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The grumpy thread


outlaw118

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Vdeos on Facebook, there's a button to press to view them:

What an absolute load of bollocks, from hilarious* staged tricks and stunts, to about 94 minutes of boring shit to watch a nano-second of something worth seeing.

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I have been to the garage which have the vectra. From speaking with mechanic it became apparent that they have weeks of work hence reluctance to get further involved. I explained if I thought it was absolutely knackered then I would'nt have brought it in. Mechanic then said he would be happy to strip it down.

We need an estate - and a diesel one. I would be happier fixing this and chucking £1k at it and fixing it than spending £1500 on some other shite. Apart from the engine the car is mint - I have seen worse three year old examples.

I think people don't fix things because they have no cash. It's easier to sign up for a PCP.

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7 minutes ago, Bren said:

I have been to the garage which have the vectra. From speaking with mechanic it became apparent that they have weeks of work hence reluctance to get further involved. I explained if I thought it was absolutely knackered then I would'nt have brought it in. Mechanic then said he would be happy to strip it down.

We need an estate - and a diesel one. I would be happier fixing this and chucking £1k at it and fixing it than spending £1500 on some other shite. Apart from the engine the car is mint - I have seen worse three year old examples.

I think people don't fix things because they have no cash. It's easier to sign up for a PCP.

Having said all this garages can also be an issue - a lot of them don't wan't to be come involved in anything that cannot be turned around quickly - ignorant people get fobbed off so buy another car.

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A grump from yesterday - I was happily working away in the garage with a bit of 'Maiden blasting out and some soppy sod at apple has decided that my hearing is at risk ! I turned it up again and ten minutes later it turned itself down again :( fuck that, I'll just turn up the amp instead :) 

IMG_0322.thumb.JPG.6e157486e5b35042df77952b6ead78b5.JPG

(I don't use headphones, it was plugged into my amp via the headphone socket)

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Grump 2. Saw a rear louvre on facebook for the SD1 - I really wanted one of these. Agreed £100 and offered to pay immediately as long as seller could keep it until after the lockdown.

Seller then said he had been offered £250 and guy could collect tonight. I told him to take it.

Some you win, some you lose.

 

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Couriers are being swamped with parcels at the moment, people are having to buy stuff online that they can't buy in the shops, companies are filling warehouses with stock in anticipation of difficulties after Brexit, staff members at courier companies are having to self-isolate after getting a positive C19 test or displaying symptoms. It's a perfect storm of shit. 

I sell a bit on eBay and use various couriers, stuff is getting delayed for so long that I'm getting cases opened up against me and I'm having to refund for stuff I can't claim back from the courier as invariably they deliver it after a month or so delay, I'm also spending longer chasing late deliveries that I do actually selling the stuff in the first place.  A parcel I sent to The Netherlands was picked up from the parcel drop-off shop over a week ago and has simply vanished, no further tracking info.  

None of it can be helped, I suppose. Just refund and move on. I'm thinking of jacking the whole lot in until things are closer to normal than they currently are.  

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1 hour ago, gm said:

A grump from yesterday - I was happily working away in the garage with a bit of 'Maiden blasting out and some soppy sod at apple has decided that my hearing is at risk ! I turned it up again and ten minutes later it turned itself down again :( fuck that, I'll just turn up the amp instead :) 

IMG_0322.thumb.JPG.6e157486e5b35042df77952b6ead78b5.JPG

(I don't use headphones, it was plugged into my amp via the headphone socket)

And *that's* why I use Android. 

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5 minutes ago, Dick Longbridge said:

And *that's* why I use Android. 

I do wonder if its an iOS thing or an EU thing...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21294537

 

good excuse to piss off any neighbours you dont like by blasting loud music in their general direction with genuine excuse of its for research purposes! :mrgreen:

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Finally got a response out of Carparts4less, the basic gist of it being their courier won't ship the battery because it's hazardous goods? Quite why they're selling them then I don't know since they're delivery only? Incompetent monkeys. A friend is going to get me one through Dingbro, which will likely be cheaper and turn up quite a bit faster. Should have just done that in the first place.

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2 hours ago, Bren said:

I have been to the garage which have the vectra. From speaking with mechanic it became apparent that they have weeks of work hence reluctance to get further involved. I explained if I thought it was absolutely knackered then I would'nt have brought it in. Mechanic then said he would be happy to strip it down.

We need an estate - and a diesel one. I would be happier fixing this and chucking £1k at it and fixing it than spending £1500 on some other shite. Apart from the engine the car is mint - I have seen worse three year old examples.

I think people don't fix things because they have no cash. It's easier to sign up for a PCP.

 

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5 hours ago, Bren said:

I have been to the garage which have the vectra. From speaking with mechanic it became apparent that they have weeks of work hence reluctance to get further involved. I explained if I thought it was absolutely knackered then I would'nt have brought it in. Mechanic then said he would be happy to strip it down.

We need an estate - and a diesel one. I would be happier fixing this and chucking £1k at it and fixing it than spending £1500 on some other shite. Apart from the engine the car is mint - I have seen worse three year old examples.

I think people don't fix things because they have no cash. It's easier to sign up for a PCP.

Is it manual? I’d check the state of the DMF before making any rash decisions. 

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16 hours ago, Dick Longbridge said:

And *that's* why I use Android. 

My last two android phones have done this too. I just turn the volume back up...

My iPod Classic has a much more annoying variant why by it sets it's volume lock at about 5/6ths if you listen at full blast for too long. To undo this you have to navigate the menus and reset the volume lock, ideal when you're driving. I have the bloody thing specifically because the interface can be used without looking at it ffs...

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39 minutes ago, captain_70s said:

My last two android phones have done this too. I just turn the volume back up...

Good lord, really? I clearly haven't played music loudly enough to find out! Having said that, I've been trying to look after my hearing for the last decade after developing tinnitus from loud personal stereo listening in my late teens and playing in a band (with a brilliant, but excitable drummer) with zero ear protection for a few years. 

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6 hours ago, Dick Longbridge said:

Good lord, really? I clearly haven't played music loudly enough to find out! Having said that, I've been trying to look after my hearing for the last decade after developing tinnitus from loud personal stereo listening in my late teens and playing in a band (with a brilliant, but excitable drummer) with zero ear protection for a few years. 

Gotta be an EU thing, my phone will sit with the headphones connected forever without altering the volume.

I have one of my old phones in the garage connected permanently to a charger and the headphones to the line-in on the hifi.

 

If anything: "We detected you were listening to Iron Maiden so we automatically increased the volume"

 

Phil

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It's the first time it has done this, presumably it was the (another) essential update that the phone decided it needed the other night. 

But yes, it should know better - Quiet heavy metal just doesn't work :(  

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19 minutes ago, omegod said:

That bearded twat explorer has trespassed and done another video of someone's woodland chodstash, cue another owner now having no peace of mind. I've been hammering him at every opportunity and will continue to do so

I've left a suitably salty comment. What a dick.

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21 hours ago, Tamworthbay said:

FedEx are twats, apparently ‘to be delivered by 6pm Thursday’ actually means ‘ you will get it when we fucking say you do, feck off’

Follow up to this, after a day of the useless tossers claiming they knew exactly where it was, it turned up as I was on the phone listening to bullshit, it had got lost in the van under some rubbish and sat there a couple of days. I let the bloke do his bullshit about the system never failing before asking him if he wanted to speak to the guy at the door with my parcel in his hands. He went strangely quiet.

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On 11/19/2020 at 2:34 PM, Bren said:

Having said all this garages can also be an issue - a lot of them don't wan't to be come involved in anything that cannot be turned around quickly - ignorant people get fobbed off so buy another car.

Many garages are basically slightly more in depth fast fit centres now. It's whipping parts off and putting new ones on (with an air gun). Fault finding consists of plugging in a code reader and declaring a car dead if nothing shows on it and they can't see something obviously hanging off, snapped or smoking.

The quicker they can turn cars around, the more cars they see to and the more rounded up hours they can charge on other cars. It soon adds up over a month. Over a year, it'd be several thousand to a busy garage.

It's even starting to become a struggle to find garages to do fairly basic but potentially long winded jobs like a clutch.

3-4 hours to them @£50 per hour = £150-£200 labour, but a ramp taken up that they could get 5-6 30-45 minute jobs done on, all rounded up to an hour @£50 = £250-300. It's effectively costing the garage £100 in profit to take on the big job.

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Unfortunately margins are pretty tight in garages. People see the labour rate and assume we are minted. The overheads are pretty shocking .

Obviously I like to turn jobs around quickly but also take on bigger more snaggy jobs too. But on the proviso the customer isn’t hassling me twice a day asking when it will be done and the price to the nearest penny before it’s even finished. 
 

But in reality it’s simple business - if you are booked ahead for weeks with easy profitable jobs why would  you want to burden yourself with snaggy shit ? 

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1 hour ago, twosmoke300 said:

Unfortunately margins are pretty tight in garages. People see the labour rate and assume we are minted. The overheads are pretty shocking .

Obviously I like to turn jobs around quickly but also take on bigger more snaggy jobs too. But on the proviso the customer isn’t hassling me twice a day asking when it will be done and the price to the nearest penny before it’s even finished. 
 

But in reality it’s simple business - if you are booked ahead for weeks with easy profitable jobs why would  you want to burden yourself with snaggy shit ? 

I heartily agree - however modern cars and snaggy shit go hand in hand. When the valve stem seals went on my 545 the local specialists did'nt want to know. The place I took it to entailed a 220 mile round trip but they did the job quickly for under a grand. They seemed to do all the stuff most places run from - do they have techs with better skills?

As cars get more complicated snaggy shit will not go away - many places will fall by the wayside if they don't upskill.

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3 hours ago, Bren said:

I heartily agree - however modern cars and snaggy shit go hand in hand. When the valve stem seals went on my 545 the local specialists did'nt want to know. The place I took it to entailed a 220 mile round trip but they did the job quickly for under a grand. They seemed to do all the stuff most places run from - do they have techs with better skills?

As cars get more complicated snaggy shit will not go away - many places will fall by the wayside if they don't upskill.

It’s not a lack of skills usually . Simple business . Enough snaggy shit comes with normal jobs without taking it in on purpose. 
I could rebuild a Maserati engine no problem - would I take it on as a job? Would I fuck as like . 

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1 hour ago, twosmoke300 said:

It’s not a lack of skills usually . Simple business .

I reckon at a lot of garages, it's 50/50.

The standard of work i see on even the most basic stuff from some places is criminally bad, blatant rush kinda stuff.

Things going back unlubed, left unclipped, everything blatantly rattle gunned back on. The sort of stuff people have rightly criticised places like Kwik Shit for, for years just expanded past Brakes and Tyres,

A fast fitter can work as a full on mechanic in a lot of garages these days. They simply don't take on that truly involved work anyway. Same processes. Same tools. Remove and replace surface components, bolt off with air gun, bolt on with air gun jobs.

Time is money. And with overheads already high, it's very much a case of many places paying peanuts and getting monkeys.

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