The photos so far

If you would like to see some photos please see below. I will label them as soon as I can !

home2rome 2008 day 0 - 1

Home2rome day 2

home2rome day 3

home2rome day 4

Special thanks

It would have been impossible to do this trip without the support of a very good friend. Thank you Ross for putting up with the bad planning, the mistakes, the disasters and generally for having a cool head when it was required. Thanks a million mate

Thank You!

I just wanted to thank all the people who donated to the Guide Dogs for the Blind.  We were collecting for them in memory of Laura Bradley: -

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/oxfordshire/7529264.stm

£579.37 in donations plus gift aid!

I also want to say a huge thank you to Greg for letting me be a part of this adventure.  I had a fantastic time and feel very privileged.  As it turned out the "challenges" we ended up with were far more taxing than taking photos of German cars and far more rewarding once completed.

The journey is more important than the destination

The point of the "journey" is not just to arrive.

I'm lying on the floor of the airport typing what may be the last posting from the rally certainly the last one from Rome. I feel a tear welling up and a lump in my throat.

The previous night was spent in the novetel 10 miles out of rome (mini bar, bath, pool, expensive tv the whole nine yards). We had three drinks in the bar and then noticed that the hotel security officers were moving in on us tacking our photos etc.. So we went to bed. We didn't make it to Venice. We got up to rush hour Rome and when your used to doing 500 miles in a day 10 miles in an hour and a half seems pretty slow.

Last night we met up with the rally in Rome and left our last tracking beacon point there.
We didn't win anything but since we didn't finish a single task set :) but that really didn't matter. We met up with Ben and Mark and had a few beers with them, and then a few more. We also met with the lovely ladies from the blunder birds and gave them our email address and they gave me back my eee cover which I left in the bar. We also met up with team linguine who were loverly too. We also said our good byes to team last minute who were fab, cheers nicos epically who was like a father figure but clearly younger than me. Thank to all the other teams who encorourgaed us to carry on and accept our sad story and tales of woe with good grace. We then had more beer and slowley every one drifted home to bed.

Waking up in Rome was lovely, Rome is a city for lovers and is so beautiful that I will not even try to describe it. We spent a good day running round and trying to do as much as we could. It really needs a revisit soon.

I will try go get the videos photos and other material up as soon as I can.

So what are the conclusions, what are the lasting effect, what lesson did we learnt. I don't know yet but we have certainly had a Journey. Thanks for reading, following and getting in touch. I'm looking forward to getting home to Sam and the kids now so will end now It's 21.07 local time and I'm getting stiff here, on the floor :)

gregs phone down

two cars have just run over gregs phone in roma so tracking will now
be down .. thanks for watching

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yes we are there..

we are currently on a tour bus cruising the streets of rome. rome is
glorious sunny and the architecture is wonderful (sorry sam). we have
met with tim hannah katie and brad at the airport. last night hotel
was the novatel as we made for rome after seeing to the boys

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what the diffrence a day makes

so we are back in the rally again and all dressed up as cowboys and
indians . todays tasks was to paint the spare tyre with the team
number 499 and have a photo taken of it in venice. we dont have a
spare tyre in the hire car . we have can of trye weld... so this was
going to be tricky. the whole thing was not really an issue as we came
across our mates ben and mark who were suffering engine problems. we
stuck with them till they could safely park on the hard shoulder.the
tow truck was supposed to take 45 mins but after an hour i got hungry.
the local village was a delight although the did laugh at my hi vis
jacket. i managed to order panni and got toasted sandwiches instead
from a lovely italian lady. all we relly needed to complete the picnic
was a frisbe or a twister set. after the dead rover was recovered we
dropped the boys off at the genova airport where they got their
rental car which is not as col as ours. after this it was fairly late
so we decided to head for rome instead of venice..we hope that team
mia2 will regroup tomorow and join the rally at the finish point..

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und day

after making it to menton we had a very nice evening with everyone on
the rally the stewards had as down as out off the game so it was nice
to prove them wrong . had some drink with all the crews still going
including the blunderbirds and the lastminute team

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and another thing...

I'm posting on my laptop using a 3 USB pay as you go dongle. We're in France, but connecting to the Italian 3 network meaning we can use it just as if we were in the UK :-)

Or Bust

Well we are in a hotel 1km from Italy just outside Monte Carlo(see tracker http://testing.hertford.ox.ac.uk/map/)

We caught up with the guys who helped us out last night getting us to Lyon(thanks again Ben and Mark!!!). Their Rover is starting to suffer so we followed them the last 50 miles or so to make sure they got here ok.

Right, time for a more in depth run down of yesterday's events: -

Soon after 4pm on the autoroute towards Lyon the Pug starting getting grumpy. The clutch was slipping more and more. At first it wouldn't go above 120 or so KPH, then 100, then 80... you get the idea. Some how it managed to limp the last few hundred metres into a picnic stop and up quite a steep slope. We feared letting it cool down would do little more than allow us to break down more spectacularly and dangerously. So we attempted to fit the spare clutch cable we had with us. In hindsight we realise the cable was not the problem, but hell we had one with us!

Anyway a 2 spanner Haynes job turns out to be a total sod. There was no way we were gonna get the car working again with the tools available. I still can't believe Greg managed to get as much of the job done as he did as I was not a great help as it involved fiddly little jobs in confined spaces. Not my forte. So with great sadness we finally decided that the Pug had reached its final destination under its own power. Despair was looming, but then we looked up and saw a gleaming beacon of hope in the form of a White Rover 820 piloted by Ben and Mark. The poor blokes were unlucky enough to pull in for a rest at the same place and gave us a ride. We were unsure what to do, so we took all we could and locked the Pug and set a course for the nearest airport to try and hire a car. This proved difficult and we had two sat-navs fighting and snarling us up in bad traffic. We had to let the guys press on without further risk to their car's health so they dropped us in Lyon.

Something most bizarre then happened. Greg and Ross wandered around looking for a hotel or a car hire place, then happened upon a bar, at which we did not have a beer! The very kind owner who did not speak English helped us out by calling around for a taxi. This took a good while because they all seemed to be booked, but despite this he carried on until we were sorted and would not accept any payment. I would like to add at this point that we sadly cannot thank all the people who helped us out by name because there were so many of them and we never would have remembered them all. Anyway I also called the AA who I have UK breakdown only with, the guy was also really helpful and gave me some numbers to try. Our taxi then arrived and we set off for the nearest airport. This turned out to be about 60KM away so we felt very glad to have freed Ben and Mark of their burden. We arrived and accidently overpaid the taxi driver who shouted back that there was a problem and made sure we got the extra back. Another lovely bloke.

We went into Avis car rental and spoke to yet another very helpful person called Lucie. She sorted us out a Renault Twingo which we could either return to them or to Rome airport depending what happened next! She spent a good deal of time making sure we got the most cost effective option so thanks go to her.

Ok, we had added the GPS location of the Pug to my Tom Tom so headed back there. We have been using French motorways and needing to do lots of u-turns. This has meant a lot of trips through toll booths( 2 Euros 80 for a u-turn. Bargain!) We got back and were delighted to find that the car was still there and was not surrounded my armed police or military. We had been instructed to call for help from an SOS phone, but there wasn't one there!!!! Next stroke of luck was that there were 4 French women having a rest break who when approached late at night in a glorified layby by two blokes wearing camo trousers and covered in grease just said bon soir and did not flee. One of the spoke English and spent 20 minutes on her mobile trying to get us help. In the end she had no luck and offered to call from the next SOS phone they came to on the motorway and give our location. Literally 10 minutes later another very nice man turned up in a low loader! Again we did not share a common language, but eventually we parted with less cash than we expected and did the necessary paperwork. That was it, the Pug c'est fini.

By this time we were pretty wiped out so drove back towards Lyon and stayed the night at the nearest Etap Hotel which was about 50KM away. We let the marshalls know what had happened and they said catch up tomorrow and that's what we've done. We still intend to drive to Rome. Stand by for more as I'm sure Greg will have plenty to add soon.
Over.

Minor hiccups

Brief update from the road! The pug is dead :-( The clutch failed, we
limped into a picnic area, attempted repair, but it was no good.

Then two angels in the form of Ben Mark from team 526 Carry on Tour
gave us a ride to Lyon. Huge amounts of help from lots of lovely
French people followed. Details later. We're on our way to Monaco in a
rented Twingo!

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in france

so we have made it to calais and spent a very nice evening speaking
german spanish italian and some french.. the rally starts proper today

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Hello, hello I must be going

Yes it's almost 5 o'clock in the morning and I'm wide awake like a kid on Christmas day

It would appear that the chunnel had another incident yesterday causing operation stack again, so we still don't know which is the best way across.

Just to remind you that the tracking web site is http://testing.hertford.ox.ac.uk/map/ if you want to see where we are !

List completed and travel sorted

Yep we have finished the list with the final item duck tape being crossed off at lunch time ..

We also have a confirmed ticket for the Chunnel on the 18:18 which is fine for the 19:00 registration at calais.

Things are looking up with two day left to go !

I think we decided today to have some photos taken by the bridge but to change out of the gear for the crossing so we don't have any problems. Don't want to spend the first night as suspected AWOL squaddies do we .

Hair today, gone tomorrow

Ok to fulfill the action man look we need action man hair cuts

This meant getting rid of my gorgeous locks :)

picture to prove it ... Yes ross did do a good job
















Definitely more thug like ... itchy too

The "No you can't have any bloody network" look ;)

So Norfolk line to the rescue it is then ...

I tried to get information out of the chunnel people today and they couldn't tell me what was happening in the way of when we could travel. Apparently they are now trying to get all the booked passengers on the few trains they have which could mean we have to travel much later or much earlier than we can ... They are currently running one train every 2 hours and stopping in the evening instead of going on through the night (which sounds like carnage really).

So I decided to book with the norfolk line just for back up (it's only cost £21 which is much better than not going !)

Ah not so good

Just got a email from those nice people at euro tunnel saying that due to a fire last week we might not get on , or be delayed or have to travel at silly-o-clock. As their "help lines" are all shut or have a monotone recorded message on them we will have to check in the morning...

A bit miffed as they made us jump through soooo many hoops to get the tickets in the first place....

Mail to blog messages

Just to say we should be able to post while on the road as long as we can get the google mail mobile clients going ..

It looks just like text only but that is ok for the in between posts we guess :)

can we fix it !

Car tool kit bought for £24 quid thanks to a sale on amazon .. just duck tape now !

Pucker Draper 95 piece one, its more to bring back but I would rather be safe than stuck.

Final painting

We painted the car today

we started out by cutting some cardboard templates using Dave's combats for shape ideas. these templates were used on selected positions of the car



Usually they worked ok



We then added our home made stickers



And Tim the genius then supplied the bullet hole transfers for that authentic war zone feel .



Before finishing the car we made templates of the childrens hands and painted them too



The final car looks something like this and does get a lot of attention in the street



Thanks also goes to Katies grand Parrents who allowed us to spray on there drive !

oops perhaps we should have got a new battery !

Just tried starting the car and it seems to have a flat battery

I had not run it for a couple of weeks so it may be just draining down !

Used the HRV to give it a jump start so we will be taking the jump leads with us .

hurrah

looks like we have got more than the £250 money for the guide dog association . At the last count we had already reached 259 with another £70 in cheques and promises . Monday we will put a sponsor us sheet and poster in the lodge ..

Last two items left harrah

Fire exstinguiser

Water pistols & rifles

An inverter (300W or bigger)

European lens kit

Tow rope

TomTom (new maps)

Maps

Working Head Unit !

M88 helmets (and goggles)

Webbing/molle jacket

camo trousers

First aid kit

Cammo hats

Brassards

Camo shorts

Sun tan lotion

triangle reflector

Cowboy outfit and Indian outfit

Car Paint

Tool kit

Duck tape

cable ties

down two the tool kit and the duck tape .....

howdy paryner

have costume too !!!

ditto

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=350094633094&ssPageName=MERC_VIC_RSCC_Pr4_PcY_BIN_Stores_IT&refitem=260280529225&itemcount=4&refwidgetloc=closed_view_item&usedrule1=StoreCatToStoreCat&refwidgettype=cross_promot_widget&_trksid=p284.m183&_trkparms=algo%3DDR%26its%3DS%252BI%252BSS%26itu%3DISS%252BUCI%252BSI%26otn%3D4

cept the tiny url :)

The car paint job

The car is going to be sand and rust camo which will probably really hard to do but I have see some rednecks on youtube do it really well ! Bizzarely they have Ice cube singing "today was a good day" on the begining of the video (ironic choice if ever..)

These are the steps so far (laying down the base coat mat in this case)


Take one pre-loved car



Wash it in warm soap water



but one litre of metal paint and one 2 inch brush



If unsure ask kind man to mix to sand colour (dulux labradour sand 4 don't you know)



paint car with paint



admire work and hope wife doesn't notice :)



Next bit involves spray paint templates and a huge amount of fun (or swearing)

Indian Costume

Check!

http://tinyurl.com/5k57tv

getting closer

I think this will be the final list, have got everything else and with such a few days to go it's getting quite exciting...

Fire exstinguiser

Water pistols & rifles

An inverter (300W or bigger)

European lens kit

Tow rope

TomTom (new maps)

Maps

Working Head Unit !

M88 helmets (and goggles)

Webbing/molle jacket

camo trousers

First aid kit

Cammo hats

Brassards

Camo shorts

Sun tan lotion

triangle reflector

Cowboy outfit and Indian outfit

Car Paint

Tool kit

Duck tape

cable ties

We should be painting the car this weekend now so I need to work on camo and how she is painted :)

Matt and Steves - sage words

Just met up with Steve and Matt from Keeble and St John who both have done a number of runs (winning one s2n and coming second in another). Not sure we can be anything like as good. Especially with 98 teams signed up !! They gave some good advice, and hinted about the challenges .

1) do it for fun but beware even the non competitive bits become really competitive
2) thing will go wrong but other teams will help you out
3) take at least 2 cameras
4) standing on top of mountains with little clothes on will get you cold :)
5) don't even think about upsetting police in Switzerland...
6) you can't have too many really big water pistols and water.

If the scenery is anything like what they showed me its going to be great :)

Thanks guys

Painting the car

So most cars are sprayed in the factory they were made in. Some are touched up or resprayed later. We are going to paint ours in a field somewhere, most likely with rollers...

Yes I understand this is not the usual technique but we are not looking for the perfect finish, just something which looks something like camo and can withstand a bit of rain.

Not surprisingly there are loads of pages on the web telling how this can be achieved, which start off telling you to wash the car and then tape it up, and then whack on the enamel ...

Watch this space for the results ...

Oh dear, still no car stickers.

Ok starting to get a little worried about our rally stickers. They haven't yet shown up and the car just wont look the same without them ! Apparently some teams have received them others have not, as the organizers are in Czechoslovakia at the moment we will have to wait !

We also have to paint the car and do any last tinkering (fill it up with redbull and chocolate bars).

Charity

We're hoping to raise a bit of cash for Guide Dogs for the Blind in honour of Laura Bradley who was tragically killed in a car accident recently. Laura was the younger sister of a good friend of ours who was also due to take part in H2R.

http://www.justgiving.com/home-2-rome-2008

Thanks to Greg for setting that site up!

This years fancy dress

One day on the trip is designated fancy dress, and this years is cowboys and indians!

Warnings have already gone out that the indians must be of the north American native tribe variety , and not any other. It will look a little bit brokeback mountain-ish. Either that or YMCA-ish !

Ross said I could be the cowboy so I will be getting a waist coat, chaps and a strange looking hat , er ye har ...

We have been told no guns (supersoakers are fine) as the itiallian police have the real thing and may get a little bit trigger happy with lots of pretend cowboys and indians with guns..

Hotel motel, holiday Inn (say what)

Got the list on friday of the preffered hotels on the route. So far I have managed to book rooms at each destination except the one in Rome itself and the one on the second night isn't a prefered one. I am awaiting wise word from the forum about wher the others are going to stay ...

Generally our hotels are equivelent to the trust house forte rep motels except the Ambasciatorie which is the recomended one with "paper thin doors".

Calais - Bonsia escale Calias
Montelimar - Balladins Motelimar Express
Menton - Menton Etap Hotel
Sottomarina - Ambasciatorie
Rome - TBA

Euro tunnel

Just sent away for my free euro-tunnel tickets. I say free but I used 40 quids worth of tesco vouchers, and since the price had gone up since I last looked £21 of real money. Then I had to send them all special delivery (another £4.60) so all in all it cost 25.60 + £40 of vouchers ....

We get the 18.20 but and have to be there 30 mins before to check in !

too tents !

Just in case we have a problem with the local hotels back up plan B has been bought in the shape of the Gelert Monodome 3. 

We hope not to use it (especially as it's cheap and not able to withstand huge amounts of water rated at 500 ) being a single skin at least its small and light !

Power comes from ...

Yes its not quite field artillery, but its well on it's way to being squad support weapon. I bring you the Water mortar, as selected by the espace oddity boys tim and brad. This should throw water bombs in a pleasing way upto 8M (which will probably be only 3 or 4 at the most but we will see.

I hope it will see some action and be fun to use :)

Tescos tokens

The Tescos vouchers have come through so I need to phone up and give them our dates, registration etc.. That means we have both ends sorted , just need to do the bit in the middle :).

Not the clutch

The good news today is that we have had the clutch looked at by the ever knowing Kieth (KPM tyres) and it appears to be fine. He did give the car a quick look over and apparently thinks we might have a job on our hands getting it to Rome and suggested we bought a spare clutch cable
which is available from eBay at 8 quid plus post ( a good investment even if we don't use it I think!

getting out there

The question of how we get back is simple, we are going to use Tescos vouchers :)

http://www.tesco.com/clubcard/deals/product.aspx?R=148

By using 10 quids worth of voucher we get 40 quids worth of travel !

So at a quiet time its only going to cost 8 quid plus the vouchers

from their web site remember

• Simply order and receive your Travel Tokens before you book with Eurotunnel.
• Then book with Eurotunnel at least 14 days before you wish to travel.
• All bookings are subject to limited availabilty.
• Deals Tokens are not transferable and will be issued with the name shown on your Clubcard Vouchers and may be printed with your postcode.

stike that off the list

Got something for my birthday (big one don't ask) to cross off the list, both maps of France and Italy just in case tomtom fails and or we need to figure out the route. That leaves just the following to get !

Fire exstinguiser

Tool kit

Water pistols & rifles

Car paint

An inverter (300W or bigger)

European lens kit

Tow rope

TomTom (new maps)

Maps

Trenching tool

Working Head Unit !

Replacement Battery ?

M88 helmets (and goggles)

Webbing/molle jacket

camo trousers

First aid kit

Cammo hats

Brassards

Camo shorts

"Dave" gets a new wardobe

Dave the mascot action man has got some new threads to be in line with the rest of the unit. Dave is sporting the British two colour uniform with the same M88 US helmet as his opo's. On top of that he is wearing the molle based bullet proof jacket and the two coloured assault vest with the quick release clips. Sadly, the purchased sand boots from the "dragon range" were to small to fit on his feet. When asked what his hobbies were, dave replied: travel, drinking and laying huge ammounts of suppressing fire down on emeny combatants with his gpmg..

He will be called Dave unless we can come up with a better name for him ! All reasonable suggestion will of course be shunned.

Official Mascot

It's fathers day, and I'm given the official mascot, yep he's a 1970's action man commander. Yep he's got the eagle eyes and yes he's say a number of commands like, enemy tanks approaching, and give me cover, cool.

He is my first action man ! Ever ever ever!

For someone who's 39 and 11/12ths it's a big deal :)

Fuel economy

Ok The last 430mile have been done on the Oil/mineral mix and it seems to have made no difference in MPG at all ? I am starting to concerned about this a bit that in a Bruce Willis style cyber conspiracy movie, texico, shell and BP are waiting to send a bunch of vat grown ninja assassins to bump me off for saying this..

May be I had a lot of coffee today ?

Water Gun

The water gun works but is not as powerful as hoped. We could probably do with a bigger pump or better jets. yes at short range you are going to get someone very wet, but I want range too !




As you can see the pavement got very wet quite quickly , but a range of 3 or 4 feet just isn't enough, turning off two jets just doesn't seem to increase the range that much so maybe it's the reducing on the manifold ?

5 out of 10 must try harder :)

Fuel ... so far - so good

Ok, started putting more oil in the tank with diesel, 2 x 3 Litre's of vegetable oil with 30 Litres worth of diesel. I will probably drive the pug all week just to check that no real changes takes place. The price of diesel is £1.26.9 the price of vegetable oil is sadly rising too, to £1.16 so only a saving of 66p in total against the three COOP bottles saving at 97p.

Savings to date £1.56, I will save the money in a separate account to see if we can pay for the car in the lower rate of running before it goes on the run ! Mind you, driving the pug to work saves me £1.41 a day on fuel costs compared with the HRV maybe I should add that in too! The pug has better MPG ~ 50 as to the 30's even though the fuel is more expensive it works out cheaper .

car	L per Mile	L per Journey (50M)	fuel £	total
pug	11.01	4.54	£1.26	£5.77
hrv	8.14	6.14	£1.17	£7.18

So whats the percentage of oil to diesel in the tank now , haven't the foggiest, better do the maths...

20L Derv + 3L SVO + 30L Derv + 6L SVO means ~ 18% of the fuel is SVO ...

All very fun and exciting, meaning the tax man get less, we are doing less damage to the planet and it's costing less !

Ambient temp is 21 degree C and raining so the cool starting problem should be avoided.

Carninore becomes an omnivore

Just stuck a litre of COOP rape seed oil into the tank to if it would kill the pug. At 97p per litre its currently 30p cheaper than the local diesel prices. It also is renewable and less carbon damaging. The tank was about a third full ~ 20 Litre, so in real terms means that the mix was less than 5% . As I said before we hope to get this up to 25%. It did feel somewhat like I was breaking the law as I opened up the filler cap and shove the bottle neck in to the tank (confessions of a vegetable oil filler part 1).

I have kept the receipt and am starting a notebook on how many litres go into the pug and when. For the truly sad cases I will also have a look at fuel economy. What started as a bit of a joke seems to be a new way of driving...

60 Litres of diesel = £75.60
45 litres of diesel + 15 litres of veg oil (97p) = £71.25 (£4.35)
45 litres of diesel + 15 litres of WVO = £56.70 (£18.90)

Now if we get into the realms of bio-diesel (ie mixing the WVO with a bit of non kerosene based white spirit) we could go 100% fill requiring 3ml per 997ml of WVO we get

59.82 Litres of WVO + 0.18 Litres of white spirit B and Q 96p = 96p (£74.64)

so if the car cost £100 quid we save that in a month in fuel alone ?



Ok it will take some time and money setting up the filters etc but that is amazing , the filter I just bought was £3.50 on ebay including post.

So I now need fuel drums, and white spirit. I have a funnel and we can get the WVO watch this space!

WVO registration to HMRC, hurrah

Just had a look on the governments website about registration of producers of WVO/Biofuels. We thought that even if we didn't produced above 2500 litre we would have to register, not so it seems

If you have produced or used less than 2,500 litres of:

• any biofuel
• any other fuel substitute or additive

within the last 12 months, and expect to produce or use less than 2,500 litres in the next 12 months, you are an exempt producer and do not need to register with us and account for duty.

Production includes the manufacture or processing of road fuel, and the setting aside of any product that has not been charged with duty – such as vegetable oil - with the intention of using it as road fuel.

So we can fill her up gith WVO and not worry about the tax, or the paper work for HMRC either as long as we make a detailed production lists.

We will need to figure out a way to filter store and produce the WVO from fish and chip bi-product, but we are getting there !

Another one off the list

Hurrah !

We have a full complement of shorts (there is a sentence you don't hear every day), so we get to tick off another item.

Fire exstinguiser

Tool kit

Water pistols & rifles

Car paint

An inverter (300W or bigger)

European lens kit

Tow rope

TomTom (new maps)

Maps ?

Trenching tool

Working Head Unit !

Replacement Battery ?

M88 helmets (and goggles)

Webbing/molle jacket

camo trousers

First aid kit

Cammo hats

Brassards

Camo shorts

We also have had an offer of some WVO ! so even 47p a litre sound expensive now... Just as well, every subsequent return to tescos found emtpy shelves and now there is a replacement product at three times the price... Will be looking into filtering WVO and regesterinmg as a fuel producer.

Tool kit, maps. batteries , paint and trenching tool to get, team MIA your looking good!

Gutted

Today is a dark day.  I discovered this morning that 3 of the Pug's blue aluminium dust caps have been stolen.  I'm still in shock and dread to think of the effect this will have on resale value.

I'm afraid I'm left with no option but to launch a vigilante mission to track down and bring to justice the perpetrators of this heinous crime.

First I'm appealing for witnesses.  If anybody saw 2 chavs, one on a BMX and one on a unicycle acting suspiciously in the Witney area, or even showing of their newly pimped vehicles, please get in touch, anonymously if you like.

:-(

Heavy Oil hmmm

There is an old joke - a man goes into a book shop and asks for a book, the owner of the book shop says that will be ten pounds. The customer say its a rip off as the book is only five pounds down the road in another book shop. The owner asks why the chap doesn't go back and buy it there then. The customer says that the other book shop has run out. The owner shrugs and say that when he has sold out he will be selling them at five pounds too.

Tesco's sells vegetable oil for 47 pence a litre. I say "sells", I mean have sold out at 47p a litre vegetable oil. I guess a lot of people have had the same idea, especially as the temperature has warmed up a bit so lowering the breakdown temperature. They do sell sub pound oil but now I have seen the chance of getting it for 47p I'm done for...

Ok I know that's a bit silly but I will pop in from time to time to see if they have got any and snaffle some if they do. As for WVO, its a good idea as long as I can find somewhere to do it safely.

On another note I have enable the blog to have the correct time stamp and inserted the google analytics js to see how many hits we get and from where ?

Chip pan car

(classic - suck, squeeze, bang, blow - 4 stroke cycle)

Rudolf Diesel originally designed the engine named after him to run on peanut oil. Basically the higher compression ratio of the diesel engine gives it more power (~30% ) and no need for spark plugs, which why it was adapted to the once cheap heavy oil/fossil fuel. Diesels are greener, cheaper and starting to look a lot more like the way to go .

Even the great top gear presenters who say that diesel is the fuel of satan have been impressed by veg oil running motors. With the world running out of fossil fuel, global warming and the price (let's not deny it) of diesel going through the roof we could be running the beast on veggie oil for part of the way. With the Government allowing production and use of biofuels, where production is less than 2500 litres per annum to be tax free. So if total tax free production of 2500 was used in a 50 mile per gallon car you would be able to run it for roughly 27,500 miles a year.... Kerr ching.



Veggie oil can be used in a number of ways and from an number of sources, it is like diesel in many ways but is somewhat heavier viscous make up, so usually needs preheating if solely used. Straight Vegetable Oil (SVO) is the stuff from the soya bean/rape seed plant/etc which you could buy from Tesco's off the shelf. Waste Vegetable Oil (WVO) is basically reclaimed chip oil, so contains particulates, solids animal fats and esters. WVO is usually filtered down to 5 or in some cases 1 micron to remove the major problems and contaminates.

Biofuel is usually SVO or WVO plus chemically treatment although, WVO is usually favoured (as it gives better performance and smells like the food that has been cooked in it). Biofuel does not need preheating as it's chemical addatives keep it flowing.

As we are new to this so we may start off with a > 25% mix of veg oil to straight diesel just to get it going and go on from there, ideally we would go down the WVO route as this is potentially free and basically a waste product which would other wise be dumped !

The Pug has a 60 litre tank so in warm weather 15 litres would be 25%, I guess the introduction of 5 litres might be worth a go . Current diesel prices are £1.20 per litre and SVO is less than £1 per litre. I will see what is the cheapest price possiable.