BX Club Forum

Vanny wrote: Its usually grey, but i've had green and pink before now.

Sounds like getting married is a hobby of yours Vanny?

Paul296 wrote:

Vanny wrote: Its usually grey, but i've had green and pink before now.

Sounds like getting married is a hobby of yours Vanny?

Are you allowed to paint the floor?

What about cheap fake grass? Or even straw for the complete farmers workhorse bx angle? My first bx was full of straw!

OK, here we go. I am a beautiful young African princess who tragically lost her entire family in a freak accident involving rabid gazelles that bit their knees off and have selected you at random as a generous benefactor who will help me in accessing my family's US$94 million for a 20% commission, totally risky free, just send me all your bank details, DNA records ... hold on a sec, wrong audience.

tl;dr I reckon we'll need somewhere in the region of £6-700 to put on the best NEC show possible. Now pick yourselves up off the floor and read on.

There are inevitable costs associated with participating in events like these. Public liability insurance for one: £55 from Clarion to cover the event only. Alternatively, we can 'take a flier' and buy a whole year's insurance for £112 (thanks to Mark for following up me tip off ;P). Insurance is an essential.

Now the "optionals" -

Lighting: I think we're all agreed that the orange lighting does the cars no justice. Unfortunately I will not find out until August when the "Exhibitors' Manual" is posted whether power will be available. If it is, it's £80 for the whole weekend. Can anyone loan suitable lights, and/or the ways and means to rig 'em up somehow? If we have no power supply, then said lights will need to be rechargeable - I was wondering about workshop torches? If we have to buy lights then a brief Google means that I'm putting a "finger in the air" figure of £200 on these.

Paul H has his heart set on carpet, with such determination that he has somehow mesmerised someone into being able to provide anthracite cord carpet for £300. This is a lot of money, but incredibly bargainous for 108 m2, and obviously it would be reusable (for comparison, NEC would charge us £900 to "borrow" carpet, which may have drips and spills on it from previous users, and "buy it back" for, well, much less).

It would be easy to say "If everyone chips in £X" - but not everyone may be able to afford that, or want to if they're not participating. So I'm going to take the risk of seeing how goodwill goes If you are willing to contribute whatever you can afford to putting on a grand show, with a view to some of this being investment in future exhibitions/events (carpet, lighting, full year's PL insurance), please gift donations to bxclubuk(at)gmail.com (replace (a) with @, typed this way to avoid spam bots) - please transfer £ as gifts so we don't have to pay commission. If you don't want to use Paypal, please contact me in confidence at the above e-mail address and we'll sort something out.

Any and all money received will be fully accounted for. If, by some miracle, we end up with more than anticipated we will consult with donors on alternative uses for the benefit of the club.

Finally - Mike H, Vanny - you've both kindly and separately offered expert engineering input for suspension demos, etc, are you both at the National? - can we chat through then? - cheers.

EDIT: updated for power supply info received.

I dont mind bunging a few quid in, bit nearer the time though as im rather poor until the cars sell.

I'm more than happy to contribute into the collective coffers.

mds141 wrote:I'm more than happy to contribute into the collective coffers.

Me too

Thanks all: I need to have at least enough to cover insurance within the next couple of weeks (I can chip in my contribution in that timescale), the rest can probably wait (Paul, can you give an indication on carpet lead times? - ta.)

Chaps, can you edit your posts with opinions on PL insurance please (edit so's not to extend this thread too much), and please can further posters also indicate whether they think full year is worth taking the risk on? - ta.

Address for donations is up and running, so carry on and flash the cash whenever you're ready (please don't make me send begging notes to posts on here?):

Caffiend wrote:Please gift donations to bxclubuk(at)gmail.com (replace (a) with @, typed this way to avoid spam bots) - please transfer £ as gifts so we don't have to pay commission. If you don't want to use Paypal, please contact me in confidence at the above e-mail address and we'll sort something out.

I think PL for the NEC is all we need as we dont host any other events.

Without wanting to get too bogged down in the detail, I think having a power supply available would really make things a lot easier. Otherwise for efficiency reasons we're effectively limited to LED lights, and a lot of those (especially the more easily available/affordable ones) also have poor colour rendering capabilities, although slightly better than the sodium lights at the NEC.

If mains is available then it's just a case of mounting a few domestic spotlights on boards which will be simple and cheap. If it's choice between lights or carpet I'd (reluctantly ) have to go with carpet though.

EDIT - I think just go for for event only insurance. We'd be looking at 3 such events to actually save money, unless I've missed something?

Insurance was needed for Bristol, which Mike S kindly paid - and there was mention of another show later in the year? (Ian S, was that you?).

If 10 people chip in £11 each, then the PL insurance is covered for the year for up to 12 events. As opposed to £50 odd per event. I'm taking the valver to a local ( Heysham ) classic car show on the 4th August with the BXClub banner to spread the word.

Caffiend wrote:
Finally - Mike H, Vanny - you've both kindly and separately offered expert engineering input for suspension demos, etc, are you both at the National? - can we chat through then? - cheers.

EDIT: updated for power supply info received.

I should be at the National for a little time, will try to message ahead and let you know how long i'll be there. I have been made a better offer for the majority of the weekend though, so not staying over.

Wasn't me Sandre. There was discussion of Stoneleigh Resto Show and also another show at Bristol I think.

Not my call, but it does sound like a very expensive effort this year. Is it worth speaking to any event companies as I'm sure a lot of them have use-once carpet that they just bin after an event?

I'd also vote for carpet over lights - everyone has the same 'orange' issues and it's only the big stands that seem to successfully use enough spotlights to counter-act it. I personally like the super-spot effect even less than the orange.

I'm not in a financial position to contribute at the moment. Will have to see how the year (and work levels) go...