Jump to content

The new news 24 thread


Father Ted

Recommended Posts

1 hour ago, paulplom said:

He wanted proper hard graft for gains. He's a bit of a fitness freak. Did 65 miles on his pushbike yesterday.

https://www-bbc-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-63227490.amp

Perhaps he could work in a ship yard.  Don't know what the split between agency and premie will be, but it will be decent money. (Mind you the security clearance takes a few weeks) 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, paulplom said:

He wanted proper hard graft for gains. He's a bit of a fitness freak. Did 65 miles on his pushbike yesterday.

If hes a fitness freak  the company I work for are always looking for staff, he'll probably get to lift 5-8 tons of car panels a day

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, New POD said:

https://www-bbc-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-63227490.amp

Perhaps he could work in a ship yard.  Don't know what the split between agency and premie will be, but it will be decent money. (Mind you the security clearance takes a few weeks) 

But that would mean experiencing Barrow.

It's not something I'd personally want to do again.

They still eat their young there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

my replacement dealer replica plates were coming off the car, so tried to replace the sticky velcro but its pulled a bit of the reflective backing off.  Absolutely gutted 

I seem to be going through one of those phase where everything I do on the fleet goes horribly wrong 

20221017_164135.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No pics from work, as there was a sign for once saying no photos. But as I left work this afternoon some presumably very rich person was looking over a mclaren f1 to buy ( a silver one L40 MCL or similar). Their rolls Royce phantom was basically abandoned blocking several parking spaces and their black suited and tied “security” was in a Range Rover. Someone else had a pagani and there was also a Japanese thing with an enormous wing in the same party. Very flash and attention seeking lot- when Nick mason turns up to take delivery he’s on his own! 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Had another rather unproductive weekend despite taking Friday and Monday off work.  Spent far too much time again pissing around with the Maxus, making no real progress - I actually managed to crack off the lock nut on the track rod end, but I still couldn't get the TRE itself to unscrew - the spanner was just slipping on the flats machined into the inner track rod, but I tried bolting the TRE back into position and unwinding the inner track rod with Stilsons and that didn't work either.  So I gave up and I've booked it in to the garage on Wednesday for the TRE and ball joint to be fitted and then a retest.  Hopefully the rest of the repairs that I (and welding mate) have done will be up to scratch, and hopefully the garage doesn't have to spend too many hours changing the bits.,,  Having finally admitted defeat on the suspension parts, I then fitted a reversing camera.  It doesn't work.

I rewired the headlights on the Mazda to make them slightly less bodgy - I fitted a fuse and put a relay in the circuit so that the headlights will only switch on when the sidelights are on, and I also fitted a main beam warning light.  Then I backed the car up onto the ramps to loosen the back box mounting bolts in anticipation of the imminent arrival of the shiny new silencer.  While I was under there I had a poke at a bit of rust, which turned into a hole in the floorpan.  I then picked at a dodgy looking bit on the lip of the sill, which came off in my hand, and further poking revealed that the join between the floorpan and the inner sill on the driver's side is basically made of underseal for a good couple of feet.  So that's going to be another weldfest needed, and has dashed my plans to put it in for an MOT before the winter.  Assuming the V5C gets here before the MOT runs out (which it should do), I'm going to tax it for another year then park it on the road outside the house over the winter, and reconvene in the spring.  I'm not going to scrap it if I can help it - it's too rare for that and anyway I still enjoy driving it.

This afternoon I got the Spacy fired up and went for one last cheeky spin round the block before it goes away for the winter.  It got rather spluttery for a while and at one point I thought it'd cut out, but it kept going and got me home without the embarrassment of having to get off and push.  Next year I'm going to make more of an effort to get it back on the road - I've been mainly concentrating on the Mobylette this year and the Spacy has been sidelined.  Although I suppose the most sensible thing to do would be to wait until the year after when it'll be MOT exempt...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, HarmonicCheeseburger said:

I believe so.  I was looking at the Avensis Mk1 and 2 for the price, but every Google search brings up woes of oil consumption going out of control.  Yet you see them every day when out driving so not sure if they fixed it, or people are buying up oil the same rate as petrol 🤣

Still tempted, either a machocist or just allured by the fact these things do moon milage as mini-cabs and I am finding multiple examples within budget of Mk1 and Mk2's online with low miles, decent economy for their size.

Just keep oil in the boot, top it off when the light comes on ASAP (their programmed to come on nice and early* anyway) . Think of it as a continuous oil change. Every 5th time the light comes on and you top it off change the filter too! 

The ex's Meriva 1.6 liked a drink and the manual said it'd do 1l/1000miles. Locally it was worse but she worked it out and happily topped the oil off and it lasted fine! Was even worse for a period when it had a leaky sump seal too... The 1.8 in the zafira that replaced it wasn't as bad but we still kept a bottle of oil in the garden. 

My hdi doesn't touch a drop 👌😅

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, HarmonicCheeseburger said:

I believe so.  I was looking at the Avensis Mk1 and 2 for the price, but every Google search brings up woes of oil consumption going out of control.  Yet you see them every day when out driving so not sure if they fixed it, or people are buying up oil the same rate as petrol 🤣

Still tempted, either a machocist or just allured by the fact these things do moon milage as mini-cabs and I am finding multiple examples within budget of Mk1 and Mk2's online with low miles, decent economy for their size.

pick a car, literally anything, and google it. All you get is hits of 'problems' - no-one ever writes any content about how their car has racked up 400,000 miles with only routine servicing and consumables. And even if they did, who would read it? 

I have a car with an oil consumption feature* - it just means I check it monthly rather than 6 monthly. Oil is cheap, and if its using a bit, then just buy mannol or something in 10L containers from ebay for £35 or whatever, as @beko1987 sez, it just means you're doing a rolling oil change rather than all in one go. 

I would be way more concerned with rust than oil consumption on a 20 year old Toyota. Provided its not billowing blue smoke out the back at startup and there is oil on the dipstick, go and check the sills closely - rust will be way more costly and problematic. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

These Toyotas don't smoke much even if they are drinking oil. I think the original problem was due to the slots behind the piston rings not being big enough, and also blocking up. So they would burn oil at a constant rate, while not leaving a smokescreen.

Mk 2 Avensises are all 13-19 years old now, so if they've survived this long they should be ok. In any case, a lot got new short engines under warranty. I'd be a lot more worried about D4D models than petrol ones.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For the first time in several years I remembered when doing the periodic "shove all the damned leaves back out the garage" exercise that I had compressed air on tap.

Yeah...that beats half an hour fighting with a broom.

IMG_20221018_151238.thumb.jpg.9f9e3a224a331a78e60d551f3085d6ab.jpg

Probably 30 seconds got the worst out.  Need to remember that in future.

We've got contractors on site at the moment working on the roof so I'm sort of stuck unable to get stuck into anything that takes more than about 15 minutes in case they need me for anything. 

Thus far I've had a 100% success rate of using my mind powers to summon them to the front door within about five minutes every time I *have* tried to start anything that's actually on my to do list.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I popped to the Jag main stealers today to get the oil separator for the XF. 

Not sure if I was just unlucky with my timing or not but they were really busy. There wasn't enough staff to cope with the amount of people wanting to buy cars.

It doesn't look like the cost of living crisis is affecting their business too much. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, wuvvum said:

Still, at least the contractors are there and working - that has to be progress surely?

Indeed!

IMG_20221018_163857.thumb.jpg.9b828d58279b62df6c5c00700d5c59a1.jpg

About 80% done the lower level and 50% done to the left.  They need to finish the lower roof before they can complete the scaffolding to get to the inset bit in the middle.

That and the bit out of frame to the right (mirror image of left) is likely to be the part where most problems are uncovered as there's been major water ingress there for a *long* time.  

Which went largely undetected as we have zero line of sight on that side of the roof itself - and the problem is at the ridge tile side.

IMG_20221017_160959.thumb.jpg.4b8338babad2d58f9aeb2f1a3c6a9dde.jpg

IMG_20221017_160107.thumb.jpg.59bdd79f66be475b4a642aae6ab82ffb.jpg

Expensive month...assuming no unexpected horrors found (the quote was cognisant of the long term water ingress), that's going to be a £25K bill.  Oh, and we've just had a bunch of fencing, tree removal and stump removal done, which came to another seven grand...though at least they turned up, more than could be said for the last company we hired to do that who buggered off into the sunset with our deposit never to be seen again.

Once the roofers are finished with the main house roofs, they're going to have a look at sorting this mess over the front door.

IMG_20221018_164337.thumb.jpg.476da3e54debfc7382c38f5acc6012c3.jpg

Which we discovered shortly after moving in was very nicely painted but consisted mainly of structural duct tape and newspaper dated shortly before we moved in.  The gutter design there is absolutely stupid as the hopper which drains the whole conservatory roof is about 1 1/2" in diameter and has no provision for shedding of bits of vegetation etc from the adjacent (Council owned) trees...so it clogs up generally within a week of being cleared.

Which I just fished this lot out of.  Was last cleared in the middle of July.

IMG_20221018_171406.thumb.jpg.a39d1f715e38de44dd8617df949d3992.jpg

Daft design.

IMG_20221018_171316.thumb.jpg.041c7abbf3a7ffa64abb456d690fd333.jpg

Probably wouldn't be quite so bad if the adjacent trees were kept cut back properly, but we've been trying to get movement on that since the day we moved in without any success.

Thankfully despite appearances, that isn't actually bearing the full weight of the roof - that's supported 6' or so further back inside the vestibule/cloakroom/porch, whatever you want to call it.

Then once this is all finished we need to move on to getting the landscapers in to get it back to "presentable, clean slate, low maintenance" condition.  

At least we're moving on some of it now!

I really do wish I'd left a gap between our trip to the US and this starting though - having work starting the day after we landed back in the UK wasn't the smartest idea I ever had.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/14/2022 at 6:49 PM, 17-Coffees said:

Officially on Holiday till the end of the Month, I bugger of back to Oregon on Monday! The fun part will be finding out what I get as a rental car, as I've booked 'wild card' essentially is getting a 'compact' for cheaper than if  I just picked 'compact', but there's a very slim chance I could be thrown the keys to something else! 

I'll probably end up with a Sentra again, but I'll try my luck and maybe see about an upgrade pending cost and what else is in stock.

I take back that comment about a Sentra...

PXL_20221018_004713689_MP.thumb.jpg.c5ca2105947d6e6143f212194dc60f01.jpg

A fucking Arazona plated Kia Sedona 🤣

Bonus points as can tell its been used as a taxi during 'rona times, due silicon residual left over from a screen behind the front row of seats...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...