psychologists, not the public.

Yes I watched that too, made me realise how absolutely useless the governments here have been at 'putting the great back in Great Britain' We may be a wealthy country but we are definitely not a country full of wealthy citizens like Norway seems to be by comparison.

Not envious, one little bit! Have an amazing trip, I’m sure it will be epic. I would love to send you off at Tagg Lane Dairy but will be in Anglesey with family. Looking forward to Bagpuss TV updates! Andy

It's fascinating how many people are convinced that EV's can't work 'for them' without having tried. Is it easy to jump from an ICE car to an EV and use it in exactly the same way? No, it isn't. You need to be comfortable with satnav route planning, install apps, learn where the fastest, cheapest, most reliable chargers are dotted around all over the country and learn what the car is capable of and what works best for it. Or buy a Tesla, which is infuriatingly well catered for in those respects. For example, for long journeys it isn't even enough to navigate to a charger location. The car also has to KNOW it's going to that charger, as well as knowing what the charger capacity is, and it needs to know that more than 30mins beforehand because this lets it condition the battery (heating or cooling) in preparation, otherwise it won't hit peak charging speeds.

The assertion was, and still is that for people who do more than "commute", and there are plenty of us, and (a point which perhaps I failed to make as clear as I wanted) where road transport infrastructre is the only option for the journey, EV's are a non starter. Perhaps non-starter was a bit harsh. Definitely a compromise that needs careful thought. I did also say it was about me and my use case as that is all I have direct experience of. As I say, there are plenty of us driving far in excess of the double charge range of an EV quite a lot of the time. EV's turn those journeys into a potentially costly affair in both "fuel" and time. Not sure I agree with ICE engines being more unreliable, the Ford Eco-Bang notwithstanding (wet belts? Really, Mr Ford?)

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

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 😲

My New Spax dampers. Ordered on Tuesday, arrived today(Friday). Superb service from @damperman and his team Thankyou

Day 3. Wensleydale to Pateley bridge. Amazing roads you have. Stopped off at a pub which was like the the league of gentlemen and in the back of beyond.

Day 3 Ribblehead valley viaduct

Day 3 On to wensleydale creamery from Malham. Oh my word. The roads you Yorkshire area have are out of this world. Never laughed and smiled so much driving.

Day 3 visit to malham. Nice drive and a lot of narrow bendy roads. Me and Bigfoot just stayed in the pub lol while the others walked the hills.

Day 3 First visit of the day was to too cold cut quarry. Long walk and fantastic views.

I’ve been trying to find an opportunity to take my Mum out in the Westfield she helped me buy pretty much since I reacquired it, but somehow it never quite happened. Finally though, the stars aligned on Tuesday. I took the day off for another less pleasant reason in the morning, but that meant I could head up from Crewkerne to Wokingham in the afternoon to see Mum on her 90th birthday, in the Westfield of course. I had some great views of Stonehenge both ways, and it was lovely in the twilight heading home. After various friends had left, I persuaded her to tog up and come out for a spin. Getting her in was not too much of a challenge, and she was snug with the 6 point harness although could have done with a cushion as she could barely see over the dashboard! We headed out through Hurst and Twyford, hitting some sticky traffic at times, but then had a wonderful run back along the B3018 and the Straight Mile and home. She was very brave, didn’t squeal once and actually really enjoyed it. I’m not sure her hair will ever be the same though 🤣. The funniest part was, of course, getting her out again. It took a few goes and I have a hilarious speeded up video of it which I will keep private to save her blushes. So, there can’t be many 90 year olds who’ve been in a Westfield at a decent lick on their birthdays! She will be dining out on that one for a while 👍

Day 2. Brimham Rocks Fountain Abbey plus maintenance for damage from bad roads. Our cars have taken a bit of underside whacks today bit a lot of spirited driving. Drove through cow pat outside base carrot. Day 3 tomorrow plans are cold cuts quarry, malham waterfalls , wensleydale cheese and ribble valley viaduct. More in depth details in next magazine.

I used to be optimistic about hydrogen as an energy carrier. Less so now. Yes, it has high energy density by mass, but low by volume (1/4 that of petrol for example). That doesn’t necessarily matter too much depending on what it’s being used for, but we’ve seen what it means for cars, and that doesn’t work well with current technology, leading to short lifespans for storage vessels and a range of practical issues. Hydrogen is very difficult to contain. There were some promising ideas around binding hydrogen in solid substrates like hydrides, but like so many promising ideas, it is yet to materialise in any practical scalable form. But worst of all is the sheer inefficiency of using it. People cry we don’t have the grid capacity for 100% BEVs. True, but it isn’t impossibly short, around 40-50% more. Hydrogen production at scale means adding the round trip costs, which are significant. 1 ton of hydrogen needs about 50MWh to electrolyse, and contains around 30MWh of energy…..assuming 100% conversion efficiency. Current fuel cells are around 60% so overall, we’d need to at least double grid capacity. And then we have transportation to consider. Another fixable issue, of course, but it still needs doing. Hydrogen will have a place, and if we ever manage to get fusion to work then we should have lots of cheap power to make it practical, but there are huge hurdles in the way. Finite resources isn’t just a problem for batteries. I’d argue we’ve already gone too far on the population front. But, all the negatives aside, I hope smart people are working on it, because we really can’t carry on the way we are.

Arrived at base carrot in pateley bridge Yorkshire. The road in was bumpy lol

Tidal and not let governments give away the revenue from oil in tax cuts.

But apart from being an MOT tester, MOT tester trainer, MOT manager, MOT manager trainer, and 50 years of MOT experience, and a great club member and Area Organiser, what has Martyn ever done for us? 🤣

Had a bad day yesterday. Out a run with my mate in the MK and was involved in an accident resulting is severe damage to the N/S of my car, just at the door area. Thankfully neither me or the other driver were injured, though I am pretty sore today. I contacted Howdens and KGM today and have sent in pictures to be reviewed by their assessors on Monday. The damage is confined to one area, the exhaust was squashed flat, the top rail at the door pushed right in and deformed the passenger seat. The lower floor has been buckled a bit and I think the transmission tunnel might be deformed too. The scuttle panel has been pushed up and there is now large gap between it and the top of the footwell. Fair to say it's a bit of a mess. I'm totally gutted, after some recent upgrades it was really going great and I had some more big runs planned. Definitely a bad day 😞

No interest so i will consider flee bay or maybe FB marketplace

Maybe next time. Family holiday tomorrow Andy