dave21478

FFS

You will lose any NCD that is less than a complete year - ie if you are changing half way through your policy year, the previous six months NCD will be lost and when you restart with Direct Line you will go back to however many full years you had at the start of this policy year.

No other ill effects - its often worth sacrificing a part-year NCD when decent savings are to be had.

A doctors? In France? On a sunny Friday afternoon? not fucking likely, they are all motoring to the coast for a weekend on their yachts.

I trundled down to a proper pharmacy....the pharmacist profession is a respected medical type here, especially in places like here in bumfuck nowhere, miles from civilisation, who can deal with minor-ish medical stuff and advise well if serious stuff is needed, at least.

"oooh, thats a big one". I hadent even taken my trousers off at this point, but realised he was talking about the photo of my bloody snotbaby. Almost certainly just a gooey clot from a slow noose-bleed that had been back-filling a cavity in the hollow, rattling void I call a head. Nothing to really worry about, better out than in etc etc...apparently.

If more nose bleeds occur or more eldritch blood monsters crawl out of my skull I will need a hospital to seal the leak so just keep calm and carry on....

.... I would keep whatever the fuck that thing is wrapped up in some tissue so you can show em exactly what your nostrils gave birth to...

I flicked it out the car window....I like to imagine it growing.... hunting...learning....

Hey guys, wanna see something fucking horrific? 

I will mask it because there are some sensitive types on here...

Driving along and this six inch blood-slug came out my nostril. it was the consistency of very overcooked pasta with a slimy coating of blood on the outside. Fucking weirdest sensation...it felt like it was attached directly to the back of my eyeball.

So...uh....is this good or bad?

Not even joking, my nose started bleeding a couple of minutes after writing that ^^

I havent had a nose-bleed for decades. Talk about portents.....

well if this is the end - see you in another life, brothers. Its been great/shit** talking to you. [**delete as appropriate]

Its 2am and I am sitting here waiting for the sweet release of death - Seriously....God.....You and I both know I dont believe in you, but on the offchance I am wrong, just hurry the fuck up and kill me.

I am one of those annyoing twats who never gets ill....the odd sniffle, sometimes a dose of the runs if food doesnt agree, but when I do get ill, holy fuck do I cop it bad.

Sore throat that is agony when swallowing....its like deep-throating a handful of hacksaw blades. This has spread to sore neck and stuffy head, and while this is just about bearable during the day its hellish at night....I havent had more than about 10 minutes of continuous sleep since Tuesday...just a few snatched minutes of dozing here and there until I am awoken by coughing and pain. Weird side effects include excess saliva production so I smear dribble all over my face when lying down and have to constantly spit into a bucket on the floor like some fucking Alabama hick, and most bizarrely I seem to have developed an air-leak in my plumbing somewhere as I am ripping out the most disturbing, life-changing farts imaginable.  

I have been to Le Boots and bought all the medicines and have been chewing that shit like its tic-tacs but its doing fuck all.

Add in the heat...the fucking unbearable, savage, unremitting heat that is supposed to get even fucking hotter next week and here I am sitting butt-nekkid in front of the computer with a fan pointed at my nads, moaning to a bunch of imaginary people on an online forum about cars that is probably all just a delusion in my head.

good car worth keeping? fix it properly

shitter to run for a while and then get rid? k-seal away.

Surely there should still be some in scrapyards?

Newer ones are available cheap enough....

https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/Direction-Assist-e-Capteur-De-Pression-D-huile-Pour-Mondeo-Mk4-S-max-Galaxy-FORD-MONDEO/32858261776.html

but the wiring loom plug is different, so you could always just change the loom plug?

iirc all they do is raise the idle speed a little on full lock, so not massively important....if you have a non working spare you could plug the inlet hole up with chemical metal and screw it in as a planking plug until you get a replacement.

Sadly this is why folk (me included) buy and use cheap Chinese shit that lasts a few years. Yes a Warn is the bollocks, but who has a grand and a half for one?

Your best bet is going to be ebaying it or try some of the its gripped, its sorted, its locked offroad forums.

I have a replacement PAS pressure switch for my Mondeo (used but supposedly known good). I sealed it in with PFTE. However, as with the old one it is leaking straight through the electrical connector (not where it joins with the PAS pipe) as in the 3rd pic  . Any ideas please?

 

I really wish I hadn't changed the fluid!

 

DSCF9240.JPG

DSCF9242.JPG

DSCF9244.JPG

Its fucked - need a new one.

[bodge] figure out if the switch is normally-open or normally-closed when in use and either leave unplugged or bridge the loom plug with a little bit of wire as appropriate[/bodge]

Flooding is only a problem when the engine is cold. Hot start is only a problem when the engine is fucked already. You don't need to pull the fuse either, you put the accelerator to the floor for the same effect.

 

I wouldn't like to learn in one though. Extremely heavy clutch and lack of torque low end makes it easy to stall. Also visibility out the back is rather shit.

Switch one off and restart a few times in short succession when hot and you will find they flood very easily when hot too.

The RAC procedure for dealing with these is to remove the fuel pump relay or fuse and crank it till clear and if it still wont go they summon a second patrol (because they dont trust a customer to not fuck it up) and do a tow-start.

I think it was one of the breakdown guys on here I saw had a fly-lead with a switch in it that they used to bypass the fuse and feather the fuel pump off and on while trying to get them to re-start.

Why not? Good road holding, tidy dimensions, and as long as it doesn't exceed 4000rpm it's about as fast as a 1.0 Metro anyway.

Its all fun and games until the learner stalls it and it wont restart because hot start issue, or they stall it twice in a row and flood the bastard. Pulling the fuel pump relay and cranking till it clears the rotors isnt the ideal thing to be done at a busy junction - especially if its a tricky one that needs a tow-start afterwards.

What the actual fuck?

 

This appears to be on sale for £1, both in the listing price and the description.

 

?????

 

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DAF-105-XF-410/263564474726?hash=item3d5daab966:g:J5QAAOSwKvJas86-

 

EDIT: there are several more recent trucks in there for the same price. Must be some sort of spammish listing.

eBay is truly bizarre. Any truck or commercial (i.e HGV) trailer seems able to be listed for £1, with contact details on the advert. Christ alone know why.

This is the first step of a super-common scam over here. You call up and some woman gives the speil about it being the husband/sons pride and joy but he died and she cant bear etc etc doesnt want the money, just wants it to go to a good home. It then devolves into the usual "Its actually in Belguim.....shipping agent blah blah please send your details etc etc" scam

Always trucks, excavators, tractors and stuff like that.

Its taken me about two years to persuade the couriers to put stuff over the gate otherwise I would never get most of the stuff I order.

Its entirely my own fault for not seeing it...its not exactly a small box. Well, it wasnt before I flattened it, anyway.

Are we talking about the cable coming down to the bottom of your pic? The lever on the gearbox needs to move straight up and down from the viewpoint of the photo but the cable is pulling and pushing at quite an angle...I know its got a ball-joint to compensate but is it in the right place? I have no idea whats further up, but it looks to me like the whole cable needs shifted an inch or two to the left at the top of the pic so the cable is straighter and working on the axis of the gearbox lever.

Holy fuckin....

I....

I just cant even right now.....

fuggin scorcher of a day today - ideal weather to spend 11 hours swinging a strimmer around. Not.

So, parched, itching all over, absolutely hosed in debris, plant matter, nettle stings and smeared with splattered slug, pine needles down the crack of my ass and generally sweating and smelling like a freshly poked minge I was glad of the aircon on the drive home. Anticipating a nice long bath and a bottle of raspberry cider I pulled up at the house and hit the button for the gates...(electric gates, see? proper posh, I am.) The gates swing open...outwards by the way... and I reverse the truck in.

"POP".

The fuck was that?

my last grump was partly about waiting for a fucking courier to not turn up....

yeah.........

He had delivered it today, although when I say "delivered" he had flung it over the gate and I have now just reversed the bastard truck over the parcel.

Was it a bag full of super hard rubber bouncy balls? No. Obviously not. Was it a lump of solid steel, like a little anvil or something? nope, not that either.

It was two 2 litre bottles of gear oil for the limited slip diff in the trucks rear axle, which given the difficulty in finding and price paid I can only assume is refined from velociraptor jizz.

This just confirms my suspicions that my entire life is some kind of cruel and ongoing Beadles About style of prank that is being covertly filmed for the amusement of others on a Japanese tv show.

Top work!

unless its some canbus shit, there must be a 12v line from the ignition switch when its at the "start" position so chopping into that and diverting through a relay to the solenoid should work.

Its been a shithouse week so far TBQFH. 

Sitting in waiting for a parcel a couple of days ago (see further on for related grump) I got a phone call from some guy I was supposed to be meeting but had completely forgotten about. FUCK. I jumped into the MGF and razzed up to work to meet the guy. Its been scorchio for a month and this was the first day of rain in all that time so the roads were greasy as fuck, resulting in a 180 spin on a corner which fairly puckered the bumholio. No damage done though, but in my haste I had neglected to bring a jacket or anything so as we wandered around measuring stuff I got piss-wet through. Job done and I set off home to wait for the courier, but as I was leaving I spied a guy from France Telecom or Orange or whatever the fuck they call themselves these days who was half heartedly prodding at a junction box by the roadside. I stopped and backed up to talk to him. My excuse is the MGF is as watertight as the fucking Titanic so was all steamed up and I couldnt see anything behind, but the reality is I am a fucking MORON and just reversed it straight into a ditch, much to the amusement of the telecoms doofus.

After a few minutes of the usual "not on my job-sheet m8, you need to phone head office and report the fault". I did ten days ago. "dunno about that mate,not on my job sheet" etc etc ad infinitum I left him to it.

Here is a wet, fat man tying a strap to his beached faux sports car so it can be pulled out by the farm telehandler.

Knocked out a load of "metal" from the end of the sill and left a gaping hole where it hit the ground. meh.

Got home just in time to receive a text message saying that the parcel cant be delivered today and would I like to choose another day for delivery. FUCK SAKES. Chose it for yesterday and again waiting in, missing work all day yesterday when I have loads to be doing and guess what? aye another fucking "we cant deliver it today, sorry" message. CUUUUUNT. So fuck knows where that is now. Fucked if I am taking a third day off for it.

And STILL no phone or internet at work. I fought the robot lady and got to speak to a person at their call centre who gave less than zero fucks and said it was "in hand" and I could apply for a rebate of this months bill for the inconve...aye, poke your refund, m7, maybe bend on some effort into FIXING THE FUCKING LINE?

And I am seriously fucking sick of looking for a new car. There is nothing that I can afford to buy that I can be bothered owning. Sick of it. Sick of the phrase "vendu en l'etat" What the fuck does that even mean? every seller seems to think its some kind of magic cover-all phrase that means everything from "its mint" to "its fucked" passing by a bit of "sold as seen" on the way. Sick of people not answering phones or emails. sick of scams. "Thank you for your interest in my vehicle. I am a legitimate businessman currently overseas and my shipping agent will...." aye, just forget it, eh? Sick of people advertising a car with a single line of descriptive text and they can get double fucked if half that line is "vendu en l'etat". Sick of a massive list of how brilliant the car is, what its had as new parts recently, how clean the interior is etc etc etc and the last line is either about how the gearbox is in three cardboard boxes in the boot or the paperwork is so administratively fucked that it cant go back on the road. Aye, forget that too, ya plum.

Barrying still seems popular in countries where used car prices are high and you're stuck with what you've got.

Lots of barrying in France because 99.9% of mechanical mods are not homologated so not allowed. Messing with bodykits and stuff is about all that can be done, really. Its especially amusing to see them rolling in to the CT test station with the standard wee steel wheels on, engulfed by huge wide arch kits.

.... police crackdowns on 'cruises' (due to the number of idiots and associated bell-endery that ensued), .....

Yyyyeaah.....you know that knobber that was going round and round and round and round the carpark "drifting" his Nova with Mcdonalds plastic trays under the back wheels while Robert Miles blasted out of the boot install loud enough to hurt, with a couple of tipsy 5th year schoolgirls in the back seat?

That was me. 

Sorry.

This scene was my entire fucking life back then. I had all the magazines, traveled the length of the country to go to all the big shows, was a regular at the local cruises, spaffed every single spare penny I had and later a fucking fortune I didnt have thanks to credit on hot mods and tunez, gave myself tinnitus from the bass and/or exhaust noises, I was a fucking master of handbrake turns outside Mcdonalds and the trafficlight drag race.

Its what made me the person I am today (a loser? yeah, probably) I started out as a total benny with zero mechanical skills, zero tools and zero knowledge and just got stuck in and taught myself. Scrapyard upgrades were the cheapest way to start....cars were like Lego back then and it was all just bolt-off and bolt-on to upgrade brakes, suspension, trim, even engine stuff. The breakers were full of plenty crashed cars to choose from....you could stroll into Persley Quarry and pick up a set of Recaros from an RS Turbo for twenty quid. An afternoon of fucking about with dads power drill and some big penny washers from B&Q soon had them bolted into my Mini which was one of the first proper mods I ever did....and that was me properly bitten by the modifying bug and it wasnt all that much later before I was swapping engines and fitting lowering kits to every car I owned.

I have lost so many photos over the years....fuck knows where all the old print photos have gone from the early stuff....The Minis....RC40s, HiLos, MG Metro engines, the entire back seat area boxed off with MDF and rocking 2x 18 inch subs and enough amps to stall the motor when the bass kicked. the Orions....RS kits, XR3 wheels, 6x9s, The Corsas....Koni, Janspeed, all the good stuff....

I have lost loads of digital pics too from computer deaths.

The Calibra was a regular at Billing and Doncaster shows.

convoy down the night before showday and sleep in the cars...

The astra took over when the Cally died

redtop forever...

Well, until you replace it with a V6

early arrival at another showground

and I have hundreds of pics like these but I wont bore you all with them....

I am a forty year old fat man now and the only way I could get some girly to bend over my bonnet and show her pants would be to pay a hooker, I would imagine.

I still find myself occasionally looking up under-car neons or drainpipe exhausts on ebay every now and then. I am seriously tempted to Barry the Metro to the fullest of my abilities....still got a massive pile of subs and amps and stuff in the garage....a few months back I sacrificed the rear footwell of the pickup to fit a sub box and amplifier so now I can once again make the mirrors vibrate so much you cant see anything in them with my Ministry Of Sound albums.

fuck, the late 90s and early 00s were the peak and life has been shit ever since. Now I am sad again.

Lost my old O2 sim card for my UK phone number. It was an old pay as you go deal from years and years ago. I think it was still in an old handset when I flung it a while back having a clear-out. Cant remember the security questions or even the last top-up date or balance so the O2 customer bod was fuck-all use, which isnt their fault, I suppose.....I only use it once every few months for the occasional UK call that needs to come from a UK number. It had about thirty quid credit on it iirc.

The grump gets grumpier because I found a replacement O2 sim card and now have to try to memorise a new number. And I have just found out that any credit is NOT carried over to the next month as it was on the old account. Apparently they dont do that any more.

Twat.

To redress the balance of yesterdays CT pass, the pickup lost half its blower fan speeds today. A quick prod with a screwdriver in the footwell of the spares truck showed the fan resistor is dead easy to get to so pulled it and swapped into the new truck for a return to four-speed luxury. Oh and thank fuck for working aircon in this weather!

Mr Bollox used an electric spray gun on his...1100? I cant remember. Anyway, it was apparently a fair old faff for mediocre results.

Decent quality aerosols would be my suggestion if you dont want to use a compressor or a brush/roller.

And they never understand that you might only want one Turkish Delight, instead insisting that you can save 20p if you buy two more

 

Tesco - every little attempt to make you fatter helps. Makes you wonder if they plan to fatten us up and then corner the market in Soylent Green products in a few years time?

Fixed that.