The new news 24 thread

[Barry Cade]

Little Mii passed its MOT this morning. Still love driving the wee thing, and apart from a rattly heatshield and the rust round the petrol flap, it's been absolutely faultless for the past year. I keep looking at Up! GTi's, but the prices are obscene.. 

[egg]

Another great spot by ardech auto. I like the commentary

Quote

an 82’ R9 still used by a doctor to visit patients

https://www.instagram.com/p/CxcvvQpIUR

Seems like seeing a car on old style black and white French number plates is like us seeing a car on Sercks or something. 

[egg]

Cool new band t-shirt arrival

[wuvvum]

18 hours ago, wuvvum said:

I've also lost my watch - I took it off to avoid it getting covered and left it in the van, but it's now disappeared - I can only think that someone came along while I was getting cleaned up, saw it on the seat and nicked it - although that kind of thing would be completely unprecedented round here, and it's not as if someone walking past casually would have seen it as the van was right in the corner of the car park so someone must have walked up to have a look, which is quite worrying.  It wasn't an expensive watch, a 40 quid Timex out of the Argos catalogue, but that's not the point.

Found my watch.  I didn't put it in the van, I put it in the Renault 4 for some reason.  I R twat.

[Sh'Eds]

2 hours ago, Barry Cade said:

No, it's a normal manual gearbox, but has no clutch. The clutch is operated automatically when you change gear with a normal gearlever.

I recall Mercedes A Classes being offered with a semi-auto box as I distinctly remember test driving one for / with my grandmother who was a serial car buyer, though decisions to buy or not were usually based upon the salesman's attitude rather than the merits of the particular vehicle. 

[barefoot]

And 1500 Beetles used to come with a semi-auto, although I seem to recall that ratios 2,3 & 4 from the manual box were marked L, 1 & 2 and you were supposed to set off in 1 & shift into 2, with L just used for silly steep hills. To make that work, I assume that there must have been a torque convertor involved as well somehow.

[somewhatfoolish]

6 hours ago, grogee said:

Is this the witchcraft where you 'pre-select' a gear? It makes absolutely no sense to me. 

There's a switch on the gearstick which you press when changing gear; the box of tricks declutches while you do that, then re-engages it afterward. A bit complicated for what it does given it's all electromechanical and pneumatic, the boffins at AP were obviously starved of interesting things to do with relays and vacuum servos and went a bit tonto.

[brownnova]

Done a multi car policy on the 2CVs… all four insured for just over £300.  Weirdly it cost more if I had zero miles on any of them… so I can do 1500 miles in the one with holes in the floor if I can get it to run seeing as it’s Mot exempt!

Also should serve as motivation to get the others back on the road! 

[Wibble]

Finally concluded my late Aunt’s estate today. It’s been 4.5 years of grief and our solicitor yesterday asked for an updated electronic  transfer form to be sent. I threw my toys out of the pram at this.

They’d been sent one a month ago and acknowledged receipt. So I asked why? They just said our accounts dept have requested it. Advised them this meant printing it, posting to Scotland, taxi to post office and another 3 weeks delay for something they already had.
 

I advised nothing had changed since the last one was submitted and I was tired of their constant delays, mistakes and frankly stalling tactics and was now concerned about where the money actually was. Suggested I may now have to speak to the Police.

Low and behold,  no need for new form, funds transferred to mum this afternoon. Cunts! Sister is adamant she is now going to the Irish law society to complain about the utter incompetence of this shower of shit law firm. 
 

Mum is in shock and can’t quite believe it’s finally over. She was in good health when it started and is now wheelchair bound. Pisses me off they’ve robbed her the chance to enjoy it, as her sister would have wanted.

[MikeR]

Wow.   8 years ..

[High Jetter]

29 minutes ago, Wibble said:

Finally concluded my late Aunt’s estate today. It’s been 4.5 years of grief and our solicitor yesterday asked for an updated electronic  transfer form to be sent. I threw my toys out of the pram at this.

They’d been sent one a month ago and acknowledged receipt. So I asked why? They just said our accounts dept have requested it. Advised them this meant printing it, posting to Scotland, taxi to post office and another 3 weeks delay for something they already had.
 

I advised nothing had changed since the last one was submitted and I was tired of their constant delays, mistakes and frankly stalling tactics and was now concerned about where the money actually was. Suggested I may now have to speak to the Police.

Low and behold,  no need for new form, funds transferred to mum this afternoon. Cunts! Sister is adamant she is now going to the Irish law society to complain about the utter incompetence of this shower of shit law firm. 
 

Mum is in shock and can’t quite believe it’s finally over. She was in good health when it started and is now wheelchair bound. Pisses me off they’ve robbed her the chance to enjoy it, as her sister would have wanted.

Oh that's shite, you're having a seriously rough time.

[Wibble]

7 minutes ago, High Jetter said:

Oh that's shite, you're having a seriously rough time.

Thanks, yes, not been much fun but good news is Dad’s headstone has been paid for. Bad news is the council have said it will be 8 to 24 weeks before they do the footings to enable its installation. Just over £2k for the headstone and £250 to the council. Was hoping it would be  in place for the first anniversary but seems that won’t happen now.

 

[vulgalour]

2 hours ago, barefoot said:

And 1500 Beetles used to come with a semi-auto, although I seem to recall that ratios 2,3 & 4 from the manual box were marked L, 1 & 2 and you were supposed to set off in 1 & shift into 2, with L just used for silly steep hills. To make that work, I assume that there must have been a torque convertor involved as well somehow.

One of the cars I was hoping to buy as my first was a Beetle with one of those gearboxes, it's the only one I've ever seen and the only thing remarkable about it.  A sort of bottle green colour, probably an early 70s model if memory serves, got to have been around '98 back when I was nerding out about getting a Beetle.

[Stinkwheel]

On 9/19/2023 at 10:46 PM, Noel Tidybeard said:

sounds like C-Matic as found on green blooded things

I loved the C-matic in my old CX, also drove a GS with one. But the best thing i've ever known with regard to semi auto/weird gearboxes and clutches is the 'trafficlutch' in some 70's 2V's/Dyanes Ami's. Simply a wonder to use. 

[Stinkwheel]

On 9/19/2023 at 10:46 PM, Noel Tidybeard said:

sounds like C-Matic as found on green blooded things

I loved the C-matic in my old CX, also drove a GS with one. But the best thing i've ever known with regard to semi auto/weird gearboxes and clutches is the 'trafficlutch' in some 70's 2V's/Dyanes Ami's. Simply a wonder to use. 

[dollywobbler]

18 hours ago, grogee said:

Is this the witchcraft where you 'pre-select' a gear? It makes absolutely no sense to me. 

Pre-selectors make more sense when you consider when they were current. Manual gearboxes were often lacking synchromesh and had one of those tricky clutch things. By comparison, a pre-selector is delightfully easy to drive. By the time automatics had been made to work with smaller engines, pre-selectors were rather pointless.

[artdjones]

13 hours ago, Wibble said:

Finally concluded my late Aunt’s estate today. It’s been 4.5 years of grief and our solicitor yesterday asked for an updated electronic  transfer form to be sent. I threw my toys out of the pram at this.

They’d been sent one a month ago and acknowledged receipt. So I asked why? They just said our accounts dept have requested it. Advised them this meant printing it, posting to Scotland, taxi to post office and another 3 weeks delay for something they already had.
 

I advised nothing had changed since the last one was submitted and I was tired of their constant delays, mistakes and frankly stalling tactics and was now concerned about where the money actually was. Suggested I may now have to speak to the Police.

Low and behold,  no need for new form, funds transferred to mum this afternoon. Cunts! Sister is adamant she is now going to the Irish law society to complain about the utter incompetence of this shower of shit law firm. 
 

Mum is in shock and can’t quite believe it’s finally over. She was in good health when it started and is now wheelchair bound. Pisses me off they’ve robbed her the chance to enjoy it, as her sister would have wanted.

My wife had the cleaning contract for a solicitor's office in West Cork, and there was a huge pile of files leaning against his desk that didn't move for years. When dusting his desk you couldn't help seeing messages asking when he was going to call people back after multiple attempts to contact him over many months.

My mother-in-law left the deeds to her property with a West Cork solicitor. He later went into partnership with a lawyer in another town 10 miles away. Then he retired leaving the second man in charge, and holding the deeds. Without any notification. Then the second solicitor closed down the practice and joined another firm in Cork, taking the deeds with him. Again, without any notification. Then he left the firm leaving the deeds in charge of another lawyer who was totally unknown to us. Still no notification. Luckily my own solicitor is good, and tracked them down.

[Asimo]

1 hour ago, artdjones said:

My mother-in-law left the deeds to her property with a West Cork solicitor.

I have heard of this being done but I don't understand the purpose. Presumably solicitors make a charge for holding deeds.

[artdjones]

51 minutes ago, Asimo said:

I have heard of this being done but I don't understand the purpose. Presumably solicitors make a charge for holding deeds.

It's a practice that's dying out now, but solicitors used to have fireproof deed safes, so as long as you didn't lose the receipt you were fine. And even if you did your ownership was officially registered. They normally didn't charge, but of course they would expect to do the conveyancing of the property if it changed hands. Or prove the will if the owner died. So it was a small quid pro quo for thousands worth of work in the future.

[TheOtherStu]

40 minutes ago, artdjones said:

It's a practice that's dying out now, but solicitors used to have fireproof deed safes, so as long as you didn't lose the receipt you were fine. And even if you did your ownership was officially registered. They normally didn't charge, but of course they would expect to do the conveyancing of the property if it changed hands. Or prove the will if the owner died. So it was a small quid pro quo for thousands worth of work in the future.

In the UK, Deeds are now held by Land Registry electronically, so it's rather irrelevant.

Back in the day, the alternative was to let the bank hold the deeds whilst you had a mortgage. It was sometimes cheaper to keep £100 on your mortgage unpaid than pay it off and have to pay someone to look after the deeds.
Although even banks can lose them too.....
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Blaze+gives+building+society+major+headache+over+deeds.-a060703355

I think that's one of the reasons why Land Registry started storing them all online.

What it has meant though, is that anyone can access anyone's deeds for £3. Which is positive and negative (positive in that if a neighbour encroaches on your land, you can quickly grab it back, negative in that you may not have bought what you thought you had and that neighbour can grab it back)

[richardmorris]

Weird day at work, but two sothebys cars spotted plus two very nice lancias.

Daytona was shiny. And the Aston Martin D reg, that mr broccoli registered after producing the living daylights.

[JJ0063]

MID is down, every reg in the country will show uninsured right now, Police ANPR must be going mad!

[Rust Collector]

14 minutes ago, JJ0063 said:

MID is down, every reg in the country will show uninsured right now, Police ANPR must be going mad!

Quick, now's the time for us all to get our bandit runs in!! 😅

[Split_Pin]

9 hours ago, JJ0063 said:

MID is down, every reg in the country will show uninsured right now, Autoshite serial looker-uppers must be going mad!

 

[Split_Pin]

Looking through the window in the front door this morning, I am starting to warm to this. It was never meant to be my driver but its actually very comfortable, although sitting right over the back axle can make it a bit harsh over speedbumps. It's also very quick and you can really feel the supercharger kick in at about 3000 rpm. It's quite easy to break traction too.

[chadders]

11 hours ago, richardmorris said:

Weird day at work, but two sothebys cars spotted plus two very nice lancias.

Daytona was shiny. And the Aston Martin D reg, that mr broccoli registered after producing the living daylights.

Quite a while ago I visited a local classic car garage with 3 Daytonas in the showroom. £5k each and they'd give a discount if I bought all 3 of them. There was also a very nice DB5 there, I'm reminded of it when one of the local garage's customers brings his in for servicing. He lives in Portugal so it's probably due to set off back for another one by the time he gets home.

[artdjones]

26 minutes ago, chadders said:

Quite a while ago I visited a local classic car garage with 3 Daytonas in the showroom. £5k each and they'd give a discount if I bought all 3 of them. There was also a very nice DB5 there, I'm reminded of it when one of the local garage's customers brings his in for servicing. He lives in Portugal so it's probably due to set off back for another one by the time he gets home.

Back around 1980 there was a petrol station in Cardiff that had a scruffy DB6, a Lamborghini Espada, and an immaculate Mach 1 Mustang outside for £2000 each.

[stuboy]

Gotta bleed the mighty moped front brake and thought I'd miss on the eezibleed kit I used before and for 13 quid I thought I'd take a gamble on it..

 

Any one used one before?

[richardmorris]

21 hours ago, JJ0063 said:

MID is down, every reg in the country will show uninsured right now, Police ANPR must be going mad!

Only down in the consumer verse. The plod still have access.

[SiC]

Gotta bleed the mighty moped front brake and thought I'd miss on the eezibleed kit I used before and for 13 quid I thought I'd take a gamble on it..
 
Any one used one before?

Yeah I've got one and used it a fair bit. Works well.

Couple of things of note. Firstly it'll always suck bubbles as the hose doesn't clamp on perfectly on most nipples. So it's a bit of a guess to know if it's clear when bleeding. Okay for a fluid change though as you can see a colour difference.

Secondly don't get brake fluid into the suction pump. I.e. overfill the container or tip it so it gets sucked it in. I had to strip mine to clean it up before it worked again.

They're also great for testing vacuum lines and parts to see if it holds a vacuum okay.

Well worth to have in the toolbox.