Last post for 2009

Christmas has been and gone and now we are a mere four hours and twenty minutes from 2010 and so the question is what does the new year have in store?

The primary objective is to get pROJECT mAYHEM finished off. In my last post I mentioned that there was a surplus of bass in the sound system and there still is but I have since discovered that it is only the two 6.5" speakers that are causing the huge amount of bass - the sub is not even working!! Now this just proves how frighteningly good the Infinity Kappa range of speakers are really but as usual I digress. I am guessing that the sub isn't working because either the wiring to the sub speaker is wrong or the amp is not working but regardless the amp is getting replaced. The simple reason for this is that I have inherited another amp which is not only bigger and better but I also know that it works and as an added bonus I have wiring instructions for it. Therefore the first jobs of 2010 will be to get to remove the bass\amp enclosure, swap out the amp, rewire both amps so the fuse box is on the outside where it will be a lot easier to access, run in a new earth wire, set the high pass filters on the working amp and then start what is likely to be a rather extended play with settings to get the sound right. After that it will be getting the rear speaker enclosures built and wired in and then play with the settings some more no doubt! Nothing like an easy start to the year eh?

After that... to be honest the above is enough to think about for now so in short get that lot sorted and all the rest that needs doing by the end of April and then the trad season starts...

Anyway here's to climbing like a punter and more importantly getting off the hill to a pub which awaits us with a pint of fine ale. Once there we shall revise the day till we finally sound heroic (to non-climbers at least)!! Happy New Year.

More bass than you can shake a stick at...

For the last couple of days I have been wondering why the sound system in pROJECT mAYHEM has been producing such a huge amount of bass and today I figured it out. Somebody (who coincidentally might be the author of this blog) forgot to set the High Pass Filters on the main amp and so I have one 10" sub and two 6.5" speakers all pushing out sound below 80hz instead of just the 10" sub which is how it is meant to be running. I am a bit annoyed at myself for such a dumb mistake but at least I have finally figured the problem out as it was confusing me quite a lot to be honest. Still it provides a much needed excuse to stay out of the pub for a couple of hours over Christmas and while I am fixing that I can sort out the earth lead problem at the same time I suppose. In fact it's almost a win-win situation...

The Final Push II

Well the list of five minute jobs turned into a list of five minute jobs, a lot of lost skin trying to get the head unit to fit back into its hole with all the extra cables that are now running out of the back of it and a major panic when I powered everything up and no sound was forthcoming! The problem was eventually traced to the earth cable having come detached from its terminal so that is probably going to have to be rectified next year but for now it can wait.

In summary everything I set myself to get done by Christmas is complete - even the lock up got swept out and all the tools got put away which was nice - it's been a bloody hard slog at times but it is all starting to come together.

The Final Push

Today went rather swimmingly if I am honest - tweeters fitted in the dash, 6.5" speakers fitted in the doors, speaker cables run and wired up and it all worked first time! The only slight downer was the door card on the passenger side has not gone back on as it should but I can live with that for a couple of weeks.

Tomorrow will be finishing off the odds and sods (of which there is a very long list but they are all five minute jobs if that) take some photos for the random people who follow this blog to look at and maybe say nice things about and that will be it with regard to pROJECT mAYHEM for Christmas.

To say I am pleased as Punch would be an understatement on a massive scale - I am absolutely ecstatic about it.

Three good days...

Thursday, Friday and Saturday marked the turning point on pROJECT mAYHEM - the van is now insulated, carpeted, panels fitted and lino on the floor. A few shots to give you the idea of what has happened in three days but I am pretty bloody pleased with what has been done so far - it makes the hard work I have put in so far seem worthwhile now.

One thing I haven't got any shots of is the amp\bass enclosure in place but that is in and wired up which required grovelling about under the van in the freezing cold today to run the power cable. As it stands currently the passenger side seat has been taken out so that I could run the RCA cables in yesterday, the passenger side door is in bits and if it ever stops snowing the replacement speaker will get fitted in there and the tweeter in the dash. Once that has been done then it is the "simple" task of running in the speaker cables, putting the door back together, channelling out a run for the power cables and then bolting in the seat before doing the speakers on the drivers side.

I think it's fair to say that tomorrow is going to be a busy day and just to add a bit of interest there is also the small matter of not buying a single Christmas present yet and I am also working nights from tomorrow night.

Texts from last night

Regardless of what goes wrong in your life there is always Texts From Last Night which provides insights into a world that is even more screwed than mine. It also has the added advantage that it's cheaper than buying a copy of The Sun just to read the problem page...

• I misunderstood what a threesome is. Please come pick me up.

• she likes to give head while listening to britney spears, getting blown by a girl with headphones on is a nice level of separation

• so we were having anal, both very very drunk when he started shouting his roomates name

• He told me his condom was going to expire tomorrow and he needed to use it. I can't believe I fell for it.

• i feel as if last night was a right of passage. to officially be an adult you must have a drunken one night stand with a co-worker and go to work the next day still drunk wearing yesterday's clothes...

• Her underwear doesnt even match. If youre going to be a face book whore at least have matching shit.

• she asked me what the final straw was. i had to tell her i caught him jerking off to digimon porn. i don't know what i'm more upset by, that he was masturbating to cartoons, or that he was masturbating to sub-par cartoons

• Best walk of shame ever. Not only did I not remember his name or the fact that we fucked, they all watched as I tried to get into 3 cars that werent mine
  
  Oh and I threw up on myself...

• Good luck! Who knows he might be a stallion in the bedroom! or it could be like having sex with a crayon

• Last night was epic. Hooked up with Emma Watson, found twenty bucks, and then passed out on my floor.
  
  No you didn't. You drank unbelievable amounts of 151, passed out in someone else's bathroom, and we carried you back to your floor. Nice dreams though.
  

• my dog ran away and came back with a marajuana plant. what are you doing tonight?

Making progress

All of the panels have now been carpeted and so tomorrows job (and likely Friday as well) is to apply the under-carpet to the passenger side and side door and then fit them. The rear doors will have to wait to get the under-carpet applied as I don't have enough to do those at the minute but it will hopefully be a reasonably straight forward job compared to the sides. Really impressed with the carpet that I got from MegaVanMats I must say - the stuff will stretch for miles - just apply heat with a hair dryer and and it is possible to do the sides and cover the wheel arch without cutting a thing. The result I got on the drivers side (once I got how to do the job figured out) was pretty good even by my exacting standards and would have been even better if I didn't have the floor base in place. I had removed the floor itself but had left the grid in place so couldn't get to the bottom as nicely as I wanted but I will just console myself with the fact that nobody will see the couple of wrinkles that are there once I put the floor back.

It is amazing just how much difference the insulation and the under carpet make to road noise as well. Driving to Nottingham last weekend to see my brothers new baby the difference in noise levels from the carpeted side to the non-carpeted side was massive and the effect will only be increased with the carpeted panels going over the top of that.

To paraphrase the Alien tagline "In the van no one will hear you scream!"

Two steps forward, one step back.

As ever the path of pROJECT mAYHEM never runs smooth - after finding myself woefully short of speaker cable I decided to get the insulation finished and proceeded to stick the roof insulation into the roof space. It was only when I had completed this and tried to put the roof panels back on that it became apparent that it was not going to be a success - the insulation just wanted to take up too much space and the end result was a roof lining that looked like a fat bird in Lycra. Roof lining out, insulation out and a trip to the local D.I.Y. centre to buy some silver backed roof insulation and a short while later the roof was done and looking tidy.

Next up was the speaker cable runs - the original intention was to mount the high and low mid range in the rear doors - something that seemed eminently feasible from my investigations into one of the rear doors. What I hadn't taken into account was the largest piece of metal since the invention of Christendom in the other door which forms the locking\dead bolt system - it is HUGE to the point where it fills about 75% of the lower half of the door!! Obviously no chance of getting a speaker in there let alone two so now I have to make up some speaker housings to fit these but if done right the end result should be a better solution. Also I won't have to run the speaker cables in through the doors now which saves me a few metres of cable and a fair degree of trauma so I can live with the set back.

Other than that I have got the two panels for the rear doors ready to carpet now (holes drilled and in the correct places first time) and hopefully tomorrow the rest of the panelling will get done ready to be put into place once the cable runs are finalised and the under carpet gets put into place.

It all sounds so simple...

Some Logical Progression

Well I made a start on the things to do today but I am nowhere near there yet strangely enough. The plan to do the speaker cable runs hit a major flaw by not having enough speaker cable and we are not talking about any minor shortage here - I am somewhere in the region of fifty metres short!! I knew when I started that I was going to require a few more metres of cable but had guesstimated that I had enough to do the runs for the rear speakers. As it was I managed to run in two of the rear speakers and there is another four to do in the rear alone.

Other than that the roof lining is out, the bass\amp position has been marked and some insulation has gone in but things will have to be worked around again as it is now a matter of waiting for the extra speaker cable to turn up so that I can complete the speaker runs before I can finish off the insulation.

There is a reason to be (hopefully) cheerful today though as I think I have located the source of intermittent rattle that has plagued me for ages from the region of the drivers B pillar. As with the best of rattles it only starts at about 70mph and it has been driving me completely mad for ages so while I had the housing off the B pillar I had a root about and discovered this.

Hopefully there will be no more rattle now but if the rattle remains then a lot more than just the housing will end up getting removed to discover the source...

Logical Progression

I surprised myself yesterday by being alive enough to do a bit of work on pROJECT mAYHEM. Usually nights out with Mr D turn into a drunken mess followed by a day of feeling far nearer to death than is good for any sane (or insane) human being. As it was a damn good night was had which culminated in getting home armed with a kebab that, for reasons I am unable to comprehend, had the salad replaced with chips and watching the legendary Johnny Cash on TV.

Anyway when I crawled from my pit (feeling positively chipper when compared to how I had expected to feel) I decided that I was going to finish off carpeting the supports for the bass bin and complete a couple of other jobs that needed doing. Overall it went well with a fair degree of making it up on the fly as usual when some great plan turned out to be a rubbish one instead but that is the story of pROJECT mAYHEM in a nutshell.

Today I am having a day off and tomorrow the fun begins again with figuring out where to fix the bass bin before stripping out the floor, panels and the roof lining, getting the insulation cut out and fixed into place followed by running in the speaker cables for the six speakers in the rear. That should be more than enough fun for the day and in theory the day after will be taken up with getting the ribs carpeted out and maybe start on the panel work. I must admit that I am slightly dubious about the panel work bit at the minute but it will probably turn out to be a lot less hassle than I am imagining it will be.

pROJECT mAYHEM Update V

Just a couple of pictures of the carpeted bass bin and amp enclosure. I am really quite pleased about how things have turned out with this actually because even though it is square this tends to cause the odd problem in itself with folding in corners and getting them neat and the like. Anyway the whole thing is ready to bolt into place now and have the cables run through - just a matter of getting everything else ready to allow this to happen which, as ever, is a list about as long as my arm...

Quick moan update...

Decided to ring VW Commercial in an effort to frighten myself and they quoted me a fairly reasonable £56.89 for the parts so I thought about it a bit and decided that it was no more expensive than any other option and a whole lot less stressful than driving about with no drivers mirror for a few days.

Before I went I checked everything over and it transpired that one of the parts had survived the impact which helped lift the mood somewhat - less cost = happier me! True to form though when it comes to pROJECT mAYHEM it turned out that I needed a third part which was more expensive than the part that had survived by about a fiver - I am so lucky sometimes!! Thought about it for all of about 3 seconds and then came to the conclusion that the stress of paying an extra fiver is bugger all when compared to driving about with no mirror so pROJECT mAYHEM has a nice new mirror now which I will remember to fold in religiously.

Quick moan...

Went out to the van this morning only to discover that that the drivers side mirror housing and mirror were laying in the road. Who ever hit it (in a van almost certainly) was travelling at a fair pace to say the least as it has smashed the thing to bits. Now I have got to source the replacement trim and mirror from somewhere and the options are to either get a replacement unit including the stalk from a breakers or to buy all of the separate parts off eBay. Will check over in more detail what I need but I think it is all of the trim and the mirror that is required which is not going to be cheap or quick so the more obvious choice is a breakers.

Needless to say this has really brightened up my day but it might teach me to remember to fold the mirror in at nights!

We haz carpet!!

On the second day of the twelve days of pROJECT mAYHEM my true love gave to me lots of lovely carpet to bedeck the beast with!

This could have potentially happened yesterday but I was following up a post from the VWT4 forum about templates for the side panels posted by a company in Sheffield (I refuse to mention their name as they are simply useless tossers). Searched out the company and drove over there in the pouring bloody rain only to find out that their definition of what a template is radically differs to what the rest of the world defines as a template. In a nutshell their version of a template is for me to buy some of their pre-made panels, an "idea" which simply got the big old fuck off and the end of any chance they had of seeing any money out of me. Don't get me wrong - the T4\T5 scene is competitive and there are a lot of people out there doing their own thing and making a living off it but I really dislike getting dragged across Sheffield on a wild goose chase. If you have templates then say you have templates but don't get me to lose a precious day fucking about please. All you have earned is a firm recommendation that you are a bunch of useless fools.

Today was the exact opposite - drove up to Leeds to see Mega Van Mats and you could not wish for better service - just a guy and his other half(?) operating out of Pudsey at the back of an industrial estate but the service was, beyond all doubt, exceptional. Talked through what I wanted to do and gave me a load of tips on how to do it and was just a pleasure to deal with. The only complaint (not that it warrants such a word) was that he didn't have the colour of mat that I wanted but he told me this over the phone prior to me setting off so it was no big shock - I just ended up with a slightly lighter blue than originally intended - big deal!! In summary A**** - fantastic guy - highly recommended - would deal with again!

Anyway now I have the task of starting the carpeting and things start to ramp up in intensity - no more creating stuff in the shed in preparation any more. Tomorrow the bass bin\amp enclosure gets clad and once I have figured out how to do that the serious work of all the steel work that will remain on show gets under way followed by final fitting of the panels prior to getting those in.

Eek and double eek!!

pROJECT mAYHEM Update XVI

Just over four hours left at work now and then the fun begins - well it will begin tomorrow really when I start the first of my 12 days off and go and buy the carpet, glue and other random stuff that is required to get pROJECT mAYHEM to the next stage. I have already spent what seems like a small fortune on nuts, bolts, screw rivets and other assorted stuff off eBay but I am rather syked for this stage as I will be able see what I have done for a change. Hopefully by the end of the week I will be able to post up some pics of a fully carpeted out van with panels in place and all the rest and the start of the kicking sound system in place as well. Getting the sound system in is probably going to prove fun as I am not only replacing but also rewiring all of the speakers and on top of that there are the three RCA cables will have got to be ran to the two amps. All in all it is likely to be an interesting few days given the route of choice for the cables is likely to be over the drivers door (and maybe the passengers door for the other side) to the dash and doors. Still the prospect of no more distortion when the bass gets phat is something that has to be considered a good thing!

Uncle Butters

Late last night I became Uncle Butters - for those of you who might be interested in such things it was a baby girl weighing in at 6lb 9oz - no name as yet.

*UPDATE* The name chosen for the baby is Esmay apparently - nice name and not especially common either as far as I know which is always good.

More general ramblings...

Got the storage finished for pROJECT mAYHEM the other day - all the tops have been cut to shape and the backs have been pretty much sorted as well so all I have to do now is figure out the housing for the gas rings but for now it is job done. To celebrate I am now teasing myself by looking at dials - I need a voltmeter for the leisure battery and have found one that matches the "indigo" dials used by VW. The problem is that they also do lots of other dials as well for monitoring the turbo boost, oil temperature and the like and while I have no need for extra dials they are very sexy and shiny and just plain tempting. Therefore I have to try and resist the urge to buy four dials instead of one when I get round to it - something that I am not sure is is going to be hugely successful to be honest - I can only assume that this is a similar thing to what women go through when they look at shoes or chocolate.

While I was doing the pROJECT mAYHEM stuff I had the Albanian Rat Hound keeping me company. He didn't contribute much to be honest other than generally looking depressed about stuff and it finally reached the stage where he couldn't be bothered to run away every time the router or circular saw got fired up and instead just sat there instead getting showered with sawdust. It has to be said that the Albanian Rat Hound is getting a lot of opportunity to be generally depressed at the minute - I am looking after him for a week (or at least till the weekend when he gets shipped off to Batty's house for a couple of days) which has coincided with me having to work days. This is rather unfortunate as it means that I have to get up just after 6AM to walk him round the park and then leave just before 7AM to go to work for 12 hours before returning again - a far from ideal situation it has to be said from both our perspectives. As if that was not enough I remembered to shut my bedroom door today so there will be no chance for him to sleep on my bed - something he got a chance to do yesterday and thought he had got away with only to be betrayed by the still warm dog sized crater on the duvet! One suspects that there is no analogy sufficient for the levels of depression and long faced gloom I am going to have to endure when I get home tonight - you just have to love dogs really...

General Rambling

The weekend was lost in a drunken blast with the family in Nottingham on the Friday night and then Sheffield on the Saturday night - much beer and wine was drunk and much curry was eaten. In short chaos abounded as it always should in these situations!

This week. Been working nights again which is always grinds you down but at least it allows you a few free hours in the afternoon so I have been making progress on the other storage unit which is almost there now. Just got to cut out the top and then plan where the two ring burner is going, figure out how to box it in and a few other odds and sods and that should be completed.

The next stage of the grand plan once the storage units were completed was to make a start on the electrics but after having a rethink the next thing on the to-do list now is to get the ribs carpeted and maybe get the insulation cut out, carpet the panels and fit those too.

There are a couple of reasons for this change of plan - the first being cost. Having to get the steering rack sorted out ate a large chuck out of my already well chewed budget and though the cost was not as bad as I had actually expected it to be, it didn't help and of the things left to do getting the carpeting sorted is the cheapest. The second is that I feel the need to do something tangible so that I can look at it and think that I have taken a step forward. While it is all well and good making storage units and the like, until they get fitted (which is looking like being a while away as yet) it feels like I haven't got anything to show for the hours I have spent working away in the lock up. Getting the carpeting sorted also allows me to finalise where the storage units and the sub woofer\amp housing will be located which in turn allows me to take up the floor and trim that as necessary, fit the T-Nuts for the storage to bolt to and run in the cables for the invertor and then carpet the floor as well. All in all doing it this way ultimately reduces the number of jobs that are relying on other things to be done so it is a win-win situation as far as I can see.

Back on it again.

pROJECT mAYHEM is apparently sorted (well it will be in 10 minutes anyway) so things are looking good until they give me the bill at which point there will no doubt be a painful feeling in the general area of my wallet...

Still one must endeavour not get depressed about these things - the weekend is here and I am not working having finished at 7AM this morning. Plans for this weekend revolve around family stuff so Nottingham tonight and then back to Sheff tomorrow night for beer and curry and general chaos no doubt. Get that out of the way and then I need to get to the wall to do some climbing before starting nights again next Tuesday.

Graffiti

Occasionally in Sheffield you will stumble across some graffiti* that is actually worth the paint it required to create it. I spotted this yesterday while walking home from work and managed to get a picture today - not quite sure what it means as such but it appealed to me.

*According to a very quick search graffiti is the plural form and I really should use graffito instead to be 100% grammatically correct. However since I very much doubt that any professor of English will ever read this blog (let alone care enough to berate me across the internet for it) I will leave it as is for now.

The horror... the horror...

The immortal words that every one remembers (though rarely the context behind them) uttered by Colonel Kurtz in the closing sequence of the film "Apocalypse Now"!

I went through a similar feeling today upon seeing this hanging on the wall in the lock up. This grotesquerie is supposed to be Rod Stewart but in truth bears a far greater resemblance to the bastard offspring of D'Israeli's "Lazarus Churchyard" and David Lloyd's rendition of V from "V for Vendetta". I might have to 'accidentally' hit it with a piece of 4 x 2 soon...

Are things looking up?

Managed to find a replacement steering rack (with very little fuss strangely) for just short of £160 delivered which I can live with quite happily when compared to the cost of a replacement from VW. Obviously it is an unknown part that is getting bolted onto the pROJECT mAYHEM but Karma dictates that my luck is due to (or has to) change where things of a van-related nature are concerned so maybe this is the start...

The other good thing is that I don't feel any worse than I did yesterday and while I would much rather feel better than I did yesterday I will settle for just feeling pretty rubbish but still functioning at some sort of level. Not sure a 12 hour night shift will help much but I will treat it as a good excuse (as if one was needed) to keep eating Mutton Karahi.

Now all I need is for Fed-Ex to deliver my parcel which is currently doing the rounds somewhere in the vicinity of Sheffield.

Quick Update

Just a few pics from the weekends work on the sleeping platform - went and bought some hinges and got those fitted as you can see but no toggle clasps in stock which was slightly annoying. Having said that I felt so rough by the time I had finished attaching the doors and worked out a couple of things that will need to be done for the other half of the bed (it will eventually fold out to double size if required) there was no way they would have been fitted today.

Discombobulated

Discombobulated pretty much sums up how I feel at the minute.

The garage that is looking after pROJECT mAYHEM rang me on Friday to tell me that the people they had sent the steering rack away to couldn't refurbish due to not being able to get the seals. Quite why it took them a whole week to admit this is open to debate but that is the situation I find myself in so now I either have to stump up for a new one which I really don't want to do at £580 or find one at a breakers. I am hopeful that the search for a replacement will not be as arduous and eventually futile as the search for the ECU but it is fair to say that I have lost a fair amount of faith in my beloved van at the moment. I am torn between selling it (and no doubt taking a heavy loss on it) or keeping it and praying to various motoring deities on the hour every hour for evermore.

On the plus side I managed to get down the ClimbingWorks on Thursday night. There is what appears to be a new set of black problems to go at and as ever they really are very good - open handed slopers, the requirement to do a lot of things statically and general technicality abound. The only problem is that every problem requires scrubbing to death prior to pulling on but it is the price that we must pay for such a good venue which is rightly proving popular with people. I also discovered the circuit board and beasted myself on the 6c problem - managed to get to the right hand end (about half way) on my first attempt before powering out looking for a foothold that wasn't there which I was pretty pleased with. The move that spat me off is not difficult in isolation but after the brutality of the traverse to start it takes on a whole different level. It also really requires you to keep the weight on your feet as much as possible which is good for me - the holds are huge but on a wall overhanging by something like 30 degrees getting as much weight off your arms as possible is a prerequisite. Subsequent attempts never quite got to this high point but the feeling of being totally battered at the end of the session was good - if my poor body ever recovers I will get back on it and try to make progress.

Friday night was spent out with a few mates I used to play 5-aside football with - got way too drunk on cider and then started on a bottle of white wine when I crawled back home. You would think that at the age of 39 I would realise that this is really not a good idea but I seem to forget this every time. I must also try and remember not to listen to Kristin Hersh's Sunny Border Blue album when drunk - as much as I love this album for its pure rawness and emotion it really is not music for when you have been drinking.

Goes without saying that yesterday (Saturday) was not a good day from the point of view of being hungover. Eventually decided that I should do some work on the sleeping platform for pROJECT mAYHEM which kept me occupied for a good few hours - think that I worked through till gone 7PM but it was good to have something to concentrate on and forget the hangover for a while. I will post up some pictures later of what I have been doing.

Today - got to go and buy some hinges and toggle clasps so that I can fix the doors I cut out yesterday and then relax at home while cooking a Mutton Karahi.

Just in case life needed to kick me one more time I think I am also coming down with something rather nasty. Great...

The things you see...

Just had to take a picture of this road sign in Leeds on Saturday night. There is quite probably an innocent explanation behind it (fnarr fnarr) but I will leave it up to Duncan Disorderly or Fiend to Google it!

Nearly grit season...

I have that fantastic ache you get after spending a day climbing: shoulders, fingers, forearms, the lot basically - they are all throbbing away gently to themselves after spending the day bouldering at Caley and generally having fun.

Got the Caley classic, Smear Arête sent second go - a really nice problem with a brutal pull on followed by a heart stopping move to get stood up and then it is pad, pad, pad (again with a lot of trepidation) to the top. A great problem and one that shows just how good bouldering on the grit can be. Did Chicken Heads but don't think I can claim the tick as I came in from the right and it just doesn't feel hard enough for the grade that way - my feeling is that it has to be done direct to get the full tick but for it to feel possible to mere mortals such as myself it needs to be a couple of degrees cooler. Also started working Forked Lightening Crack and had similar problems - the crimp for the right hand will feel much better when it is a bit cooler and though it didn't feel that bad yesterday it just didn't feel quite right. It is a hard move to get the left hand up and you need to trust the crimp fully, something I couldn't do as I was constantly aware of a slight layer of moisture between my hand and the hold regardless of how much brushing I did or chalk I used. For now it will just have to be added to the ever growing list of 6b nemeses that I have got on the go but it is a really nice problem - powerful and with a degree of technical nous required as well. Other than that we just ticked off a fair few easy problems before retiring for a couple of well deserved beers - a grand day out in all.

The curse of pROJECT mAYHEM.

In my ramblings of a few days ago I mentioned that pROJECT mAYHEM was losing power steering fluid and that it was, hopefully, going to prove to be a cheap fix. Yeah right - this is pROJECT mAYHEM we are speaking about here so the chances of a cheap fix are somewhere about the same as me climbing 8a... Turns out that the problem is the steering rack itself leaking - £300 to get reconditioned plus labour on top of that. Just as bad is a whole week with the van stuck in the garage because the market for reconditioned steering racks is not that big so they get done on an ad hoc basis. I could have had it back today if I had been prepared to bolt on a new one but the extra £200+ that would have cost soon put that idea to bed. Bugger!!

Anyway after receiving this great news it was a simple choice between climbing wall and pub - I eventually decided that I could do both and hit the Climbingworks with Duncan Disorderly and Tim. For the first time back on plastic in ages it went OK - got a fair few problems done, fell off some other stuff and generally had a good time socialising - all the best things about climbing on the plastic really. One thing I am going to have to suggest though is that the Climbingworks offer free entry for the best sob story of the day - I reckon I would have been a 100% cert yesterday if this genuinely brilliant idea had been implemented before now.

Following the wall it was off to the Sheaf for part deux of the evenings grand plan. It was the usual Thursday night scene with climbers everywhere so more talk about climbing and the like followed and the night was completed when I was asked by Dave Thomas to go and do some trad sometime soon...

Potato shaped like a thingy

In honour of this currently for sale on eBay.

Before you ask: I would explain why my brother is only wearing one shoe but the reason for the lack of said footwear is so unbelievably mundane that recounting it would probably tip me over the edge - just put it down as a bored farmer thing.

Weekend ahoy!

Well at least for me since I finished work at 7AM this morning and don't have to be back at work till 7AM on Sunday (hopefully later).

Tomorrows plans are to run pROJECT mAYHEM into the local garage as it has started to lose power steering fluid from somewhere which is not really what I want in life. Hopefully this is just a result of the missing bracket that was highlighted on VW's check over and the pipe that it is supposed to hold has been rubbing and worn through. Otherwise it is probably the seals on the power steering pump itself that has gone tits-up which is not so good but still not exceptionally bad when compared to the cost of the ECU replacement. Either way I will be pushing to get it back tomorrow night (Thurs) if at all possible.

Assuming that I do get the van back tomorrow, Friday will be spent at Curbar trying the usual projects and maybe starting off this years campaign on Gorilla Warfare.

Friday night will be spent drinking wine in Leeds and then off to explore some North Yorkshire grit on the Saturday. Where depends on how far the "dear boy" is prepared to drive but he didn't seem too put off by the prospect of a trip up to Slipstones when it was mentioned in the pub earlier. A "casual" mention of the fact that the Black Sheep brewery is in the vicinity has hopefully swung this as the choice of venue so maybe the outstanding project that is Right Hand Twin will get resolved.

Saturday night - make it up as we go along!

Hotter than the sun.

A.K.A. how to cook a Chilli that will take paint off the wall.

Chilli was probably the first thing I taught myself to cook, and while this recipe has changed beyond all recognition from those early efforts, my search for the perfect chilli recipe goes on. It's about as close as I can get at the minute but one day I will figure out how to improve it that little bit more. Till then here is the best chilli recipe that I know.

Take some garlic and chop it fine. Add in two scotch bonnet and six birds eye chilli's both finely chopped. It is important to use the two different sorts of chilli's as they have different qualities when it comes to the heat that they generate - the scotch bonnets give an immediate heat that is then replaced by the after burn of the birds eye chilli's in the finished dish.

Fry the lot in a large pan with some oil - be prepared to go temporarily blind if you get too close to the pan at this point.

Throw in two pounds of the best mince you can find - low fat content is the key here but not to the point where there is no fat present at all - you need a bit of fat to make it taste right. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Leave for a couple of minutes and add a little Cayenne Pepper and more importantly Paprika.

Once the mince has browned off nicely then add Tomato Puree, three tins of Chopped Tomatoes and two cans of Kidney Beans.

After that leave to cook for two to three hours and then let it stand for 24 hours. The standing period is the most important bit as it lets everything mellow out.

I am aiming to try a variation on this soon using Chipotle Chilli's (these are dried and smoked jalapeños) and combine this with chocolate to produce a more Texan variation of chilli which I will post up when I get round to it.

Alain Robert

Earlier I got text from friend asking if I was watching the antics of Alain Robert, the limelight loving, attention seeking French climber of buildings on TV.

My reply was something along the lines of "I would view watching anything with him in it as a waste of an hour of my life".

Feeling a bit guilty about this rather terse missive I sent one back later saying "Sorry if that last text was a bit harsh but Alain Robert is a cretin of the highest order and should not be allowed the oxygen of TV that he so desperately craves IMO".

My guess is this probably qualifies as a fail in the way of an apology but I am blaming Alain Robert for this - it only seems right somehow...

A new truimph of over engineering

As briefly mentioned in the last post I was considering getting the storage\bed started and as you can see from the pics below I have got that stage under way in the last few days.

All going pretty well actually as I seem to be getting better at cutting wood in general though anything that requires an angle that is not 90 degrees tends to go a bit Pete Tong at times. One slight problem is that one of the main stays on the bottom is warped (which I knew at the time and tried to work round) but is causing slight concern at the minute as the next stage is probably going to be to fit the internal panels to separate the storage space. While I know that the frame has enough flex in it to compensate for the warp now it might not once I add more structure to it so I have got to figure out a way around that before I can progress any further. Other than that the usual curse of needing three other things in place before a job can be completed is starting to raise its ugly head on this part of the project now. I want to shape the back of the storage so that it follows the line of the panels but until the panels are carpeted and fitted I don't know what shape the back is going to take which has the knock on effect of being unable to fix it to the floor. Aargh!!

Even with all of these "problems" to work around I am getting close to having the wood stuff done and dusted I think. The internal panels have been roughly cut out now though there will have to be something removed from the edges before I can fit them in place to allow for how much space will be taken up once the ribs have been carpeted. Even better than that I am pretty sure I have figured out a way of fitting them that doesn't involve drilling holes in the internal braces where there are already VW fixtures in place. It has always been a bit of an aim of mine to drill as few holes as possible in the van and while I will have to drill some holes for the upper sections of the barn doors and the top panel of the side (unless I have another great idea) the main panels themselves won't require them. As with any of my solutions it probably involves a lot more work than banging in a series of self tapping screws but my Heath Robinson approach to engineering has served me well so far so why change?

Rethink

I would have loved to have got the carpeting done next month on the pROJECT mAYHEM build but it has become apparent that there are way too many other things to do before that. I seem to be at the stage where one thing depends on another thing being in place which usually requires a third thing to be sorted before you can make progress.

The revised plan that I have now come up with is:

• Finish cutting out the interior panels in rough form.
  

• Fit leisure battery and split charger.

• Fit the fuse box for the electrics and install the reversing camera.

• Remove the roof lining and cover that, carpet the interior, carpet the sub woofer\amp enclosure, get the lights ready to go in and the tweeters installed.
  

• Insulate behind the panels, under the roof lining and run in speaker cables and wiring for lights in rear doors.
  

• Wire up the rest of the lights and switches, the sub\amp enclosure and speakers and fit all the above.
  

• Build the sleeping platform\storage.
  

All in all a bit frustrating at the minute but at least the sub\amp enclosure is finished (or at least as finished I can get it for now) and the sleeping platform can probably be started with the purchase of a few more lengths of wood for the frame. No doubt there will be other stuff that requires doing as well but if all else fails I will just have to go climbing.

Good day\Bad day or some random combination thereof

To be honest the last couple of days have been pretty bloody good actually after returning from the home county of Suffolk which always tends to weird me out for some reason or another. Yesterday was spent getting back on with pROJECT mAYHEM stuff and today was spent trying to slay a couple of nemeses at Curbar with Sloper. Do I need to say that the two nemeses I am referring to are Strawberries and The Ultimate Gritstone Experience? Probably not...

Strawberries didn't go particularly well - felt all out of sorts on it and the best I did was to get half way through the rock over move at which point I started to believe that it was possible, scraped my right hand up the face and lost it. Spent a while after trying but it turned into too much of a process of breaking it down into individual moves and trying to link them. The end result was that nothing was flowing so I sacked it off - even so I feel I have broken some sort of barrier with it though quite what it is I am not 100% sure at the minute.

Anyway after feeling a bit out of sorts on Strawberries it was a bit of a trudge off up the hill to TUGE (standing start). After a couple of finger scraping attempts with a duff sequence Sloper pointed me in the right direction and the bottom section just clicked. Reached my previous highpoint in way more control than I had before and after that it was (almost) smooth as silk to there every time. I got to that point at least four\five times and at one stage I had my left mitt over the top of the overhang on a really good hold but a combination of sheer excitement\anxiety, a foot blowing and not having a clue what to do robbed me of a possible send. Regardless of that I made tangible progress today and I have a couple of good ideas on how to proceed past my new highpoint so it's looking really good.

So to sum things up: gritstone season is not quite here yet but one big YYFY moment is in the pipeline fo' sho!!

A triumph of over engineering II

Bit of an update on the last post to show progress on the sub and amp enclosure for pROJECT mAYHEM. Now the main box is built it is time to get a bit more cosmetic on things like some rather shiny fan guards...

As hinted at in the last post I have also been enclosing all of the wiring in an effort to keep interference to a minimum - it also looks nicer and gives me an excuse to exercise my perfectionist tendencies!

I appreciate that fans with lights in are probably extremely unnecessary and will quite probably be abused greatly but the effect is rather good in my opinion.

Pic to give a general idea of what it is supposed to look like now I have managed to get the fans sorted and the hole for the sub woofer cut out.

Same shot just taken from the other end.

Now we are starting to cook on gas - BOOM!!

Finally a few shots of the wiring which turned up at last today - both amps have all the necessary power etc. but I have only wired in the one for the sub woofer so far as that was the easier one of the two to deal with - just one set of speaker cables to deal with. The other amp will prove to be a bit more challenging but the vast majority of the wiring will be out of the box as someone forgot to allow for space to install the four crossovers. This provides its own challenge though as I can't wire in the crossovers until the box has been carpeted - it is the carpeting (or rather not being able to afford to buy the carpet yet) which is going to delay the finish of this part of the project. I have probably got another half day of things left to do but after that it will be the insulation and the panelling to take care of which will no doubt prove to be equally fun.

A triumph of over engineering

If someone had told me that building a bass bin would have been as complicated as it has been turning out to be I might have had second thoughts but there again I probably would have just proceeded anyway with careless abandon. Just getting to the initial stage of construction was a long drawn out affair as I had to calculate the volume required for the bass bin but the only measurement I had was the width of the entire bass bin and amp enclosure to work with. Working on a guesstimate of half the width as a starting reference and 1 cubic foot for the volume I threw a series of numbers at a spreadsheet that worked out the volume for me until the required figure and the projected figure were close enough. I then found out that 10" sub woofer I have recommends a cubic volume of 0.75 cubic feet - arse!! Cue more calculations and tweaking of figures until I managed to get it to a compromise of about 0.825 cubic feet. As a result I will probably end up experimenting a bit with the level of fill that I put into the enclosure due to the over-sizing but that is a problem that can be managed at a later time - all that mattered was that I had measurements for the box

For construction of your sub-woofer\amp enclosure take vast amounts of 15mm ply, similarly vast amounts of 32 x 32mm box, a sack of 30mm screws, various other sized screws, ducting, glue, silicone sealant, an old mat from the back of the van and a few other odds and sods as required. Add in circular saws, drills, screwdrivers, clamps, tape measures and a life saving mitre saw courtesy of UKB\Paul B and you can start.

The initial stages of construction.

Taking shape.

The main box frame fully constructed.

Amps in place for measuring where the mounting boards needs to be fitted. The one on the left is to power all the speakers other than the sub-woofer - that is getting powered by the one on the right running a low pass filter at 80Hz. BOOM!!

Given the amount of glue that has been whacked between each of the joints on this construction there was very little chance of it leaking but just to make sure all of the seams have been sealed with silicone. I wouldn't recommend using the clear variety of silicone sealant as it is a right pain when you have to apply it by hand at the points where you can't get the cartridge gun - being clear you can't see the stuff and end up either missing parts or reapplying to the same point! It also looks shite in a photo...

Tracking laid in for the power cables and speaker wires and the amp mountings in with some shock absorption added in for good measure.

View from the other side.

Finally got the lids cut out last night and temporarily screwed into place just to make sure everything is in place.

Next stage will be to get the hole cut out for the sub and the riser plate (visible on the right) fitted and once that has been done then I can run the speaker wires through to the sub and get those sealed off, add a bit of stuffing and that will be that for that side.

For the amp side it is a matter of running in power, earth and remote power for each amp, cutting out the holes for the fans and wiring those up, figuring out which screws I am going to use for fixing where they will be visible and last but not least the small matter of how to fix the whole thing to the floor. After that I think that is probably that until next month when I can afford the carpet to cover the whole enclosure.

Wales pics

Oooo matron! Yours truly getting stuck into Brown's Crack with a slight degree of trepidation it would seem.

Fiend looking hard for some sort of footholds on The Seam - truth be told he spent an awfully long time looking for footholds on this slab. I pointed out the sequence that I had worked out but this was rejected in the vain hope of finding something that was actually visible from more than a couple of inches.

After aeons of contemplation some sort of sequence was arrived at for the flash attempt but once that had proved to be futile it was over to a slight variation on my method. I didn't get further than this - damn that mono for the right hand was painful but probably nowhere near as hideous as the two finger sidepull that Matt came up - a Fiend in more ways than one for squashing his sausage fingers into that hold and sticking it!

10m too much bloody rope!

Heard this a lot over a great weekend climbing with Fiend in Wales. Apparently having 60m half ropes is a crime though I don't think it rates quite as highly as cycling, running or hill walking on the list of things punishable by death but I could be wrong.

Anyway other than having the length of my rope complained about it was a bloody good weekend for a whole host of reasons. It was my first time doing trad in 13 months and it showed the first time I racked up and struggled to remember which side of my harness I rack my cams on. Once that minor issue had been sorted though I got Yellow Route in the bag and a fine route it is too - well worth doing whatever grade you climb. Well worth checking out Creagh Dhu Wall as well if you are in the Tremadog area - two fantastic pitches on great rock. I also managed to second two E1s and an E2 clean as well which I was quite happy about as I am a fat weak boulderer.

After two days of trad I was shot (figuratively anyway) but not to the point where bouldering in the Pass seemed like a good idea once I had gotten over the excruciating tightness of my shoes. With my feet now only rating as painful I tried Browns Crack which proceeded to eat the backs of my hands a fair bit thereby moving the pain about at least. Twice I got past the hand eating crack (which I got sorted relatively quickly) only to be repelled by the crux at the top due to not being able to figure out where to place my feet and after the second time I gave it the honour of being my first nemesis in the Pass. From here we went onto the Roadside boulder - flashed the rising traverse in good style and then made a complete hash of the start of the direct from the same place!! Got it on the second attempt which added to the disappointment but didn't detract from what is a great problem. From there we went across to the slabs on the opposite side of the Pass and after taking into consideration the lack of skin I decided to attempt the classic V3 slab problem over the equally good looking V2. The only problem with the V3 is that it has a vicious move off a mono for the right hand and by the time I had worked out the feet positions I was running out of time and after experimenting with some very random taping it saw me off to leave me with another nemesis.

Other than some great climbing pROJECT mAYHEM got us there and back without a problem apart from a very annoying rattle but at least I know the location of the rattle now so the mission to get that resolved sometime over the next few days. Also having slept in the van for three nights it gave me a much better insight into how the layout will work and just proved that it was the right thing to do when I bought it.

Death by Midges

Sloper's sport climbing ambitions had been cruelly thwarted so it was up to me to take him off to Apparent North for some easy bouldering as some sort of consolation. We decided to warm up on the left hand side where it became obvious that it was not going to be much a pleasant day out in the sunshine - no breeze, greasy holds and lots of midges was the order of the day. We stuck this out for all of about three or four problems before seeking some respite further to the right and we ended up at yet another one of my many, many Peak nemeses "Crimpy Roof Problem". On the one time that I have knowingly tried this before I failed to get as far as the lip of the roof but my recent run of discovering some sort of working sequence seems to be continuing and I now have a method of getting both hands on the lip courtesy of a toe\heel lock. Sure there is still some footwork stuff to do to get the next break but I feel that another very small breakthrough has been made. Awesome!

Anyway back to work tomorrow and then it is off to Wales for three days with Fiend (soon to be McFiend proper) for some trad and boulder action which I am rather excited about to say the least.

Greasy as a weasel...

...liberally coated in butter, engine oil and lard and then deep fried - if you had used said culinary masterpiece to brush the sidepulls on Strawberries at Curbar today then it wouldn't have felt any harder. However I digress slightly so I shall backtrack a few hours and start at the beginning.

Today I woke up and felt confident about doing Strawberries - quite why I don't know but that was the case so after a couple of coffees I set off to Curbar in a rad and syked mood to send. Did the usual warm up problems - the traverse and back on the other side of the Trackside boulder, the mantle\undercut problem, the three pocket problem and the one on the big holds to the right of that. All was going strangely well - the footwork was good and the friction while not exactly great was feeling OK. Still feeling rad and syked I cleaned off the holds for Strawberries, rolled up a quick tab, sat in the sunshine and pulled on my shoes,. Having done that I worked out the sequence again just to make sure it was right in my head, gave the holds a last brush and tried it out.

It felt awful - truly, truly awful - I could get to the higher sidepull with my left about half the time but from there it was time to forget it - you could just feel it sliding off and there was no way you could get the necessary leverage on it for the move up to the jug. Still it will be there another time and I still went home happy - I have finally managed to get a decent sequence to the three pocket problem which means I can semi-static to the third pocket in control now instead of it being an all out slap and I got introduced to a problem that I think is called "The Eyes" (to the left of the problem Trackside). Now this feels like a really nice problem and it will be good to have that to project alongside Strawberries but will require better conditions to get the bottom section wired and the top doesn't look too much of a gimme either. Also starting to get ideas re: Trackside itself and I still have The Ultimate Gritstone Experience to do - bring on the cooler temps - the rad and syke seems to be back!

Cornwall

Cornwall was not bad really considering the weather was as inconsiderate to me as it always is. I had originally planned to stay down for at least a week maybe nine days but a lack of money and indifferent weather conditions resulted in me bailing early. Arrived circa 11AM on the Tuesday and after meeting up with my brother and his girlfriend who I was staying with I decided to head down to Little Fistral for a quick check on how weak I am which it turned out was bordering on very.

Little Fistral is never going to going to be considered a premier venue for bouldering and would struggle to get into the second or even the third division if we are honest. It consists of an overhanging wall with two maybe three traverses on it all about 10 metres long max. There are also a few up problems of debatable quality but it is a venue I know and I wanted to get the middle traverse done if possible. The hardest part of the problem is getting to the main line of the traverse itself which consists of about 7 moves with the crux being bumping the left hand across with the right on a decentish sized flat hold. In essence a 5+ which requires a bit of thought regarding footwork and body position and after that it is piss. Anyway I worked out the sequence to get into position to get the flatty and from there it was one move and pretty much over. Did I do it? No in a word - if I had been on my own I probably would have done but my brother and his girlfriend had decided to accompany me and conditions were less than hospitable with a stiff onshore breeze carrying with it large amounts of salt spray and the like so I decided to bail out for a beer and cordial relations.

Wednesday and Thursday were pretty much rained out and nothing got done apart from travelling about and eating and drinking too much but Friday was a better day so I went up to Helman Tor for some easier bouldering and general exploration. Getting there was interesting due to turning left about 200 yards too soon which resulted in driving down some very narrow "roads" with grass growing down the middle of them - seriously out back of beyond! After a bit of guesswork I eventually arrived and once I had figured out that the topo was not exactly accurate in relation to distance and where things were located it turned out to be a nice place to be albeit a rather windy one. There was some sort of bird of prey flying over the valley below, some really rough granite to deal with and some nice views just to make it really pleasant. As it was I got a few problems done and backed off a few more mainly due to the remoteness issue but also the wind howling across the top which made things seem that little bit more tenuous. Still it is a worthwhile venue if you have a couple of hours to kill.

View from the walk in.

The mat marks the centre of the three problems on this block - the left hand problem (no arête) is one I backed off more than once as the top out is a very rough but slopey horror show, the centre problem I couldn't work out the start and the right hand one is easy as.

There is a seriously good looking problem up the centre of this wall at about 6b - one to go back and try for sure.

Not a difficult problem up the flakes (I did it sans mat) but nice all the same.


Didn't even bother with this - slab to a big roof with a decent prang potential if you got it wrong!


Another three lines up here - I looked briefly at the left and centre problems but didn't have a serious go as there is a deepening gully from the left hand side that you can't see. The right hand problem is not one to fall off at all as warned in the topo - I couldn't see anyway that you would walk away from it if you did. There are a couple more problems and a project around the corner of the right arête including a really nice looking line up a ramp but they all start from a ledge about a metre wide with a fair sized drop off behind that. The project is a blunt arete that looked simply nails. There is also a couple from the cave to the left of this - one really hard problem on small holds and an easier one that I could figure out the start of but the finish (and the point of it) was lost on me.