Duffy Sheardown and I have been friends and colleagues multiple times since 1991. We have been involved in countless adventures and misadventures connected to Motor Racing. Duffy even saved my life one grim day in Missouri when in the midst of a blizzard he dragged me to hospital, delirious and dangerously close to succumbing to pneumonia. Duffy has enjoyed a glorious variation of employers in motor racing, been associated with some of the most successful and least successful teams in top flight categories, yet never shy’d from the challenge of the seemingly impossible. In short, if you want to get things done, Duffy is one of those people you want on your team….. don’t ask him for his job description, he cant give you one, think of him as a “facilitator” much like Mr Wolfe in Pulp Fiction, although slightly less handsome than Harvey Keitel and thoroughly less macabre.

Duffy is seen here in headset as part of the
JCB Diesel speed record team at Bonneville.

Much like me, Duffy has recently taken cause to cut back on travel and the rigours of international motor sports. His new productive output is making niche chocolate under the Red Star Chocolate banner.

Duffy has always been a nutter about Italy, when I first met him, he had a derelict cottage in Oxfordshire and a tiny apartment somewhere in Italy,  just in case he got another job with an Italian F1 team (which he did, but that is another story….) So his affliction with Chocolate and the whimsy of the chocolate expo in Perugia are completely congruous with the Duffy I know.

When I was in the UK recently I had dinner with Duffy and he gave me 3 bars of his new hand made chocolate to sample. Authentic hand made wrappers, the whole bit, edible craft. The chocolate was wonderful, perhaps the first time I have ever noticed that a piece of chocolate can actually have intriguing, lingering flavors, much like a decent glass of wine. Thanks to Duffy I have now developed a chocolate snobbery that makes me investigate for the lasting flavor of every chocolate I taste….. thanks Duff!

Just as WEVO has been operating in a carefully identified niche market over the past 15 years, I can see that Duffy has that same adventure ahead of him as he steers his Red Star Chocolate brand towards it’s niche destination on the global chocolate map.

Duffy has no shortage of those who are in “need” of chocolate samples, plus he still has some technical hurdles related to the machinery that is used to make chocolate before he can make it in viable small batches. Coupled with this, Duffy has a real sense of “off-the-grid” that he hopes to marry with chocolate making. So when he commented that a vintage windmill (the giant Dutch style) might be a good idea – he may not be joking.

Duffy Sheardown, tags: off-the-grid, fair trade, motor racing, chocolate, Italy, travel, motor cycles, curry, Dub, etc. etc. What a great friend to have!!

The plastic bag sausage fight….

In Part 1. of the packaging manifesto, I illustrated how careful we are about using recycled packing materials and how we recycle cardboard, re-use boxes, boxes made from post consumer materials etc, etc.

So if you have ever received a package from WEVO and the first thing you noticed is how the abundance of thick Ziploc bags seems to contradict our packaging manifesto, please let me illustrate.

It’s not all that it appears. We have an obligation to our customers to careful pack our expensive parts and deliver them with the cosmetic finish unblemished. Years ago we discovered that 4 MIL thick bags offer us the best protection of metal parts packed together. Ziploc’d bags offer the greatest convenience. A 4 MIL, zip lock bag is by no means our cheapest option, or the most environmentally friendly.

Second use is what it’s all about, we send you a heavy duty plastic bag so durable, so re-usable, that you now have a decent bag to store the O.E. parts that were replaced by the WEVO products you recently purchased.

We often receive parts shipped from other small companies, packaged in plastic sandwich bags (about 1/4 the thickness – 1 MIL). Good for nothing really except sandwiches - often chaffed through, no further service life available, all the embodied energy wasted on a single inadequate use……

So next time, or the first time you get your package from WEVO with one or more nice 4 MIL plastic Ziploc bags, go ahead and re-use it, or save it for that project when you can.  Please don’t throw it away after our single use….. give in to the organizer’s compulsion. These bags are a great way to organize your parts safely and securely. We have some 4 MIL bags with parts stored over 10 years ago, parts zipped safely inside still ready and waiting to get back onto a Porsche one day.

Product development is something we take very seriously at Windrush, this applies to our WEVO products as well as any of the consulting design we undertake for motor racing clients.

There are always extremes. Forces, weight, cost and in this wonderful example – Endurance.

Thomas Jameson has been a friend and customer for the last 8 years. When Thomas called me in October to discuss his plans to run the NASA 25hr race at Thunderhill, we talked quite candidly about his plans and the state-of-readiness for the variety of systems on his car. http://www.nasa25hour.com/

Thomas joined forces with Jeff Gamroth from Rothsports (http://rothsport-racing.com/) in Tualatin, David Agretelis and Greg Ross to enter the 38 car in the 2009 edition of the NASA 25hr race.

In doing so Thomas committed his car to the most extreme endurance road race event accessible to recreational motor racing drivers. His 1970 911 has been developed to race in the PRC Toyo Spec 911 Class (GTS) and has a full compliment of WEVO products on board.

Their event was not without drama. Contact with a Miata early in the race lead to significant damage, ultimately mostly cosmetic, as the car was made safe and continued to race, recovering to 4th place in the EO class, covering 657 laps of the 3.0 mile circuit in 25 hours.

WEVO congratulates the cheekily named Team Motorsports Racing for surviving the freezing (25 F at dawn !) cold weather,  all challenges and racing the 38 car for over 2000 miles without any maintenance. I have spoken to Thomas and Jeff since the weekend, both were buzzing with residual excitement from their enjoyment of the event.

Onboard the 38 car was a WEVO line card including, 915 Shifter, 915 GateShift kit, XT-032 Bearing retainer, Stock 911 PSJ, SS Engine mounts, SS transmission mounts, CamberKing and WEVO SPS. All performed flawlessly, as did the 915 race transmission assembled by yours truly.

The WEVO SPS and CamberKing both took excess pounding as the Miata auger’d across the roof and down the side after climbing the LR  tire.

With the steering wheel considered to be acceptably straight and the remaining bodywork pulled clear of the tires, the car ran like clockwork, clicking off lap times that were better than GTS lap records – albeit on Hoosier DOT radial tires (not legal for GTS).

Over 60 cars entered in the NASA 25hr event, so Team Motorsports Racing shared their enduro experience over the weekend of December 5th with hundreds of others from all over the country.

Both Jeff and Thomas have vowed to return again in 2010, with plans already forming about how to make an even more competitive effort.

Anyone who knows Jeff, will appreciate his post race jubilance and homage to the early 911. (top)

It’s kind of hard to describe the feeling of delivering a product to a client that has been waiting in anticipation for months and months. On this occasion I am not going to attempt it……

A car project, code named PVX has been in our hands for almost 3 years.

As a project it has changed direction at least a couple of times, escalating – as they often do, into a cool tricky gadget that I doubt many custom car companies are smart enough, or stupid enough to execute.

As a 911 that will tip the scales at roughly 2180 lbs (991 kg.) with the power of a 2006 GT3 Cup motor in it’s tail. This car stretches my envelope, perhaps the envelope of many others too, we will find out!

This project car has been a non-stop sequence of conceive - design – fabricate. As we took tally of which systems can truly be considered unaltered, the list comprised of the steering column assembly and the doors…little else.

What is outwardly a simple car at a glance, is a most necessarily complicated execution to articulate the customers complex ideas.

Not to steal the thunder of the man who owns this fantastic car, I am keeping this relatively ambiguous, the official launch of this demon hot rod will come early in 2010. Stay tuned.

As a formally trained Designer I am often challenged by products that seem to be created in the complete absence of due process.

The greatest challenge is when you encounter fantastic design, most likely a product or article where the process has been rendered so transparent, that you have to consider whether the creation was purely intuitive, or so thorough that the design is fully resolved?

One of my favorite all time custom car creations is the Manta Ray by Dean Jefferies. This car is 100% KILL, fresh ideas, beautifully executed and resolved in cohesion with mechanical aspects of the car and the resources available to Dean Jefferies.

The idea of Kill over Carrion, is how I personally differentiate new design from adopted design.

As in nature, the Carrion is an easier mark, less effort, shorter path to satiation. To be comfortable with larceny becomes a habit and typically leaves more time for relaxation.

On the other hand a Kill can be risky, expose one to perils of the hunt, there is repeated likelihood of failure to complete. One can go hungry a long time if your DNA is programmed for KILL’s alone. The stress of not knowing where the next Kill will come from is a distraction that evolves into a pre-occupation, further reducing the chance of a kill…….

It’s pretty much 10 years since my last design Kill. By my own definition I have been living on Carrion for quite a while. Picking up scraps has left my design skills idling, pretty much like those without the skills to ever score a Kill.

I feel it’s time to sharpen ones instruments and search for a target.