TVR Photograph Session

Received an email the other week from my local TVR Car Club organiser. Apparently a chap doing a degree in digital studies was putting together an exhibition and wanted to include some highly recognisable marques from the 90's.

I reached out to him and offered mine... and a few emails later we arranged to meet one cold night in March at a remote location. Imagine how I felt driving there, never met this guy before, was it for real, was someone going to half inch my pride and joy, and most of all would the car make it there and back. After all it was the first run out of the year?

Needless to say, all my concern was for nothing, as the guy turned out to be a very nice chap called Andy. Not only did he have a passion for cars... he drove a BMW 335 but I won't hold that against him... he was also a very good photographer, as you can see from this picture.

It took us about two hours of shooting to get the pictures that he wanted and it was great to watch how he set the car up and chose different angles and lighting... here you can see my feeble effort of how the previous shot looked to me... this is exactly the same car position, honestly!

During the shoot, we also had a very nice chap come out and make us a cup of tea... imagine 9pm on a cold March evening and two total strangers are stood outside your house taking photo's... what would you do?

Turns out this guy was also a petrol head and had an AC Cobra replica in his garage. We had a good chat about his experiences of driving the Nurburgring, and we thanked him for the tea.

Anyway the moral of this story is reach out and offer some help to students, it's amazing how many people turn down their requests, you might be as amazed at the results as I was.

Sports Relief Mile

Participated in the Sports Relief Mile in Gateshead this morning, my kids and myself were running for charity... our dog, a Border Terrier, also ended running and up doing his bit for Sport Relief. We all had a great time and I have to say the location and organisation of the event was excellent, what's more the sun came out and it was a beautiful day. Congratulations to all of the other people who ran today, gives you a great feeling doesn't it?

How can your business use Twitter?

If you’re reading this blog then you may be a regular visitor to the Sage Blog, or more likely you’ll have been directed here by a tweet.

My inspiration to write this blog came from reading an article in the BA Business Life magazine whilst I was flying last week. I read the statistic that 27% of UK SME’s use twitter. Doing a quick piece of math, 27% of 1.4 million businesses registered for VAT equals 460,000 SME businesses using twitter in the UK today… and this number would rise to well over 1 million if you include businesses who are not VAT registered.

There is a readymade network out here that the SME can leverage, not only to share information about their business, but to set up trading network and build their brand. What’s more the buzz word in industry today is globalisation, more and more businesses are trading overseas and twitter plays to this as you’ll see in the example below, as it has no boundaries.

As a social networking tool Twitter has had a bit of a meteoric rise to fame with between 3 and 6 million users from all walks of life, with some very notable participants in the likes of Bill Gates and Barak Obama, although I’m not sure the latter writes his own tweets.

I have to admit when I tried it first time round, I was unimpressed… how can it possibly be of any use? How do I know who to follow? How do I get followers? What could I talk about? and how could I say it in only 140 characters?

Today, I’m a convert, I use twitter every day, it’s an excellent source of news and information on just about any topic. For me it allows me to keep my finger on the pulse of IT and Business information as well as to share information about Sageas well as my other passions with people who have chosen to follow me.

When I say share information with people who have chosen to follow me, the twitter network leverages the six degrees of separation principle well, so if one of my follower’s re-tweet’s my tweet, then all of their followers get to see my tweet, and so on.

To give you an example of how this works, I tweeted a link to my last blog on the secret to successful innovation then I watched what happened… even though I only have a few hundred followers myself, within the first hour, my original tweet had an audience of over 30,000 people. Within a couple of days my blog had gone around the world and turned up on other sites such as Innovation America, it also stimulated others to reuse parts of my blog in their own innovation blog a way to keep the message alive and a complement indeed.

I was amazed by what had happened here… one piece of information, seen by a huge audience across the globe and recycled a second and third time, what’s more it increased network traffic on sage.co.uk and on average people looked at 8 pages in addition to the one they were directed to… and all from a single tweet… the power of social networking truly is amazing.

I would strongly encourage all of the SME’s reading this to think about how you might use the power of social/business networking to benefit your business. Twitter is just one part of what you need, it’s a tool to build your network, headline key information and lead people to your business. When they get there they need to find a website, or a blog with more meaningful and relevant information.

I don’t propose to tell you how to get going with twitter in this blog as it has been covered by many people already… although you might find this link useful from CIO online and this link from Social SmallBiz who offer great advice to SME’s or our own guide to social media for small businesses.

Give it a try, other than a little of your time and effort, it’s free… and you might be as amazed with the results as I was.

Sage Blog

What is the secret to successful innovation?

I was intrigued when reading a story recently which defined the meaning of innovation as the execution of an idea, whereas creativity was having the idea in the first place. Most people I speak to would instinctively lump these two things together and call them innovation. So, I went off to the web to check this out; here I found a number of meanings. A couple that jumped off the page were…

“Innovation can be described as the result of some amount of time and effort into researching (R) an idea, plus some larger amount of time and effort into developing (D) this idea, plus some very large amount of time and effort into commercialising this idea into a market place with customers”.

Being from an R&D background, this strikes a chord with me as it combines the idea and the delivery, and more importantly it goes further to look at commercialising… I wonder how many companies put all of their effort into the first two parts and forget the last and arguably most important part? I have to say that I’ve seen this happen on more than one occasion.

Building on this point, I came across another thought provoking statement…

“Innovation is the conversion of ideas into cash. Invention is the conversion of cash into ideas.”

How many businesses set out to innovate but end up inventing? How many people remember the £40 million ATP Train innovation or invention? How many businesses really turn ideas into cash? and how many innovations end up costing the company a small fortune?

A few weeks back, I was watching this youtube video posted by Dennis Howlett, It’s a chap called R “Ray” Wang presenting how a major software vendor had failed to commercialise some great ideas.

Why does this happen? Did they get it wrong from a customer perspective? Did they work with customers to see if the original ideas were valued before they went on to deliver them? Did they fail to commercialise them? Do the company see this as a failure? Or was it actually a ‘share of voice’ Marketing and PR success despite the ideas not being widely adopted? Plenty of food for thought, and only the vendor themselves will know the answers.

Is the secret behind innovating to ask customers what they want before you start?

Controversially, I would have to say no to this question, well not entirely anyway… Whilst, I would advocate speaking to customers at all times and involving them through the process to add value, you can’t always rely on customers as your only source of “innovative ideas”. What’s more the customer will most likely be focused on today’s issues as opposed to looking for step change innovation. Henry Ford’s classic quote sums this up nicely…

“If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me a faster horse.”

To be really successful in business I believe you have to continually innovate and generate new ideas, not by relying solely on customers to tell you what they want, but by understanding how your customers work, what they need today, and where they are headed in the future.

In my experience the best and most successful innovations are the ones where you deliver something that the customer didn’t know they needed but can’t live without.

And what happens when you run out of ideas?

Go visit a bunch of customers!

Sage Blog

TVR Car Club outing to Floors Castle

Some cracking pictures from a TVR Car Club outing to Floors Castle in the Scottish borders last year. Forty or fifty TVR's roaring through Kelso was a sight and sound to behold.

Red V8 is in there somewhere, probably shy and retiring just like me!!!

New Springs for the Savage

About six months after replacing the chassis on the savage I finally got round to putting the new springs on... massive difference.

Thats it, the Savage is complete, i'm not planning to spend any more money on it!!!

Twitter Desktop Software

Been using Twitter for a while @_stuartlynn and @RedV8... have tried both TweetDeck

http://tweetdeck.com/beta/

and Seesmic Desktop

http://seesmic.com/...

Although both are very easy to install and do pretty much the same and work in a similar way, so far I prefer Seesmic Desktop... edges it on ease of use for me.

However, what I feel both lack is the ability to add new follows/followers and manage existing followers... unless of course i've simply not found this functionality yet... please ley me know if this is the case?

New Chassis for the Savage

Okay, the story goes like this, bought a new HPI factory shell for my savage from ebay... very cheap I thought... turned out to be an XL body, longer than the wheelbase of my SS (DOH!)... What the hell I think, so I sent off for a XL conversion kit... below is what it looked like before, what I had to do to fit the new chassis (easy), and what it looks like now. The Before Savage...

Starting to come to pieces... shell off

Wheels removed, and shocks loosened at the top to allow me to get at the side plate screws... I thought I would take one side off at a time instead of dismantling everything

7 or so screws later and one side is off

Next I dropped one end off completely so I could get the new side plate into position

Here the new plate is fitted on the top side and the old one is still on the bottom, notice the difference in length (55mm)

Next reattach brake linkage and throttle

New heavy duty dog bone also supplied with kit, considerably longer then original

Put the new dog bone in place and fitted the back end back in place (all screws thread locked in place)

First and only problem I came across... I had to modify the engine braces to give more clearance to the new dog bone... (not shown here) but a file did the trick in a couple of minutes... [I plan to buy a heavy duty 3mm engine plate and braces next]

Other side plate fitted in exactly the same way as the first and here you can see all of the new length is behind the engine... effectively moving the COG more towards the middle of the truck... I wonder if I could re-site the fuel tank in there?

Almost finished now, tank, exhaust and carrying handle refitted (I must look out for a new carrying handle!!)

And finally the new body shell that caused me to upgrade is fitted... looks fantastic IMHO and I'm well pleased with the results

The wheelbase is now a whopping 400mm and I already had extended axles with 23mm hex conversions. I have new springs to go on, but ran out of time last night... recon i'll have a bash with these at the weekend and upgrade the springs next week. Took me about an hour and a half all in and that included a lot of cleaning along the way, the mod, and putting the kids to bed.

Out of Hibernation

Awoke my P&J from hibernation today.. for the 5th year of ownership..

Washed, polished (even in the garage over winter the bodywork gets grimy so needed the odd bit of t-cut followed by ultra deep shine), hoovered, dusted, cleaned seats, checked fluids. Fired up first turn of the key, took it for a gentle run, pumped up tyres... couldn't for the life of me remember the pressures so I settled on 24 front and 26 rear, great to hear that gurgle once more.

Original Chimaera Brochure

Some images takes from the original Chimaera brochure circa 1996

This is Red V8

This is my TVR Chimaera, she's a 1996 model, factory spec in burgundy with a 4.0l Rover V8 engine

Looks fantastic on the outside, and she's very fast... mainly because it is an engine on a few tubes, i.e. this is a Chimaera without the body on...

I've had her for 5 years now... and she's been a joy.

An Alarming Tale

Many of us have been here before, we only have one remote fob and it’s on its last legs, it only works when in close proximity to the passenger side windscreen pillar, it takes two or three goes to work, you've tried a new battery, and even the age old technique of holding it against your temple (yes, apparently it does magnify the signal) doesn’t work any more.

And then the inevitable happens, the day arrives when it gives up the ghost completely, and no matter what you try, you’re locked out of the car. At which point you rush into the house and log on to Pistonheads to ask someone for the ‘secret way in’, or if you are away from home you call the AA (who struggle to help, as they aren’t that familiar with TVR’s), so you’re left with no option but to break into your pride and joy.

After breaking, you can start the car, but usually the alarm starts going off, then you have to work out how to disable it, or take a hammer to it!

Hassle that you just don’t need, and hassle that you can easily prevent.

If you have the original code for your alarm then you can contact someone like Carl Baker at http://www.tvruk.tv/ who can supply a replacement fob with instructions how to code it in.

If you don’t have the original code, you could try and ask your local TVR dealer to track it down through the cars history, and if they can find it, then contact Carl to supply a replacement etc. However, I wouldn’t recommend this, as the records back at TVR are very poor, or no longer exist, believe me I tried this route to no avail.

If neither of the above work, again I’d strongly suggest you don’t even bother with the second option, then you need to remove the alarm unit from the car and send it off to Carl who will reprogram the unit and supply two brand new key fobs. Whilst this might sound like a daunting task, it really couldn’t be easier, and you don’t need to be a mechanic.

The alarm unit is located in the dashboard, at the passenger side. To get to it is easy:

1. Prize off the plastic caps and remove the two cross head screws holding the glove compartment (more an elasticated flap really) in place.

2. Ease the glove compartment down, to reveal an access hole to the underside of the dashboard.

3. Feel around under the dash to locate and then remove the two 10mm nuts shown at points 1 and 2 (shown on the diagram below), you don’t have to worry about the infamous third nut to gain access.

4. Once these nuts are removed, ease the top of the dash upwards first then ease it forwards slightly just enough to gain access to the alarm unit (already removed in the picture below).

5. Unplug the alarm unit from the wiring loom; you’ll need to disconnect two large white plugs and three smaller ones to get the unit out completely. The two large plugs can only go in one way, and the three smaller ones are colour coded, red, white and black, so you don’t have to remember where they came from.

6. Now you have the alarm unit out, package it up with plenty of bubble wrap, and send it off to Carl for reprogramming with any fobs you have by registered delivery. Be sure to give Carl a ring first to arrange payment etc.

7. In the meantime, the immobiliser can be turned off from the steering column and you can still drive the car, but you won’t be able to lock it.

8. A few days later you should receive the unit back, and refitting is the reversal or removal, about 10 minutes is all it takes.

Now you have two working fobs once more, which work from a reasonable distance, but more importantly you have the peace of mind that you’re not going to find yourself stranded one day by what really is a really simple problem to prevent.

TVR Chassis Treatment Part 2

Started this thread last week about the perils of waxoyl

http://www.pistonheads.co.uk/gassing/topic.asp?h=0...

Just finished scraping, preparing and painting the other side... much easier and less messy this week after learning the ropes last week.

I'd strongly recommend using a pair of surgical rubber gloves underneath a hardy pair of gardening gloves or the like... might seem a bit "mamby pamby" but prevents you from losing skin whilst scraping, and no messy hands when removing waxoyl with white spirit, or when applying POR treatments and paint.

I scraped at all of the visible rust first, which also removed a fair amount of waxoyl, then used the white spirit, then scraped some more where necessary before cleaning with the POR Marine Clean etc.

One thing I noticed today is that the passenger side takes more of a hammering than the drivers side, so if you really want to know what the condition of your chassis is check the outriggers on the passenger side.

Also, wanted to mention that I bought one of those Clarke CTJ1250A low profile trolley jacks from Ready2Race before I started the job. Excellent piece of kit, slips right under the TVR and I would strongly recommend it.

Well, one more coat of pain then I'm done... all I need now is a bit of good weather.

http://www.pistonheads.co.uk/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=8&t=520716&nmt=Chassis%20Treatment%20-%20Part%202&mid=46775

TVR Chassis Treatment Part 1

This time last year my chassis was a nice white powder coat… apart from a few bits of falking around the outriggers and rust starting to show through. Now I’m a paranoid soul and I decide to have a waxoyl chassis treatment done by the dealer at the same time as my annual service and MOT. I should have expected it really, but to my horror, I get the car back and my nice white chassis and most of the rest of the car underside, shocks, springs, driveshaft’s, and the bottom half or the engine bay are covered in black gunge, as is half of the bodywork in overspray.

A couple of days later I manage to convince myself it’s for the best, and although aesthetically horrible and not cheap either, my pride and joy will surely benefit in the long run. At this point I have to admit to being a fine weather TVR enthusiast, so my P&J has been tucked up in the garage most of the winter with a couple of hot water bottles and a blanket.. Okay I exaggerate, a little oil filled radiator keeps the place dry and slightly warm.

Anyway a few weeks back the weather breaks, blanket comes off and I go for a spin or two, join my fellow TVR Car Club chaps for a great run out… this is what it’s all about I think. Time to clean the car and I wash and polish as usual, and I happen to have a look underneath… the waxoyl is starting to come away in one or two places so I have a scrape around… F$%k it’s not just one or two places it’s all over and what’s more underneath is surface rust. How can this be I think? isn’t the waxoyl supposed to delay ageing, all that seems to have happened is premature ageing…. I’ve only done 2,000 miles since last service.

So this morning, time for action… up she goes on the axle stands, wheels off, scrapers in my hand to tackle the rust, and white spirit and a selection of rags to get rid of the gunge. Six hours of back breaking work later, amid constant cursing of the guy, whoever he was, who sprayed this gunge all over my car, and I’ve got one side cleaned up… not just the chassis, but the wishbones, anti roll bars, and everything else. The good news is that the chassis is actually in excellent condition, really solid, but I dread to think what it would have been like in another year if I’d just patched up the gunge.

I’ve decided to use POR15, based on lots of advice on here. I bought some last year before I had the gunge put on, but didn’t use it, seemed too much like hard work. So I’m writing this whilst having a cup of coffee, after having used it today. I followed the instructions to the letter, POR Degreaser first, followed by Etch primer, and finally the first thin coat of POR 15… looks good so far and the next coat goes on in a couple of hours.

So why am I sharing this, well just to advise caution if you think that a chassis is in good condition because it has been waxoyled, in my case this was definitely not so… all it served to do was mask the rust gremlins that are our very worst enemy.

Also, to say there’s no shortcut to doing the job right, it’s hard work albeit rewarding when you get it done. Mind you I have to tackle the other side next week, and I’m sure the gunge man’s ears will be burning once again!!

http://www.pistonheads.co.uk/gassing/topic.asp?h=0...