What do we want from this forum?

[911hillclimber]

I ask this question honestly:

I visit several forums and find them enjoyable, informative, interesting and above all relevant to what I'm after.

does the HDLCC forum work for you?

The Committee have asked me to be more involved in the site's development and admin and i have several ideas about the site's layout, but any forum is about participation, so i need to lead by example.

Please let me know, preferably out in the open and not pm's so we can all see what we think.

Who will open this up for me?

Bet it's a funny bloke with a funny yellow car!

Graham.

[bobjacqs]

Well I haven't got a funny yellow car but I'll respond.
For any forum to work you need active moderators. This is true in the education field where I work and run online courses with forums and in the motorsport field where I follow a number of forums. This is because if someone posts a message they should receive a quick reply and ideally from more than one person. Then it will snowball and conversation threads get going.

The reason I am replying on the same day you posted the message is because I use a change detection program to alert me to changes on various forums. Some forums ping daily. This one hardly ever does, so it is obviously not particularly active which is a shame as far as I am concerned as I live near Hagley and love Loton. Last December I thought to enter the HDLCC's championship but couldn't find any information on the website and so posted a message on this forum but I never did get any information about it and so never entered it.

The website like the forum must be relevant (and I see it there is some up to date info on it now). Last weekend I was at Wiscombe Park in Devon. By the time I got back to Kinver on Sunday might the results were in my inbox and on the website. The following day they were on my own club's website (HSA) in a championship table. Excellent.

I've just realised I haven't answered the question - what do we want from this forum? I guess we want to hear from fellow competitors about how events went for them. We want to share useful and helpful information and above all we want to feel part of something - a community - to be able to share something of the passion we feel for hillclimbing in that boring space between events.

Anyway, good luck and best wishes,
Bob

Hillclimbing and sprinting in a 1990 MX5 and blogging at www.bobjacqs.wordpress.com

[911hillclimber]

Thanks for the reply Bob, and quite agree!
I have several threads running on my Lola and the explosion of conversation has been invaluable to my questions on the car.

It is all about getting things going.

I am asking those reading on a very quiet web site what they want. things will be slow at first. Hope i can wake people up.

ps: My daughter has an MX5 which she adores, must link your blogg to her!

Any other takers for opinion on what we need on this site to get some energy flowing??

[rescuedude]

We certainly need more competitors posting but as already said it's a snowball thing.

Even though most of the committee are members here it's very rare any of them, With one or two exceptions leave comments.

Lead by example please.

[thejanitor]

I think rescuedude has summed it up. I'm simply a non-competing club member and have posted comments in the past, but threads do seem to peter out rapidly, and there have been few updates from competitors, even immediately following an event.

It would be good to have views from competitors after meetings. The newsletter is informative, but surely it leaves plenty of scope for further background info on the forum.

[911hillclimber]

I have a running report on my hillclimb Lola on 3 other forums, one has had 65,000 hits/800 posts over a 2 year period.

It needs the interest and snowballing to get things going.

I'll give it a try and see if it unfolds on here!

[compsec]

Graham,
Well done for trying to generate some mileage on the forum,
I post messages as often as I can, but don`t usually start a thread, tending to reply to others. I did spend a good half hour this morning doing the pre-June Loton write-up on the"events"page, which I hope is read by members?
We also post Loton results on the site usually the day after the event, but real time results can be seen on the "resultsman"site.
I always send a personal welcome message to new forum members to encourage them, but that doesn`t seem to work too well. See you at Shelsley next week and Loton on 11th & 12th

[911hillclimber]

I'll give it a go Dave!

Leading by example dear members, see the new thread about Life with Lola!

[stevef]

It is a tricky one - I have the opportunity to read the threads on a regular basis and it does seem to be one of those odd things that gain momentum from the most unlikely places!

I have enjoyed just looking through the Lola thread - very interesting and informative. I will log in again when have some more time to read properly. I have a car nearing readiness in the garage, so will see about putting up a few pics for those who may be interested.

Keep up the good work!

[911hillclimber]

I think many petrol heads like to see what others are doing and have done.

Way back several magazines did sections on Garage Scenes, and v interesting things went on.
Hillclimbing i think is just so fertile with home-brews being welded together or a Rover V8 being persuaded to fit where it really should not be.

Look at Jim Gazey's Smart.Toyota, or Alann's Mini on a Justy floor pan!

In -build can be every bit as good as in-car!

I actually prefer the building to the scarey bit, bet i'm not alone.

?

Graham.

[thejanitor]

Build histories would be a valuable addition to the forum, and surely would generate some Qs and As. I've enjoyed reading about the Lola. Knowing a little of the hard work that's gone into a build before the car is seen on a hill helps us appreciate the extra effort some make.

[compsec]

Well.you asked for it!
This couild be a lengthy post, so I will split it into chapters.
My first foray into motor sport was completely unaided by family, none of whom were in the slightest bit interested. There were of course no Driving Schools back in the dark ages of 1965 when I bought my first Anglia from Terry Nicholls in Liitlehampton. The car was fitted with a 1200cc 3-bearing engine on Webers, but nothing much else done to it. I did a couple of circuit races, and realised it would need a great deal of money thrown at it to make it moderately competitive.
I entered a Curborough Sprint, and Loton & Prescott hill climbs and was very soon hooked on speed events. The car was entrusted to Roy Gwillim in Kidderminster who procured an ex-Police 1500cc engine which was bored to 1650cc, an A6 cam fitted and the suspension was lowered, but precious little else was done to it. Happy days! I
I campaigned the Anglia for 4 years and wanted to move on, so I bought a 1650cc Diva 10F (they were designed to run 1100cc engines!)from a guy in Scotland....continues[/img]

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[911hillclimber]

The Lola's history on 10-10th site is the 800 post/66K hits one. The mix of history and engineering seems to have caught a bit of interest! It is now a near blog on 'Adventures with Lola' which could get me in Court!

There is the excellent Uphillracers site for Hillclimb/sprinters, it is a great site and satisfies a lot of 'Hagley' people too i suspect.

To my knowledge, Bugatti and MAC do not have club web sites. Need to have a nose around.

anyone know better?

[compsec]

The Diva was a bit of a shed when I bought it so we re-painted it metallic blue with a red nose cone. The only significant success was an FTD at a very wet Gaydon Sprint when the standing water washed my feet off the pedals on one run! I then had it on fire at Tern Hill when a fuel line let go and didn`t realise how quickly I could extract myself from the car. I even put my right hand straight through the fibreglass rear wing in my hurry to escape the inferno. The fire damage was minimal, and I then sold the car to Martyn Silcox to part fund the purchase of a new house, and the car sat in Roy Gwillim`s garage for many years without tuning a wheel.[/img]
After a few seasons away from the motorsport scene I bought Ron Hand`s Escort t/c, then another Escort Mk 1 push-rod. The crossflow was soon replaced by a superb 2 litre BDG.
More to follow[/img]

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[compsec]

The second Escort Mk 1 was an ex hot-rod which had a 1760 pushrod motor, soon to be replaced by the 2 litre BDG. Dave Lampitt at Spec-Fab in Pershore was looking after the prep, and just around the corner from his workshop was AVJ engnes run by Aston-Martin specialist Tony Jones. He had never built a BDG before, but he was commissioned to build mine with a budget of around £2500. Some months later the engine appeared giving 261 bhp on webers, and about a grand over budget! Big bucks in the seventies...It was a superb engine, 100 bhp more than I was used to , but I soon got the hang of it, I had 7 successful seasons out of the car, but in `82 I saw an ad for a works Davrian in Autosport, and decided to order one. Not long after placing the order and parting with a substantial deposit, Davrian went bust, and I got the last Mk.8 out of the factory doors before the receiver moved in,nearly trapping my fingers as the shutters came down.
The car was entrusted to John Beattie who had just set up his preparation business in Broseley, so chassis and engine plus a Hewland FT200 box supplied by Mike Endean were delivered to him. After studying the installation he rang me and said the engine mounts were not substantial enough to take the weight and power. After much head scratching we decided to acquire a March 743 rolling chassis, and grafted the uprights onto the car, Some 2 years later the car appeared and was sensational. After winning the class in the Midland Championship the car fell foul of the regs, and was moved to the Sports Libre class. I was well p.....d off at this and after subsequently destroying rhe engine at Mallory Park, broke the car up and sold most of it to a French guy who came over clutching a fistful of francs.
A couple of outings in Steve Jewell`s Chevron B48 followed, and in 1991 I decided to return to my tin=top roots with my ex-company car . the 1987 Sierra Cosworth. continues....

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