The new news 24 thread

[RobT]

No worries it was worth the ask!  I'll punt it on some other way.  It's a decent car despite some suspension knocks and a bit* of rust.

[Llessur]

On 26/05/2025 at 06:23, Yoss said:

I love a good Felicia and there were a few there. 

 

The girl I was seeing when I was 17/18 had one like this, my two memories of it are 1) it overheating every time it detected even a sniff of a traffic jam and 2) being an unwilling front seat passenger during its inaugural flight over this roundabout:

To be fair to her, after we landed she was very apologetic and even bought me a Mars Bar from the Tesco petrol station round the corner whilst making me promise not to tell her parents exactly how the front suspension components managed to work themselves so far out of whack from factory specifications.

[alcyonecorporation]

On 26/05/2025 at 08:46, brownnova said:

I believe it’s a Crossley. 

Manchester's finest (before, during and after the Model T was built in Old Trafford). 

[SiC]

Clean pass on the old turd 🎉

 

[cms206]

Shopping list for a new car:

Smallish, economical hatchback (or estate), modern and (hopefully) reliable, in good condition with a decent whack of MOT.

I think I only managed "(hopefully) reliable". Maybe.

One in... petrol station shot quite apt, as that is where it was purchased from.

[reb]

There are creatures outside my window 

[Tickman]

1 hour ago, cms206 said:

Shopping list for a new car:

Smallish, economical hatchback (or estate), modern and (hopefully) reliable, in good condition with a decent whack of MOT.

I think I only managed "(hopefully) reliable". Maybe.

One in... petrol station shot quite apt, as that is where it was purchased from.

I see no issues, looks fantastic 

[loserone]

1 hour ago, reb said:

creatures

Do you have the networking required to source some parts of these a bit later on in the year¿?

[reb]

2 minutes ago, loserone said:

Do you have the networking required to source some parts of these a bit later on in the year¿?

Not really alas, and I don't have much incentive to pursue such a thing what with having gone vegetarian a good few months ago.

Once I've got my license back I could definitely* bundle one into the volvo and run it down to you!

[High Jetter]

2 hours ago, reb said:

There are creatures outside my window 

Potential Sunday lunches!

[24vdiamond]

Bye bye little astra 😪

 

[wuvvum]

Had unexpectedly good weather today so I thought I'd crack on and get the Merc done.  That didn't quite go to plan.  I got the rear anti roll bar bushes done after a bit of a fight (they are an extremely tight fit on the bar and there's too many bits of suspension around them to get any proper leverage, and one of the Torx head bolts rounded off and had to be sliced through with the grinder), but the spring proved to be more of a challenge - I got the strut off the car with no issues (unlike the ones on the bloody Eos), but because of the way the spring had snapped my compressor was only able to grab hold of one coil, which meant that it wasn't able to take enough tension off the spring before it ran out of travel.

So I'm going to have to run the strut round to the garage tomorrow morning and ask them nicely to swap the spring over for me, so I can put it back on the car and take it for its retest.  At the moment it's sat in the drive immobilised which means I can't charge the Mitsubishi.

[Rustybullethole]

10 hours ago, wuvvum said:

Had unexpectedly good weather today so I thought I'd crack on and get the Merc done.  That didn't quite go to plan.  I got the rear anti roll bar bushes done after a bit of a fight (they are an extremely tight fit on the bar and there's too many bits of suspension around them to get any proper leverage, and one of the Torx head bolts rounded off and had to be sliced through with the grinder), but the spring proved to be more of a challenge - I got the strut off the car with no issues (unlike the ones on the bloody Eos), but because of the way the spring had snapped my compressor was only able to grab hold of one coil, which meant that it wasn't able to take enough tension off the spring before it ran out of travel.

So I'm going to have to run the strut round to the garage tomorrow morning and ask them nicely to swap the spring over for me, so I can put it back on the car and take it for its retest.  At the moment it's sat in the drive immobilised which means I can't charge the Mitsubishi.

Can remember from my days of lowering cars that some merc springs were notoriously hard work. Maybe for the best.

Thought id chuck the new washer pump on quick before breakfast.

This of course turned into a war when the rubber decided to disappear inside the bottle when removing the old pump. I mean how did it even do that? A random act of fuckery which in hindsight was always going to be the way. 

Much plastic shit removed and now have working screen wash. The even refitted some of the fixings for said plastic shit. 

[Dyslexic Viking]

15 hours ago, cms206 said:

 

240 has become mostly too expensive for this now but if you go back 15 years, this is in this condition the typical teenage car, at least in rural areas in Norway. And the Saturday night is spent outside the local petrol station or similar, the driver is 18 and an agricultural machinery apprentice, and the friends of the same age are builders apprentices or similar and in the back seat are also two teenage girls who all 3 are trying to get to bed, everyone except the driver is drinking and on the car stereo is a song about a bloke named Reidar who has bought a new manure spreader.  The Volvo is parked in a group of cars and tractors and mopeds and it's about the same conditions in all of them.

And later, someone decides they are a rally/racing driver, leading to episodes like the picture below.

Here you have insight into Norwegian youth culture in the countryside about 15 years ago that no one asked for.

[lesapandre]

UK car production down to 1952 levels - 59,203 - perhaps we'll see the Austin Somerset reintroduced - hope so I'd buy one 😀 

Though commercial vehicle numbers bump it up to around the 300,000 mark.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgrydlqqn8o

To put these numbers in some perspective - Morocco made almost 500,000 vehicles in 2024.

[lesapandre]

Fleamarket find.

UK Citroen Xsara launch brochure. 

'Nothing as distant as the recent past.'

[paulplom]

A year to the day since my kid's mother's life support machine was switched off.

[wuvvum]

The Maxus has just gone straight through its MOT for the second time in a row.  So that was a nice surprise.

[wuvvum]

Well the garage fitted the new spring to the Merc strut and refused payment, so that was another good thing that's happened today.  So it's all back together and ready for its retest on Monday.

In less good "things that have happened today", the Mobylette fell over and smashed its front right indicator lens.  Fortunately it's broken into five reasonably large pieces which should be easy enough to superglue back together.