#16: Five foot cycle lanes

Steve this morning showed me an article about cycle lanes in yesterdays newspaper. In todays show we discuss a Triumph Stag with engine trouble and daft cycle lane planning.
Andy: Steve’s rushing around like a blue arse fly this morning and I walked in and he’s got a Triumph Stag on the rack with an over heating engine and he’s already been to the car and got a newspaper out and he’s ranting about cycle lanes.

Steve: We’ll come to the cycle lanes in a minute Andy, I guess we must get the garage business out the way first of all.

Andy: Yeah, what’s the story with this lovely yellow Triumph Stag without an engine?

Steve: I said to a guy that owns the Stag that you know it’s loosing water; it was loosing it from around what appeared to be around underneath the manifold in the middle of the engine, it’s a V8 engine. Not very easy to actually see underneath the manifold what’s going on, but when we took the manifold off we could then see that it was actually leaking from the sides of the heads, so we said to him right, it’s your loosing water from around the heads and obviously the heads need to come off. So he said OK, took the car away and I think it was about three days after that it decided to overheat and blow the hoses. Pressured up, blow the hoses and we recovered it, we got it back here now, obviously done a head gasket.

Andy: Yeah, I can see a mangled head gasket on top of it.

Steve: Yeah well it’s done a, I mean there’s two head gaskets so you know. It’s really a case on these, take the engine out. But this particular engine had a little bit of a ?[01:46] from the timing chain which they’re quite prone for and also a little bit noisy on the cam shaft and when we actually striped it, one of the buckets or the followers on top of the valve was, the cam was actually worn through it. The cam on one of the lobes has worn square and one of the other followers is cracked so yeah. I mean this engine, according to the owner, was actually rebuilt two years ago so, I don’t know who rebuilt it but it hasn’t lasted very long for two years because it hasn’t done an awful lot of miles in those two years.

Andy: No but it’s now hanging on a chain and there’s a young chap. What’s he doing painting it?

Steve: Yeah he is, I mean we said to the guy that owns the car you know whilst it’s out we’ve got the blocks striped right down now, the blocks just hanging there on the hoist and we got young Richard there and he’s actually painting it. Being a Stag, the car that it is, I mean ?[02:52-02:53] we’ll give the engine bay a good clean out and probably even polish the engine bay for him. But yeah I mean it needs a full rebuild. We’ve made inquiries, I don’t doubt there are engines out there somewhere but it does seem like the best way to do this is to actually rebuild it and if we rebuild it then we know it’s going to be done right and done properly because if that engine, we don’t know the history, all I know is that it was supposedly a recon two years ago and of course it’s two years down the road it’s not in a very good state for a two year old engine you know, so you’ve got to sort of wonder what sort of recon did they do. Or was it just a con engine rather than a recon, I don’t know.

Andy: Well if it was a recon maybe it had been conned before and now it’s being conned again. Recon.
Steve: Yeah I suppose that it depends on the definition of the word recon you know.

Andy: So the blocks fine it’s just the bits that go on to the block need replacing is it?

Steve: Yeah the block itself is OK, it’s you know obviously head gaskets are quite prone for it. Timing chains tend to wear; this one was a bit chattery so we’re going to replace all this. The heads have been sent away, they’ve been tested, and they’re OK. They’ve been faced up and pressure tested.

Andy: Steve when you say heads, just explain what the heads are again.

Steve: Heads. They’re cylinder heads. It’s a V8 engine so which means it’s got eight cylinders and there’s two cylinder heads on this and they actually do what they say, they’re the heads, and they go on top of the engine and they have the valves inside, they have the cam shafts sitting on the top which open the valves and the chain that sits on the front of the engine inside a casing turns the cam shafts which opens the valves.

Andy: And because it’s a V8 it has two actual separate heads does it?

Steve: Yeah there’s two separate heads being a V8. The V is the configuration of the engine so it’s sort of configured like a V. So you’ve got four cylinders on either side. And then you have the manifolds inlet manifold which is where the air comes in through, it sits on the top of the engine between the two heads. So that’s the basic configuration, I mean these engines, we’ve said it before, the stag engines are renewed for being what I’d class as a soft engine they were never designed to take much stick because of the problems that you got with them unlike the Rover V8. I mean the Rover V8 engine, again V8 configuration, lasted for years. I mean they use the same basic block for probably about nigh on forty years, the Rover V8 engine just gradually modified it as it sort of went along and it’s still running around in lots of pretty new Range Rovers. So that particular Rover V8 engine I believe was taken from a design from the States, it was originally an American design which Rover or British Leyland back then, Austin Rover, whatever they were back in the fifties, took.

Andy: That’s going back a bit isn’t it?

Steve: It is yeah, I mean they took the design and that engine was far superior to this engine. This Triumph V8 is basically naff as you say.

Andy: Pants.

Steve: Yeah absolutely. And the annoying thing is they used this particular engine. If you were to cut it half so that you’ve got four cylinders where you would be looking in to effect to the Triumph Dolomite engine, which is half of a V8 four cylinder. And that as well never really took a lot of stick, had its problems, so yeah. I mean the Triumph engines were not the best and they would have been much, much better, much more reliable had they have put the V8 in. But of course, people like classic cars the be original and if you put a V8 Rover engine in it, whilst it would be mechanically superior it’s not original and the purists would say well that’s it the car is not worth as much as devalued because it is not original.

Andy: devalued because it’s better.

Steve: Yeah, it’s weird isn’t it, I mean it’s more unreliable, it suffers lots and lots more problems but it’s worth more.

Andy: So Steve, what do you think of this new rule that the council are bringing in, three strikes and your car gets towed now if you don’t pay your tickets.

Steve: Well I suppose on the face of it, really, I say to everybody, if you get a parking ticket first thing you’ve got to do is contest it. Don’t pay it straight away, contest it. If you’re in the right or if you’re in the wrong you still have the right to contest the ticket. There’s various websites you can go on that people claim to be able to get the ticket squashed on technicalities and various things I have but it’s definitely worth sending a letter in. I mean I’m against the amount of tickets, like most motorists, I’m against the amount of tickets that are issued to motorists because purely by definition a group of people that are persecuted lets say, because motorists, I class them as being persecuted, they’re a persecuted group of people. So I suppose by definition that’s discrimination. And discrimination laws in his country are such that we shouldn’t discriminate against anyone should we, motorists included. But this three strikes rule that they’re doing, yeah if you get a parking ticket then you contest it but if you accumulate three parking tickets and you refuse to pay them or you don’t pay them then they’re looking at lifting the vehicles, taking the vehicles away and putting them in a compound and then charging you more money for storage and more money to retrieve your vehicle and at the end of the day it’s money again. Bottom line it’s money which I think, enough is enough lets leave the motorists alone, you had enough money out of the motorists and look at someone else to persecute.

Andy: I read in the paper, so it must be true, that the revenues from parking had fallen by a million or are projected to fall by a million. Why is that? And this is perhaps why they are doing this?

Steve: Yeah, well, figures and statistics again. Who comes up with these figures, who comes the statistics and who decides that the revenue’s going to fall by how ever much it is? It’s no different to a guy goes to work, earns a wage, he gets used to living on a certain wage. The council gets money, they’ve got so used to getting so many millions off the motorist that they wouldn’t be able to live without it now. So as soon as they get a drop they look at it as a drop in revenue, but surely that’s the wrong way to look at it. It’s not a drop in revenue is it? It’s just fines and any way that they can to try and get more money back in the coffers, all be it the wrong way because I keep saying, leave the motorist alone, give us a break.

Andy: Maybe they should pick on the pedestrian – we should have pavement tax.

Steve: To be quite honest if you’re going to tax one group of people, pedestrians, fine yes, you know…

Andy: Yes, but what if you’re a pedestrian and a motorist you get a double whammy then don’t you…

Steve: Well no, I mean two for one deal.

Andy: So I read in the paper, sorry to change the subject suddenly, I read in the paper that, because of a cycle lane, they’re going to have to move a listed shelter 1m. Did you read that one?

Steve: Oh yes. This is where we go common sense. Over the past few years common sense has been taken away from the British mentality. So we’re breeding now a nation of people without common sense. In last night’s local paper the Argus, there’s a bit about the cycle lanes there again, and it highlights the problems with cycle lanes. They’ve got up at Hollingbury by ASDA, they put a cycle lane in, fine, on the pavement, fine, so the cyclists can knock the pedestrians over, like they do round the town. And they painted this cycle lane with road signs, posts, in the middle of the cycle lane…

Andy: You’ve got the paper in your hand now haven’t you, yes…

Steve: I have. And it is…

Andy: So there’s this cycle lane with a sort of roundabout sign right in the middle of it.

Steve: Yes, if you look at the picture here, it’s actually on the entrance to ASDA going up. So you’ve got the pavement, you’ve got this cycle lane marked out, at a cost of how ever many thousands of pounds that they put these cycle lanes in. We’ve got a couple of posts sitting there sitting right in the middle of the cycle lane which they’ve kindly painted little white mini islands around for the cyclists to go round. Is that just not stupidity. Now surely , whoever put those lines in would have thought, “Now hang on a minute, let me use my common sense and let me talk to somebody at the office and say ’Are you sure you want us to put this cycle lane in around some posts?’”, you know. Maybe we can get rid of some cyclists that way, you know, they run into the have accidents, you know. And going back to what you where saying about the shelter on the seafront, now, those shelters have been there for donkey’s years. When I say donkeys years I mean we’re talking back in the nineteenth century I believe they were put in along the seafront. So here we go, common sense again, we’ll put a cycle lane in, on the seafront there, where there’s lots of people walking around, so that we can take a few pedestrians out as well, you know. And this cycle lane goes past this shelter, where pedestrians want to sit and admire the view. They’ve now decided after, I don’t know, ten years I think it is the cycle lane’s been there, they’ve now decided it’s dangerous. Ss they’re looking at moving the shelter at a cost of thousands of pounds to the tax payer. Instead of moving the cycle lane at a cost of tens of pounds, you know, move a couple of lines and move the cycle lane, which has only been there ten years as opposed to a hundred and forty odd years or a hundred and fifty years however long the shelter’s been there. And we’re going to move this listed structure because of the cycle lane. Now that is typical Brighton Council logical thinking isn’t it. To come up with these sort of schemes – you know you have cycle lanes that are five foot long – why? That really is stupid…

Andy: I’ve heard people complaining about the cycle lanes down on Madeira Drive, down by Peter pan. So you park your car and the open your door immediately onto cycle lane. And then have to cross a cycle lane to get onto the pavement.

Steve: Yeh. Again, Madeira Drive there, you know that road there is a lovely old road. It’s used for various things including the Brighton Speed trials that’s been running for a number of years now plus various other events, the old London to Brighton runs, the marathon and things like that all end up on the seafront there. Well again, in their wisdom, they put this cycle lane in. This cycle lane is actually if you look at it, probably wider than the pavement, it’s probably wider than one of the carriage ways down there. So if you actually go down there, it’s total confusion. You’ve got the pavement. You’ve then got a cycle lane that is so wide that you could drive a bus on it. You’ve then got car parking which appears to be the cars abandoned in the middle of the road. You’ve then got these large great what I’d call window tubs almost like window tubs, you know the old flower tubs stuck across the middle of the road, so that people can run into – but they’re supposed to treat them like a chicane and they’re supposed to slow people down. If you actually go down there and you look, and there’s one or two cars parked along there they look for all the worth as if the cars have been abandoned in the middle of Madeira drive. The cycle lane sort of goes onto the road then it goes onto the pavement, back onto the road. Again, there’s another picture here in the Argus about a cycle lane on the seafront, on the actual footpath and you can just see there a cyclist, in his Day-Glo with his helmet on trying to worm his way in between pedestrians that are totally jamming up the cycle lanes. But of course they’re gonna say “Well we need to do something about it”. Instead of going back to thinking “Why did we put a cycle lane on a footpath in the first place?”, I can see what they’re going to do. They’ll probably take the inside lane out down there, and they’ll make that for cycles only, give the footpath back to the pedestrians and say to the motorist “Go to Hell!”. That I think is probably the way they’re going to go. This is what they’ve been saying to the motorist for, I don’t know how many years, we’re going back to persecution and discrimination again here.

Andy: Well on that positive note we’d better leave it there, Steve. But thanks for talking to us and if you need your car fixed come to Steve’s excellent garage, 1st Class Garage in Kemptown, Brighton, UK. Thanks Steve.

Steve: OK. Thanks Andy.