My Blog
The personal blog of me, Tim Trott. What I get up to, photography, news and so on.
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Monday 16th October 2006
Today was my first time driving since the accident I was involved in, back in late February. Since my insurance company have refused to insure me for less than £1400 on a Ford Escort and most other cars were just a point blank refusal, I have had to be added as a named driver to my parents Ford Ka policy. I was a little rusty for a few minutes, but I soon got comfortable again and I am now driving perfectly fine again, and for short journeys there is no uneasiness or discomfort whilst driving, physical or physiologically.
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This post is filed under Car Crash, Injury and Recovery, Cars by Lonewolf at 8:43pm
Monday 13th March 2006
On Monday 27th February 2006, whilst innocently driving home from work after my shift finished (around 11pm), unknown to me an oncoming car round the next bend swerved to avoid an animal in the road and lost control. The car in front of me was able to see what happened and took evasive action, but I did not have a chance as we were both traveling at approx 60mph. We collided head on at these speeds, the impact destroying the front half of my car. Unfortunately my legs were also in the front half of the car as well and they were trapped between the floor (which had buckled and risen), and under the dash. It took the emergency services over an hour and a half to cut me from the wreck. Thankfully I am still alive, and considering the nature of the crash I have escaped with relatively few injuries.
I have a torn ligament on my left ankle, deep lacerations on my left knee (15 stitches), multiple fractures to my left arm (I have had an operation to put all the pieces back and I have a metal plate and four screws, 19 stitches), my right knee cap was shattered (I had two operations to reconstruct it, again more metal and 17 stitches), and I have severe and painful chest bruising from the seatbelt and suspected fractures on two ribs.
I was taken to the cardiac care unit before being moved to orthopedic wards and I was in hospital for two weeks. Now I am home and can start healing properly, although it will be a long road. All I can do at the moment is lie around with an arm and leg in plaster, and unable to move much because of the pain in my ribs. At least I can use my laptop and watch TV!
I would like to thank all the emergency services that attended, especially Police Constable Sean White, who was one of the first on the scene. He stayed with me the whole time, kept me awake and talking, administered first aid and kept me comfortable with blankets, despite not being able to take shelter from the rain himself. All the fire crews were fantastic; they did there best to cut me out as quickly as possible with the minimum discomfort to myself. The ambulance crews were also fantastic, keeping the pain down with morphine, and making me comfortable. Lastly but by no means least, everybody in Frenchay Hospital who looked after me for two weeks; everyone in A and E, Helen and Fiona in CCU ward 103, and all the staff on ward 202 where I spent most of my time, and last, but not least, the surgeons who did a great job of putting me back together. They were all fantastic. Thank you.
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This post is filed under Car Crash, Injury and Recovery, Honda Civic by Lonewolf at 10:15am
Fitting New Parts to the Civic
Thursday 16th February 2006
Since I have had my Honda Civic back after the engine rebuild it has been performing very well. There are none of the signs of a bad engine this time and pulls alot harder than the last one. I think it has been done correctly this time. I am still running it in before I give it the beans. My brother in law sold me his HKS vacuum gauge, and since we both had the week off we fitted all the parts I had lying around, such as a Tanabe Sustec Strut Brace, Mugen Oil and Radiator cap, Spoon Earth Code grounding system and a few other bits and bobs. Just waiting for February’s pay cheque then I can get some Skunk2 Cams and Hondata ECU then I’m done with the modifications. Hopefully it will be around 180bhp when its finished. 
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This post is filed under Honda Civic by Lonewolf at 3:33pm
Wednesday 1st February 2006
I had a call yesterday that my car is finally all repaired and running properly.
Tony has taken the engine apart and stripped it down. The port and polish of the cylinder head was far to aggressive for a naturally aspirated engine, which was even causing oil to enter the combustion chamber. The head should have only been lightly polished to remove the cast imperfections. Also the valve seats were not cut back properly, causing oil to enter the cylinders. Since too much metal had been taken out the only option was for Karma to replace the head cylinder for me. This was then sent away to head flow experts for a mild port and polish, skimming and valve seats. When Tony got the head back he installed new Skunk2 valve springs for me (which I supplied).
While he was waiting for the head to come back he dismantled the gearbox to find that the bearings had collapsed and the syncro on 4th gear had melted. Because this was a mechanical fault, and not covered by the warranty any more I had to pay for a new one, but he was able to source an Integra Type-R gearbox at a very good price. Tony then transferred my Quaife ATB diff to the new gearbox.
He then proceeded to work on the block, stripping out the pistons and replaced all the piston rings and oil seals. The main and big end bearings had already been replaced by the previous mechanic, but they were double checked. The distributor, power steering pipe and throttle cable bracket were all replaced with the correct parts and the faulty thermostat was replaced.
When I collected it, by means of compensation, Alex give me a set of Nology Hotwires in black, and has sorted out a shiny intake pipe for me (I supplied the HKS mushroom filter).
I am very happy with the work that Tony had done, the engine is a lot smoother, pulls harder, VTEC engages properly and most importantly it does not smoke any more. The only problem I had was a minor adjustment to the idle control.
Finally, after nearly six months I have the engine swap I was after!
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This post is filed under Honda Civic by Lonewolf at 8:53pm
Friday 23rd December 2005
I had a phone call on Tuesday to say that he had looked at the car and the gearbox will need replacing, but I will have to cover the cost of a new part as it is out of warranty and the cylinder head will need to be replaced, at Karma’s cost, as far to much material was removed during the port and polish.
This afternoon I popped in and we had a good chat, and I enquired about valve springs as I will be looking into cams in the future and as the head is off and being rebuilt, now would be a good time. Tony showed me a few things on the car, and a little bit about how gearboxes work and the problems with the old one. I left feeling much more positive, no hard feelings any more.
Earlier this evening I had a call from Trading Standards, asking how things were going between myself and Karma. I was able to give them good news that Karma are fixing all their mistakes and its looking good for all repairs to be carried out early in the new year. The will call be back in the second week of January just to follow up. Hopefully I can tell them that it is all sorted and they can close the case.
Attached Thumbnails
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This post is filed under Honda Civic by Lonewolf at 8:28pm
Monday 19th December 2005
I have been speaking with Trading Standards and my brother-in-law I reluctantly decided to take my broken down car back to Karma Imports to have the faults looked at. My brother in law convinced me that as they have a new mechanic, Tony, now I should let him look at it. Tony had nothing to-do with the previous work and it was unfair to tarnish him with the same brush as the previous mechanic.
Yesterday my brother in law and I compiled a list of faults, which I gave to Tony to look through, and he looked over the car with me and even added a few more items to the list.
When the time came to take the car for a test drive, Tony could not get reverse gear to engage, so that put a stop to that one. He could feel and hear that the gearbox was no good though. He did a compression test for me, the previous day me and my brother in law saw plumes of blue smoke from the exhaust and were worried about the piston rings. Compression results were good at 170, 179, 175, 165psi from cylinder 1 to 4 but he suspected the valve stem seals on the head, and the lack of power could be accounted for my an overly aggressive port and polish. Karma have shown willing to repair the faults without cost to myself, so I left the car with them this afternoon afternoon.
I’m happy to let Tony fix all the problems. I have given him a printed list of the problems to work though.
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This post is filed under Honda Civic by Lonewolf at 3:48pm
