The grumpy thread

[Supernaut]

4 hours ago, PhilA said:

Tropical Depression Nineteen is due to be a tropical storm and be here Monday.

Great.

I've had enough crappy weather this year.

Time to board the doors up again.

 

Again.

 

Phil

At what point do you just fit hinged shutters to the windows? Oh, you said doors.

I sometimes feel a bit miserable about the weather in Scotland, but I'm thankful I don't have to deal with things like that! Best of luck to you.

 

My grump today is very minor. I need to unblock the passenger side washer jet on the 316 before its MOT on Monday, and last night I discovered the bulb that illuminates the heater controls has blown. Not like replacing that bulb is hard.  Two phillips head screws to get to it. Got the rear section of the exhaust replaced yesterday with 17-Coffees' help though.

[155V6]

37 minutes ago, strangeangel said:

RIP Toots Hibbert.

 

Very sad,I saw him on TV a few weeks back promoting their new album & thought he looked really healthy ?

[Agila]

Got a phone call at 11am. One of my cousins has cancer. I'm devastated and my head has completely gone. Don't think ill be contributing much from now. 

This is just for information only. Thanks.

[PhilA]

2 hours ago, Supernaut said:

At what point do you just fit hinged shutters to the windows? Oh, you said doors.

I sometimes feel a bit miserable about the weather in Scotland, but I'm thankful I don't have to deal with things like that! Best of luck to you.

 

My grump today is very minor. I need to unblock the passenger side washer jet on the 316 before its MOT on Monday, and last night I discovered the bulb that illuminates

shutters to the windows? Oh, you said doors.

I sometimes feel a bit miserable about the weather in Scotland, but I'm thankful I don't have to deal with things like that! Best of luck to you.

My grump today is very minor. I need to unblock the passenger side washer jet on the 316 before its MOT on Monday, and last night I discovered the bulb that illuminates the heater controls has blown. Not like replacing that bulb is hard.  Two phillips head screws to get to it. Got the rear section of the exhaust replaced yesterday with 17-Coffees' help though.

the heater controls has blown. Not like replacing that bulb is hard.  Two phillips head screws to get to it. Got the rear section of the exhaust replaced yesterday with 17-Coffees' help though.

The house has shutters, the garage doors are 15' tall and rotten as a 1977 Mini. They need bracing against wind load.

[MorrisItalSLX]

Corolla just killed its gearbox to death, now stuck in park on the driveway.

Couldn’t have happened at a better time, starting in a new position at work doing a fixed 5.5 days a week rather than my previous flexible 4 days a week.

[Zelandeth]

Getting hacked off with my usual garage now.  I know they're swamped at the moment and are down on staff...but my car has been sitting with all the remedial work done for a week and two days now just waiting for them to do the bloody MOT retest.

...After almost three weeks after dropping it off to have said work done, they farmed it out to someone else because they were never going to get to it.

I stick with them because their work is bloody good and they never overcharge...in fact I've forced them to take more money than asked on occasion.  However there comes a point where even I start to get impatient and feel like they're taking the piss.

Sadly the only other two garages nearby I'd consider taking the car to have a >14 day queue for MOTs right now apparently...so it's not as though I can just grab the keys and go somewhere else.

[Jazoli]

1 hour ago, Zelandeth said:

Getting hacked off with my usual garage now.  I know they're swamped at the moment and are down on staff...but my car has been sitting with all the remedial work done for a week and two days now just waiting for them to do the bloody MOT retest.

...After almost three weeks after dropping it off to have said work done, they farmed it out to someone else because they were never going to get to it.

I stick with them because their work is bloody good and they never overcharge...in fact I've forced them to take more money than asked on occasion.  However there comes a point where even I start to get impatient and feel like they're taking the piss.

Sadly the only other two garages nearby I'd consider taking the car to have a >14 day queue for MOTs right now apparently...so it's not as though I can just grab the keys and go somewhere else.

I wouldn't stand for that at all to be honest, regardless of how good the work is, if it was my car I'd be kicking up a holy stink, there must be some other garages with mot availability surely, it really doesn't matter where you take it as its just a test, hell even Kwik Fit must have some availability, my 3 most local ones all have tests available on Monday.

[sierraman]

I got to the point I couldn’t be arsed with jobs on the car, so I farmed a lot of work out. After a succession of half arsed jobs I’ve realised it is actually less agg to do it yourself. Even if it means buying a £100 tool and fucking about on the driveway it’s becoming apparent you can’t get a half decent job done at the places local to me. 

[PhilA]

I've come to the realization that a lot of garage are run by people who have less mechanical knowledge than I do, but generally have bigger hammers.

[Parky]

7 hours ago, Remspoor said:

The way to look at this. One it should lower your green certificate as this will be cleaner* than the previous one.

It will look good on any sales waffle. You care about maintenance and a new boiler is certainly much better than one that is x years old.

Have you tried to purchase and then install it yourself? I have done that twice. Once in the UK with a back boiler and more recently here in Spain with a kitchen "Ascot" If the routing of the gas pipe and exhaust are the same no issues. Although maybe not 100% in keeping with any regulations.

It crossed my mind as Dad and I are more than capable but when it comes to Gas it is safer just to let a registered authorised guy do it.

As part of the house sale the boiler needed a gas safety certificate which it never would have got, but even if it had a sharp eyed surveyor might have picked up on it so could have been used to negotiate a couple of grand off the sale price anyway.

When we fitted my gas Hob years ago we had to have an engineer come out to safety check it.  He was a half blind ex alcoholic with terrible DT’s who glanced at the pipework, said “yeah fine, here’s the cert, that’ll be £50 mate”.   I now had a gas safety cert from a registered engineer so the insurance was now happy.  They wouldn’t have been had they seen him..

[Supernaut]

42 minutes ago, sierraman said:

I got to the point I couldn’t be arsed with jobs on the car, so I farmed a lot of work out. After a succession of half arsed jobs I’ve realised it is actually less agg to do it yourself. Even if it means buying a £100 tool and fucking about on the driveway it’s becoming apparent you can’t get a half decent job done at the places local to me. 

Yup.

I traced a leak on the Saab's exhaust recently... to a weld on the new flexi joint I got a garage to put in, and they charged rather handsomely for it. I mean, come on. FFS.

That, plus the garage who did the remedial work for its MOT back in July putting in handbrake cables but not adjusting them up at all (but it still somehow passed). Actually, the MOT site shows it as passing an MOT the day before they said they got the handbrake cables in...

 

 

I've almost always done as much as I can myself (or on a mate's driveway), and I'll continue doing that!

[paulplom]

16 minutes ago, Parky said:

It crossed my mind as Dad and I are more than capable but when it comes to Gas it is safer just to let a registered authorised guy do it.

As part of the house sale the boiler needed a gas safety certificate which it never would have got, but even if it had a sharp eyed surveyor might have picked up on it so could have been used to negotiate a couple of grand off the sale price anyway.

When we fitted my gas Hob years ago we had to have an engineer come out to safety check it.  He was a half blind ex alcoholic with terrible DT’s who glanced at the pipework, said “yeah fine, here’s the cert, that’ll be £50 mate”.   I now had a gas safety cert from a registered engineer so the insurance was now happy.  They wouldn’t have been had they seen him..

You need to register the boiler with gas safe to get your building reglations compliance certificate. You'll need that to sell your house, not a 'safety certificate' It's purpose is to stop any diy experts and cowboys from fitting their own boiler and killing people. 

Nearly every regulation we adhere to is because their was a fatality leading up to it.

I'm not half blind ot an alcohic either.

[somewhatfoolish]

12 hours ago, chadders said:

We were on oil when the First Gulf War started so we've paid our dues, having to forage wood to keep the house vaguely warm that winter for our new baby.

I was in short trousers; was there really a supply issue or just price gouging by opportunist profiteering gits?

[PhilA]

53 minutes ago, somewhatfoolish said:

I was in short trousers; was there really a supply issue or just price gouging by opportunist profiteering gits?

The latter.

 

See how much they sucked out the ground since and at what rate- particularly when Russia decides to have a price war pissing match with them like they did at the end of last year.

[Asimo]

9 hours ago, MorrisItalSLX said:

Corolla just killed its gearbox to death, now stuck in park on the driveway.

Couldn’t have happened at a better time, starting in a new position at work doing a fixed 5.5 days a week rather than my previous flexible 4 days a week.

Cross fingers, hope it is just the selector linkage...

[Zelandeth]

6 hours ago, sierraman said:

I got to the point I couldn’t be arsed with jobs on the car, so I farmed a lot of work out. After a succession of half arsed jobs I’ve realised it is actually less agg to do it yourself. Even if it means buying a £100 tool and fucking about on the driveway it’s becoming apparent you can’t get a half decent job done at the places local to me. 

To be honest the vast majority of the work I do the majority of my own work.  I've just got a rule that if it involves taking apart suspension assemblies that it gets farmed out to a garage.  If bolts are going to shear off, get cross threaded, bushes refuse to go in etc... I'd rather it happened up on someone else's four post lift with a full set of tools to tackle the problem than on my driveway.  Been there, done that, immobilised my car and spent a week fighting to change a ball joint that should have taken an hour...

Exhaust work also gets farmed out generally...simply because I utterly despise doing it. 

Seems to be quite s rush on MOTs at the moment.  Though I could probably go to Kwik-Fit I'd really, really rather not.  Especially after they charged me £350 for work they never did back in 2012.  It's also "fun" taking a 24 year old Citroen to a non classic-friendly garage for an MOT.

It's never good when you have to tell the tester no less than four times that the handbrake does work just fine...but they're never going to get any reading if they keep testing the rear wheels.

[Tadhg Tiogar]

3 hours ago, Asimo said:

Cross fingers, hope it is just the selector linkage...

.....or low fluid level?

[MorrisItalSLX]

5 hours ago, Asimo said:

Cross fingers, hope it is just the selector linkage...

1 hour ago, Tadhg Tiogar said:

.....or low fluid level?

Selector is moving at the gearbox end and fluid still showing on the dipstick.

It was slipping in first under any load and now will not shift out of park, also there is fluid on top of the gearbox from a breather. Diagnosis is not good.

[PhilA]

Just to make me cheerful, I've cracked one of my fillings open. Great. 

Nothing like toothache to make someone real happy.

Phil

[paulplom]

I have a massive phobia of dentists. I was told to leave and get out the surgery the last time I was there.

Instead of trying to calm me down he got all angry and told me not to come back.

Looking back I should have reported the bastard. 

[Agila]

2 hours ago, PhilA said:

Just to make me cheerful, I've cracked one of my fillings open. Great. 

Nothing like toothache to make someone real happy.

Phil

This is some good stuff.https://www.boots.com/orajel-dental-gel-for-toothache-5-3g-10081004?cm_mmc=bmm-buk-google-ppc-_-PLAs-_-(GB:Whoop!)+Orajel-_-(GB:Whoop!)+Boots+Shopping+-+Category+-+Health+and+Pharmacy+-+Mobile&gclid=CjwKCAjw4_H6BRALEiwAvgfzqyUGWG29iIf55EA1OzZ_dnABm3KS2pLJ9RJifFOv_IlEGyryURx1DxoCg_EQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

[MikeR]

Yesterday i trashed two padlocks getting them off some spare chain i had ............

 

Today i found the keys .

[junkyarddog]

Fucksticks!!

Busted my indicator lens on my 205.

[Crackers]

Today has been absolutely fucking monstrously, colossally, biblically shit even though no major problems have occurred. 

I really fucking hate my head. 

There's not many other places I can write that. Sorry. Carry on with your thread. 

[beko1987]

3 hours ago, junkyarddog said:

Fucksticks!!

Busted my indicator lens on my 205.

Scrap it m8

[Tamworthbay]

34 minutes ago, Crackers said:

Today has been absolutely fucking monstrously, colossally, biblically shit even though no major problems have occurred. 

I really fucking hate my head. 

There's not many other places I can write that. Sorry. Carry on with your thread. 

Some good advice/ support here:

Don’t suffer alone.

[PhilA]

House boarded up, garage boarded up, grass mowed, all locked down for storm and there's a car come up for sale that I really want but I can't go see it until at least Thursday. So, likelihood is it's gonna sell before then. Arses.

[MikeR]

1 hour ago, PhilA said:

House boarded up, garage boarded up, grass mowed, all locked down for storm and there's a car come up for sale that I really want but I can't go see it until at least Thursday. So, likelihood is it's gonna sell before then. Arses.

why would you mow the grass before a storm ?

wont the cuttings blow every where

[chaseracer]

One way to get rid without having to rake 'em up... ?

[PhilA]

1 hour ago, MikeR said:

why would you mow the grass before a storm ?

wont the cuttings blow every where

Cuttings all over is the least of my concern. 

It rains so much with a storm that the ground is so sodden you can't mow for about a week afterwards, during which time it's usually sunny so the grass grows like crazy.

Cut it now and there's a chance of it not turning into a wild Jurassic Park scene by the time it's dry enough to mow again.

 

Phil