Making up for lost time

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

Alarm set for 4:30 this morning, loaded the car and set off at 5:06.  Nicely heavily laden with tent, sleeping bag, air mattress, hiking gear etc.

The drive down was cold and noisy, but it didn't stop me smiling like an absolute muppet the whole way! Had to resist the urge to wave at random cars as I passed them a few times! (before anyone worries, the below photo was taken using my phone in a mount, with a timer and the shutter pressed while stationary) 

The car is absolutely fantastic. I'm so happy with the little changes I made to deviate from the standard car - Freewheel is so good for night driving, being able to switch between dip and main beam mid corner without taking your hands off the wheel. The quantum suspension is just incredible too. I took my friend who drives an M3 for a spin yesterday and he said the Westfield soaks up the bumps better than his car. When I take it on a track too, I can just dial up the damping to wherever I want it. Very glad I asked JK composites to put heater pads in the seats as well. They really make a massive difference and they're so comfortable. A heater in the car would be nice, but wrapped up as I was and with heated seats, I don't see any reason I couldn't drive this car in the middle of winter. 

 

When I arrived down at the port, the security guard at checkin directed me into the lane to have my car searched, although I think he did it just to confuse his colleague who was carrying out the searches! "eh... Eh... Can we have a look under the bonnet?". He then proceeded to ask me a few details about the build rather than anything security related!  All safely boarded on the ferry now. Car is up to 798 miles now, less than half way through its 4th day with registration plates, although, granted more than half of those miles are from the trip up to Carlisle for the IVA test!

I've taken a couple of pictures but the WiFi on the ferry is pants and there's no signal in my cabin so I'll have to edit those into the post later tonight when I get to Düsseldorf! 

 

Edit: managed to upload them eventually! 

 

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

A fantastic start to ownership Andrew! Well done.

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

Thought I should probably put an update on here so nobody sends a search party out! Big couple of days finished. Made it to Düsseldorf last night shortly after 9pm.  All was well except for the last half hour when I lost all of my Freewheel controls. Not ideal to lose your indicators on the autobahn at night time, but I got there anyway! Turned out just to be a wire that had been trapped by wiper pot cover which was shorting. Tidied that up and modified the routing slightly so all good again today.

 

This morning around 10am I set off for Denmark. Rain was spitting and the clouds looked pretty ominous so I thought it would be best to try out the half hood I bought from SBFS. I think this is probably the first bit I'm not overly impressed by on the car. When I did the fittings in my garage, I remember being disappointed with the fixing at the rear using cable ties. Sure enough, as soon as I tried to tension the roof, the supplied cable tie started slipping, so I had to spend a half an hour getting stuff out of the way in a McDonald's car park to fix that. Even with new cable ties and the roof fully tensioned, though, it leaks.  I expected some water to get through gaps around the doors etc. But not through the actual roof seams!  Anyway, nothing to be done about it now. 

 

Waze reckoned about 6 hours of driving to get to my camping spot for the night in Denmark, but I have no idea what speeds it was anticipating me doing on the unlimited stretches of autobahn. It was pouring down rain for a good chunk of the drive, so having set off at 10 am, with three stops along the way for food, coffee and petrol, I arrived at the camp site around 8:20. Slightly wishing I'd taken a photo when I arrived, but it was very nearly dark and I wanted to use the little remaining light to get my tent set up! I'll take one in the morning though!

 

Tomorrow I'll set off for Sweden.  Aiming to be in Stockholm on Wednesday to meet a few friends I haven't seen in years so I'll just drive that general direction and pick a point along the way to pitch a tent tomorrow night! It'll be nice to be off the autobahn. Everything today except the last half hour was autobahn which is not the best for my car - especially with the front wheels toed out. At one point the next instruction on my satnav was to take the exit in 133 miles - to go onto the next autobahn... Exciting stuff. 

 

Anyway, photos tomorrow! Time for some rest now! 

[Geoffrey Carter (Buttercup)]

It may be worth starting a separate thread with a different title. 

 

I think more more people will find and follow it then.

 

I for one am so looking forward to following this.

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

Fair point! The ferry from Sweden to Finland on Thursday is 11 hours long so I'll try to get my laptop out then and put together a new thread in the places to visit and road trips section.

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

44 minutes ago, AndrewOBW said:

Fair point! The ferry from Sweden to Finland on Thursday is 11 hours long so I'll try to get my laptop out then and put together a new thread in the places to visit and road trips section.

 

A moderator can always split these posts off and make a new thread for you, perhaps might just need you to edit the first of the posts into an introduction? Just shout, if you want it done!!

[AdamR]

Awesome Looking forward to further updates!

[Paul T]

Nice one Andy, shame about the soft bits half hood, I was going to order one over the winter but not sure now 🤨

 

good of luck with the rest of the trip though, if a leaky roof is the worst thing to go wrong then you’ve obviously done fantastically well with the build! 🤞🏻

 

...I still have your M14 tap btw 😁

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Whilst I can't comment on individual cases without seeing them, but one point with these sort of soft tops in general, is that they do need/benefit from a certain amount of regular care and attention; this doesn't just mean keeping them clean, it also means treating them with a re-proofed; nite also, that you need to pick the right one for your hood/half hood's material, vinyl, like the factory hood needs s different formulae re-proofer to moleskin, which the Westfield half hood's are made of. (Sorry, not sure on the material SBfS use). You will find the reproofer also soaks into all the seams etc, and helps stop the tendency for water to "sweat" through them, in heavily er, moist, conditions!

 

The treatments also help protect from UV exposure, mildew etc. to.

 

I tend to use the Renovo treatments, but I'm sure there's other good stuff out there.

 

As for SBfS, if your issue is an actual manufacturing fault, and these things do happen occasionally, even to the best, then, while I know it's a pain for the trip, but do get in touch with them, they are very good at repairing, modifying gear for customers and I'm sure they'll be just the same with warranty stuff.

 

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

- oh forgot to say, I've always used reproofer from the outset with any new hood, so it's not just a case of waiting six moths or whatever.

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

4 hours ago, Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Secretary said:

- oh forgot to say, I've always used reproofer from the outset with any new hood, so it's not just a case of waiting six moths or whatever.

 

I guess that's probably what I should have done. I assumed I'd need to do it in the future but foolishly expected that it would be pretty well treated from the outset.

 

Just crossed over into Sweden. Gutted the weather has been so changeable today. Went over one of the bridges towards Copenhagen and it was spectacular. The sun was coming out so I decided to pull over and take a gamble on taking the hood off and setting up the gopro.  Then a few minutes down the road I saw a rather unhappy cloud... 

Before I could get to another exit to get the hood back up, it turned into a very unhappy, hailstoney cloud...

I might complain about the hood, but for cases like that it's better up than down!

 

Sadly this meant the hood stayed on for the Øresund bridge so I can only show you the stock Wikipedia photo for it:

What a spectacular piece of engineering. 4km tunnel followed by an 8km bridge. The toll booth operators at the car side even offered me a cup of tea when I jumped out of the car to pay them! 

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

My campsite for the night! Who says a westie can't go off road, eh? 

[ludo]

I am jealous of the roadtrip, awesome, thanks for sharing!

[Alan Cutler (Adge) - Dorset AO]

Great trip, great write up. Looking forward to following your adventure.

Tristan at SBFS's told me to "just use any tent waterproofer" on my hood. Perhaps you could pick some up on your travels and brush it on. It dries quite quick, and so far has kept the seams on mine watertight

Enjoy your travels.

[Andrew O Byrne White - Ireland AO]

On 17/09/2019 at 21:52, AdgeC said:

Great trip, great write up. Looking forward to following your adventure.

Tristan at SBFS's told me to "just use any tent waterproofer" on my hood. Perhaps you could pick some up on your travels and brush it on. It dries quite quick, and so far has kept the seams on mine watertight

Enjoy your travels.

That sounds like a good idea. I'll be spending most of Friday in Helsinki so I'll find a camping shop then.

 

Carried on to Stockholm yesterday. Decided to forgo the 3.5 hour motorway drive in favour of a 5 hour non motorway drive - which turned out to be 2 hours of non motorway followed by 3 hours of a different motorway. Still a good trade in my eyes! The views were beautiful, although the speed limits too low for any entertaining driving.

 

Once I got to Stockholm, I parked up the car and checked into my hostel. It was nice to have a hot shower after two days sleeping in a tent!  Then went and met up with my friends - one originally from Finland and the other from a bit further north in Sweden.  In my head it was only 2 or 3 years since I'd seen them, but the reality was more like 8 or 9 when we worked it out! 

 

That's one really important point about this car that could be so easily overlooked - it's a fantastic conversation starter, both with old friends and new ones. My housemates lived in my old house for 4 years before I moved in without knowing the neighbour's names properly. Once I started working outside on the car, everyone would stop for little chats here and there, or ask for a little advice if they were having some car trouble. The result was that I got to know them really well, to the point where I know a good chunk of their backgrounds now too! It's so easy these days to live without building these relationships, that's what makes it so fantastic to have something that facilitates them! 

 

Anyway, I'm now on the ferry to Finland, where I'll be meeting up with my friend and his mk1 MX5, and the rest of the trip then we'll be doing together. I quickly changed my speedo back to mph this morning to check the mileage reading. 1 week today since the reg plates went on, and the car has covered over 2000 miles and driven in 5 countries (that'll be 6 in about 11 hours time)! That's some pretty decent progress I think!