Jim Bell

Ravensworth Road, Gateshead 1980s

Dunston Comprehensive school, gateshead 1960. 

Station Road, Fulwell, Sunderland. 

Thanks I hate it. 

Lambton Lion Park. 1974

South Shields 1970s

16 hours ago, stevek said:

Ok let’s totally box off the catch up session on the blue one by posting the pre-jet washing pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-Steve-

DO NOT WASH

this level of nature must be preserved. 

Stockon High Street 1979. 

Widest High Street in Europe. 

Gateshead 71

1 hour ago, MiniMinorMk3 said:

Smith's NCB Electric Suburbanite Milk Float at Smith's Electric Vehicles, Team Valley, Gateshead

Free tax on them. 

South Shields Keppel Street

Sunderland 73

There's been a few nice looking Corollas on eBay and Marketplace recently so I'm going Toyota. 

3 minutes ago, Stanky said:

Please provide urgent update on car mats situation!

Edit - TBF that boot liner is giving me a bit of a semi, so sculpt, many stain resists...

Mate. 

I ordered mats online before I set off and they're STILL in the post. 

It's got my shit itching having a car with 0% mats in. 

It actually drives great.

It runs straight, brakes straight, rides really well, has no suspension conks, and is generally a fun enough and economic way to scoot about. Once cleaned, the interior is tidy and undamaged. It's a happy little thing and I'm really pleased with it. 

It needs a few jobs but once done I think it'll be a very good little car. 

Fiat Pa-cma-nda. 

It was all kinds of filth inside so I had a good go at it today with wet cloths and a hoover. 

The boot was in a similar state of DIRT to the rest of the car. 

Before 

*Insert hoovering montage*

After

Better

Best. 

I haven't got a rattle gun so I bust out my biggest breaker bar and did some early morning Saturday swearing. 

Looks better with the trims off anyway. 

Well the front two tyres were worn on the edges, which was an mot advisory and the rears weren't holding air so I decided to go completely off-script in Autoshite terms and signed up for FOUR  MATCHING BRAND NEW TYRES FROM A MAJOR HIGH STREET CHAIN. 

It was booked in at 17:00 on a Friday.

FORESHADDOWING.

I collected it, checked nothing and drove home. 

When I got most of the way home I thought I'd better stop and check the wheel nuts were actually tight. They were, but I noticed that there was no valves on the tyres. Well, there were valves, but they were trapped behind the wheel trims, which are the type that bold on with the wheel bolts. 

GR8. 

The wheel trims were not fitted correctly because they'd put a balance weight where the trim clip has to engage if you want the cut out for the valve to be where the valve is. 

But it was 1700 o clock on a Friday so theyd just rotated the trims 45 degrees, trapped the valves and rattlegunned the nuts to 19000 newton meters, hi fived each other and gone to the pub. 

Me:

Tyres are good though. 

Two more stops to top up and made it home grand.

Well done little panda. 

Drivers seat analogue Tyre monitoring sytem activated. 

Hold on you 13inch clownarse. 

At Berwick, which was the next available fuel stop, I checked all the tyres. Rears were down to 20psi ish. So they're leaking. 

Right. 

Pez shot.

I'm sure it'll be grand if I stop a couple more times on the way home. I'd made it 80 miles and it was about the same to go. A couple of stops and gas ups should be fine. 

I had no compressor and better yet, an inspection of the interior revealed that there was no 12v outlet. It's so base that it doesn't have one. WELL GR8. 

Me creeping around asking strangers if they have a compressor, and if they could park their car REALLY CLOSE to mine so that they could plug it into their own car so that I could pump my tyre up. 

The first 20 or 30 people/families that I asked just looked at me like I planned to murder them using this complex ruse as a ridiculous introduction and scurried away to make their pisses. 

Eventually a kind man in a Golf agreed. 

The worst rear tyre was on 5psi and the other wasn't much better. I pumped them up to 33psi and headed for Berwick. 

I stopped for a piss near the border and happened to walk past the back of the car. ......

Ok well that's flat. Like really flat. 

I upgrade my piss to a level three panic shit then came back out to see if it was still flat. It was. 

It's an 80k 1.2 eco and is as base as they come. The only concession to modernity seems to be electric front windows. 

I pointed it south and set the right foot council estate cruise control to a reasonable velocity. 

The car seemed to move around a bit but it was quite windy so I ignored that. 

Had a nice catch up with the Juulars and Laquerpeel then decided to hit the road. 

@MrsJuular mentioned that she thought one of the tyres looked a bit soft so I safety checked the front two by kicking them before I got in. I didn't waste time by checking the back two. They don't even steer. Would have wasted precious seconds. 

FORESHADOWING

me doing Geordie yoga to try and get my bones and muscles onside before I fold my self into this tiny car. 

Then I checked absolutely nothing else and hit the road.