#10: Water under the bridge and Steve’s RV

Steve talks about his personal challenges during our hiatus and shows us his new project, an RV

Andy: Hello everyone. We’re back with ‘Passionate About Cars’ and with Steve. Alright Steve?

Steve: Yeah, hi Andy. Seems to have been a while doesn’t it?

Andy: Yeah, we’ve been kind of off air – sorry Steve you lead the way. We’re just going to the back. We’ve got an exciting project to talk about.

It’s kind of my fault and I do apologise we’ve been off air for a year, we’re back now with a vengeance. And the exciting thing is we’ve got a new website, which if you’re listening to this on the website you’ll know about because you’re on it. But if you’re listening to it on the feed, through iTunes or something like that take a look at passionate-about-cars.com. You don’t need the www but you can put it there if you want. That’s the new website for hosting this wonderful podcast.

Quite a lot of water’s passed under the bridge the year we’ve been off hasn’t it? Tell us what’s been going on.

Steve: Yeah well apart from motor trade, I mean there’s always an awful lot going on in the motor trade – business wise there’s been a fair bit going on.

And personally, I mean, as you’re aware Andy like I had a little bit of a scare a couple of months ago now, it was a heart attack actually. And it happened here at the garage and I think probably a lot of that will be down to stress of running a business, you know I mean some people might say diet and all this sort of thing like. But I used to smoke; I’m not a smoker now I gave that up quite a few years ago. Drink wise, no I used to drink years ago, you know in my sort of service days when quite a lot of us used to drink back then. But now there’s really not an awful lot of alcohol passes the lips so… So it’s not really down to that and the only thing I can put it down to is probably more the stress of running businesses, you know particularly in this day and age. Things get a little bit awkward from time to time.

There’s an awful lot of things to sort out and whether you like it or not you find yourself getting stressed out and it happens. And I guess it happens to most people that are running businesses as I say particularly at the moment because things are quite sort of tough out there for people.

The heart attack as I say happened here at work. Bit of a strange thing, wasn’t really what I expected, you know. When people talk about heart attacks the first thing you think about is chest pains. I didn’t really get chest pains. I had a little bit of what was seen to be a bit of indigestion and I know a lot of people have the same thing leading up to a heart attack. This was a little bit in the morning when I woke up.

One of the main things I noticed at that time, that morning was my shoulders ached, particularly my left shoulder. I put it down to being in the gym. The previous day I’d had a bit of a workout in the gym and thought may be I’d overdone it a little bit so I put it down to a little bit of sort of may be muscle strain or something like that. But obviously it wasn’t and I came into work just feeling a little bit out of sorts, couldn’t really put your finger on it. Just felt a bit under the weather.

By about sort of quarter past ten that morning I started to feel really nauseous and had to go to the loo in the garage and thought I was going to be bad but I wasn’t. I then just started sweating profusely. It was like someone threw a bucket of water over me. I was just totally soaked in sweat. Had to sit down and I felt really short of breath then, started struggling to breathe. And I guess I sort of suspected it was something to do with the heart at that time but I didn’t have the chest pains. So again I was like thinking like I guess a lot of people, you know heart attack, chest pains – I didn’t have chest pains.

But one of the guys sort of spotted me, obviously looking a little bit off colour sat in one of the chairs, called the ambulance and was taken up to the hospital which fortunately is only sort of five minutes from the garage here. And they ran a few tests and it turned out, yes I’d had a heart attack.

So I was kept in there for a few days, had a stent put in, you know they had one of these angiograms where they go in, have a look, put the dye in, found the main artery on the right side of the heart was actually blocked which they then stick the balloons in and start inflating it to clear it out. And then put the stents in like a little bit of scaffolding inside your vein and it was a bit of a scare. I was only in the hospital for… I went in on the Tuesday and they let me home on the Friday night. And it’s then a case of you can’t drive for a month, this is law. If you’ve had a heart attack over here DVLA won’t allow you to drive for a month.

But I got bored to tears sitting at home like…

Andy: I bet you did.

Steve: Within the first sort of week and got my wife to bring me down to the garage here like just an hour here and an hour there, like. And pretty soon you get back into it, back on the treadmill and within – probably too soon some people might say – but I mean I was virtually back to normal working within about three weeks. Which perhaps I should’ve given it a little bit longer but I felt fine. I feel fine now. I occasionally get a little bit tired but generally I feel absolutely fine. And there’s no reason why that we shouldn’t be fine, continue to be fine. I’ve got an outpatient’s appointment in the next week or so just to go and have some checks done, do the treadmill see what the heart’s doing. But other than that, no…

I think sitting around, you know with any sort of ailments if you sit around you start to wallow a little bit in self-pity. It gives you time to think and so getting back to work is I think the best thing, keep your mind occupied and just get on. So that really for me was quite a bit of a shock I guess like. I wouldn’t say I’m old by any means, you know middle aged but not old. But it’s happened and now we sort of move on and fortunately it happened where it did and still drawing breath as they say.

Andy: Well I have to say, I mean the last time… When I – I think it was about three weeks ago when I saw you, I hadn’t seen you for ages and I almost accidently bumped into you.

Steve: Yeah.

Andy: And I have to say you look better now than you did then. I mean the only difference – looking at you now the only difference with how I remember you from a year ago is you’re a bit trimmer. That’s about the only difference.

But it sounds like the prognosis is okay as long as you take it sensibly?

Steve: Yeah I think you have to be a little bit sensible and be a bit aware. And people say that who suffer these sort of heart attacks – I guess fortunately mine was not a serious heart attack, you know but it’s still a heart attack nonetheless. And some people say it changes their outlook, you know changes their perspective on life. And all of a sudden things that used to matter before don’t seem to matter so much, you know.

Yes it’s sort of changed my perspectives on one or two things. But I guess generally I’m still, when I look at it, what I’m doing now I’m virtually back on the treadmill type of thing and back into work fulltime. And doing what I was doing before. So I guess it hasn’t affected me that much, although it’s at the back of my mind all the time.

Andy: Sure.

Steve: And of course now we’re on a cocktail of tablets for the rest of our lives, you know so… But a small price to pay, you know we’re still here drawing breath as I say and working absolutely fine. And I feel fine, simple as that.

Andy: And talking about changes of perspective and the way that you think. We are sitting in Steve’s new RV – tell us a little bit about this RV?

Steve: This was a little project I sought of fancied. Myself and my wife, I mean we’ve had various holidays around the world, seen lots of places. Every time we’ve gone to do a holiday in the UK it’s rained. I mean we went to the Lake District one year, we got there and it rained. And it rained continually for three days. We give up, we come home – it’s just no fun.

We went to the West Country another year and it rained. And it continually rained. So we give up and we come home. And we said then “We’re not going to holiday again in this country.” I mean we like to get the sun on us like most people do and… So we tend to go abroad for holidaying. But there is lots and lots of places I’d love to see in the country – Scotland and Wales, you know – up North sort of thing as we say from down South here. So there’s an awful lot to see, there’s a lot of history, lots of things to see.

So we looked at the idea of getting a caravan, you know a campervan, a motor home and like everything. I mean I do like the American vehicles to a certain degree. And we started looking at RVs. These are the American recreational vehicles, RV.

We went – we started driving around looking at one or two around the country, you know. There doesn’t seem to be an awful lot down here, down South. Most of them appeared to be Midlands’s way. So we were making trips to the Midlands, going to look at these buses. And quite a few of them were in fairly poor, well-used conditions. And then we spotted this one which was up in Telford and we went up there.

This particular one here is a Gulf Stream. It’s a Sun Stream 2000 model; it was actually made in 1995. But the interior like a lot of the American ones around that sort of time looked very ’70-ish. So you have to look a little bit beyond that. Provided it’s mechanically pretty sound. Provided it’s structurally sound – one of the things they do suffer with is water ingress.

This one here is 32 foot long. It’s about 8 foot wide. It needs headroom clearance of about 12½ foot. So you’ve got to be careful where you drive around in the UK – left hand drive as well. So going down some of the country lanes could be an experience.

Andy: And low bridges of course.

Steve: Low bridges, yeah you need to be extremely aware of them but we’re just going to get a Sat Nav system. You can get Sat Nav systems for RVs. For commercial vehicles that obviously when you put in your details of your vehicle, it will only take you on routes that will take that vehicle. It’s no…

Andy: Ah that’s smart.

Steve: It’s no good taking you down the little six foot six country lane that peters out on to a dirt track when you’re in something like this because you’re never going to turn it round.

Andy: You’ve sort of reconditioned the inside haven’t you?

Steve: Yeah, I mean this one here had signs of water damage to the driver’s side front inside. The insides of these vehicles are basically insulated with like a sort of a polystyrene block material which is then covered with a wood-ply. But it’s quite a thin wood-ply.

The roofs on most of these vehicles are covered in like a rubberised canvas type of material, which needs to be treated fairly regularly. Every year or two, you know you just buy this stuff which you can paint on, which keeps the weather out, stops the water getting into it. Because if the water starts to get in it will seep in and it will come inside and it will start rotting the inside of the vehicle. And this had happened a little bit around the front driver’s door on this particular one. But it’s a case of treating the roof, which I’ve done.

The roof’s been treated and sealed. The ply lining on the driver’s side at the front now I took all that lot off and re-plyed it. I’ve used slightly thicker ply so it’s probably a little bit better than it was from when it left the factory. The interior I’ve totally like recovered the interior in like a leather material which is like…

Andy: You’ve really brought it up to date. I mean it doesn’t look ‘70s at all. It looks 00s now doesn’t it?

Steve: Yeah. I mean the idea was to bring it up to sort of like a 2000 or Millennium sort of style. And brighten it up largely which is why we’ve gone for sort of a cream colour on all the walls, which I say is like a leather sort of material. You buy it on a roll and stick it on like wallpaper, largely.

I mean all of the curtains – we repaired the curtains, myself and my wife. They’ve got what they call day and night curtains or blinds I should say.

Andy: Ah these clever blinds that’s half of it’s black and half of it’s like translucent?

Steve: Yeah you can sort of pull down one section and you’ve got like – almost like a net curtain effect. Pull down the next section and it’s like a blackout effect. Which is very, very good, very tidy. And I mean the upholstery that we’re sitting in at the moment we took all that apart and reupholstered the seats.

This particular vehicle has got under floor heating. A lot of the RVs have. So it’s got these hot air vents which blow up through the floor. This particular vehicle is a six and a half litre V8 Diesel. It’s got LPG to run the onboard generator. It’s got its own generator under the back to make it all self-sufficient. The LPG also runs the boiler system because it runs constant hot water when it’s all switched on. And it runs 12 volt – the normal 240 volts. It’s got what they call like a three-way full size fridge which is LPG, as well as 240 as well as 12 volt.

And they’re called ‘Full timers’. This particular one, like a lot of these of this size you can actually live in and people do live in them. They’re like a one bed roomed flat on wheels.

Andy: So when is the inaugural voyage do you know?

Steve: Well actually we were going to go away the week I had the heart attack. I was just sort of finishing off a few things to get it ready to go and do a little bit of travel down to the West Country. The idea with getting it was that you wouldn’t be confined to making a booking in certain parts of the country when once you make a hotel booking and that you’re then stuck to dates. And we all know what the weather’s like in this country.

So the idea really is like you get to a Thursday or a Friday, if all of a sudden the weather’s looking good in the West, in Wales, up North, you can say “Well let’s jump in the bus and let’s go and have a look then.” We’ll take a weekend or a week or something and we’ll just stay away from the rain as much as possible.

So that’s the idea to give you a bit more freedom, yeah just make things a little bit more versatile I suppose with the travel.

Andy: Well Steve thanks so much for showing us round it’s absolutely beautiful and let’s talk to you again next month.

It is business as usually isn’t it?

Steve: Oh it is yeah, yeah. It is business as usual. I’ll… In the future sort of episodes we’ll find… There’s plenty of subject matter out there at the moment I tell you.

Andy: And we’ll have some more political discussions as well.

Steve: Absolutely, yeah, yeah. We won’t get started on politics today but yeah there’s lots of things going on locally, within the transport. It’s a subject that’s quite sort of…close to my heart.

Andy: Well Steve Kennard of First Class Garage in Kemptown, Brighton, UK, thank you very much indeed.

Steve: Okay Andy, cheers. We’ll speak to you again.