The new news 24 thread

[EyesWeldedShut]

1 minute ago, MrGTI6 said:

Looks like it's been in an accident.

Looks like it's ready to gobble up these:

[lesapandre]

10 minutes ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

Sorry - that's just Fugly to me. (I bet I wouldn't send it back if I won it in a roffle though?)

There was not much enthusiasm coming from the visitors to the showroom. They are worse in the metal. 

But it's a good place to visit for the sports cars. I was given a warm welcome even though I was upfront about not being a buyer. I did not get to sit in one. The 2.5M car is very beautiful.

I get the impression they are trying to rebuild the brand - and we had a long chat about British design DNA. They do factory tours I understand and you can pick up a new sports from the factory. 

Jaguar should be doing this - it's all such a pity.

[EyesWeldedShut]

News just in:
Most single marque car forums on t'interweb are full of fake news (or well intentioned bollocks)

2007, 2.1 Mercedes CLK diesel with engine fan on full blast: all.the.time.from cold start.
MB car owners forums
.........
Needs new fan £££££
Needs new fan controller £££££
Needs new ECU ££££
Needs new MAF ££££
Needs new aircon compressor ££££
..........

Mercedes Sprinter forum "check the inlet temperature sensor, M8. They fuckup".
My dodgy Ali express scan thing says 'non, you have no engine in this car' @95 quid Peugeot's scanner thing - "You have an inlet manifold temperature of 149 degrees centigrade".

£8.90 Chinesium part rocked up this morning. No more hovercraft noises.
Happy Days  

 

[richardmorris]

I am hoping to swap fiats around next month and dad has booked the x1/9 for a quick oil change service at Allitalia in Wrexham on the 7th. I had thought we’d last had it serviced before I brought it to Bicester last year but it seems to have been 2021 ( although that wasn’t 1000miles ago). Now just need to get the 2cv fixed to use as the daily car.

[stuboy]

15 minutes ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

Sorry - that's just Fugly to me. (I bet I wouldn't send it back if I won it in a roffle though?)

bloke in my close works at a dealer and brought a yellow one home is gopping

[EyesWeldedShut]

Just now, stuboy said:

bloke in my close works at a dealer and brought a yellow one home is gopping

Did his missus tell him to park it around the corner?

[richardmorris]

3 minutes ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

News just in:
Most single marque car forums on t'interweb are full of fake news (or well intentioned bollocks)

2007, 2.1 Mercedes CLK diesel with engine fan on full blast: all.the.time.from cold start.
MB car owners forums
.........
Needs new fan £££££
Needs new fan controller £££££
Needs new ECU ££££
Needs new MAF ££££
Needs new aircon compressor ££££
..........

Mercedes Sprinter forum "check the inlet temperature sensor, M8. They fuckup".
My dodgy Ali express scan thing says 'non, you have no engine in this car' @95 quid Peugeot's scanner thing - "You have an inlet manifold temperature of 149 degrees centigrade".

£8.90 Chinesium part rocked up this morning. No more hovercraft noises.
Happy Days  

 

I think @richykitchy mentioned a good scanner on his YouTube , and had said he would do a video on it…..

[EyesWeldedShut]

3 minutes ago, richardmorris said:

I think @richykitchy mentioned a good scanner on his YouTube , and had said he would do a video on it…..

I have a Delphi ds150e knock off which does everything on this car bar the engine - it's probably US software - so it's only got specific links for two pez engines.  It will give me generic OBD engine data on the engine (OM646) though.
95quidpug's scanner is an iCarSoft, Mercedes specific thing which does read out engine data on this car. Between that & the Delphi I can get access to more data/information that I think I'll ever need (or want tbh   ).

A younger me would have spent hours, days, weeks fiddling and tweaking the computational aspects of this sort of car. Older me is quite happy just to troubleshoot and fix the obvious problems.

 

[stuboy]

54 minutes ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

Did his missus tell him to park it around the corner?

he did actually

[Split_Pin]

11 hours ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

single marque car forums

I have found the Audi A8 Facebook pages to be surprisingly bereft of any real mechanical knowledge. Nobody could give me any anecdotal  experience of the job so I really was playing a guessing game.  I find with lower range models like the Rover 75 and Saabs that there are many more people with practical knowledge.

[EyesWeldedShut]

16 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

I have found the Audi A8 Facebook pages to be surprisingly bereft of any real mechanical knowledge. Nobody could give me any anecdotal  experience of the job so I really was playing a guessing game.  I find with lower range models like the Rover 75 and Saabs that there are many more people with practical knowledge.

Bini ones can be a bit 'take it to the dealer' on mech stuff but OK if you want to know how to change the colour of your dash LEDs 🤷‍♂️ (although North American Motoring  does have some good mechanical threads). The US Subaru forum I used to use is ace for mechanical stuff - maybe more out of town/redneck owners? UK Ovlov forum is also good for the likes of the 940 - US ones tend to be all about drifting. (I try to avoid YouTube but that seems to be the up to date place to find stuff ??)

A lot of the older MB/BMW stuff is getting stale as it predates cheap third party scanners so the older posts are telling you 'dealer' or you must scan it with the MB Lexia equivalent etc. etc. when you can just stick it on something like the Delphi and there's the data looking at you (things like sprogs C4 it can force a DPF regen and the like which I think is really cool.
I am a bit sad.

 

[GMcD]

On 15/05/2024 at 20:27, GMcD said:

A collection of sorts.

Brought baby gmcd home from the hospital this afternoon.  To say I'm buzzing is an understatement.  Mrs gmcd is a superstar. 

Not sure I can justify having a brace of two-seaters now 😆. 

Day 5 of bub gmcd and on the way out for supplies, dad of the year* took a smoll detour to the scrappies for some seats....

...Thank you everyone for the warm wishes for baby gmcd ☺️

[Joey spud]

The rear pads starting groaning on my Avensis recently so I splashed out £44 for replacent bits from 'Car parts in motion' via eBay who I use alot and seem to be a good reliable seller who use royal mail too so delivery is mostly painless.

APEC blue was the brand of the new bits and fitted without fuss and my calipers (Bosch not jap) even pushed back nicely.

While the wheels were off I had a look behind the arch liners and wasn't overly surprised to see corrosion had started to form behind them (car is 16 years old and rarely gets washed).

But surely this area should have been under sealed when new and not left in primer.

So digging in the shed I found a tin of red primer the father in law bought for £2.75 over thirty years ago from Par Plant Centre back when he lived in St Austell and i also dug out the shitters favourite my dented gallon can of Waxoyl.

Not at all pretty but it'll do for now and although the ends of the f-r brake pipes are a bit scabby they'll go another year.

I keep looking at replacing the old girl, I've owned it for nearly six years now it has been a faithful servant and it owes me nothing but being an old diesel I can't go near London or its Kentish suburbs in it.

Labour have recently taken over Medway council and their leader says he has no plans to introduce a ULEZ scheme here but financially they're broke so I wouldn't be at all surprised if they did a U turn in the near future to raise some cash (sorry improve the air quality) then it would have to be replaced.

I fancy a mk9 Civic tourer next but can't decide diesel or big petrol assuming its not a wet belt engine and also a Panda for carting the dogs and crap about.

[Jim Bell]

 

Well that wasn't connected at all. 

 

 

[Wibble]

It’s the Basingstoke festival of transport tomorrow, if anyone nearby fancy’s a visit.

[egg]

Stop people hitting your wing mirrors with WingAware! As seen on TV!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/202681692648

[SiC]

6 hours ago, Joey spud said:

I fancy a mk9 Civic tourer next but can't decide diesel or big petrol assuming its not a wet belt engine and also a Panda for carting the dogs and crap about.

Both are chain and not made out of chocolate either. Diesel does 50+ mpg easily. Petrol is the same engine out of the mk8 civic but optimised for less drag. We get 40mpg-ish out of ours. Not amazing by today's standards but not awful. 

Petrol is old fashioned Honda naturally aspirated and so needs the knackers with little torque low down. Hurts the fuel economy quite a bit doing that. Multi port injection with no turbo and loads of room to work around it in the engine bay through. Should basically be bulletproof. Ours is currently on 108k and have no reason to not truck on with it. 

Only late 65 plate onwards are CAZ and ULEZ exempt though. We went petrol as knew all would be okay. Petrol a lot simpler than a diesel too of course and no DPF or such bollocks. Faster as well. (Still not quick but it's acceptable). 

I don't particularly like ours but it's a car that does everything we need to. Primarily my wife's car and she really likes it. So that is all which matters! It also means I can buy old knackered German cars and always know there is a car on hand for any eventuality. I.e. if a family member is ill in hospital or such emergency travelling, it's the go to car that we 100% know is solid and won't cause any drama to get there & back. 

They're pretty rare cars. I think because the demographic of them tends to keep them for a long time rather than the type changing every 3yrs or so. Our requirement for a facelift petrol meant even smaller pool of cars. When we bought ours two years ago, there was 6 facelift cars in our budget and only 2 petrols. Ended up travelling ~4.5hrs from Bristol to Doncaster way and bought it there and then. Other was up in Edinburgh 😅

[stuboy]

Bloody actuator rod stuck again on the galaxy.. long nose pliers and lots of wd40... seems to be sorted now

[Snake Charmer]

Our 18yr old apprentice turned up for work Wednesday in his first car, an '08 E200 Kompressor. Used well over £60 of fuel out with his mates that night. Good lad.

[BorniteIdentity]

I suppose the News 24 thread is the right place to say that I took control of my first BBC Radio 4 programme this week. I started this Studio Director role about six weeks ago and this week I’ve run the 1800 News twice. 

Now- I’ve worked in radio for 22 years now, and the shine wore off after about 18 months. Since then, it’s a job that paid (certainly me) very well and avoided any manual labour.

But, let me tell you. When Big Ben bongs and Chris Aldridge is smiling back through the glass at you - it’s an amazing feeling. 

Me! With the Home Service at his fingertips. Lunacy. 

 

 

[Joey spud]

2 hours ago, SiC said:

Petrol is old fashioned Honda naturally aspirated and so needs the knackers with little torque low down. Hurts the fuel economy quite a bit doing that. 

😅

Ah I'd hoped the petrol engine was now better than that. I had a petrol Accord and the need to thrash it to progress just didn't sit right with its wafty exec leather interior.

I love Honda's build quality and engineering but not their VTEC system.

It'll have to be the 1.6 dtec then which is even fitted into the CRV and seems to move it along well enough and give good mpg.

[SiC]

10 hours ago, Joey spud said:

Ah I'd hoped the petrol engine was now better than that. I had a petrol Accord and the need to thrash it to progress just didn't sit right with its wafty exec leather interior.
I love Honda's build quality and engineering but not their VTEC system.
It'll have to be the 1.6 dtec then which is even fitted into the CRV and seems to move it along well enough and give good mpg.

I found the 1.6 dtec not quicker than the 1.8 petrol tbh. 0-60 is a lot slower and it feels it. Torquey low down as you expect with a diesel but it runs out of puff very quickly. I think the diesel is like 3s slower to 60 or something like that.

[High Jetter]

2 hours ago, BorniteIdentity said:

I suppose the News 24 thread is the right place to say that I took control of my first BBC Radio 4 programme this week. I started this Studio Director role about six weeks ago and this week I’ve run the 1800 News twice. 

Now- I’ve worked in radio for 22 years now, and the shine wore off after about 18 months. Since then, it’s a job that paid (certainly me) very well and avoided any manual labour.

But, let me tell you. When Big Ben bongs and Chris Aldridge is smiling back through the glass at you - it’s an amazing feeling. 

Me! With the Home Service at his fingertips. Lunacy. 

 

 

Essential service! Not a bad job, I'd hazard.

[egg]

Damon Hill on Senna, it's been 30 years.

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid02crcJo5QZeZLA12L2ptUq8uEv4rSKoUjqJcxQy3WtPYuq5eQ2Fti5KmPXv588TAbDl&id=100057751913156

Quote

It is the San Marino (or Emilia-Romagna, as it now known) Grand Prix weekend. Better known simply as 'Imola'. May 1st has passed, but its roughly close enough 30 years since this photo was taken on what was to be Ayrton's last Sunday morning. We were at a sponsor function and we had lost Roland the day before so the mood was pretty heavy. I think we'd also already done the Driver briefing where Ayrton had asked me and Gerhard to challenge the FIA Race Director on the suitability of the Safety Car. He had a penalty hanging over him so he didn't want to draw fire directly from the FIA by being the lone agitator. But he surely waded in after us to make his point clear. The Safety Car - an Opel Vectra - was sub-standard. The Safety car driver, Max Angelelli, had already complained about it, but they didn't want to change the car for their own opaque reasons. Predictably, the ironically titled Safety Car came into play in the race. Ayrton pulled up along side the car gesticulating angrily for it to speed up. But it couldn't. It was already at its, and its driver's, limit. The rest is history.

 

[Split_Pin]

In contrast to the A8, this thing has been a stellar servant on the fleet.

In no way is it in its first flush of youth but since buying it in November it has needed absolutely nothing doing, other than the belts and an oil change which were discretionary.

So I'll allow it a wheel bearing which has started to drone as of yesterday 😀

[Coprolalia]

13 hours ago, BorniteIdentity said:

I suppose the News 24 thread is the right place to say that I took control of my first BBC Radio 4 programme this week. I started this Studio Director role about six weeks ago and this week I’ve run the 1800 News twice. 

Now- I’ve worked in radio for 22 years now, and the shine wore off after about 18 months. Since then, it’s a job that paid (certainly me) very well and avoided any manual labour.

But, let me tell you. When Big Ben bongs and Chris Aldridge is smiling back through the glass at you - it’s an amazing feeling. 

Me! With the Home Service at his fingertips. Lunacy. 

 

 

Congratulations on the new job and the renewed joy it's bringing. I'll listen out for the "our studio director..."

[agent]

After several years of worrying in the back of my mind it might be rusting to pieces underneath I finally got a chance to take a good look under my corolla to clean up and underseal it all.

This has not gone to plan, because it turns out toyota put a shit load of underseal there at the factory and it's still holding up great. It was starting to go in a couple corners near the rear where the factory stuff hadn't quite covered up to the very edges and even then peeling off the flaky bits around a couple exposed rust spots revealed shiny bare metal after not long, which is better than I could have hoped for with an old japanese car that lives out in the elements. It even survived the classic "smash the handle of the nearest tool into it just in case" test, because I was feeling brave at this point.

An hour or two with a tin of rust converter and underseal later and it's looking good again

Suspension pieces don't look as pretty but that all seems to be the paint coming off where theres some surface rust (or in the case of most of it, just road dirt stuck on top). I'd love to get it all apart and properly cleaned up one day but that's a future me issue.

The high quality exterior repairs have also continued and now the main blob of rust where someone had bashed into it has been sanded and had some hammerite slapped on it courtesy of my dad. No paint on hand at the time but given the state of the rest of the bodywork it fits right in. Now I just need to get it professionally* painted by myself in the driveway and start working my way through all the other tiny rust spots from where things were chipping and bumping and landing on it when it was sitting.

As a bonus I grabbed a rustival ticket as I was kicking myself over missing the last one, only double the distance of any journey I've driven and probably more than the car has seen in decades so what could possibly go wrong.

[stuboy]

How do I convince someone to sell there project they not touched in 30 years?

Bloody FiL.. too many projects ... too decrepid too finish..

[egg]

6 minutes ago, stuboy said:

How do I convince someone to sell there project they not touched in 30 years?

Probably the truth is you can't sadly. It's damn hard to make anyone change their mind about such things....

[vulgalour]

The job interview I had that I thought went well but was fretting about the logistics of getting to and from has relieved me of all stress by delivering a rejection letter.  I may call them to find out why I wasn't successful, they do invited applicants to do so and since it was my first interview in fifteen years it seems sensible to get some feedback if I can.

Waiting on a reply from another interview, won't get that for at least another week, and have applied for another front-of-house role.  Getting the hang of what vacancies to avoid now, and being a bit more keen eyed on locations, the most recent application being literally within walking distance of current home.

I imagine this applying and waiting and interviewing and failing thing will go on for some time until I find a place I fit.  I also got the first bit of money toward the next big job on the Princess today, that being a new windscreen and painting the roof properly, just another few hundred to go on that one.  Next weekend I hope to be doing a bit of a weldathon too, getting through whatever I can without disabling the car totally in the process.