Back in beige

[jamie]

Nice to hear from you all, and to see what everyone else is up to!

...the immigration guy at LAX couldn't believe that we'd be spending most of the month in PS (not LA etc)- he said we'd be bored after 3 days. Like you, didn't happen.

Typical LA mindset. Only boring people get bored.

[Darren65]

Great to hear you and the family are having a great time Mr Lipman....you are so SoCal

How's that lovely Citroen coming along? x

[jamie]

Great to hear you and the family are having a great time Mr Lipman....you are so SoCal

How's that lovely Citroen coming along? x

I sold it on - was a crazy idea, given the stress level of moving abroad and essentially starting a business all over again. When we moved out of LA I wasn't going to have a hangar to keep it in, so it had to go.

I've attempted to maintain a one-in, one-out rule on old cars, bikes and aeroplanes for years. Own one good thing, look after it and enjoy it.

Props to those that can manage a collection, but it's never ends well when I break my rule. At one time, a few years back, I had three aeroplanes, two old Renaults, a bike and a scooter, and shite was always broken.

[jamie]

All that said, right now I wouldn't mind a $3000, don't care, piece of crap Baja Bug to smash about in the desert with my boy.

[Gary71]

A friend's jet, which he bought off Las Vegas Craigslist for $5000

Only in America ‘the jet he bought from Craigslist for $5k’

Good to hear from you again.

[Gary71]

All that said, right now I wouldn't mind a $3000, don't care, piece of crap Baja Bug to smash about in the desert with my boy.

Do it.



Although that’s probably not a $3000 piece of crap...

[willbrown]

Fantastic Jamie!!! I love the photo of your pal in the $5k jet. Absolutely priceless and well beyond cool :o)

Good to hear you're doing well.

[jb]

You are a legend Jamie
What a great report
Very glad you are flying again
I love your RV4

[jamie]

December 2019 update.

Since the car was finished (even in the cool, moist British air) I noticed it ran hot. Hot when you pressed on, and hot when on the motorway. Since moving to the desert of South West United States, to a dry, hot valley surrounded by 6-8000 ft mountain passes, the car would run hot if you so much as drove it to the shops.

At the end of last spring I took the car to Chuckwalla Raceway for a track day. I could get about 15 minutes out of a 20 minute session before the oil temp guage started to hit 235F. That's my limit - if you run an aircraft engine (another four cylinder, air cooled boxer...) up there for too long, you'll f*** it up, so I'm not risking doing that to my lovely car.

The summers here in the desert are about 40 degrees, so I wasn't going to be driving the car for a while anyway. I dropped the motor, threw it in the back of the truck, and brought it home to my office. After stripping it down to a long block, I pulled the heads and flew them up to Ollie's in Lake Havasu to be drilled for a second set of plugs. These guys do all sorts of machining work on Porsche air-cooled motors (only) and have a great reputation. Havasu Airport is a 45 minute flight (or a three hour drive) has cheap Avgas, a great restaurant & brewery called Hangar 24, and a shitbox Ford Windstar courtesy car which has that sweet 90s Ford plastic + musty air conditioning smell that I really like, so it's nice to go there.



A few weeks later I collected the heads and reassembled the engine. The car is now running crank-fired ignition, through a Microsquirt ECU (variation of Megasquirt V2 in a sealed ECU unit) to two VW wasted spark coilpacks from a 2.0 Mk4 Golf. So far it works beautifully. I have been able to reduce my advance from 35 degrees to 26 degrees, and the engine runs way, way cooler. This morning I drove from Palm Springs to Temecula with my little boy, and didn't see temps above 200F.

Next modification ideas much appreciated. Fuel injection is the obvious choice. I like the idea of turboing it, but I think I'm alone on that one.

[hot66]

Nice one Jamie

Spent a Halloween night in havasu a few years ago.. great little oasis with some amazing boats

[911hillclimber]

Next Mod?
A/C and injection surely?

Good to see younger DDK'rs moving around in search of a better life.
We were 'invited' to work permanently in Santa Rosa, north Cal, way back in the very early 80's, but family and lack of bravery stopped us....

[Gary71]

Good to see the next generation of Lipman getting involved

[impmad2000]

Turbo sounds good to me Jamie.

[sladey]

How about suspension and brake mods Jamie?

[jamie]

Very nice to hear from you all!

How about suspension and brake mods Jamie?

I completed the rebuild of the car on Bilsteins. Over time, I realised they were way too damped for the minimal weight of the car. I replaced them with standard Boge units and the ride and handling was much improved.

The car is on SC brakes, which seem to work just fine and give very nice pedal feel. The limit is my 6in tyres, which I have no plans to change because I love those too.

Things I would like to change are my gearbox shift, which feels very tight (but perhaps better than the alternative), fifth gear (would like to be a touch taller) and perhaps injection. Maybe. I do like the analogue feel of carbs, and I seem to get great MPG on them.

But I do already have an ECU installed, so perhaps if I can get more power from EFI, I'd take that, too