Adrian Hollister

Bleedin' technology eh - damn thing stopped publishing new articles and I never notice

It's taken a while to get this off the ground, but we now have a new West Berkshire Green Party web site!

You can find the site here or by typing http://www.westberskgreens.org.uk

So far all has gone well on the rebuild of the 300tdi. The new cylinder head looks to be good and has cleaned up well. Fitting the new pistons has been a little more difficult as they were very tight, but all went back together ok. Firing up for the first time was a bit of a worry. I'd glaze busted the cylinders and put the pistons in with a little grease as they were v tight, so when it finally did start to turn over it would have some lubrication. When it did fire up though a good deal of that stodgy grease burnt off with a bit of smoke. What the heck though, it fired up and I ran it for about 15 mins on tick over-1500rpm.

All sounds good eh, so why the 'but...' in the title, well after the 15 mins or so the starter kicked in (no joke it did) and everything sounded very bad. I turned the engine off, but when ever the key is in position II or III the starter engages. Suspects so far are... a trapped cable during the rebuild (though I can't see anything), a buggered starter, or switch/electrical. I'm starting with the leccy side of things as this is the cheapest thing to repair.

In a recent article in the Newbury Weekly News, the Tory led West Berkshire Council seem to be (without any consultation) turning the street lights off at various times. Yet another half baked Tory fake green stance.

Adrian Hollister said, "..I wrote about this issue in my blog quite some time ago. The thought of having no street lights does at first seem a bad thing, but with the use of technologies such as LED's and OLED's street lights could be modified to produce full light during the busy early evening hours and 'good enough' lighting activated by sensors during the early hours of the morning (similar to the PIR's people are familiar with on their driveways).

My focus would be to ensure that any savings are passed on directly through the next council tax bill as a part of a 'Environmental savings' scheme.

What's the point in turning street lights off though if businesses, especially office blocks leave their lights on over night? We need to work with local businesses to ensure that savings would be provided to all those businesses that met some simple environmental and social principals - such as local employment, lights out schemes and give back to the local community."



Article: Turn the lights off at night Newbury

Created: February 13. 2008

Web link: http://adrianhollister.co.uk/archives/30-Turn-the-Lights-Off-at-Night-Newbury.html

Article Contents:

I've been interested in the question of street and shop lighting for some time and I've never quite got to grips with why people and businesses seem compelled to leave the lights on all night.

I'm in the lucky position of being north of Newbury in an area of outstanding natural beauty. Our village and the surrounding villages have no street lights. Everyone who is going to be out at night carries a torch, even visitors learn quickly that a torch helps them back to their car. We look up and see a blackish sky, but we can easily see the yellow glow of Newbury, Reading etc.

Driving around the towns you see offices, shops and even houses leaving on lights when they are not in. It would be very interesting to see if one of the smaller towns such as Newbury could enforce or persuade local businesses to turn the lights off at night. Perhaps an incentive around the business rates would interest them? It would also be very interesting to see if people who are used to street lights could survive again with few or no street lights on a night. Is safety really the concern or just fear of the dark?

Ends.

With nothing much else to do in the snow, I took the my 300TDI dicovery engine apart. I have a new cylinder head to put on, so I dropped the sump off and took the pistons out as well... might as well replace the big end bearings and piston rings whilst I'm doing the head. There is some good wear on the bearings as you'd expect as they were in from new and had covered 130K miles. The only thing of note was that the piston from the number 1 cylinder had what looks like a valve mark in it.



So, I've a cylinder head from ebay in the hope that it's ok, new big end bearings and in the end new pistons (as it was only a few quid cheaper to buy them built into the cylinder.

When it warms up I'll try and put it back together...