The new news 24 thread

[wuvvum]

That's a different shape of Mirai to the one I've seen here.  Less fugly.

[Volksy]

I saw one of those Hydrogen Mirais in Berlin the other week. 

The chap had only just bought it, and managed to kerb both nearside alloys trying (really badly) to parallel park it in front of the bar we were sat outside of. I'd have thought that these would have come with some sort of self park shenanigans given how 'Advanced' they appear to be. 

[grogee]

Papped our local taxi driver's Allegro, seems like he's got it out for a run. I've not seen it much this summer. Sadly it'll have got wet as it was raining this morning. 

Bloody love this car

[anonymous user]

20 minutes ago, grogee said:

Papped our local taxi driver's Allegro, seems like he's got it out for a run. I've not seen it much this summer. Sadly it'll have got wet as it was raining this morning. 

Bloody love this car

Princess Anne, sorry, Douglas Bader had one of those

[lesapandre]

25 minutes ago, grogee said:

Papped our local taxi driver's Allegro, seems like he's got it out for a run. I've not seen it much this summer. Sadly it'll have got wet as it was raining this morning. 

Bloody love this car

700,000+ of all models made - so not the catastrophe so much prognosticated elsewhere. Decent wheels and blacked-out sills and detailing it does not look half bad. Up to this point a lot of BL's offering had been dressed up for 'Terry and June' type buyers - a bit more jazz suited the car.

Ironically- and I've not checked the figures - I belive the Allegros outsold the Maestro car which followed...

[grogee]

Allegro: 642,350

Maestro: ~605,000

So yeah, both of them definitely* set the showrooms alight. 

The fella with this Equipe also has a black Maestro Turbo. Told me it's been tweaked to 200+bhp, which may or may not be true. However I haven't seen it running this year around town. Here it is seen last year next to my white one. 

[stuboy]

21 hours ago, stuboy said:

mot booked for the mondeo for tomorrow

Failed... boo...

 

Booked in for Monday they doing repairs and retesting it.

[SiC]

642k units is still a pretty respectable number for any car though. Especially one that had a lot of its expensive R&D (e.g. engines) negated by using a lot of old parts bin stuff. 

[beko1987]

11 minutes ago, stuboy said:

Failed... boo...

 

Booked in for Monday they doing repairs and retesting it.

Nothing scary I hope? 

[stuboy]

14 minutes ago, stuboy said:

Failed... boo...

 

Booked in for Monday they doing repairs and retesting it.

 

[wuvvum]

13 minutes ago, stuboy said:

Failed... boo...

-Repair immediately (major defects)

      *Vehicle has far too many shit stickers.

[Split_Pin]

Wonder if the centre rear is jammed because the backrest isn't fully locked into position?

[wuvvum]

2 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

Wonder if the centre rear is jammed because the backrest isn't fully locked into position?

I had that issue on the Zafira.

[stuboy]

1 hour ago, Split_Pin said:

Wonder if the centre rear is jammed because the backrest isn't fully locked into position?

when dude told me i remembered id been sodding about with the amp/subs with back seat down....

[Split_Pin]

1 minute ago, stuboy said:

when dude told me i remembered id been sodding about with the amp/subs with back seat down....

Fixed!

[Arthur Foxhake]

Today was an interesting day. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pretty sure I found the failure.  

A rivet failed and the whole centre exploded. That bit was heat welded onto the input shaft,  never had such a difficult gearbox to remove. 

Ready for replacement tomorrow. 

 

[Mally]

At least you found the problem.

I'm happy when I find something, makes dismantling  worthwhile.

[brownnova]

Our house has been electrically powered by this for the past 24 hours… 

Still waiting for VTEC to kick in. 

[stuboy]

36 minutes ago, Arthur Foxhake said:

 

turbo'd with the wing vent?

[Arthur Foxhake]

17 minutes ago, stuboy said:

turbo'd with the wing vent?

Turbo and air conditioning. Not all turbos have the vent. 

[Lord Sterling]

1 hour ago, Arthur Foxhake said:

Today was an interesting day. 

Cool, planning on ram-raiding Curry's at some point?

I heard* they were pretty good for that. 

[Zelandeth]

2 hours ago, Arthur Foxhake said:

Today was an interesting day. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pretty sure I found the failure.  

A rivet failed and the whole centre exploded. That bit was heat welded onto the input shaft,  never had such a difficult gearbox to remove. 

Ready for replacement tomorrow. 

 

That must have made some exciting noises when it let go!  Haven't seen that much carnage from a clutch in a while.

[wuvvum]

2 hours ago, Arthur Foxhake said:

Turbo and air conditioning. Not all turbos have the vent. 

Ooh, very posh.  Is it reasonably high geared being a 100?  The last turbo Smiley I had was a 190 and ran out of revs at 78 in 5th.

[Arthur Foxhake]

7 hours ago, wuvvum said:

Ooh, very posh.  Is it reasonably high geared being a 100?  The last turbo Smiley I had was a 190 and ran out of revs at 78 in 5th.

Nah, same fucking gearbox and diff.

Goes like fuck to about 60-65, then runs out of ideas. Cruising speed is exactly the same. The DOHC petrol one I had off PBK was long geared, that'd crack 100mph happily. 

[Bren]

Insignia has it's MOT in the morning

[comfortablynumb]

33 minutes ago, Bren said:

Insignia has it's MOT in the morning

Is that divine intervention, or the last rites? 🤣

Which ones your son hoping for?

 

Edit - I forgot,good luck 🤞 

Edited September 4 by comfortablynumb
Additional

[reb]

I was out taking the bins in and noticed that the 850 has V70 washer jets and the V70 has 850 washer jets. I thought about swapping them over, but the v70 ones clog easier and the ones on the v70 already look in better cosmetic condition.

Not really of any importance, I suppose.

[hairnet]

21 hours ago, Lord Sterling said:

Cool, planning on ram-raiding Curry's at some point?

I guarantee they are good for that. 

 

[Lord Sterling]

On 03/09/2024 at 14:51, Lord Sterling said:

Oh dear! Now I know where I get my occasional bad luck from! 😅

Today myself and Father_Sterling went into to Brussels to fit a lock to a garage that my Dad parks at when at work. 

It's basically a garage within a very old and well-built building with a private multi-story carpark attached. The thing I love about this garage is whilst it looks dark and dingey, it's very secure with entry via a key fob on both driving and foot exits/entrances, you get your own 'box' garage with a door that you can shut as per a private domestic garage, it's covered even outside and the box garages are massive, it can swallow up even modern Range Rover with space to spare;

I do have some odd enthusiasm about garages/under cover parking garages etc... mainly because I don't have one where I can stick my own cars into, I've always had a thing about having my cars under cover.

ANYway, myself and Father_Sterling were fitting the lock and rear locking bars to the garage door because some randomer had decided to park in the space (the doors are generally kept shut on the box garages) and as a result, my uncle, who owns a space, decided the door should be shut and locked tomorevent this happening again, but the lock was old and didn't work.

We fitted the bars and lock only to find the bars were just too short to effectively lock the garage, this was because the locking mechanism that the bar is bolted too was just a bit too short.

Fair enough, we decided we'd pop to the hardware shop to purchase a couple more bars, except Fatha_Sterling's Passat wouldn't start, why? (I'd like to because VW but...) because we'd left the lights on to work on the garage door, great.

OK, so now we have a car that won't start and needed a jump-start, the only place we could get one was the garage (where I'd got my air-con topped up) which was over the otherside of Brussels. What we did have though was the use of my uncle's car, he'd arrived to work, so Father_Sterling explained the situation and took uncle's car, a Toyota Mirai, to the garage to borrow up a battery booster pack.

Broken down Passat. 

Toyota Mirai.

Now this car is Hydrogen and electric powered. I must admit, in my sad little existence, I've never driven or even been in a car that is powered by anything other than an internal combustion engine. I have driven hybrids, lots of them, but not a fully electric/hydrogen powered vehicles.

It was nice, silent, fast and ultra modern, but that was about it. The Mirai is usually a US-only vehicle but this was imported by a German businessman who sold it to my uncle. However, since then, the Mirai has become available for retail sale in Europe. The UK was the first outside Japan to get this car.

Anyway. We picked up the battery charger, got the Passat started, bought some new bars from a hardware shop which were prepared for fitting tomorrow.

Well, finally....

I've discovered where the aircon leak is coming from;

The condenser. This time I'll be taking the car to an air-con specialist rather than a garage that simply bashes it and claims I need to pay for another one. If I had an extra week, I'd get these guys, friends of my Dad to do it.

We also finally got the garage lock fitted and done. However, in the middle of this, I got called back home (Brussels, not UK) as my brother was ill, I took him to the doctors and waited for him whilst I admired the shawarma sandwiches;

Then  Fatha_Sterling required my help to finally get the garage, so dropped brother off back home and headed back to the otherside of Brussels. I passed near to where I used to live near the European Union building and Kitty O'Shea's

Got back to the garage to try and sort the lock, the garage is a great place for some moody shots:

We finally got the lock and bars fitted properly and all is well again.

Tried the Jag for size whilst we popped out to get some extra keys cut:

 

[wuvvum]

13 hours ago, Arthur Foxhake said:

The DOHC petrol one I had off PBK was long geared, that'd crack 100mph happily. 

Yes, I owned that one for a bit as well - it definitely didn't hang about, I remember losing a modern Sprinter in it on the A12.  Liked a drink though mind.