The new news 24 thread

[wuvvum]

Got my first fine through the post today for "keeping a vehicle with no insurance" for the Solara. Fortunately the date they quote for the "offence" is 3rd February, two days after the tax ran out, and I have a SORN confirmation letter from DVLA saying that the SORN starts from 1st February. So I'm going to send them that and tell them to swivel.

[barefoot]

twats - How much is your 'fine'?

[wuvvum]

£100. Taking the piss really for such a trumped-up "offence". I would imagine I'll get a few more similar letters in due course too as I'm fugging useless at remembering to update the MID when I buy new tat.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Nice to see they gave you a generous two days before starting to send out the invoices, what a shower of wankers.

[CreepingJesus]

^+1. 2 days to send out the fines; 9 months and counting to get me a V5 (as I've mentioned elsewhere). Shows you exactly where their priorities lie. As if that were any kind of surprise.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

On the directgov website it reckons they send out a warning letter first, I presume they fooked that step off as it was too time consuming.

[CreepingJesus]

Back in the dark times, before the databases and ANPR and the like, it was a bit hit-and-miss whether a warning letter turned up. I used to keep a heap or two kicking about, for spares and such. Invariably out of legalities, but demonstrably non-functional. One or two were fined straight out, without warning; the upside was that the system was just as easily confused the other way, and I rarely paid the fines.

I sometimes still have a giggle at the thought of the SAS turning up, storming the house, and me ending up in a show trial at The Hague...doubt it tho'

[Cavcraft]

Just done the Autoshite tyre strip challenge. Thanks to advice on here I jacked the alloys up against the underside of my lad's Frontera (thank God for the lift kit on it!) and started breaking the beads. The first one was a bit tight, the second came off easy and the current one is an absolute bastard!

Recalling one of the first things I was ever taught at the start of my tyre fitting career, I did 'little and often' working along the beads. Also just found that shoving old spark plugs and stones into the gap before moving further round helped a lot.

Sweating like a bastard here so it's time for a brew and maybe take the dog for a walk before the 'fun' resumes.

[cort16]

I got the half shaft out my SD1 without too much bother after warnings of doom from others in the SD1 fraternity. I put a bit of thread bar into one of the holes the halfshaft bolts into and wound it out with a nut and washer on the back of the halfshaft and it popped out no bother much to my surprise . I cut the old bearing off with the grinder but I'm going to get the garage next door to press the new bearing on. Because this has been straight forward you can gaurentee all the nuts on the caliper will be seized/rounded when I come to change the pads.

[Mike D]

I have successfully eliminated the worlds most annoying squeaking noise that was eminating from the rear of the Mongdeo, turned out to be the boot catch after much removing of every bit of plastic trim before I found the actual cause! A swift lowering of the catch and it is much better Rear door speakers to change to ones out a breaker at my mates tomorrow as the passenger one is blown, and it should be getting there!

 

I've also done 220 miles in it, and it's still above half a tank of fuel! GR9 after the 840! It isn't the most exciting thing in the world to drive, but it does the job

[R9UKE]

Crossed another item of shite off my wanted list today. For me, this car, in Fastback form only, represents proper 90s Britain. Feels like an episode of Police Stop! every time I get into it

 

 

Letchworth Rover dealer sticker and tax disc holder. V5 and the absolute OMG SHIT LOADZ of service history says it stayed there all it's life wearing the private plate "44 JT" - so some posh fucker! Service history includes 2 timing belt changes and 2 head gasket changes. Also one receipt for a new digital clock from Rover in 2004 for £84

[Shep Shepherd]

That is ASTOUNDING!

[Mike D]

MAGNIFICENT!

[Pete-M]

Spent pretty much all day sorting the 604. Interior is all in properly now. Sill covers attached properly with the chrome strip and rubber seals along the top edge. All inner arches cleaned up and undersealed.

 

Had a little spin around the compound in it. Wish I didn't have to sell it, but next week it'll go for the MOT and I'll have driven a working 604 that belongs to me along the road. Which is another one off the bucket list. It drives bloody well considering the amount of sitting around it has done recently.

 

Next week, re-attach all the side rubbing strips and make an entry onto Greenpeace's most wanted list when I'm cleaning it. It'll be MOT'd hopefully by the end of the week.

 

Tomorrow, work on the Jag begins..

[R9UKE]

Thank you gents - it got more looks than the Avantime today

[Mr_Bo11ox]

HOLY SHIT, that Rover is a beauty!!! Is it an 'e' or an 'i'?

[R9UKE]

It's an "i". Being a BL virgin I'm unsure as to which is better... ?

[CreepingJesus]

The 'i', it's the multipoint injection. The 'e' was single point iirc.

Top buy, it looks well.

[Angrydicky]

That Rover is gorgeous. Looks really tidy as well!

[ashmicro]

That XX is astonishing. Top find.

[Cavcraft]

'All of the above'.

 

That Rover is bloody lush, top bombing.

[eddyramrod]

Agreed, another lovely Rover.

 

Meanwhile, today I thought I should resurrect my bikes. My "free" mountain bike has been sitting on a flat front tyre all winter, so I loaded it into the pickup and will take it down the bike shop in the morning. They do puncture repairs at no charge, but I think the tyre's pretty rotten and will also have to be replaced. Won't be expensive. So, having got "bike" in my head, I dragged out my Eddy Mercx Giro d'Italia which moved here in bits, as I'd stripped off the rotten tyres and tubes and bought new but never fitted them. Bit of air in the new tubes and... one has a gash. I found it by dumping the tube in the swimming pool and pumping it up a bit... OK, so that one goes in the truck too, they can repair that at the same time. The other one is fine so I've fitted it to the back wheel and put it on the bike. Tomorrow afternoon or Tuesday morning, I should have an actual choice of cycles, for the first time in years!

 

Pumped up the tyres on Mrs R's Raleigh too and she's been riding it round the yard a bit. Getting on and off is a bit of a struggle but once she gets going she finds it helps her knees. So that's good!

[wuvvum]

Picked the Primera up on Thursday evening and have been running it around for the last few days. It's quite bizarre driving a modern(ish) family car with variomatic transmission. It's a lot like a scooter in that it doesn't respond as instantly to the throttle as a conventional auto as there's a fraction of a second pause while the engine revs up and the transmission takes up the slack, and it's also odd to hear the engine revs dropping as the speed is increasing, but it seems to work well enough, and its top ratio is quite high-geared for a Japanese hatch - 70 is around 2,500rpm. The manual override is a bit odd as it shifts gradually up to the next "step" rather than instantaneously. Down shifts are a lot quicker.

 

Overall it's not a bad thing though, handles bloody well (although the steering is a little on the light side for my tastes), the seats are supportive, it's reasonably quick once it's up and moving (off the line isn't brilliant) and the computer reckons it's averaging 36.5mpg. We'll just have to see how the belt drive copes with being thrashed round Marham for hours on end...

[Mike D]

Swapped out the rear speakers, repaired the doorcards and winders, changed out the parcel shelf holders on the mondeo, and got these:

 

 

for Pete M

 

Do they look ok dude?

[Cavcraft]

Have you track day-ed an auto before Wuvvum? I wouldn't mind throwing the CLK round Oulton Park one day, but despite the fact it's Tiptronic (or whatever bollocks it's called) I'm thinking the lag would be a right pain in the arse, especially coming out of corners.

[wuvvum]

Nope, so far all my track days have been done in manuals. I do know that there are several auto-boxed cars that do turn up at Marham though - some of the Skylines and the occasional Beemer or Senator - and they seem to enjoy themselves just fine. I suppose you'd just get used to the lag and get on the throttle slightly earlier than you would in a manual.

[Cavcraft]

Aye, sounds like a good plan that, thanks. I just need to consider the possibility of grenading it I suppose, maybe getting a £200 shit heap (instead of a £1,000 shit heap) would be best to start off with.

[wuvvum]

I have to say the most fun I've had on trackdays was with cars that were so cheap / disposable that I really didn't give a flying feck about breaking them - last time I went to Marham I took a Renault 21 Turbo, and I think I hit the redline once during the whole course of the day - the rest of the time I was short-shifting up at 5,000rpm to avoid caning the engine, which kind of defeated the point.

 

The first time I went was in a 2-litre non-turbo Legacy estate, which wasn't particularly quick but it cost me £150 and spent the whole day bouncing off the rev limiter as I really didn't care if it went bang. Did an amusing line in lift-off oversteer too, that car. As it happened it did go bang two weeks later on the A11 (and had to be towed to the next services behind the Innocenti ) but I got my money back in scrap.

[Mike D]

I'd be mega wary of grenading the 722.6 auto box Billy, they're shite!

[CreepingJesus]

I worked with a guy who used to chip in with his mates to buy a vaguely sporty, short T+T heap from the auctions. Then they'd thrash it round Knockhill until it broke. One of the notable failures was an ex-Fife Constabulary 'interceptor spec' XR4x4. It survived two or three trackdays before they took pity on it.