Malvern countdown...

 It's late on Wednesday and I'm starting to look forward to Malvern. Saturday is looking better than Sunday, with sun and clouds for the day;

That should give me pleasant driving conditions both ways (although I might wear a jacket to head down!). To get to Malvern I normally just head down the M5, but it's as boring as it is long so I thought a better route would be on the cards.

Turns out following the A449 will get me almost to the showground, then I can pick up signposts for the last few miles. The A449 is not particularly twisty turny, but it's very green and nice to drive on. Well it is when you're between towns rather than driving through them. 

That's a 2 hour drive with traffic, but 80 minutes without. I'll head out around 8:30 for roughly 10am arrival, that's still plenty early. I will need a comfort break and coffee when I arrive.

(Thursday)

Despite the spectacular thunderstorm last night, things are still really hot everywhere and it's still lasting until the weekend (touch wood!). 

One task I have assigned to myself is finding a fuel pump. I have a cheap Chinese pump that, to be fair, has done alright so far. Apart from it's initial fit when I put it on backwards, it actually does what it's supposed to do. It is a bit noisy but that soon disappears as I start driving. 

I want to consider replacing it, or at least having a replacement on hand. I was trying to find a brand replacement, with CBS having a replacement for not much money. But it wasn't branded, so I was torn between CBS (hopefully) not selling garbage and it being unbranded. So I posted a question, and very quickly got reminded that a 'Bosch 044' pump is the go-to pump for builds. I remember that from very early on in my build but had completely forgotten about it. 

Of course, it was so long ago that Bosch 044 no longer exists, it's been replaced by a Bosch '200'. So I'm on a mission to find one at a decent price. It just so happens that I'm going to a car show this weekend so I'll take a look there. 

Fitting it shouldn't be too bad, I may need to re-terminate the hose and maybe enlarge the bracket but apart from that it should be fine. The benefit of replacing the pump also means I'll have a bit more headroom for any future engine upgrade. 

I also had an idea about 3D printing a seat base. I have a reel of TPU that works really well to create 'soft things'. Why not print a cushion? Admittedly it would take a while and I'd want to print a test piece first, but I'd be able to print any profile I wanted. It's an interesting experiment, probably massive overkill considering sponge would be quicker, but isn't that the point of 3D printing? Why do a job the easy way if you can use a 3D printer, take 3 times as long and get 80% of what you were doing in the first place? 

(as an aside, that reminded me I needed a TPU cap for the dashcam connection. That's all done now, hopefully it'll keep moisture and prying eyes away from the memory card)

(Friday)

It's a bit less sunny out there, the temperature is down a fair bit but still worthy of being out and about. Of course, I'm not, I'm stuck at work with a release going out at the end of the day and we're working our socks off to get it done in time. At least I'm busy, unfortunately it's not 'car related' busy :( .

The TPU test pieces have been printed. I went for a 2 inch square by 1 inch deep pad, no walls and gyroid infill. This is a 'collapsible' infill that is deliberately less sturdy than pretty much any other type of infill. I started with 5% infill, that's far too squidgy. It would give no support at all. 10% went too far, that was rock solid. However that could be good for the base where most of my weight is. 8% works well though, that's comparable to my sponge so would work really well. Whether it would last as long as sponge I don't know, and to be honest it took so long to print such small test pieces that I suspect I'll just use sponge for the final product! 

One thing that did occur to me is that I need to do a pre-drive check tonight. I've not looked under the bonnet for a while and it'll be worth me doing a quick once over to confirm nothing else is loose. I also want to buy something for lunch tomorrow, it'll be the first time I'll be able to sit in my car and eat lunch compared to just sitting on the grass or wandering around eating a sandwich. Normally I pop to the supermarket just before I get to Malvern (there's a Tesco nearby) but this time I think I'll be a bit more prepared. 

(Saturday!)

Well, it's a nice sunny day, a bit cool which should make the journey very pleasant. Everything is packed and I just have the pre-drive check to do. I'll see everyone at the show!