The new news 24 thread

[junkyarddog]

Found this rummaging in my late uncle's shed.

Chuffed to find this,dates to around 1962/3.

[Split_Pin]

2 hours ago, trigger said:

It's fine, as I say I did say in the ad there was no history to back up the mileage and the rear panel is only noticeable if you remove the back bumper, I treated it with some kurust and painted it with some red hammerite.

 

I was just a bit annoyed. I did message him to say I was disappointed to see it back up for so much after his initial keenness and he's replied apologising as it was a knee jerk reaction due to him spending £1200 on some new alloys for it that didn't fit and it overheated? (I spent a hour in traffic in it on Tuesday and the gauge never moved from the middle...) never the less apparently it's now at his garage and it's a stuck thermostat and the garage have told him it's a really good car and he's now keeping it so who knows. 

Sounds like a chancer to me. Nothing wrong with that as such, but... still a chancer.

[Ghosty]

After having to call them twice when they failed to call me, Kwik Fit have finally called me back and are sending a fitter tomorrow evening to make right. 

They don't know why the previous fitter couldn't complete the job and won't until he's back on shift on Monday. I think he's also chipped the paint on one of my wheels as there are several fresh looking large chips around the lip of the wheel, tapering outwards to the lip. 
 

[Cluffy]

7 hours ago, grogee said:

@Cluffy has a story about keys locked in car ... 

Thanks George, I don’t think I’ll ever forget this one  

A day that was going so well. @grogeegave me a lift to pick up my V12 XJ-S from long term storage and we had a nice burger onboard halfway home. Cruising along and it started making alarming noises so i pull over (engine still running). 

Cant see anything visible poking head underneath as best as possible. Then I try and get back into the car to find the doors locked and no other key on my person. To add to the ridiculousness of the situation is that I’d just had spares cut and they were dangling on the same key ring hanging out of the ignition!

Queue 30 minute wait for AA man who tried with rods etc to unlock but in the end we needed to smash a quarter light to get in. 

Lessons learned. 1) Don’t leave keys in ignition when leaving a car and 2) Always keep spares separate from original keys!

[High Jetter]

1 hour ago, Cluffy said:

Lessons learned. 1) Don’t leave keys in ignition when leaving a car and 2) Always keep spares separate from original keys!

I went through a phase of getting out of my van and locking my door leaving the keys in the ignition. Had to get handy with wire coathangers on a few occasions. I always have 2 sets of keys in my pocket (1 for home and a bigger one for work) so solved the problem by putting a spare key on the work set.

[EyesWeldedShut]

On 10/5/2022 at 3:53 PM, SiC said:

Another Ceri delivery! This one actually got the neighbours out for a look.

But TL;DR it's a one owner local Bristol car that was his company car. Creme Cake (iirc) was in use until 2004 when it failed it's MOT and parked up for restoration. Left outside since then, it sadly slowly deteriorated.
They had a number of lovely pre-war Austins in the garage which presumably was always the main interest and this just never got done.
The chap passed away and the family decided that this had to be sold. When the cat came out from underneath and more rust fell out, they knew it was never going back on the road.

I paid basically scrap price for it. I hate the idea of ever scrapping a car but this is by far past it. I'll primarily be using it for body cuts and the like. Maybe selling the odd part cheap if anyone is after anything. My purchase money went to a Parkinson charity, so will only be right if I donate a proportion of anything I sell there too.

I'll do a video later of it after work. Apparently the engine runs really sweet. Ceri mentioned it even drove onto the trailer under its own power!

My better half would like to know what is the car in the garage with the carboard boxes on the bonnet?

I have no idea myself tbh

[Mally]

3 hours ago, junkyarddog said:

Found this rummaging in my late uncle's shed.

Chuffed to find this,dates to around 1962/3.

Are they worth anything? I could have a look for mine.

[junkyarddog]

16 minutes ago, Mally said:

Are they worth anything? I could have a look for mine.

From a £tenner up depending on condition. 

The smaller motorbike version are worth a bit more apparently. 

[HMC]

On a similar subject re flipping-

About 4 months ago I nearly bought a wolseley landcrab for 2k. I’ve seen it up more recently for £5k in basically the same condition as was then. 

Im pretty philosophical about it- Selling is such a ball ache good luck to them. Ultimately  I’m in it for the love of cars, I make my money elsewhere; but for some it’s their main income stream.

[Yoss]

I've never owned a car where it is possible to pre lock the drivers door as you get out but at work on both the Sherpa (and LDV Pilot etc) and the later Transits it was possible. So I had a routine where the second I stop the keys went in my shirt pocket then I push the button in the way out. This was marginally quicker and easier than locking the door with the key from outside but when you are getting in and out  a hundred times a day it all adds up. This was long before central locking obviously, I mean central locking existed but not at Royal Mail where everything is ultra base spec. 

This worked fine until you get a distraction, like waiting to see what three in ten was on Popmaster, where you have to leave the key in to keep the radio on. Did that a few times and would have to ring the office to get them to bring the spare out. Although a couple of times I was near enough to just walk back to the office. 

I had a 55 plate Transit and I reckon it was less than five years old. One day I came out of the office and got in what I thought was my van except I'd forgotten I'd parked it somewhere else in the yard. It wasn't until I got in I realised it wasn't mine because it had more rubbish in it. That's odd, I thought, I'm sure I just unlocked it. Maybe it wasn't locked in the first place. So I tried the key in the door and sure enough it worked. So, being curious, I walked over to another Transit and found I could unlock that too. So by the time they were five years old the keys and door locks were completely interchangeable on the whole fleet. I expect that sort of thing with my old Leyland stuff but not by the mid 2000s. 

One day, I'm out doing packets and there's another RM Transit sitting outside a local post office with the driver stood outside looking bored. He was doing collections so came from a different office to us. I stopped to see if he was OK and he'd managed to shut his his keys in the back of the van. It was a Transit like mine so I thought let's have a go. Fiddled with the key in the back door for a while but to no avail. So moved to side slidey door. It didn't like it but I could feel a bit of movement and after a bit of wiggling it gave way. The other guy was so relieved as he'd come from the big mail centre up by the airport and it would've taken ages to get a spare key out to him.

I kept an old Transit key on my home keys after that, you never knew when it might come in handy. It's not an issue any more as we've entered the late 20th century and now have central locking on our vans. We still have some 08 plate Combos with windy windows and tape players though. 

[andy18s]

[wuvvum]

2 hours ago, Cluffy said:

Queue 30 minute wait for AA man who tried with rods etc to unlock but in the end we needed to smash a quarter light to get in. 

Leaving a V12 Jag idling for 30 minutes probably cost more than a year's AA membership too.

[wuvvum]

6 hours ago, BorniteIdentity said:

young Michael

Isn't Trig older than you?

[BorniteIdentity]

7 minutes ago, wuvvum said:

Isn't Trig older than you?

Considerably 😉😬

[trigger]

Hold on there, I'm not sure about the considerably part! 

[Matty]

5 hours ago, trigger said:

The profit isn't such a big deal as I can't see him getting it, it more the fact that he lied to me about wanting to keep it as his parents had one etc and that he stuck it back up for sale hours after getting it and even using my photos with literally no effort taken at all on the car. 

I'd wash my hands of the job. He will either clear a profit or he won't. I know it's annoying but don't look again. It'll only wind you up. Plus you know you didn't act like a cunt. He did by inventing some bollocks back story. So he is a cunt. And no one wants to be a cunt 👍

[stuboy]

11 hours ago, trigger said:

Cunts 🤬

Unbelievable, I sold this a couple of days ago for £3300 and its already up on Facebook for £5500! He hasn't even bothered to take new photos! Mega annoying

least it wasnt this dude..........

EWyrksdWkAMP5vZ.jpg_large

[junkyarddog]

26 minutes ago, Matty said:

I'd wash my hands of the job. He will either clear a profit or he won't. I know it's annoying but don't look again. It'll only wind you up. Plus you know you didn't act like a cunt. He did by inventing some bollocks back story. So he is a cunt. And no one wants to be a cunt 👍

 

[SiC]

2 hours ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

My better half would like to know what is the car in the garage with the carboard boxes on the bonnet?

I have no idea myself tbh

Dolomite Sprint! The destination for most of the parts cut off this donor. There is a tarpaulin on the bonnet to protect it from too much scratching.  

I've a thread somewhere on it. Not properly worked on it for a while now. 

[Matty]

Just now, junkyarddog said:

 

Lovely stuff. I swear a lot (blame work) but that word still has a lot of power. I try to use it sparingly 😄

[Cluffy]

1 hour ago, wuvvum said:

Leaving a V12 Jag idling for 30 minutes probably cost more than a year's AA membership too.

There was also the nerves that the thing was going to overheat too!

[artdjones]

2 hours ago, Yoss said:

I've never owned a car where it is possible to pre lock the drivers door as you get out but at work on both the Sherpa (and LDV Pilot etc) and the later Transits it was possible. So I had a routine where the second I stop the keys went in my shirt pocket then I push the button in the way out. This was marginally quicker and easier than locking the door with the key from outside but when you are getting in and out  a hundred times a day it all adds up. This was long before central locking obviously, I mean central locking existed but not at Royal Mail where everything is ultra base spec. 

This worked fine until you get a distraction, like waiting to see what three in ten was on Popmaster, where you have to leave the key in to keep the radio on. Did that a few times and would have to ring the office to get them to bring the spare out. Although a couple of times I was near enough to just walk back to the office. 

I had a 55 plate Transit and I reckon it was less than five years old. One day I came out of the office and got in what I thought was my van except I'd forgotten I'd parked it somewhere else in the yard. It wasn't until I got in I realised it wasn't mine because it had more rubbish in it. That's odd, I thought, I'm sure I just unlocked it. Maybe it wasn't locked in the first place. So I tried the key in the door and sure enough it worked. So, being curious, I walked over to another Transit and found I could unlock that too. So by the time they were five years old the keys and door locks were completely interchangeable on the whole fleet. I expect that sort of thing with my old Leyland stuff but not by the mid 2000s. 

One day, I'm out doing packets and there's another RM Transit sitting outside a local post office with the driver stood outside looking bored. He was doing collections so came from a different office to us. I stopped to see if he was OK and he'd managed to shut his his keys in the back of the van. It was a Transit like mine so I thought let's have a go. Fiddled with the key in the back door for a while but to no avail. So moved to side slidey door. It didn't like it but I could feel a bit of movement and after a bit of wiggling it gave way. The other guy was so relieved as he'd come from the big mail centre up by the airport and it would've taken ages to get a spare key out to him.

I kept an old Transit key on my home keys after that, you never knew when it might come in handy. It's not an issue any more as we've entered the late 20th century and now have central locking on our vans. We still have some 08 plate Combos with windy windows and tape players though. 

Back in the day it was Fords that were notorious for completely interchangeable keys. Cortinas especially.

[brownnova]

My gran had a Metro, one day she parked it in a multi storey car park, and forgot where she parked it. Eventually she was relieved to find it, and unlocked it and drove off towards the exit… at which point she realised it wasn’t her Metro as it had different coloured seats!

She carefully returned it to its spot and found hers!

Or so she says… 

[Yoss]

31 minutes ago, artdjones said:

Back in the day it was Fords that were notorious for completely interchangeable keys. Cortinas especially.

Yes Fords had a reputation for it but in reality all cars at the time were as bad as each other. I suspect they got their locks from the same supplier. I can start my Triumph with anything that will fit in the lock, doesn't even have to be a key. Or at least I could if it worked. 

[Rust Collector]

I've just updated my insurance ready for tomorrow's colekshun. It's the first time in a while that I'll be driving a purchase back; since buying a trailer I've mainly been doing colekshuns on the 'easy' difficulty setting. Luckily I'm buying something sensible* and not at all known for mechanical hissy fits, so what could possibly go wrong?

[Zelandeth]

Been out today driving for the first time in five years in the US.  Pleasingly it feels far less alien than last time I was here. 

Guess being in an area I actually know my way around rather than the Florida Keys helps - Miami rush hour traffic is not something I ever want to experience again.  Especially that bit where dropping the rental car off where I merged into the freeway on the left - then had less than 500 yards to merge SIX lanes to the right to get to my exit.  That was not a pretty manoeuvre.

Things I have reaffirmed.  

I am still not a fan of this bloody thing.

Sorry, don't have a current photo...so have one from out an upstairs window from 2015.

Things I dislike:

[] Indicators/wipers.  It has those STUPID stalks that just toggle up/down and don't latch in place.  Trying to cancel the indicators without signalling in the opposite direction is near impossible.  Plus it seems to be a complete crap shoot as to whether you will get three flashes or whether the signals have actually latched on.

[] Suspension.  It's a big, heavy lump of a seven seat SUV.  It is never going to handle anything like well.  It corners like a pregnant hippo.

So WHY the bloody sodding hell did Ford find it necessary to fit Audi style shock absorbers?!?  It just about knocks the fillings out of your teeth every time you hit a joint in the road or a pothole.  It also makes it skip really unnervingly on freeway ramps where there are undulations in the surface.  It makes what could actually be quite a comfortable car (the seats aren't half bad actually) incredibly tiring to cover distance in.

[] Central control panel.

*Sigh.*

Screen ain't actually bad by the standards of touchscreen interfaces, though I'd really rather not have one for ANYTHING beyond the reversing camera and sat nav if given the choice.  The controls for the media system are pretty easy to follow, many are duplicated on the steering wheel/multifunction screen on the dash for the driver.  I also like that when you have the phone linked to it that there's a gigantic "do not distrurb" button to just automatically divert calls to voicemail and to silence notifications.  No need to hunt through menus, it's just there on the home screen.

Below the screen there are a plethora of buttons.  Quite a few as there is a modern stereo and pretty comprehensive quad zone climate control to deal with.  Grouping is pretty logical and the layout isn't by modern standards terrible.  

However they're not buttons...the whole damned thing is a touch sensitive panel!  There are mouldings to pick out the button locations by touch...which is precisely zero use as you'll then trigger every button you touch on the way to find what you're looking for.

It may as well just be controlled through a touch screen as it's completely impossible to use without actually looking at it.  I hate it.  It's an absolute abomination of UI design, the worst of both worlds.

[] Drivetrain.

No idea what size the engine is, I'm guessing somewhere around 3.0 litres, it's a V6, and is matched to an automatic gearbox with completely the wrong set of ratios for it, and some seriously dim witted control logic.  If you absolutely boot it from a standing start it will gather speed acceptably well.  It only really produces any decent power at high revs though.  Trying to accelerate for instance from 45mph to 55mph (two common speed limits here), requires it to think about it for a good second before dropping at least two, maybe three gears and thrash around frantically trying to use torque that just doesn't exist.  Increasing the cruise control from 65 to 70 produces similar levels of panic.

I really miss it's predecessor.

That was a 2000-ish GMC Envoy.  Roughly four litre straight six which had plenty of torque to make progress effortless at any speed, conventional controls, and nice squidgy suspension which dealt with concrete slab construction roads excellently.

There's nothing the Explorer does better aside from having bigger rear seats.  It's even appreciably worse on fuel.

 

Has reminded me though how much I really do want to own a proper old Jeep Cherokee though.  They're everything I like about US vehicles, the whole "high velocity squidgy leather sofa" idea just appeals to me.  Just wish I could find one that hasn't A: Dissolved, B: Been modded into an off-road toy or 😄 Is priced at the best part of ten grand.  Had kinda hoped that the recent fuel price madness might have hurt their values a bit, doesn't seem to have though.

[JJ0063]

 

Amazed that this was owned by a school until 2021, typically a place where cosmetically I can’t think much care is usually taken. This thing looks brand new, it’s fantastic.. look at the engine bay!

[paulplom]

13 hours ago, High Jetter said:

I went through a phase of getting out of my van and locking my door leaving the keys in the ignition. Had to get handy with wire coathangers on a few occasions. I always have 2 sets of keys in my pocket (1 for home and a bigger one for work) so solved the problem by putting a spare key on the work set.

I used to have a habit of throwing my van keys in the door bin when I got out. I just finished a job about 20 miles from where I live and went to get my wallet for my bank card details for payment. I shut the van door and something must have hit the lock button on the keys in the door bin locking the fucker. I had to get a mate to come and get me and take me 20 miles all the way home for the spare and then take me back to the job. I was sick as fuck.

I've never kept the keys there since.

[Yoss]

39 minutes ago, JJ0063 said:

 

Amazed that this was owned by a school until 2021, typically a place where cosmetically I can’t think much care is usually taken. This thing looks brand new, it’s fantastic.. look at the engine bay!

Are they special seats for primary school children? Ours used to be three across and they were cozy to say the least. 

[LabRat]

On a road trip from Oldham to Skegness to visit the parents. The weapon of choice for a 130 mile run?

 

2 people, a basset hound and a weekend worth of luggage, with room to spare surprisingly. Though may the Gods have mercy on my spine, cos the suspension certainly won't!