barefoot

Nah.
You're just going over to mumsnet and making stuff up based on a cocktail of their latest topics.
There's no way one person's life is so full of drama and sheer fucking stupidity.

Thanks - I believe that the more you use old vehicles the more reliable they become. That said, I do travel with a comprehensive tool kit and spares!!  

Latvia - excellent, 25/10 would waft oily fumes through again. Still a lack of quality chod out and about though.  Riga bought this excellent quality bridge - major route, a lot of spalled concrete. Vaguely terrifying. 
 
Also saw some excellent photos of old street scenes and manufacturing from the Soviet era in the National museum. All unfamiliar to me! 
 
Campsite had these two lorry based adventure wagons - German registered and having had a quick peek at their Instagrams used mostly for pottering around rather than their intended use! 

The unpaved roads did a a certain amount of dust

On to Tallinn, which was visibly richer. Old chod became slightly more common, mostly Volvo flavoured. 

Some how this chap seems to have turned upside down:

as the cars got older, so did the buildings 

Quick ferry over to Helsinki then up to Oulu in Finland. At one point I slammed to door and the large collection of wob I had been keeping as a rough version of a front wheel arch decided enough was enough and popped a bit off:

Obviously I have it a poke

and the fixed* it using top skillz

A medium term repair! 
Pottering around in Finland was a lot more old shite - they have the concept of the ‘weekend car’ which  genuinely sees a lot more random stuff out and about. Lacking photos of most of it! Lots of just old cars in daily use as well

around halfway through my fridge battery stopped charging as this

had become totally insensitive and unfeeling. Inside was complicated 

so I binned it in favour of a standard relay triggered off the charge light. Cold drinks and a less like warm sausage was achieved again.
Random meuseum if life type place had a cracking tractor, still fully working 

and this chap has a sense of humour that appealed on his lifted truck

 
always amazed how much more stuff you can buy in the shops - set of wheels and tyres in what’s basically Wilko anyone

coming back down Finland we used the car train - was weird seeing the van getting shunted round the station 

would do it again, but we didn’t book cabins so sleep was not had .
Back in Helsinki we saw these two beauties

I’m not sure which has a greater 0-60 speed though…..
From there it was a long ferry back to Germany, across to Amsterdam . So a modern art gallery  as kids wanted to go. Save your junk, as this pile is valued at quarter of a million 

I may possibly be a philistine, but for the most part I just don’t get why it’s art.
From there it was a short hop back to Rotterdam, ferry, MacDonalds breakfast and home for lunch.
About 4500 miles all in, 750ml each of oil and water used, 25mpg achieved due to the long, empty and relatively slow speed roads across the Baltics and Nordics  
Knocking cv joint has cured itself for now, so other than a good was and sorting the front wheel arch there isn’t a great deal to do until the next trip! 
 

Today we made it to Latvia:

 
The A roads are big and empty, but turn off them and it’s lots of this:

Not sure it’s the best terrain for a dicky CV joint, but it seems to be holding up okay! 
to get this far we have spent a lot of time doing this

did enjoy watching the stevedores just pushing a trailer unit that was too small into a gap until all the other trailers shuffled across. The noise was amazing, and I’m pretty sure all those trailers are now rogered, but they got an extra couple on so seemed to think they were winning! 
Chod spotting is dire - it’s almost all Audis, with a smattering of other Germanic motors, nothing is that old that I’ve seen, which has been a bit disappointing  
However along the way we have stayed at a Franciscan Monastery (now with rooms on air b&b) 

Lithuania offered me the the hill of crosses which was a bit weird, and coming from north wales not a hill 

but this palace in Latvia was cracking 

it couldn’t have been more like a National Trust place - even the cafe was strangely familiar!! 
800 miles so far, no oil lost (staggering) or water. Lots of petrol used - 22 em pee gees.
Also rolled over 150000 miles, but didn’t feel it was worth a picture as the odometer has only worked on and off for ages, so think it might be a smidge* over that already. 
Tomorrow Riga, then on to Estonia. 

Much confusion, thats a mk1 Dodge Caravan (or plymouth version) not an El Camino 😅

Today I swung in by Duncans workshop to have a discussion on the way forward with the kingpin on REV, He has it fully disassembled and we measured everything and came to the conclusion that it is worn!  By kingpin standards not badly worn, enough to probably induce a speed* wobble but nothing dagerous. Fortunately the housing for the bushes is showing no wear at all, so the new kingpin and bushes should be an easy fit and solve the problem. The bushes do in fact appear to be oilite type, and the bottom of the kingpin tube is open into the front drum, which explains why no grease nipples are fitted.  In the bottom of the tube was a ball of rock hard grease that had obviously been put in many many years ago.  Dunc has also spoken to a few of the old boys who tend to congregate at interesting workshops, including the fella who maintained the 1920s bus in Aberdeen which used a similar, if somewhat larger, kingpin assembly.
The unanimous decision is to leave things as original and reassemble with a good coating of heavy weight oil. After all, it was good enough for the government for the lifetimes of these vehicles. He will hopefully start putting it back together later this week.
We started discussing speed wobbles, as you do and we decided to see if we could improve the aerodynamics of REV
The first attempt using Seat parts was not great
So we looked around and found a yellow and white body kit on an old Audi in the corner which we think will work better!


 

So what?

So my grump is people who post 80% of their posts having a dig at people in the grumpy old man thread without a hint of irony.

Test drive time; to Loughborough in the slowest of crawling market day traffic and then to Manchester & back, twice in two days - Sorted.

I have no idea, when is the next bank holiday?

@dollywobbler Thank you for organising today’s social! Had a lovely day out with these 2 and the old man and got chatting to some lovely folks.

Replaced the wife’s diesel Bini with a newer hybrid one. The old one was insurance group 16 , the new one is 26, so I expected at least £100 a year increase , so pro-rata , thought it would be maybe £70 ish for the rest of the year. 
The exact increase? 1p. I asked them if they were seriously going to collect 1p which would presumably cost a few pounds to process, and I was told ( to paraphrase) “ computer says yes!”

Oh and as I posted that he’s just replied:
“the engine turns over but doesn’t fire up, we have been told it is an electrical issue, it is not the immobiliser, but the electrics are not connecting with the brain of the car, it is actually with a guy in Norwich at the moment”
Sounds like someone’s already had a go and hasn’t had any joy. Probably not worth me getting involved then!

I have no idea, when is the next bank holiday?

Renewed today, turns out it's 3,000 mpa. But tbh that was more than enough for the isle of Skye and Cornwall. 

Brand new* and young* driver?
Me, 161 earth years old in  45yr old van , little change.  
The big test comes in July with 87 Scirocco & 944 and 02 Rover 75 on same policy. 

Iran. Believe Ed March said that Iranians were one of the friendliest people he had met and if he had to choose a place where he would have woken up naked with nothing, it would have been Iran.
Ed March drove from Thailand? to the UK on a Honda C90.
https://www.youtube.com/c/c90adventures/videos

Sodding Google. 
Anyhow, looking at it myself I'm not sure whether I should go through Iran or Russia? 

Great to see a solutions driven approach! 
 
Best plan.😀

I think they used to do it on August bank holiday, I am going back to the 90's though!

I have no idea, when is the next bank holiday?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/226076018849?itmmeta=01HTNBW1VXJQPD9ZGYBZ02SBQG&hash=item34a32e48a1:g:l78AAOSwjttmDcl5

Apologies for shit post but it looks a fucking bargain and I'm on my phone that I can barely use. 
https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/433361725875654?ref=search&referral_code=null&referral_story_type=post