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Occupations and Westfields...


Richard (OldStager)

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31 minutes ago, Rush Motorsport said:

Sold fuel to business jet operators. Now do nothing. It doesn’t help with Westfield ownership. 

A knowledge of fuels and their applications surely, I tried Av gas once in the comp car, was rubbish due to its viscosity - you could have helped me there, LOL.

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58 minutes ago, Nemesis said:

I Grew up (allegedly) as a very skint yoof..... I learned how to keep a Yamaha FS1E going with a hammer, single screw driver, a plug spanner and a pair of pliers.... then I served as a Royal Navy Medic on Submarines where they taught you all about the mechanical stuff that makes a complex thing like a sub work, the Royal Navy adopt a simple concept with tuition.... "it goes up and down or round and round", it compounded my simplistic approach to fixing things, ie. get a bigger hammer. For the past 21 years I've been doing a strange thing called Health Physics, it's taught me naff all about mechanical stuff but has funded the addiction to the lunacy that is a V8..... Now all I've got to do is install my new engine and chassis wiring loom and then maybe this year have some fun again.  

Ah a fizzy eh, my moped was never that fast sadly.

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12 minutes ago, OldStager said:

A knowledge of fuels and their applications surely, I tried Av gas once in the comp car, was rubbish due to its viscosity - you could have helped me there, LOL.

 

Yes, but i didnt want to upset all the forum members who insist fuel goes off after 3 months in a tank...

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I left school and went to a local college to train as a mechanic, did that for about 13 years and I had a chance of coming out of the workshop to do the current roll that I do as a aftersales manager for a Mazda dealership, 12 years in and still not too sure I made the right move 🤔😆.

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im a cnc machinist/programmer/toolmaker. but ill get involved in anything that i can. currently work in a small toolroom making lost wax injection tooling for power generation. 

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I did an apprenticeship with National Grid and worked for 12 years as a fitter/engineer, then for the past 3 years moved into the offshore wind as a turbine tech.

 

I love all things petrol and mechanical. Old bikes, cars and noisy paramotors!

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Mechanical engineer in the water industry - absolutely nothing transferrable to Westfield ownership. 

 

Learnt basic spannering on mountain bikes over the years, a sunny weekend is always a tossup between the car and the bike.

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I'm a coachbuilder, since  I left school. I've been getting away with it for 42 years. 

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I left school and started work For Black & Decker repairing power tools. Did that for a while until the service side was bought out. Tried various other things since but I now run my own garden machinery business. I repair and service mainly ride on mowers. I know what I'm doing with a car engine but not so much the electrical side as there isn't much of that on a mower!

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I did automotive and Motorsport technology at College, but taught me very little new. After college I got a job with 3M producing pharmaceuticals where I am trying to make my way into a technical role by learning how to fix and maintain the machinery better than the actual technicians.

First experience with Westfields would be around 2003/4 when my dad was building his, then from 2005 onwards I've always been around the Speed Series. When I was at college in 2016-2018 my dad and had talked about a project car, something like an MX5 or an MG Midget; something to learn the ropes on. Then in November 2018 after my dad won the Speed Series, I found a Westfield chassis on Ebay and thought, that'd be nice, so I bought it. over 2 years later now, and it's still  just a bare chassis, taking up room in the garage, I think I bit off more than I could chew when I thought that a competition Westfield built to compete against the likes of @Terry Everall - WSCC Competition Secretary and @Simon Waterfall Syman84 would be a good first car 😅

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Some wide and diverse careers posted so far, but as I had suspected many are in the engineering / automotive sector . I seemed to gravitate towards messing about with mechanical things by accident really and started ( from memory ?) when I disassembled my mums lawn mower for some reason, then was unable to put it back together, I must have been 7 or 8 years old - she was not best pleased.

 

My very first job was via the YOP scheme back in the 80's, making wiring looms for arcade machines, this then seemed to lead me down the electrical route that was to last for the next few decades. A brief spell as a sound engineer at live venues was perhaps the most enjoyable job I had.

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I was always good at school in T.D. and metalwork doing extra work making iron gates and jewelry and rebuilt my brother in laws Ford Popular when he gave it to me (but took it away once I made it run again)

I wanted to go into car mechanics from school but was told by the Headmaster that my qualifications were too good for such a trade🤣 so chose draughtman going through college for 6 years(starting in steel production-when UK still had one, onto civil engineering and roofing). After college as wages and prospects so poor ended up selling construction equipment finally owning my own machinery hire and demolition/repair business. Throughout the construction based work I have always had close association with equipment mainly industrial, but maintained own fleet of electric tools including 1 & 3phase, diesel and petrol motors so have a wide base of engineering qualifications, making bespoke equipment as required, as well as construction techniques (professional qualification in how to use a hammer - when I hit my finger it still hurts though🥴)

Westfield idea was born out of son-in-law booking a test drive from the factory and the seed was sown, with my statement that the impulse had to be a V8 or Cosworth with the later being the first to offer itself and after years in build here we are still modifying.

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I have worked in mechanical design since graduating with a HND many years back. Mainly focused on plastic components from shower valves, private mobile radios (public sector), washing machines, JCB Fastrac tractors and currently as an external hardware engineer for Bentley motors.

 

Always had a passion for mechanical devices since 14 years when I worked on a farm. The tenant farmer wasn’t well off which led to a fix and mend culture. The best job was to build one working combine harvester out of 2 broken machines!

 

westfield ownership has always been my dream, from an early age! Chris Smith took me on a test drive when the early independent rear suspension had just been developed. He scared the living daylights out of me! Never forget that experience. From that day knew I HAD to own a Westfield. 
 

I built the first one in 2004-5, am now on my third!

 

Andy

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28 minutes ago, Snags said:

I was always good at school in T.D. and metalwork doing extra work making iron gates and jewelry and rebuilt my brother in laws Ford Popular when he gave it to me (but took it away once I made it run again)

I wanted to go into car mechanics from school but was told by the Headmaster that my qualifications were too good for such a trade🤣 so chose draughtman going through college for 6 years(starting in steel production-when UK still had one, onto civil engineering and roofing). After college as wages and prospects so poor ended up selling construction equipment finally owning my own machinery hire and demolition/repair business. Throughout the construction based work I have always had close association with equipment mainly industrial, but maintained own fleet of electric tools including 1 & 3phase, diesel and petrol motors so have a wide base of engineering qualifications, making bespoke equipment as required, as well as construction techniques (professional qualification in how to use a hammer - when I hit my finger it still hurts though🥴)

Westfield idea was born out of son-in-law booking a test drive from the factory and the seed was sown, with my statement that the impulse had to be a V8 or Cosworth with the later being the first to offer itself and after years in build here we are still modifying.

Funny how many of us have overlapping interests, I too loved T.D. at school ( is it still taught ?) and I actually got a summer holiday job in a drawing office, for me it wasn't as expected and didn't go back the following year. I perhaps should have done as I think I was just too young to be put into such an environment ( 14 or 15 ish).

Not sure a headmaster should steer you into something else if you had ambitions on something else, should he ?.

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