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7 hours ago, Yoss said:

MOT time for Felicia today. Nothing to report of course, it's a Felicia, it just goes straight through. 

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It's 23 years old now and still does this every year. 

These were parked outside. Not shite or even interesting but there is something satisfying about identical vehicles with consecutive registrations. 

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Or is that just me?

No, very satisfying. More than 2 even better.

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Such a pain in the HOLE with the restrictions at the minute so I’m guessing we are all either unable to indulge in the passion for shite vehicles or simply lacking the motivation to do anything motoring related - currently a 5km limit here. 
However, had to bring my elderly dad for routine procedure today so decided to give the P38 a proper scrub. You need to be one brave bastard to depend on one of these to get you to a hospital on time. She started well and drove faultlessly all day. In fairness of all the shite cars I’ve owned over the years as dailies (and there has been a LOT) I especially fupping love this one. It brightens up an otherwise very dark January indeed..

 

CFD
 

 

 

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19 hours ago, vulgalour said:

Got my first "I've not seen one of those in ages" today at the shops.  I would have chatted more, the guy seemed genuinely delighted to see a Maestro and eager to talk about his Montego he had years ago, but I wasn't really in a position to chat.  It's also been weird seeing the Maestro referred to as a 'classic car' by younger people, who aren't even bothered that it's not the performance model.  I'm told Maestros were very popular in the south as a 'car Mum did the shopping in' which probably explains why it turns the heads of women of a certain age wearing puffer gilets, while up north my experience of them was as a lower-middle class family car when new, or the sort of thing the local farmer owned until it literally fell apart around them.

I got that shortly after getting the Saab 9000. I was at @17-Coffees' house and his neighbour across the street, who's into his cars, sauntered over for a chat. He waxed lyrical about how a 9000 Aero was the best car he ever owned. Shame mine isn't an Aero, but he was still properly impressed by it.

I just see it as an old shed...

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54 minutes ago, reb said:

It's my birthday today. No real news, but I'm pretty sure my last one was only a few weeks ago.

That must have been a hell of a party then for your last one!

I'm glad you're back, back here at least. I hope you're doing a bit better now, all the best to you and happy birthday👍

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1 minute ago, Supernaut said:

I got that shortly after getting the Saab 9000. I was at @17-Coffees' house and his neighbour across the street, who's into his cars, sauntered over for a chat. He waxed lyrical about how a 9000 Aero was the best car he ever owned. Shame mine isn't an Aero, but he was still properly impressed by it.

I just see it as an old shed...

I used to get it with the 924. It's nice when people enjoy seeing your car. Time will tell if people enjoy seeing the Volvo 740, I know I am when I see them in the wild.

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Sledgehammer, meet nut

 

Image may contain: car and outdoor

 

Image may contain: car and outdoor

 

Got absolutely fucking drenched, but it's gone now. Had to use a boost pack to move it on the starter to get it from where it was, and then to line up with his truck.

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Got caught out with a fine from DVLA for an untaxed vehicle. This happened because I got trapped aboard over the Covid Christmas chaos. This meant I didn’t have access to the V5, which was still in the post and the warning was several days old by the time I got back. I SORNed the car on Jan 16th there and then. I got a fine notice today saying I was getting a fine because the car was untaxed on the 16th. I wonder if an appeal will be successful because I have an email receipt of SORN for Jan 16th? Bloody annoying. Got trapped abroad for weeks and now that I’m back it’s an absolute shitstom of things I couldn’t fix while I was away. This has all been very costly.

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32 minutes ago, Cavcraft said:

Sledgehammer, meet nut

 

Image may contain: car and outdoor

 

Image may contain: car and outdoor

 

Got absolutely fucking drenched, but it's gone now. Had to use a boost pack to move it on the starter to get it from where it was, and then to line up with his truck.

Nice work. Where's it off to?

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1 hour ago, Cavcraft said:

Sledgehammer, meet nut

 

Image may contain: car and outdoor

 

Image may contain: car and outdoor

 

Got absolutely fucking drenched, but it's gone now. Had to use a boost pack to move it on the starter to get it from where it was, and then to line up with his truck.

Fuck me....you sold it to Cazoo?

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4 hours ago, Broadsword said:

Got caught out with a fine from DVLA for an untaxed vehicle. This happened because I got trapped aboard over the Covid Christmas chaos. This meant I didn’t have access to the V5, which was still in the post and the warning was several days old by the time I got back. I SORNed the car on Jan 16th there and then. I got a fine notice today saying I was getting a fine because the car was untaxed on the 16th. I wonder if an appeal will be successful because I have an email receipt of SORN for Jan 16th? Bloody annoying. Got trapped abroad for weeks and now that I’m back it’s an absolute shitstom of things I couldn’t fix while I was away. This has all been very costly.

Think you should have solid grounds for an appeal there - you can demonstrate to them that you've made all reasonable efforts to resolve the situation as quickly as you could.  I doubt they're going to argue the case too much.

 

I'm waiting for the fine letter from Horizon Parking right now.

Parked up in the Brunel Centre car park when picking up a prescription for a friend who is still Shielding - realised as I walked away from the car that I had zip by way of cash on me.  I can't actually remember last time I opened my wallet as I just use Google Pay for everything these days, especially since the arrival of Covid.  Turns out, checking my jacket that I didn't even *have* my wallet on me.  Nor did I expect to need it given I wasn't even buying anything.

That car park is one of those CCTV controlled, pay before you leave jobs.  The only payment method is by coins.  No card options, no pay-by-phone option, if you don't have your £0.30 in coins on you, you're stuffed.  The helpline number on the signs doesn't work - just get a "Beep...The number you have dialled has not been recognised, please check and try again..."  There's also no free grace period.  As soon as I realised there wasn't going to be an option to resolve it properly, after faffing around looking online for an up to date phone number that worked etc, I legged it - but had probably still been there for about ten minutes though.  Then spent about half an hour trying to find an on-street parking space because everywhere was rammed.

Ticks me off that the ones around here now accept contactless but NOT Apple/Google Pay - but at least there is an option to pay through the Ringo app there - albeit having to use the horribly, horribly clunky piece of software that is their app.  Whereas you arrive down there and don't have cash, you're stuffed!

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5 hours ago, Tim_E said:

Floods floods floods. And I live on a hill! I dread to think what the folks in the valley are going through.

It’s bad round here too... 

This is one of the the roads out of my village... the van got well and truly stuck (although I question the floor driving technique as I reckon I could’ve got through that in a van...)

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I waded out to him to check he was ok and it was right to the top of my wellies! 
 

This is the local pub a couple of villages over... I drove past this on my way home a couple of hours before and the river was right at the top of the bank.

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However 5 miles up the road... it’s snowing!! 
 

standard British weather... 

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1 hour ago, brownnova said:

It’s bad round here too... 

This is one of the the roads out of my village... the van got well and truly stuck (although I question the floor driving technique as I reckon I could’ve got through that in a van...)

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I waded out to him to check he was ok and it was right to the top of my wellies! 
 

This is the local pub a couple of villages over... I drove past this on my way home a couple of hours before and the river was right at the top of the bank.

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However 5 miles up the road... it’s snowing!! 
 

standard British weather... 

Standard approach round here of "hit it full throttle at about 50mph to absolutely ensure to drown the engine" I'm guessing?

It does still baffle me the sheer number of vehicles which seem to have air intakes absolutely purpose built to inhale water the moment you're unlucky enough to hit any major body of standing water.

There was one bit of road by where I used to live which flooded regularly (not seriously, we're talking 6-8" deep for 50' or so).  I lost count of how many cars we saw dead on both sides of that.  Yet I used to take great - utterly immature I know - pleasure in blasting through it pretending to be a rally driver for ten seconds.  Especially when I had the Niva and rear engined Skodas.  Even did it more than once in the Metro.  Approaching it in my parents Motabiliy cars though I was always bloody careful as I knew it would be far too easy to drown them given they virtually all of them had the air intake from basically ankle height in the nearside wing in front of the wheel.

If it was anything like that though unless I knew the area well, how deep it was and ideally had seen another vehicle pass through it as a guinea pig, I'd just find another way around.  Especially as you never know what's been washed out and is hiding under the surface.  Better late than stranded.

I never understand what's going through the heads of people who go and drive into water that's obviously like waist deep and then act surprised when it all goes wrong.  Saw that happen more than once in a couple of spots in Aberdeen - the railway bridge by Dyce railway station was always a favourite.  No excuse there as it's not as though you suddenly round a corner at speed and suddenly you're halfway through it...clear visibility both ways and you can clearly see contextually from the brickwork and such how deep it is.

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15 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Standard approach round here of "hit it full throttle at about 50mph to absolutely ensure to drown the engine" I'm guessing?

It does still baffle me the sheer number of vehicles which seem to have air intakes absolutely purpose built to inhale water the moment you're unlucky enough to hit any major body of standing water.

There was one bit of road by where I used to live which flooded regularly (not seriously, we're talking 6-8" deep for 50' or so).  I lost count of how many cars we saw dead on both sides of that.  Yet I used to take great - utterly immature I know - pleasure in blasting through it pretending to be a rally driver for ten seconds.  Especially when I had the Niva and rear engined Skodas.  Even did it more than once in the Metro.  Approaching it in my parents Motabiliy cars though I was always bloody careful as I knew it would be far too easy to drown them given they virtually all of them had the air intake from basically ankle height in the nearside wing in front of the wheel.

If it was anything like that though unless I knew the area well, how deep it was and ideally had seen another vehicle pass through it as a guinea pig, I'd just find another way around.  Especially as you never know what's been washed out and is hiding under the surface.  Better late than stranded.

I never understand what's going through the heads of people who go and drive into water that's obviously like waist deep and then act surprised when it all goes wrong.  Saw that happen more than once in a couple of spots in Aberdeen - the railway bridge by Dyce railway station was always a favourite.  No excuse there as it's not as though you suddenly round a corner at speed and suddenly you're halfway through it...clear visibility both ways and you can clearly see contextually from the brickwork and such how deep it is.

Search Rufford Ford on YouTube, look for the one from 3 days ago, or equally may of the episodes, which feature SUV and vans launching themselves, only to get stuck and hydrolocked! The three days ago features a black mercedes SUV thing getting driven like a... Mercedes driver.

Gets locked, gearbox is fried and locked in gear, two proper 4x4s can't pull it out!!! 

Gets abandoned in the puddle of shame.

If it wasn't a Merc it might not be so funny. Prejudice, I know.

Edit: can't find it now, but there are plenty with terrible driving featured. Alongside good driving too.

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28 minutes ago, HarmonicCheeseburger said:

And a fail, in the garage near the MOT site being fixed today, and re-test due tomorrow morning.  Will sort the tires out during next week asap.  

Didn't feel any brake imbalance and I do check now and then for any wheels being hotter than others.  Confused a bit about that, no matter as brakes are in bits now in the garage being sorted.

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I've been told that you can't feel the degree rust the machines measure to, as in they have to be very out of balance according to the machine to be able to feel it or detect it yourself.

 

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3 hours ago, Tim_E said:

Search Rufford Ford on YouTube, look for the one from 3 days ago, or equally may of the episodes, which feature SUV and vans launching themselves, only to get stuck and hydrolocked! The three days ago features a black mercedes SUV thing getting driven like a... Mercedes driver.

Gets locked, gearbox is fried and locked in gear, two proper 4x4s can't pull it out!!! 

Gets abandoned in the puddle of shame.

If it wasn't a Merc it might not be so funny. Prejudice, I know.

Edit: can't find it now, but there are plenty with terrible driving featured. Alongside good driving too.

I work with a woman who used to live in a cottage next to Rufford Ford. They used to get idiots getting stuck in it and banging on their door at all hours (3am etc) asking for help. Most of the time the people who got stuck had driven round the "Flood" and "Road Closed" signs as well. One one of the main reasons she moved house.

The route to avoid the Ford only adds a max 5 mins.

However it has fun moments in summer when the water is 2 inch deep as the country park next to it has a viewing platform of the Ford. Those who gun it and make a massive splash get the biggest cheer form the watching kids😃

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Sold the Vespa PX today.  Will probably regret it, but it does mean room for something else now. It also means I can swap the insurance over to one of the others now, or it'll reduce the £700+ insurance renewal coming soon.

Too tight to invest in a new number plate to replace the horrific one on the C200, I simply turned it over and sprayed the other side with £1 shop mat black spray. In case that doesn't work, took a spare number plate off a bike now sold, used £1 shop white spray on that and might get some stick on numbers, the spray over the rest black.

Ordered an ultrasonic cleaner (came yesterday) and the fluid is due Saturday (bought separately,  different sellers) and quite fancy trying to clean the carb on the AR50 to see what it comes out like. Really do need to do something with that bike, though it'll end up in a queue, probably behind the little A100 so I can try and sell the Suzuki.

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Had the Focus in for front alignment and wheel balance yesterday. Was pre-booked for 8:30am, took them 6 hours.... just as well the garage was close to home. 

Anyway, to his credit the guy did spot one of the front pads had delaminated, so I had an afternoon of tinkering planned. 

Still wasn't happy with the holed and generally shagged drivers seat so decided to try another scrappy. Abbey Breakers in Paisley. Came away with a seat for £20 which I was very happy with. It's currently in the flat drying out....

A fine scene;

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Good selection;

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Was back home to start on the brakes. Gubbed pad;

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A video presentation of a Scotch Gear Top Tip;
 

Was only doing pads and a general clean up of brakes, discs seemed decent enough yet. Noticed coolant just below minimum line, so thought I'd top up. Well fuck.....

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That centre piece isn't threaded so couldn't run it back out. Tried to lever it out, but it was crap plastic so it just ended up mangled. Last minute order from ECP of a new expansion tank for £17 saved the day. 

Fitting was easy, it sits on some tabs that hold it in place, then it's just three hoses to unclip, then reassemble. 

IMG_20210121_181648.thumb.jpg.7c7b84b5521696493e8eb2cd9ee035c9.jpg

 

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