Skip to main content

Unpimp my ride

It was a VW commercial years ago, where people would buy GTI that had gone Essex and remove all the useless stuff, including very loud exhaust systems.  I know this is a strange direction for a farming channel, still I always wondered.  The quest for knowledge was driven by an old Top Gear episode where Jeremy Clarkson modified his vehicle by adding huge tires and raising the whole thing.  Invariably this leads to terrible handling.  The funny bit of course, was that Jeremy never seemed to learn his lesson, which was part of his charm on Top Gear.

My future son-in-law asked if we had a barn where he could store an old car that he owns, as they will soon be moving permanently to the farm.  The car right now is largely in pieces, it arrived yesterday, it's a 1973 Jensen Interceptor.  As my son-in-law says it was a terrible car, but beautiful, in his spare time he is rebuilding it, not using old parts but rather redesigning the vehicle so that it can take a 3.0L BMW turbo engine.  He is using CAD to make parts it's an amazing hobby.  He has been working on the car for over a decade.  It used to belong to his father.

What he is doing is using 21st-century design and tools to make the perfect Jensen.  It has gone to a chemical bath to remove paint and filler, all parts were disassembled and measured and several are being replaced.  The three things that will remain are the chassis, body, and interior, the rest will be replaced.  

He showed me videos of people restoring old cars and adapting them to allow modern power plants.  But he also showed me endless videos of expensive automobiles being made impossibly loud and uncomfortable.  

The thing is, my son-in-law just wants a good car, eventually, and to have fun rebuilding it.  He knows it will have no value because of all the modern electronic and functioning AC and heating.  Apparently a no-no for Jensen aficionados.  

Anyway, the car is now in a barn ready for when the formally move in.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ok so I lied...a little (revised)

When we began looking at farming in 2013/14 as something we both wanted to do as a "second career" we invested time and money to understand what sector of farming was profitable.  A few things emerged, First, high-quality, source-proven, organic farm products consistently have much higher profit margins.  Secondly, transformation accounted for nearly 80% of total profits, and production and distribution accounted for 20% of profits: Farmers and retailers have low profit margins and the middle bits make all the money. A profitable farm operation needs to be involved in the transformation of its produce.  The low-hanging fruits: cheese and butter.  Milk, generates a profit margin of 5% to 8%, depending on milk quality.  Transformed into cheese and butter, and the profit margin rises to 40% (Taking into account all costs).  Second:  20% of a steer carcass is ground beef quality.  The price is low, because (a) a high percentage of the carcass, and (b) ground beef requires process
Post a Comment
Read more

21st century milk parlour

When we first looked at building our farm in 2018, we made a few money-saving decisions, the most important is that we purchased our milk herd from a retiring farmer and we also purchased his milking parlour equipment.  It was the right decision at the time.  The equipment dates from around 2004/05 and was perfectly serviceable, our installers replaced some tubing but otherwise, the milking parlour was in good shape.  It is a mature technology. Now, we are building a brand new milk parlour because our milking cows are moving from the old farm to the new farm.  So we are looking at brand new equipment this time because, after 20 years of daily service, the old cattle parlour's systems need to be replaced.  Fear not it will not be destroyed instead good chunks will end up on Facebook's marketplace and be sold to other farmers for spare parts or expansion of their current systems. All our cattle are chipped, nothing unusual there, we have sensors throughout the farm, and our milki
Post a Comment
Read more

So we sold surplus electricity one time last summer...(Update)

I guess that we will be buying an additional tank for our methane after all.   Over the past few months, we've had several electricity utilities/distributors which operate in our region come to the farm to "inspect our power plant facilities, to ensure they conform to their requirements".  This is entirely my fault.  Last summer we were accumulating too much methane for our tankage capacity, and so instead of selling the excess gas, that would have cost us some money, we (and I mean me) decided to produce excess electricity and sell it to the grid.  Because of all the rules and regulations, we had to specify our overall capacity and timing for the sale of electricity (our capacity is almost 200 Kw) which is a lot but more importantly, it's available 24/7, because it's gas powered.  It should be noted that the two generators are large because we burn methane and smaller generators are difficult to adapt to burn unconventional gas, plus they are advanced and can &qu
Post a Comment
Read more