I haven't driven the Jag for nearly three months now. It has sat parked up at the side of a quiet road, away from passers by, just mouldering. The battery has gone flat from it being sat so long - a fact I disappointingly learned when collecting some stuff from the boot. What's really sad though is the fact I haven't missed it... It's not that I don't enjoy driving it, I do, but recently the noise from the timing chain tensioner and the spongy brakes have put me off using it. I've gone without and almost forgot about it.
Realistically though, the actual running costs have been more of an eye opener and a mojo killer. Looking back at my outgoings over the last year or so it has been clear that I was haemorrhaging money on petrol. In fact, I must have spent upwards of £600 a month during the summer. It didn't help that the Ka failed it's MOT and that I had to buy the Almera. That expense really left me broke. No spare cash means no money for spares, no money to use towards petrol, and no money to use towards restoration work on the big cat.
So now I'm at a bit of a fork in the road... Keep it, or sell it? Put it in long term storage and accept the fact that many more things will go wrong the longer it sits, or run it once a week where funds allow until the tax and MOT run out in March? I'm not sure what to do.
Monday 3 December 2012
Bangernomics & EV's...
Drafted a couple of months ago...
I'd like to put another big 'Thank you!' out there for Rob Jenner of the Jaguar Enthusiast's Club, who has once again supplied me with parts to keep the Jag roadworthy. This time it was a complete rear brakes set-up: callipers, carriers, pads, discs, shoes and their fitting kits. All for beer money.
The parts need cleaned up but I can do that in the college, or hopefully when it's quiet at Mulsanne. Fitting them will be done at the college after the timing chain tensioner/rattle is sorted. I won't be mucking about when it comes to doing that particular job. New bits are the order of the day there. With a JEC and possibly a trade discount too, a new tensioner, dampers and gaskets shouldn't break the bank. Which is just as well because I haven't been in full-time employment for over 2 years and my money is running out!
I should explain why that is actually...
Just over those 2 years ago I was working full-time at The University of Edinburgh. It was a management position worth a good £25k per annum or thereabouts and seemed to be a suitable evolution from my previous, similar roles with BSkyB and Motorola. I hated it though. The machinations of being a team manager, plus the stress of the office politics that come with it, had just wore me out. As I looked at my career, I realised I'd steered it down a dead end. To use a modern analogy it was as if I'd been using Apple Maps the whole time.
An opportunity arose to leave the University with a redundancy payment in hand, so I took it. I decided that I needed to take a chance and make a change, to do what I should have done when I left school. To that end I applied for motor vehicle courses at all the local colleges as I wanted to train to become a Mechanic, and waited with baited breath for a reply. Thankfully I was able to enrol in Jewel & Esk College on a full-time course, plus I was awarded a bursary. The financial support meant that my lump sum from the redundancy could be stretched out considerably longer. What would have been six month's wages was now more like ten.
There came a point though when those funds were drying up. Just before they did I was fortunate enough to receive a successful PPI claim for a sum of money roughly the same value as my original redundancy payment. I used some of it towards paying off old debt and clearing my feet to reduce my monthly outgoings, then I bought the Jag, and ultimately the Nissan when the Ka bit the dust. It is the remainder of that fund which is currently running out.
There is a Scholarship available at the College though that will pay the bills and which will open a few doors for me if I am successful in my application.
The College are looking to employ an assistant on their EV Project. This is a sustainable, zero carbon transport initiative piloted by Jewel & Esk which sees them using a fleet of electric cars instead of the petrol/diesel alternatives for day to day inter-campus commuting and deliveries. The data gathered so far indicates that the EV's are mainly used for short, stop-start journeys and that you can travel 18000 miles in an electric car for just £630 in charging costs.
The enterprise is really beginning to take off as the fleet of cars is expanding and the extra data gathered needs to be analysed, interpreted and presented to demonstrate the usefulness and viability of the EV's. For instance, one thing that someone (hopefully me) will need to do is find out just how far you can actually go on a one way trip using one full charge - and how that range is affected by your driving style. Once the values for those are known they can be collated with the rest of the data. If someone then wants to know whether or not an EV will get them from Midlothian Campus to Dunbar, we will be in a position to tell them. The aim of the project is to switch attitudes to EV's and demonstrate to large organisations how they could use them. In doing so, they would reduce their carbon footprint and save money. If the vehicles are charged using renewable means (eg. solar or wind turbines), the organisation's carbon footprint would shrink even further.
We need to demonstrate that the EV alternative is practical though and that's where I hope to be able to make a difference.
I'd like to put another big 'Thank you!' out there for Rob Jenner of the Jaguar Enthusiast's Club, who has once again supplied me with parts to keep the Jag roadworthy. This time it was a complete rear brakes set-up: callipers, carriers, pads, discs, shoes and their fitting kits. All for beer money.
The parts need cleaned up but I can do that in the college, or hopefully when it's quiet at Mulsanne. Fitting them will be done at the college after the timing chain tensioner/rattle is sorted. I won't be mucking about when it comes to doing that particular job. New bits are the order of the day there. With a JEC and possibly a trade discount too, a new tensioner, dampers and gaskets shouldn't break the bank. Which is just as well because I haven't been in full-time employment for over 2 years and my money is running out!
I should explain why that is actually...
Just over those 2 years ago I was working full-time at The University of Edinburgh. It was a management position worth a good £25k per annum or thereabouts and seemed to be a suitable evolution from my previous, similar roles with BSkyB and Motorola. I hated it though. The machinations of being a team manager, plus the stress of the office politics that come with it, had just wore me out. As I looked at my career, I realised I'd steered it down a dead end. To use a modern analogy it was as if I'd been using Apple Maps the whole time.
An opportunity arose to leave the University with a redundancy payment in hand, so I took it. I decided that I needed to take a chance and make a change, to do what I should have done when I left school. To that end I applied for motor vehicle courses at all the local colleges as I wanted to train to become a Mechanic, and waited with baited breath for a reply. Thankfully I was able to enrol in Jewel & Esk College on a full-time course, plus I was awarded a bursary. The financial support meant that my lump sum from the redundancy could be stretched out considerably longer. What would have been six month's wages was now more like ten.
There came a point though when those funds were drying up. Just before they did I was fortunate enough to receive a successful PPI claim for a sum of money roughly the same value as my original redundancy payment. I used some of it towards paying off old debt and clearing my feet to reduce my monthly outgoings, then I bought the Jag, and ultimately the Nissan when the Ka bit the dust. It is the remainder of that fund which is currently running out.
There is a Scholarship available at the College though that will pay the bills and which will open a few doors for me if I am successful in my application.
The College are looking to employ an assistant on their EV Project. This is a sustainable, zero carbon transport initiative piloted by Jewel & Esk which sees them using a fleet of electric cars instead of the petrol/diesel alternatives for day to day inter-campus commuting and deliveries. The data gathered so far indicates that the EV's are mainly used for short, stop-start journeys and that you can travel 18000 miles in an electric car for just £630 in charging costs.
The enterprise is really beginning to take off as the fleet of cars is expanding and the extra data gathered needs to be analysed, interpreted and presented to demonstrate the usefulness and viability of the EV's. For instance, one thing that someone (hopefully me) will need to do is find out just how far you can actually go on a one way trip using one full charge - and how that range is affected by your driving style. Once the values for those are known they can be collated with the rest of the data. If someone then wants to know whether or not an EV will get them from Midlothian Campus to Dunbar, we will be in a position to tell them. The aim of the project is to switch attitudes to EV's and demonstrate to large organisations how they could use them. In doing so, they would reduce their carbon footprint and save money. If the vehicles are charged using renewable means (eg. solar or wind turbines), the organisation's carbon footprint would shrink even further.
We need to demonstrate that the EV alternative is practical though and that's where I hope to be able to make a difference.
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