Who's this Stueeee bloke?

**stueeee** · 02-12-2009 13:08

My name is Stuart Giles, or Stueeee to all of my Northern England based work colleagues. I was born in Kent, grew up in "Sarf" London and have lived in Kent for a long time now. I'm the youngest of four brothers, we're all into cars and bikes in one way or another.

I started my working life as a Mechanical/Electrical Engineer in a prototype workshop. Then I fell into the computing world when my employer got me to sort out some Computer Numeric Controlled equipment that just wasn't. One thing led to another, and I have been paying the bills by working as a Consultant/designer of computer networks for the last 20 years or so.

I started my oily fingered life with karts as a kid, then rebuilding/riding/wrecking motorbikes as a teenager -still have a couple of road rash scars and an iffy knee as mementos from this era; then into cars as soon as I was old enough to drive one on the road.

I've rebuilt (and modified along the way) several old and oldish cars over the years, have also done racing car preparation and trackside support for mates' vintage single seater and sports racing cars. Not doing this at the moment as I'm struggling to find the time to do my own projects and earning a living too.

Now I have the daily driver, a motorbike, several pre-war cars -a couple of these are real long-term projects. Also have a hillclimb/sprint single seater fitted with a 4.5 litre TVR/Rover based V8 motor, and a V8 engined 1950 Chevy 1/2 ton Stepside pickup that I imported from the States with the idea of using it as a tow truck to take my my hillclimb car to events around Europe and the UK. I took the truck off the road "for eight weeks" in 2007 and after suffering serious mission creep, I got it back on the road after 16 months work in 2008. There's a build up page of the truck on my website (the URL at the bottom of the page)

What I enjoy most is the engineering challenge of (hopefully) making whatever I'm working on perform better than before. I do the bodywork and paint stuff on cars too when I have to, but it's working on and re-engineering the mechanics that I'm passionate about -this is probably another way of saying that you might not want to get stuck in conversation with me at any car shows or in the pub!

If the technology works, there's a image of my charitable rest home for old and distressed machine tools -or as I prefer to call it, my workshop -and an image of the truck dwarfing my 1932 Austin Special below.

Hope to meet up with some old friends and make some new friends on here.

Stuart.

**ASH** · 02-12-2009 14:03

Hey Stu , welcome , not spoke to you in a while so hope alls good your end , Ash

**chris** · 02-12-2009 14:12

hello stueeee bloke

**dualquads** · 02-12-2009 17:04

hello matey, welcome to the dark side

kev

**Plumpcars** · 02-12-2009 17:13

Well from the title I thought it was a baby with a funny shaped head from Rhode Island!
Seriously though, great workshop and projects and welcome to the forum.

**NoJive 55** · 02-12-2009 17:45

Hi Stuart got to say that a Very good 1st, post.....

So a Big

..to Rods n Sods

Bob...

**59Impala** · 02-12-2009 18:04

Hi Stuart from another Sarf Londoner. I'm also a historic motor sport fan, used to crew for a couple of Shelby Mustangs and Sunbeam Tigers a few years ago. You'll note that I'm just up the road, maybe I'll bump into you around here.

Paul

**trevd** · 02-12-2009 18:24

Hi and welcome, the resting place for older machinary looks too clean (it must be a static display) what are the lathes, i can make out the mill, bridgeport (got one of them) are the lathes round head colchester????

**stueeee** · 02-12-2009 19:01

Originally Posted by trevd

Hi and welcome, the resting place for older machinary looks too clean (it must be a static display) what are the lathes, i can make out the mill, bridgeport (got one of them) are the lathes round head colchester????

Workshop not looking so clean at the moment - half finished projects everywhere.

The big lathe is an old Colchester Triumph, a handy machine for biggish jobs. The smaller machine is a Smart & Brown toolroom lathe, as well as almost every accesory S & B ever made, its got a digital readout which is a really useful accessory for an old git who's eyesight isn't what it used to be.