What makes you grin? Antidote to grumpy thread

[Wack]

23 hours ago, Saabnut said:

A friend of mine tells the story that at the end of the war, the local airport here in NE Scotland had rows parked on the runway and for sale. His father would not buy him one as £50 was a lot of money which they did not have!

I think they were £1000 in 46-47 

Only because a friend of a friend's grandad was a farmer near Burscough around that time , he died in the 80s ,they cleared a huge barn out because farmers never throw anything away 

Found a wing , then another wing , then the rest of a spitfire 

His farm used to be a raf base , aparrently he bought it at the end of the war with this idea he'd learn to fly it but it got shoved in the barn under a tarp and forgotten about,  buried behind old machinery 

The government tried to claim it as left there at the end of the war but the family had a receipt for £1000 from the mod so it was theirs.

I've never found anything online about it but it's the sort of thing you read and think , yeah that definitely happened 

[Metal Guru]

9 hours ago, richardmorris said:

My mums dad ( who died 40years ago), was stationed in Canada in ww2. He used to tell us about having to dig their way out of the barrack dormitory in the morning as the snow was 8ft deep. There’s a photo somewhere my mum has. Always told us as children who got excited when the snow was deeper than wellies, that we didn’t know what deep snow was.

I remember twice in the 80s (81 and 87 I think) , driving through cleared snow drifts as high as the car roof on the Hoo Peninsula in Kent (A228). This is about 30 miles from central London. 
In 87 several villages there got cut off for over a week and had to have supplies flown in by helicopter. 
Even the main A2 through Kent ( a motorway really) was closed for several days .

[myglaren]

11 hours ago, richardmorris said:

My mums dad ( who died 40years ago), was stationed in Canada in ww2. He used to tell us about having to dig their way out of the barrack dormitory in the morning as the snow was 8ft deep. There’s a photo somewhere my mum has. Always told us as children who got excited when the snow was deeper than wellies, that we didn’t know what deep snow was.

When I got off the ferry to Sweden, having followed an icebreaker into port, I got on a bus for my destination 30 miles away and was staggered by the snow piled up fifteen feet deep at the sides of the road.

Also, I knew a French girl who had lived in Chicago when little who told of her dad having to go out in a morning with a long pole to probe the snow to find their car.

[Joey spud]

A mate posted this image entitled "a fearless soul on his C90 circa 1982"

[AnnoyingPentium]

Had spent ages trying to find out where my Dad's old Nova had went after it was sold on. Logged into Facebook and boof, first post I see...

Edited September 30, 2023 by AnnoyingPentium
Idiocy

[Matty]

On 9/29/2023 at 2:50 PM, vulgalour said:

Automotive perfection.

Thus one cannot sell automotive perfection 😉

[Wibble]

1 hour ago, AnnoyingPentium said:

Had spent ages trying to find out where my Dad's old Nova had went after it was sold on. Logged into Facebook and boof, first post I see...

That’s amazing, really pleased you’ve tracked it down!

[motorpunk]

Fishermen having an awkward conversation on Rutland water this morning…

[Wack]

That would be a no , I'm not available to help with your car 

[Floatylight]

59 minutes ago, Wack said:

That would be a no , I'm not available to help with your car 

Er, no thanks!

[gm]

as the sun was shining, i fancied a bit of a drive out - but couldn’t decide which to take ? 

so took each one in turn  it’s hard to choose a favourite when they’re all so much fun 

the mighty mazda and the Exo will be coming off the road for the winter so i need to make the most of them now  

[GrumpiusMaximus]

Sat in the cockpit of an Avro Vulcan this afternoon…

[Remspoor]

31 minutes ago, GrumpiusMaximus said:

Sat in the cockpit of an Avro Vulcan this afternoon…

Where is the choke?

[Yoss]

44 minutes ago, GrumpiusMaximus said:

Sat in the cockpit of an Avro Vulcan this afternoon…

They used to have the cab of a Vulcan at Bournemouth airport, at the small museum there. I've no idea if it's still there but you were free to climb in and press anything pressable. Made me happy too. 

[hairnet]

Yoink

[Dick Cheeseburger]

Just spotted Tony Robinson hopping out of this 2.3 pez Landie sporting its virtue signalling plates. Someone on the production team having a chuckle I guess.

[RoverFolkUs]

I had a load of old toot to get rid of that I couldn't really be bothered to do anything with. Couldn't even be bothered to take it to the tip in the next town over.

A lot of it was stuff that either could have been eBay'd but was likely to cause problems as it was all flawed in one way or another so I'd end up posting daily in the fuckwits thread, or it was only worth £10-20 so after postage and fees wasn't really worth the time and hassle. So over the course of the last year it's all got chucked into a corner and ignored.

Despite it being October, I hadn't yet got round to doing my annual car boot sale. Normally I wouldn't bother this late in the season but since the forecast was looking ok, yesterday afternoon I thought fuck it, boxed everything up and filled the car

Glad I did, because I ended up taking just shy of £80 in total for stuff that had very little value (to me, anyway) and came back with just a couple of boxes. 

Sorting through everything left, it can go on FB marketplace to offload, chuck a couple of boxes in the loft for next year, and "donate" a few bits to "10p man". As the name suggests, he's there every week and sells everything for 10p, so whatever I would have taken to the fusspot charity shops, in order to do which I would have had to pay to park the car and drag it all around the town looking for one accepting donations, I gave it to him. 

What made my day was an older gentleman, probably in his 60s/70s, he said he owned a 1915 Ford Model T Van. In a box of surplus spanners I had was one which he identified as having originated from a Model T toolkit. He was absolutely delighted when I said he could have it for 50p! I was delighted to reunite the spanner with what it was destined to be used with more than a century ago! 

[Hertz]

[Remspoor]

22 hours ago, Yoss said:

press anything pressable

[DavieW]

We have an old phone box which has been converted into a "give and take" for books, DVDs etc. Tonight someone had left a load of annuals, one of which was Tiswas 1983. Of course, I had to have a look through to see if there were any photos of Sally James 😍 it was all cartoons etc and no photos but there were a couple of drawings of said Sally with her famous nips drawn in. 🤪

[DavieW]

Thank goodness for the apostrophe 🤣

 

[paulplom]

Had the A4 valeted inside and out yesterday and it's come up rather well. The roof especially. He said they'd haf to do the carpets three times and he still wasn't happy. They look perfectly fine to me and will be  covered by some new mats indue course anyway. 

Good use of £65 imo.

[reb]

3 hours ago, paulplom said:

Had the A4 valeted inside and out yesterday and it's come up rather well. The roof especially. He said they'd haf to do the carpets three times and he still wasn't happy. They look perfectly fine to me and will be  covered by some new mats indue course anyway. 

Good use of £65 imo.

Car carpets are inevitably horrendously dirty. As you say, they'll be covered by mats anyway! I took the carpet out of my 205 and pressure washed it, the water that came off it was filthy, came up lovely; probably not really viable on a modern though.

The last time I paid someone to wash my car it was a tenner and he gave me a fiver off because he knocked one of the side repeaters off. I gave him the fiver as a tip because we both worked at Dominos.

[808 Estate]

[DavieW]

On the M90 near Perth this afternoon, cruise control set at 80, I looked in the mirror and saw a black Merc catching up at a fair lick. I thought it looked a bit strange and sure enough when it passed me ( must've been 95+) it turned out to be a hearse. Fortunately it was empty and not late for the occupants final journey 🤣

[RoverFolkUs]

Wasn't sure whether to put this in the motor trade or grin thread, but because it's a grin it's going in here. 

Customer phoned up a couple of weeks to book in his self diagnosed failed clutch

I asked what the problem is... 

"Yeah, the revs shoot up when changing gear" 

On the face of it, this sounded like a slipping clutch. 

He dropped it off and as I got in it to move it, I was surprised that my knee wasn't touching the headlining by the time the bite point was found - the clutch seemed absolutely fine. 

Instead of putting it on a ramp for the clutch to be replaced as requested, even though he's not asked for a diagnosis, I thought I'd take it for a quick spin. 

Sure enough, change gear, VROOOOOOM 

But, the key difference here is that it went VROOOOOOM when pressing the clutch down... so it can't be slipping can it!! 

Redlining it and then dumping the clutch in 4th gear resulted in a nice quick drop of revs, so it definitely isn't slipping... 

The engine was holding onto it's revs...

Because.... 

The clutch pedal position switch was faulty! A £15 part! 

Bloody moderns.. 😃

In other words, the car didn't know the clutch was pressed so it was building revs up by itself

That could have been an expensive costly error on the customer's part! 

I was pretty pleased with myself and for him that I had the foresight to actually give it a quick spin just in case.. The most tragic thing is that he could have spent £500 on a new clutch to find it was exactly the same afterwards..

[hairnet]

 

[High Jetter]

55 minutes ago, RoverFolkUs said:

Wasn't sure whether to put this in the motor trade or grin thread, but because it's a grin it's going in here. 

Customer phoned up a couple of weeks to book in his self diagnosed failed clutch

I asked what the problem is... 

"Yeah, the revs shoot up when changing gear" 

On the face of it, this sounded like a slipping clutch. 

He dropped it off and as I got in it to move it, I was surprised that my knee wasn't touching the headlining by the time the bite point was found - the clutch seemed absolutely fine. 

Instead of putting it on a ramp for the clutch to be replaced as requested, even though he's not asked for a diagnosis, I thought I'd take it for a quick spin. 

Sure enough, change gear, VROOOOOOM 

But, the key difference here is that it went VROOOOOOM when pressing the clutch down... so it can't be slipping can it!! 

Redlining it and then dumping the clutch in 4th gear resulted in a nice quick drop of revs, so it definitely isn't slipping... 

The engine was holding onto it's revs...

Because.... 

The clutch pedal position switch was faulty! A £15 part! 

Bloody moderns.. 😃

In other words, the car didn't know the clutch was pressed so it was building revs up by itself

That could have been an expensive costly error on the customer's part! 

I was pretty pleased with myself and for him that I had the foresight to actually give it a quick spin just in case.. The most tragic thing is that he could have spent £500 on a new clutch to find it was exactly the same afterwards..

It's a car. It has a clutch, a device refined over decades. Why is a switch needed, FFS?

[RoverFolkUs]

4 minutes ago, High Jetter said:

It's a car. It has a clutch, a device refined over decades. Why is a switch needed, FFS?

Because, erm, the ECU needs to know for, erm, informational purposes!? 🤔😂

It didn't even have cruise control! So I see no other purpose for it other than to negate the fact the ECU will over rev the engine when load is taken away without the switch telling it the clutch has been depressed 🤷

[Wack]

Americans on vacation