louiepj

Is there some secret agenda to take at far away from @LightBulbFun as possible to ensure the greatest degree of misery adventure when it gets collected?

I just won £20 on a 50p National Lottery instant win game!
 
(We'll ignore how much money I have shovelled into these games winning next to fuck all)

Young horse will do the same thing when you ride them out on the road for the first couple of times.
They'll rock up to a Give Way or Stop junction and do a couple of things:
1) Pop over it like the cows     (Wannabee Unicorns)
2) Stop and stare at it                 (Wannabee Pony Trekking career)
3) Spin and fuck off sharpish (Wannabee Findus Lasagne) 

Good news x2.
Neat paraffin removes overspray from plastics. I have cleaned up the front wheel arch liners that someone forgot to cover when respraying the Sierra.

Remember this?

I cleaned up the air filter housing cover and made a cardboard template of the area that needed covering up.

I then cut the lid off an Isopon P38 tin, the only black flexible plastic thing I had in the garage, into shape, fixed it into place with three self-tappers and, hey presto, job done.

The scratches were already there, presumably occurred during the previous repair.
Once re-installed where it belongs, nobody will ever know.

I think I'm winning.
 

Ford EcoSport
For a car thats less efficient and slower than a Fiesta as well as being fuck ugly.

Fresh atf fluid and filter appears to have completely cured the CLK which is now shifting better than it ever has, no clunking, no slippage, perfect. Tracking now way out & some suspension clunking but that’s a doddle to sort compared to new gearbox.

This morning my mrs told me to sound the alarm and get us to the hospital.
An hour’s brisk driving in the Disco of Doom and amazingly we had no FTP’s and no major traffic and found ourselves at Hastings Conquest in good time.
Even more amazingly, my partner wasted no time in bringing child number two into the world.

I got to name our son (Jensen), and my mrs has settled on Amélie for our daughter.
I’m absolutely over the moon, couldn’t be more proud of my partner and I’m incredibly grateful for the excellent care once again by the maternity team here in Hastings.
All being well then they’ll both be home tomorrow!

My one from 2014 on Google Maps, and I had a weldathon on that to re-secure the roof to it. I used to wash half the roof at a time from the wall. She had large BBC Lincolnshire stickers on each side as they had been part of the charity donation of it to a special needs school.
I took all the other stickers off but left the BBC on as it often got mistaken for Exhibitors/Support Vehicle and got me free parking or access to places.


Sent from my SM-S711B using Tapatalk

My one from 2014 on Google Maps, and I had a weldathon on that to re-secure the roof to it. I used to wash half the roof at a time from the wall. She had large BBC Lincolnshire stickers on each side as they had been part of the charity donation of it to a special needs school.
I took all the other stickers off but left the BBC on as it often got mistaken for Exhibitors/Support Vehicle and got me free parking or access to places.


Sent from my SM-S711B using Tapatalk

My one from 2014 on Google Maps, and I had a weldathon on that to re-secure the roof to it. I used to wash half the roof at a time from the wall. She had large BBC Lincolnshire stickers on each side as they had been part of the charity donation of it to a special needs school.
I took all the other stickers off but left the BBC on as it often got mistaken for Exhibitors/Support Vehicle and got me free parking or access to places.


Sent from my SM-S711B using Tapatalk

Or at least it feels like that now.
 
So, I was on a walk and I found something so good that I had to reinstall Tapatalk just to do this.

Absolutely no words, except for shite

New project truck has arrived, will I be joining the tax dodging, self employed pickup driving crowd (who clearly don't need a pickup for you know IT work etc) .......
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Nope its a bit smoll....

I appear to have inherited a Tamiya monster truck, needs a new battery pack and a bit of fettling, Woot!
 
 

Talking to one of the lads at work, he's in his late 20s. Mentioned how I bought a 106 S1 Rallye for £900 about 15 years ago.
He was fairly gobsmacked. Loves em as much as I do.
 
Then a couple of hours later, this drove past my window:

Piloted by what looked like a fairly elderly couple (although it was quite dark so I hope I haven't offended anyone)
I was in two minds whether to sprint after it and offer them £900 for their "Auld Peugeot" . Then I noticed the plate.... 03 is late for a rallye.
Comes up as 1100cc on the DVLA, so it's a replica!! How dare they!

Ah yes, the inevitable royal connection. 
I had to sell a Fiat Uno with a dented front wing for the same reason. 

One of my partner's students rocked up the other day and proudly told her that he'd bought his first car.
A MK3 Fiesta.
This has made me far happier than it has any right to.
Fortunately his dad can weld. 

This is a really shit situation. It's servicing stop. A bunch of absolute shitehawks. I have plenty of information about how they operate, I've seen it first hand, I would absolutely support any efforts to have them put out of business. 
The garage in Enfield is the head office of servicing stop. 
Servicing stop take a booking from the customer for a ridiculously cheap service. Typically £100-150. 
Servicing stop then book the car in with a garage nearby to the customer and ask them to collect and deliver it
Servicing stop ask the garage for a list of additional work.. if the garage refuse, then they will make it up as they go along and sell whatever they can anyway. 
Servicing stop will then phone the customer up at some point throughout the day and sell all of the above additional work. They will use scare tactics
Crap marketing. Customer pays £85 (+vat!?) For a single fuel treatment, and then every service they book with them in the future they get one included. What gets put in the tank? 
A bottle of redex or similar. I'm being dead serious. 
Obviously 90% of customers probably never use the company again, so they've paid £100 for a lifetime subscription of fuel additives if you like when it's only 1 bottle on 1 service. 
They also do exactly the same thing with engine flush. 
As much as I would encourage this, their response will be "we gained authority from the customer to carry out to the works at the quoted price" 
We have done work for servicing stop in the past and I know exactly how they operate. A customer got stung to a similar degree as above, we confronted servicing stop about it and the above was their response
They are absolute scum and I would encourage whatever recourse may be possible.
See above as I wrote to horriblemercedes..
£100 labour refers to the initial total service that was booked. A "full service" which includes labour, the oil and the filter. 
The way they work is that they hook the customer in with a cheap full service. Then once the garage have picked the car up, they phone the customer and pressure sell the additional items. 
I can speak from a garage point of view here- 
They pay the garage just £7 for the fuel treatment which they charge £85 for (+vat)
They pay the garage about £30 for the brake fluid change which they charge £165 for above(!) 
We do not see a single penny from the fluid too up charge or environmental charge. They are both complete SCAM additional surcharges! They do NOT contribute to fluid top ups or environmental disposal. 
Oil in included in the £100. They then pay the garage £3/litre for oil surcharge. The customer still pays £24.99 even if their car only takes 3 litres ... Oil is capped at £7/litre, which means it's virtually impossible for the garage to use the correct oil in some cases. 
It's not out of the blue. They have booked a service with servicing stop who are a middle man. 
Servicing stop are the shitehawks based in Enfield, they are merely a call centre. 
The garage is an innocent entity. They get booked to collect the car, service it, and deliver it. Servicing stop does all the pressure selling at extortionate figures, instructs the garage to do said extra work, pays them peanuts for doing it, and blackmails the customer into paying before they get the car back. 
It's crafty that they pose as a garage because they are not, they are a call centre. 
The garage will be based near the customer and will be completely innocent in all of this

It's the colour of bile. 
It is small. 
It is not a Dacia, Kwashkwai or Juke. It's much worse than any of these things. 
 

 

 
 

 
 

Me creeping back from the toilet on the train trying to look inconspicuous because I made an awful monstrosity and the flush wouldn't work so I just piled all the toilet roll on top of it and left a short note of apologies for the next user. 
 

Thats @LightBulbFun's flat and the electricity is coming out of it 

Had a visit from mate steve, a family man who solved the question answered  “volvo xc90” a different way

update if anyone's interested... (also someone please let me know how to change the thread title as I've had this thing for a month now)
sketchy times getting it up the drive - duct tape over the plate was for the tax fairies

everyone in my life who told me it wouldn't fit (including myself) can bugger off haha

 

found a free gift wing-mount aerial, but there's no radio, and no wings for that matter either? Came with the car so I'm keeping it, will re-install at some point in the distant future
 
Assessment time - removed the pond from under the rear seats, the dessicated rat from under the driver's seat (sorry no piccy) and the mouldly sound-deadening.
Needs: OS front floor (especially the bit under the rat, probably corroded by death juices), little bit of the OS rear floor, and parts of the boot floor:

eh, could be a lot worse
 
Floppy gearstick was irritating me, so had a look under the cover plate:

hmm that's not right...
 

pin's somehow sheared off the linkage. Probably unlikely to find a replacement, since seems it's base-model specific for some reason, so...

ended up being welded back together and popped back in the car. Was a right pain trying to get the bolt off the end to slide the pin back into the bushing, breaker bar in one hand and holding the linkage to the kitchen floor with my bare foot (socks give you no grip whatsoever)
 

All back together, featuring spare CV boot from the Golf, because again there's no way I'm ever finding an OEM replacement rubber boot. Please also ignore the large amount of daylight coming through the floor.
 
Ok so natural progression would be to get the clutch working, so master cylinders and servo out:

Wondering where all the brake fluid went?

Straight through the structure of the car of course. Excellent.
To be fair, looks like it's only the top side that's fucked, though not the easiest place to get to for welding.
 
Servo looked fine, so painted it with some weird £5 iron fence paint, just to protect it. Should really be plated but whatever.

May notice the recurring theme here that my workbench is a wheelie bin
 
Next steps, work out how to remove the front seats to get to the floors, and sort the clutch slave cyliner out as it's looking decidedly sad at present.
Need to get some taller axle stands from Machinemart since the ground clearance is so big nothing I have will lift the wheels off the ground, but gotta find a route that doesn't go through ULEZ cameras - every £12.50 I save will go on penetrant
 
 

This is why I love our postie, Mel.  During the week it's highly likely that I'll be in and she knows to wait a few seconds for me to answer the doorbell on my phone (I work in a garden office).  Before we had the video doorbell, I had a package that I wasn't able to answer for.  She tried neighbours and nobody else was in and then came back at the end of her round and tried again with a neighbour.
I was so surprised and in the end sent her a compliment on the Royal Mail website.  We had a chat about it and it turns out they actually read it to her, etc.  Her dedication to her work is second-to-none and I don't know how she keeps her spirits up given the shit that's constantly thrown at her.

We have a thing on our PDAs (I'm Royal Mail by the way, if there's anybody new here, so I'll admit I may have a vested interest in slagging off the other delivery companies) that is supposed to tell us if somebody has requested a neighbour to leave stuff with. When I scan a packet a blue box with 'delivery information' written in it pops up at the bottom of the screen if somebody has requested it. They don't come up often, only about three or four times a day. I assume it's something a customer can fill in online like you did.
Thing is every time I press it it comes up with the same address, 11 Basing House. I have about 750 addresses on my delivery, most of which are a long way from Basing House. The first time I had it was coincidentally for another flat in Basing House so it didn't seem an unreasonable request but when I knocked on the blokes door he knew nothing about it and refused to take it. I still click on it every time I get one just to see if it ever changes but so far it hasn't.
I blame Fujitsu.

Headline news on TV.....English tourist deported. Apparently totally dangerous on his rented bike and thought a hairnet was protection enough.                                                                                       Police said they had issued him with 25 speed tickets and 35 for being on the wrong side, also 60 for the hairnet, they said that was  just because it was fun. Sergent Moronish said that was the best day he has ever had at work.