cort1977

Just realised that @GrahamR or his brother live near me. I have had a chat with them once or twice when I have seen them working on various cars - they have some cool stuff - various 300ZX and a V8 cortina. If I see them about I will say we're asking about the Acclaim.

Peugeot 505 is interesting, was it a genuine Dangel? Don't recall them having those flares but looks to be genuine.

Trash panda! Was it tame? Wild ones can be feisty little buggers.

How are those TV viewing figures arrived at? Look up how they are calculated in UK and you will see it's essentially a tiny survey that's extrapolated to be applicable to the whole country. So hardly rigorous. Now think about how that data would be collected in Afghanistan or Zambia. So any figures like this should be taken with an entire mine's worth of salt. Also, for the people who believe 'royals bring in tourists', check out the most visited country in the world. Turns out it's France, and we all know what happened to their royal family...

Loss leader maybe? Get punters in the door with a cheap oil change and then upsell them the paint protection package and underseal.

Don't know, never seen them up here before. Don't know much about cars moderns but apparently these are avaliable as a T8 version with a turbo and supercharged hybrid system that puts out over 300hp. You'd like to think someone with a sense of humour could have specced a few of those but they're probably diesels.

I think 50 state emissions means it can be sold in California. As you say, sometimes higher power versions weren't available or detuned for California but not sure how much that goes on any more. I think there are about 12 Eastern states like Connecticut that require California spec now so I think the tendency is just to have one version for the whole country. Edit - Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Washington D.C. have all adopted CARB (California Air Resources Board) Standards as of September 2021. Love the car @Schaefft FWD suits Cadillac I think even though my first love will always be a Fleetwood with the LT1.

I wonder what they have now with the whole (40 years late) Aberdeen by-pass? Anything? Not noticed any cameras come to think of it.

I genuinely get 23mpg out of mine, now the brakes are not binding.

Are we allowed forrin rozzers? Hard to go past the coolness of this. All Dutch police are 7 foot tall with alarmingly large hand guns - fact. Used to see these cruising around Houston. Harris County had money unlike Houston PD who were still running Crown Vics in 2019. Best American cop car is the old Chevy Caprice though. The Australian built Commodore version never really caught on sadly, it's all crappy SUV type things now, Ford Expedition based I think. Honorable mention to the Challenger Charger. I'll stop derailing thread with these colonial ramblings now...

Firstly, can I express my utmost delight that Mr. @Samuel_Pepys_Esq has made a return from the distant past to entertain us with his cheery epistles. I have strong opinions on police cars because it's bad enough that all coppers appear to be about 12 years old these days but it adds insult to injury when they're driving some kind of Noddy car. I want a proper machine driven by a proper copper with a big moustache and a line in sarcastic rhetorical questions 'do you know the speed limit for this stretch of road, Sir?' Therefore, the only proper police cars are the Vitesse, Range Rover and the Volvo estates especially the 850 T5R. My mate, whose family had a car dealership, claimed that the police ones of those had the boost turned up a bit but not sure i believe that because don't police value durability and idling for three hours more than outright speed? With the Queen's passing there have been quite a few V90 estates around up here, a very welcome return to form by the peelers.

Yes, but only on estates worth over around 600k. Despite price rises there's not that many of those.

Cats are furry bastards. In my experience they pick you. Our current one appeared on our doorstep one day and wouldn't go away. Wife and kids decided we should keep it despite me pointing out that cats are shit and we were about to move to another fucking country. Paid for cat to be imported at massive cost and a few weeks after that the little twat broke its hip, because it was a fat bastard. Another massive bill. Then a few week after that it did the other side, bonus time for the vet. I genuinely could have bought a nice Boxster for the money that fucking cat has cost. And how does it repay this kindness? By bringing in vermin most days (not always dead), truffling its ringpiece noisily when I'm eating and waking me up at all hours if you forget to shut the door. Incredibly, despite all this I quite like it.

Looking good, I'm sure you will be able to get all the correct filters easily enough, one of the good things about Mercedes is that parts availability is excellent of not cheap. For the body work, have you considered learning to weld? TIG is a black art practised by wizards but basic MIG welding is not that difficult and your car will be made of good thick metal so maybe not too difficult to DIY if you have the time?

Did you just use a soldering iron for the palstic welding? And feed in some plastic as a filler? I need to do a similar job but have also been looking at those chinese kits on ebay where there's a tool that heats up staples to stitch the crack together.