8:46 pm, October 29, 2009
OMG. Bangers4BEN is just over a week away. The fact I’ve got a magazine to produce in between now and then has kind of taken my eye off the ball a little.
But I am starting to get a distinct feeling of panic tinged with some excitement as the clock clicks down to the big event.
I’ve spent much of today collating the entry forms from the different teams which lay out their action plan for the event. They’re all rather amusing and I’ll post them on the site as soon as the last couple arrive.
I’ll have to put them on the site because I’ve realised our preview of the event will be published in the magazine that comes out the day after the event finishes! Such is the joys of monthly publishing.
This week we finally managed to get a firm replacement for Brands Hatch which dumped our charity challenge in favour of paying customers. I know… not very nice of them, but some times charity holds little weight when it comes to a few quid.
But our knights in shining armour come with a three pointed star, as our friends at Mercedes Benz World (pictured above), in Surrey, have offered us the chance to take to their track on the final day of the event.
PULLING OUT
The thing is, really this is just an end destination – not the be all and end all of the event – but not everyone saw it that way. Sadly one team dropped out because they said we’d ‘misrepresented the rally’ and that ‘Mercedes Benz World isn’t exactly Brands Hatch is it’.
They kind of missed the point of Bangers4BEN.
The whole point of the rally is to make as much money for BEN as possible when we come to sell the cars – the laps of the track at the end were purely for a celebration that we’d completed the trip.
With this team – who shall remain nameless – dropping out, and a couple of others having to pull out due to work commitments there’s a chance we still have a couple of last minute places if you fancy one. Email me by clicking here if you want details.
If you want more details on what BangersBEN entails all the information you could possibly need is contained in this post here.
LAST MINUTE
Team Car Dealer is, true to form, pushing things a bit fine. Our car has been kindly taken back to the manufacturer for some friendly ‘fettling’ and an MOT.
I heard this week that it requires a little more than simple fettling – some £400 worth of parts are needed and an equal amount of time in labour to get it fit for the trip. That’s the MOT failure sheet on the right.
The car is currently in the maker’s press garage having the work completed and is due back with us next Thursday. It then goes to our ‘artist’ for decoration and back to us for the weekend – two days before the big event.
Told you we were pushing it fine…
In the meantime we’ve got to get tax sorted out but can’t do that until the car comes back with the MOT. Argh, my head hurts just thinking about it!
Anyway, it will all be worth it in the end when we raise a shed load of cash for BEN!
You can follow the rally’s developments in our dedicated Bangers4BEN section on this website or follow the Twitter feed from all the participants here.
James
