What makes you grin? Antidote to grumpy thread

[wuvvum]

On the way home from work this evening, was sat behind an impossibly scruffy FB Victor with a blowing exhaust, which appeared to be the bloke's daily.

[PhilA]

Kid has a knife safety/wood whittling thing to do for Scouts so I decided to see what I could do in an hour with one of the spare bits of wood.

 

 

I tried to make a miniature of the car.

 

Craft knife and Crayola

 

Phil

[cort1977]

Been there, done that and would probably do again some time.

 

That would be the Wbod weiner for ever.

 

I have toyed with the idea of the V6 engined voyager just for omgcomfyvan, but I'm scared because of all the horror stories I've heard of them.

 

 

So this years Wbod is....

.

A 1997 Ford Exploder* 4l v6, low miles, loads of history and cheap enough that I won't mind chucking loads of firewood in the back of it.

IMAG0036.jpg

 

IMAG0037.jpg

Nice.   Out of interest was it built in Australia?   Have been told that RHD explorers were built there but not sure I believe it.

[barmatt]

Nice.   Out of interest was it built in Australia?   Have been told that RHD explorers were built there but not sure I believe it.

 

I'm not sure where it was built, any idea how I would find out?

[Asimo]

I'm not sure where it was built, any idea how I would find out?

 

 

It's all in the VIN. Pop the number in a vin decoder website and all is revealed.  Google "vin decoder"

[adw1977]

Sold my Mondeo via Gumtree.

Got one person enquiring, who was able to text sensible questions in actual English, with punctuation.  They viewed it, we haggled for about 30 seconds, deal done.

Not a single "swap 4 xbox" or "250 CASH 2NITE" message from anyone, either.  Result!

[RoadworkUK]

Did you hear about the Kelloggs lorry that crashed into a car on its way to a sci-fi convention?

 

It was a Start Wreck.

[eddyramrod]

I don't know if this is Grinworthy or not really but... we've got two Roffles swinging on tomorrow's draw, and I've gone for random numbers in both, meaning I could win with any one of eight different balls!  Also, I can't win both cars.  This could be exciting...

[Parky]

Bagged two Depeche Mode tickets for the London concert. Now to find my Violator t-shirt and see if I can find where my 1990 haircut went....

[willswitchengage]

Went on a visit to Drax power station last weekend. It was an incredible place that has about 8% of the UK's generating capacity and is the largest power station in Western Europe. They fire coal and surprisingly large amounts of biomass, which originates as forestry waste from the southern states of the USA. It felt surprisingly backward, however, in no way a pinnacle of modernity or efficiency (the control room felt something out of 1970s Star Wars) and the generating units were surprinsgly small for something having the power output of 10,000 Ford Kas.

 

Anyway, obviously none of you have read that so here are the photos, in Google Drive's typical scrambled order:

 

 

The cooling towers

 

 

The 'big board'. Each generator has a maximum output of 680 MW, and there are six of them. In the summer they're often switched off as demand is low and renewables kick out quite a lot, but when in winter when there's nothing better to do than six in front of six power-hungry laptops displaying youjizz.com, the demand is higher so they'll typically run at full pelt. The turbines can actually spin up surpsingly quickly too, I think they said about an hour to do a 'black start'. They require so much power to run that they have diesel generators to fire up gas turbines which only then provide ample power to start up all of the auxillary equipment to power the boilers.

 

 

Shoddy photo of the 'crushers' - where coal is pulverised into dust and mixed with hot air to be injected into the boilers.

 

 

 

 

Lots of pipes - this is about as good a view of the boilers that you can get. The whole place felt a lot like that old Microsoft background with all the pipes growing all over your screen.

 

 

The high pressure end of the generating unit where 140 bar steam hits the turbines. Note how small it is! The valves to the side load the steam on and off to ensure a constant output of 50 Hz.

 

 

 

Side elevation of the high pressure turbine unit.

 

 

Back end of the generating unit. The mask surrounding the turbines is the heat exchanger -the turbines are closed cycle using high purity water, and this is cooled by river water - which is what you see evaporating from the cooling towers.

 

 

Waste product that is used to make gypsum and a thickening agent in milkshakes - I am not kidding!

 

 

[The Moog]

That looks an ace place to visit

[twosmoke300]

Amazing ! I've been in Peterhead power station and dounreay nuclear but was too young to remember much . Apart from the guide at Douneeay saying " we just think of it as a massive kettle " 😬

[anonymous user]

I'd love to have that model layout in the last pic, it would look great in a Bond villain lair

[Parky]

That's number two on my list of places to go. Just ahead of Baikunor Cosmodrome but just behind Pyongyang.

 

I've never been one for Torremolinos

[beko1987]

The meriva had a wheel shake at certain speeds, and been drinking a bit more recently. I also noticed one of the tyres looked a bit low...

 

Followed amy to the pez station on her way to work, 3 were at 25, 1 was at 22...should be 35/32...

 

Apparently it's driving much better now! I'd best check them more than once a year moving forward

[The Moog]

I'd love to visit North Korea but I'm doubtful that passport control would let me through since they banned sarcasm.

Missus Moog isn't taken by the delights on NKorea. So won't be visiting just yet ...

 

Do fancy Chernobyl though

[richardmorris]

I've been to wylfa and trawsfynydd with school in the mid 80s. But it was rather boring as nuclear power and school children tend not to be in close contact.

[beko1987]

Amy came home from her friends earlier with 2 fair sized off cuts of nice expensive carpet left over from their new extension, so me and a mate had a few beers when she went to work and carpeted the hall! We rent, so it's only laid over the laminate, with the edging strips removed and put back over the top, but fuck me it makes the hall warmer!

 

 

Said mate has a massive roll of ok condition carpet removed from a large house too via work, so in a week or two the front room will get done.

 

If the letting agent doesn't like it (I reckon he will though, he's ok) then when we move the whole lot can come up with no damage!

[M'coli]

Fuck me, how did you get into Drax? I'm a jealous, jealous, jealous bastard!

[Mr A Lawrence]

I did security at drax for a week in the mid 80's.

 

Dirty, noisy smelly place.

 

Was in a hut inside where people had to show me a pass to get onto the generator section.

 

Boring as fuck!!!

[Des]

Just driven to Watford to pick up a rare hoover and the car didn't break! Watford traffic can get to fuck though, sod that again!

 

Jesus man! I wouldn't drive in Watford for a Constellation, and I'm living in the shithole. Apparently there's some golfing shit going on at the moment.

[vulgalour]

Scary, I hope you keep us updated on the Hearse, particularly what sort of hearse-specific repairs it needs.  I do intend to own one some day but in depth build thread/resto type information seems scarce.

[Sheefag]

Van AC broken? No problem.

 

 

 

[rainagain]

I did some work in Drax years ago. The units are positioned diagonally in the turbine hall. The lifting crane runs conventionally i.e. right angles to one of the walls, so there is some clever electronics that automatically moves the bogey on the lifting beam to compensate for the diagonal layout as the main lifting beam travels on its rails. I also miss working at the now closed Longannet power station, at 2400MW it was almost as big as Drax but had a unique compound layout, so each 600MW unit actually had two generators. This meant there was eight lines of turbines in the turbine hall making it a massive space. I was still awed each day I walked up the steps to the turbine floor when I was working there.

[beko1987]

Jesus man! I wouldn't drive in Watford for a Constellation, and I'm living in the shithole. Apparently there's some golfing shit going on at the moment.

Yes, that was 50 minutes to get off at j19! 50 minutes of 'will my cambelt snap?'

 

I came back a different way!

[cms206]

Not sure if it has been posted before, but dug this gem up on youtube, I believe this is an actual video of an SVM entrance exam

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFLDZaw2ZWo

 

My brother found it yonks ago on Volvo300mania and I think its a blinder, especially with the soundtrack.

Volvo did a whole album called I am Rolling for the 60th anniversary of the company Stanky, plus additional songs for the 960 and the 850 T-5. We at The SVM are all legally obliged to carry a copy of it at all times or we lose our membership.

 

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

[Richard]

It's disc 6 in my changer. It was playing while the car was getting its MOT test.

 

I haven't heard the 960 or T5 songs though.

[chaseracer]

We at The SVM are all legally obliged to carry a copy of it at all times or we lose our membership.

 

West Midlands Border Agency colleagues will be ensuring compliance at the Truckers Rest facility this morning.  Please be ready to provide all documents and equipment for inspection upon request.

 

Thank you for your cooperation.

[Jon]

Bit of a late update, since I've been busy with work but my Commodore had its televisual debut on NZ screens last week (if I discount it's half second glimpse as a background car a few months back), where it was being driven by incompetent French terrorists. Here's a screengrab from my laptop featuring it doing a 1 wheel peel, which I haven't even done myself. The production company even used my reg plate, so I hope people don't report me to the police.

 

 

Frankly, I'm surprised it achieved it with it's might Nissan LD28 straight six n/a diesel power*.

 

Anyway, it's probably not available to view outside NZ on the TVNZ website but someone's thoughtfully just uploaded a squished up version on Youtube.

It features for the first time around the 31 minute mark. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwmLSRzsbBk

 

Later on, there's a photo of it on a police evidence wall and it's the initial shot I sent to the production company, shot on my driveway! Lazy buggers!

[Frogchod]

Checked the LHM level today and this mouse was there to help me

May turn into a grump if he's nibbled anything more than soundproofing....