Kitty Litter

Out of the 600 odd cameras in the Met area they are removing film from about 400 cameras and gradually decommissioning them. Why? Well I’ll let them in the know tell you that. The following from Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens who says the cameras should be used to focus on preventing accidents at blackspots, not raising money from drivers.

Which amazingly is a common sense decision. I agree fully with the concept of speed cameras, they are there simply to save lives. If they are placed in areas that are known accident hot spots, then I’m all for them. There’s enough danger on the roads without prats speeding down the high street.

However speed is not really the problem, it’s the appallingly poor standard of driving in this country. Recently a woman pushed too hard on a country lane and got it wrong, tragically killing two young girls – one of which was her daughter. Country lanes are exceptionally tough to drive down at speed and I bet that the woman in question was simply out of her depth. You can’t drive on the limit outside of a competitive event – it’s simply too dangerous.

Perhaps with that in mind, the police should start a campaign to promote fast driving in the right time and place – on the circuit/stage/test.

I thought I’d give you an update on the progress of my two machines for this season (one hopes).

The Austro-Porsche (Formula Vee – see last month) is coming along gradually. Once I got it home, I stripped it until it was completely naked. I then explored the inside to see if I would fit in (the older ones are often too small for me). It was really rather tight and I’m still not convinced that the car will be able take me, so if not it is back to the work’s car which would be a disappointment.

Having the bare chassis in the garage I decided to have a look over the assorted bits and bobs and giblets that came with it. I had a very dirty but complete and usable road spec front beam, some very old race suspension, bodywork (mostly knackered), various pieces of suspension bits, driveshafts, a pair of engines (old looking), crash bar, front hubs, some old drum brakes, steering wheel and loads of assorted bits and bobs – pretty much all of it in a bad way.

However I had a good starting position to build an on the nose competitive 2004 spec Vee out of the ruins of the 1971 championship winner.

I picked up some lightweight modern spec but historic looking wheels from another driver – who in turn had bought them from a drag racer – I got a mega deal on them. Split rims with a chromed outer rims and black centres.

I loaded the whole malarkey aboard a hired van and headed off to the AHS works / factory – home of the Challenger chassis – the same as I ran last year. This year my car will be run by the AHS team along with the four works’ cars in all the Vee races I do. At the moment they are building it to a rolling chassis level. When that’s complete I’ll give you another update.

The NKS ‘Magog’ is coming along a lot more slowly than hoped – the original engine was totally shagged so the search is on for a decent replacement. I’ve also planned a mega new paint scheme for it. I’m planning two more NKS’s now so ‘Magog’ is to be a development hack I think.