The new news 24 thread

[artdjones]

1 hour ago, Tadhg Tiogar said:

A sticky end for some Dorset chod

Your man isn't too bothered,is he? Maybe houses falling apart are a common occurrence in Dorset?

[Tadhg Tiogar]

Just now, artdjones said:

Your man isn't too bothered,is he? Maybe houses falling apart are a common occurrence in Dorset?

That fella is Mister Casual. Nothing seems to bother him at all!

[Kiltox]

18 hours ago, Ghosty said:

Q - if I do the retention online how quickly can I get a document to make up some numberplates? 

https://www.plateservices.co.uk

Order plates today and you’ll have them tomorrow. Answer yes to “are you a trade customer” and you’ll forego the need to supply any paperwork. 

[wuvvum]

3 hours ago, Tadhg Tiogar said:

A sticky end for some Dorset chod

Nice LT panel van at the start.

[barefoot]

Drove back to garage in the Fox & picked up my lovely, scruffy old Scirocco. Simply a collapsed vacuum pipe, but I'd have never found it & I didn't have anything to replace it with so £25 well spent. Showed a couple of lads in a BMW its arse on the way home too. They should have had me easily, but apparently they couldn't keep up with the VW through the twisty bits.

[wuvvum]

Sciroccos do handle nicely.  Mk1s are even better.

[barefoot]

Mk2's with strut braces are pretty bloody sharp!

[Bren]

Replaced the SD1's near side brake dust shield.

Well past its best. It crumbled as I unscrewed it.

Verdict. Fucked.

Nice shiny new one. Tomorrow I will strip the brakes on that wheel.

[junkyarddog]

Had my two Japanese coupes out today,doing a bit of a reshuffle. 

13 years only seperate these two,but they feel light years apart.

Doing a recommission on the Honda,hope to have it on the road later this year for its 30th. 

[Fumbler]

And in the red corner...

Juxtaposition goodness.

[Ged]

I got what i deserved for posting here a bit ago about there being a "significant lack of rust" on the saad 900NG

[Split_Pin]

4 hours ago, junkyarddog said:

Had my two Japanese coupes out today,doing a bit of a reshuffle. 

13 years only seperate these two,but they feel light years apart.

Doing a recommission on the Honda,hope to have it on the road later this year for its 30th. 

I love that shape of Prelude, looks great from any angle and it also has a cool dash. 

[Split_Pin]

Scrubs up well I think.

I make no apologies for the tyre shine, the wheels had been in storage and the tyres were mockit. 

[wuvvum]

On 5/23/2021 at 11:59 PM, wuvvum said:

The Ducato is also now really quite poorly.  I put it up on the ramps to check the gear cables, and it looks like there's plenty of grease on them, but when I took it for a quick drive the gears rapidly went to pot, with first gear going completely AWOL, and fifth being an absolute bastard to get too.  By the time I got it back to the car park I could barely get it out of gear at all, and then reversing it into its space it was shaking like a shitting dog and I had to get both hands on the gear lever to yank it out of reverse.  It did another odd thing - in neutral, with the clutch up it was free to roll down the slight slope of the car park, but press the clutch (even in neutral) and it stopped dead.  I went out to it again today and first was still MIA, reverse was still a bastard but the clutch had decided to play up in a slightly different way - lifting the clutch pedal in neutral the van started to try to drive forward, then stopped when I pressed the pedal.  I'm really not sure what's happening but I'm going to have to get the clutch changed before I do anything more with it - for now it's been relegated to shed status.

So this evening I took the Ducato to the petrol station to stick some air in the back tyre (which has a slow puncture), having not touched it since Sunday, and it drove spot on - all the gears were there and selected easily, and when I got back it reversed into its space absolutely fine.

I have no fucking idea...

[bunglebus]

My son in law (ish - girlfriend's daughter's husband) is a nidiot. He always goes at everything like a bull in a china shop, and tonight it has bitten him on the arse.

I suppose the story goes back a few weeks when he started complaining that the starter on his auto Ashtray had gone wrong. The one time I looked at it during a lovely rainstorm, it was because it wasn't in park...

Anyway fast forward to this afternoon, borrows my jack and axle stands so he can fit the new starter tomorrow. Not long after we get a call that he's gone through a ford and it's cut out and won't start. Said it was less than a foot deep and he was doing 10 MPH. Unfortunately for him, we're just leaving to get my girlfriend's Covid jab done, and we also have to go shopping as I'm away tomorrow and my GF hasn't passed her test yet, and to add another layer to the mix we have the GFs grandkids with us so they have to come along too.

By the time we get to them there's someone else trying to sort out towing the car - but it won't come out of park now. I'm thinking along the lines of wet electrics causing havoc, but that fault was just low battery voltage, jump leads from the Lupo saw enough juice to release the lever - but now I see the key blade snapped off in the ignition, and it won't turn off - just ign lights on or start position, which just rewards me with a thunk.  Turns out he got annoyed and turned the key hard enough to snap it, probably ruining the barrel in the process. Also the windows won't close.

Investigating under the bonnet revealed pools of water in every recess on top of the inlet manifold, and an air filter that I could wring out. Well that's fucked then.

Next problem is getting it out of the way, back wheels are still in the water and the steering lock won't release. This is where the trolley jack came into play, had to jack it up and shove it sideways several times to line it up with where we wanted to push it (uphill) to. It gained several dented wings in the process but the next stop is the bridge for this one.

Just to add insult to injury he stabbed me in the finger with a screwdriver while trying to get the stereo out, right where I already had an injury. And broke the stereo.

So to summarise, drove through a ford too fast, sucked water into the intake killing the engine, then ruined the ignition barrel because he was annoyed. Then called me to help while we're looking after their kids.

It wasn't a bad Astra either, now it's sat down a country lane with the windows open, so will probably be trashed/burnt/on bricks soon. 

Did I mention he fixes tanks for a living?

 

PS - I told him to tell the police the car is there so they don't tow it and bill him, but I bet he doesn't bother.

Next thing will be wanting me to look at replacements with him but I think it's time he learnt to deal with his own problems now.

[Ged]

6 minutes ago, bunglebus said:

My son in law (ish - girlfriend's daughter's husband) is a nidiot. He always goes at everything like a bull in a china shop, and tonight it has bitten him on the arse.

I suppose the story goes back a few weeks when he started complaining that the starter on his auto Ashtray had gone wrong. The one time I looked at it during a lovely rainstorm, it was because it wasn't in park...

Anyway fast forward to this afternoon, borrows my jack and axle stands so he can fit the new starter tomorrow. Not long after we get a call that he's gone through a ford and it's cut out and won't start. Said it was less than a foot deep and he was doing 10 MPH. Unfortunately for him, we're just leaving to get my girlfriend's Covid jab done, and we also have to go shopping as I'm away tomorrow and my GF hasn't passed her test yet, and to add another layer to the mix we have the GFs grandkids with us so they have to come along too.

By the time we get to them there's someone else trying to sort out towing the car - but it won't come out of park now. I'm thinking along the lines of wet electrics causing havoc, but that fault was just low battery voltage, jump leads from the Lupo saw enough juice to release the lever - but now I see the key blade snapped off in the ignition, and it won't turn off - just ign lights on or start position, which just rewards me with a thunk.  Turns out he got annoyed and turned the key hard enough to snap it, probably ruining the barrel in the process. Also the windows won't close.

Investigating under the bonnet revealed pools of water in every recess on top of the inlet manifold, and an air filter that I could wring out. Well that's fucked then.

Next problem is getting it out of the way, back wheels are still in the water and the steering lock won't release. This is where the trolley jack came into play, had to jack it up and shove it sideways several times to line it up with where we wanted to push it (uphill) to. It gained several dented wings in the process but the next stop is the bridge for this one.

Just to add insult to injury he stabbed me in the finger with a screwdriver while trying to get the stereo out, right where I already had an injury. And broke the stereo.

So to summarise, drove through a ford too fast, sucked water into the intake killing the engine, then ruined the ignition barrel because he was annoyed. Then called me to help while we're looking after their kids.

It wasn't a bad Astra either, now it's sat down a country lane with the windows open, so will probably be trashed/burnt/on bricks soon. 

Did I mention he fixes tanks for a living?

 

Know someone that killed a E39 doing something similar. Atleast without the extra destruction of having the windows stuck down in the middle of nowhere by weather and lovely people.

[HillmanImp]

The (old) news 24 thread. 

Facebook is telling me it's 13 years since I bought the Scirocco that @barefoot has had for many years. 

[barefoot]

I'll have had it for eleven in October this year.

[Bren]

15 hours ago, bunglebus said:

My son in law (ish - girlfriend's daughter's husband) is a nidiot. He always goes at everything like a bull in a china shop, and tonight it has bitten him on the arse.

I suppose the story goes back a few weeks when he started complaining that the starter on his auto Ashtray had gone wrong. The one time I looked at it during a lovely rainstorm, it was because it wasn't in park...

Anyway fast forward to this afternoon, borrows my jack and axle stands so he can fit the new starter tomorrow. Not long after we get a call that he's gone through a ford and it's cut out and won't start. Said it was less than a foot deep and he was doing 10 MPH. Unfortunately for him, we're just leaving to get my girlfriend's Covid jab done, and we also have to go shopping as I'm away tomorrow and my GF hasn't passed her test yet, and to add another layer to the mix we have the GFs grandkids with us so they have to come along too.

By the time we get to them there's someone else trying to sort out towing the car - but it won't come out of park now. I'm thinking along the lines of wet electrics causing havoc, but that fault was just low battery voltage, jump leads from the Lupo saw enough juice to release the lever - but now I see the key blade snapped off in the ignition, and it won't turn off - just ign lights on or start position, which just rewards me with a thunk.  Turns out he got annoyed and turned the key hard enough to snap it, probably ruining the barrel in the process. Also the windows won't close.

Investigating under the bonnet revealed pools of water in every recess on top of the inlet manifold, and an air filter that I could wring out. Well that's fucked then.

Next problem is getting it out of the way, back wheels are still in the water and the steering lock won't release. This is where the trolley jack came into play, had to jack it up and shove it sideways several times to line it up with where we wanted to push it (uphill) to. It gained several dented wings in the process but the next stop is the bridge for this one.

Just to add insult to injury he stabbed me in the finger with a screwdriver while trying to get the stereo out, right where I already had an injury. And broke the stereo.

So to summarise, drove through a ford too fast, sucked water into the intake killing the engine, then ruined the ignition barrel because he was annoyed. Then called me to help while we're looking after their kids.

It wasn't a bad Astra either, now it's sat down a country lane with the windows open, so will probably be trashed/burnt/on bricks soon. 

Did I mention he fixes tanks for a living?

 

PS - I told him to tell the police the car is there so they don't tow it and bill him, but I bet he doesn't bother.

Next thing will be wanting me to look at replacements with him but I think it's time he learnt to deal with his own problems now.

Fixes tanks? There was an old REME joke about their mechanics tool kits - adjustable spanner and a can of easy start.

[richardmorris]

[dozeydustman]

 

MoT tomorrow. Needs a load for brake tester.

 

work best not be as crap tomorrow as it has been recently. Truck on fire yesterday https://www.chichester.co.uk/news/refuse-lorry-forced-to-offload-rubbish-after-fire-breaks-out-3250762?fbclid=IwAR2r2qaNYlXozgjX7EouAGrMo2FofrIZHND5TG4hMGMTf6SvZkyIXjmk6nM

shortage of drivers, management meetings, all 4 supervisors and the overall manager for refuse out on rounds last 4 days.

[Split_Pin]

Weelll THAT was an interesting drive home from Cumbernauld.

First run out in the Cav for ages and the throttle jams on at 3000 revs. 

Yep, this car is STILL fighting me every step of the way.

[HMC]

Chanced a second hand replacement battery off a scrapper  on the Beetle, as I’m feeling very skinflinty at the mo- I usually just buy new ones. I wondered if the existing  battery was duff or perhaps was there a parasitic battery drain?

I’m too thick to properly diagnose that but my logic was that the battery  never went flat as such but just lacked cranking power when cold. A bit of diagnostic battery  parts darts later and all sorted now, and let’s be honest I’ll be selling it in 5 minutes anyway.

[Stanky]

53 minutes ago, richardmorris said:

New tyres on a car are the best thing ever. Improved acceleration, handling and reduced road noise. 

[Spurious]

2 minutes ago, Stanky said:

New tyres on a car are the best thing ever. Improved acceleration, handling and reduced road noise. 

To me, having decent tyres on a car is a good sign it's been looked after. 4 matching is nice, but at least two matching pairs is alright. 

 

[vulgalour]

For the first time in a while I checked the oil and coolant today on the Maestro fully expecting them to need to be topped up and no, they're exactly where they were when I got the car and it hasn't used a drop of either.  No need for screenwash either since the bottle is about the size of an olympic swimming pool.  Brake fluid still exactly where it was too.  I genuinely expected it to have at least used a bit of oil, given the high mileage of the engine you'd at least expect a bit of oil burning but no, it's fine.

Hopefully it's not attempting to lull me into a false sense of security.

[richardmorris]

31 minutes ago, Stanky said:

New tyres on a car are the best thing ever. Improved acceleration, handling and reduced road noise. 

I’ll have to give you a ride in the 2cv. None of the above apply!

[richardmorris]

Nearly forgot about this outside the lab today. And the colour in the flesh was wonderful.

[richardmorris]

31 minutes ago, Spurious said:

To me, having decent tyres on a car is a good sign it's been looked after. 4 matching is nice, but at least two matching pairs is alright. 

 

Went for Toyos again for the 2cv. The merc is on Goodyear efficient grip performance all round and the fiat Pirelli’s. Will hopefully get them fitted tomorrow- my friend pete has offered to come over with his 2cv van and help get them done.

[richardmorris]

46 minutes ago, Stanky said:

New tyres on a car are the best thing ever. Improved acceleration, handling and reduced road noise. 

Anorak that I am...

last Toyo set fitted 2012, previous Michelins 2006, then 1999 ( bargain from Southall tyres £140 fitted  for four Michelins!).