The further adventures of Doogle

I ordered one from GSF, £5 including postage.

 

Stop it.

 

C'mon Snotty....where's the double entendre

 

It's Ms Scrooge. She started it.

 

Behave! You’re spending to much time with @CollyP …. Bad influence


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Oo you are awful, but I like it !

 

We are currently out and about in the North, after two nights in the van at a star camp near Barnard Castle. A good place for an eye test, apparently, I found with a bit of coaching that I can just see the Andromeda Galaxy with the naked eye , 2.5 million light years away.
Many heavenly bodies are named after chocolate, Mars, Galaxy, Milky Way Titan etc.
Last night it was mostly overcast but over the weekend using the telescopes provided I’ve seen Solar flares and sunspots, galaxies, Jupiter and it’s moons and seen the Milky Way is made of a squillion stars.
Dougal has behaved, and not objected to being spelt correctly for a change. The passenger window has stopped opening, and the driver’s side bamboo shelf became dislodged. It stuck in a new position where it is so firmly jammed that I’m leaving it alone as it’s more solid than when I mounted it.
I filled up today and was surprised to find we’ve been doing 28mpg! Very little oil used, but I did stop for a cool-down tickover at the top of the Pennines when the oil temperature was starting to scare me. I had a near miss parking when reversing up to a high kerb, Kas pointed out I was about to wipe out the exhaust system!
Everyone we meet loves the van, smiles and waves everywhere we go. I’d hate to be stuck behind me though, but I now laugh when I see a speed camera.
We’re now cheating by spending two nights at our favourite hotel in Ravenstonedale, but it was prebooked for our Anniversary. The manager has just been showing me pictures of a Splitty he hired to go round Scotland this Summer, I don’t know what that cost but he enjoyed it.
Pictures to follow but only when I get home to a proper computer.

 

Some pics from our weekend as promised:


Mrs W, stew, cold lager from the fridge and clutter, note the colour coded kettle, not sad at all.



At the starcamp, we only got stars the first night, the second was pants but nothing anyone could do. During the day there were telescopes with filters on to observe the sun..


If you embiggen this pic, taken with my phone held up to the eyepiece of a telescope, you can just see solar flares around the edge, which are actually thousand of miles high.



Sunday we had a trip out in the van to see High Force on the River Tees, where it goes over the Whin Sill, a layer of hard volcanic Dolerite



Also Low Force a couple of miles walk downstream, we watched nutcases going over this in Kayaks...



Finally we moved south, we stopped to see the ruins of Brough castle, what tickled me about this is that while most castles were destroyed by war or being abandoned, this one burned down in the 16th century when a Christmas party got out of hand! Now that's what I call a *******up.



We arrived at Ravenstonedale. The AA Good Pub Guide lists only one good pub for the whole of Manchester, Ravenstonedale, a tiny village, has three, one reason why we like it.


We went for a walk to see the Smardale Viaduct, on a disused line that used to carry a million tons of coke a day, that's quite a habit.

 

“The AA Good Pub Guide lists only one good pub for the whole of Manchester.”

AA as in Association or are you a paid up member of the other one?

 

We’re just back from a motorbike rally, the last ever NABD Rally. Although I still have three bikes, I’ve retired from camping, so the bus gives me a way to do rallies again, they’re great fun.
The van went fine, although it wasn’t a long trip. It used no oil and gave me no problems, though I think the clutch could do with a couple of turns adjustment. I’m about to order a new leisure battery, despite not using the fridge or lights, my CPAP machine sucked all the juice out of the huge battery after six hours then packed up due to low voltage. That battery had been through long layups so a new one may give me a better shot at doing two nights without a hookup.

The best bit was being able to make a bacon butty and a cup of tea first thing rather than going to stand in a long queue of hung over bikers. My hangover wasn’t helped by them selling Newky Brown at £2 a bottle, I haven’t paid that little since the 1980’s. So I drank twice as much, of course.

Notice I parked next to a potential replacement engine source. This morning the owner asked me if I had any oil spare.

An prototype bay I spotted

 

Great write ups...
Love your adventures..

 

A monster tricycle. Some people are obviously short of something better to do, although they’d probably say that about us, spending years welding an old van.


I liked this one for the colour, obviously. Note the reg.


I did take a video of three people drunkenly dancing on a trestle table, but it stubbornly refused to collapse while I was filming. It did later, of course.

We watched the presentation of the trophies for the best show bikes, the highlight was when everyone clapped and cheered as an old bloke with a stick came past on his way somewhere, everyone thought he was the winner coming to collect his trophy.

 

After much moaning that it was a waste not going anywhere, we’re currently sat outside the van, on a site next to the River Ribble outside Clitheroe, catching the rays and drinking cold G&T from a thermos bottle. Dougal went fine, I’m slightly alarmed by the oil light coming on at traffic lights, but I’m sure I read a warning to expect that. Anyway it isn’t blowing up, so far, and runs a lot happier after the Zed carb tune up.
I was going to upload a photo, but it seems that the site free Wi-Fi isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

 

Nice around there.
Your oil light, being off the aftermarket dual sender, does light up at a higher pressure than a stock one would. Hopefully that's all it is, but you know I think your jetting needs looking at and could be causing it to run hotter than it should.
This one?

 

28 mpg is a bit of a sign of things being a bit lean too. When the oil temperature gets hot .. there are scarier things going on in the cylinder heads. ..

One way to deal with the oil light coming on like that is to just lean gently on the accelerator in neutral at the lights so it goes off again. Eventually the faster fan speed will cool the engine more than the faster "idle" warms it up.

Sometimes stopping the engine completely when its screaming hot is the last thing it will ever do, while idling it or driving down a long hill gently or engine braking in a low gear may cool it quicker than an immediate stop.

 

Just whipped the two rear plugs out (the ones I can reach) and they do look like she’s running weak. It’ll have to do for getting home, however the temperature has dropped considerably, yesterday was the hottest day of the year up here.
I’m away again in 10 days time to an event we have tickets for. I either risk catastrophe on the grounds it’s done a lot of miles with those jets in, and not melted yet, or try getting the carbs off, find what jets I have and go up a size, then set her up again (at least I’ve seen it done now, but I’ll need to get a flow meter), but to a deadline. I don’t want it in bits waiting for parts in the post.

 

Perhaps the PO knows the jetting fitted?

 

I’ll pm him, he pops by now and again

 

We’re back home from our travels, no dramas, and if I didn’t have oil temperature and pressure gauges to worry about, as per standard, I’d say it ran perfectly. I’ve ordered a thermometer from Amazon (Mrs D has one for making jam that I’m forbidden from touching) to check the temperature gauge for myself. I have two, the one on the sump barely registers, while the dipstick one goes nuts.

 

Well the thermometer arrived, I put the dipstick and the thermometer in a jug of hot water. 85 degrees C on the thermometer corresponds to 130 degrees on the gauge so panic over a bit. We came home at an indicated 130 degrees and I was expecting it to seize at any moment. I’ve been on The Samba to see what other vans run at, and as I’ve found with US bike forums, they all turn into oil threads without really telling me anything.