The grumpy thread

[Fumbler]

PAS pump shit the bed this morning on the way to work, explaining the mystery rainbow stain on the driveway yesterday. The high pressure union backed off somehow and caused fluid to piss out and run the pump dry. We've nipped it back up and refilled it, but the metal sludge I saw in the reservoir yesterday has returned, so the pump is proper lunched. Hopefully I can nurse it home.

[wuvvum]

15 hours ago, cobblers said:

All seems a bit wasteful tbh. 5 blokes wages, a nicked 10k? range rover, a nicked 2k transit and all that risk for about 5-10k cash. And all that risk?

Numbers don't really add up, they'd be better off just ringing the vehicles.

Don't most ATMs these days have anti-theft gizmos that squirt ink all over the notes if anyone tries to tamper with them?  Although I'm not sure if that'd work as well with plastic notes.

[wuvvum]

15 hours ago, New POD said:

I tell myself what a twat I am most days. On the other days, someone else will point it out to me, as if it were new news. 

Usually the Mrs, one assumes?

[scorchio69]

I sit here typing this in the tv room offshore and some smelly 🔔 end keeps dropping farts because clearly he is 12yrs old in front of his mates, I am starting to find some of these trips really beginning to grate with me but then so does getting stuck in the workshop with the workshop fun sponge.

Is it not chopper time yet ……………….

[New POD]

26 minutes ago, wuvvum said:

Usually the Mrs, one assumes?

Not always.  Mostly.  

[Zelandeth]

52 minutes ago, wuvvum said:

Don't most ATMs these days have anti-theft gizmos that squirt ink all over the notes if anyone tries to tamper with them?  Although I'm not sure if that'd work as well with plastic notes.

Yes, and it transfers very easily to anything and everything it comes into contact with for a good while, and is quite hard to get rid of.

My grump, the bloke we were meant to be getting a bunch of garden work done by after countless delays and issues has announced that they've shut up shop due to health problems.

Great...now we need to find someone else to do the work (and we wound up putting up with this BS because I'd utterly failed to get any interest from other parties), and we're already getting harrassed by one of our neighbours again.

They've promised to refund our deposit, but I'll believe that when I see it.

God I can't wait to move the fsck out of here.

 

[Pieman]

Is your house built on an ancient cursed grave or something?  Every time you get someone interested in going near it something seems to frighten them away!

[Zelandeth]

12 minutes ago, Pieman said:

Is your house built on an ancient cursed grave or something?  Every time you get someone interested in going near it something seems to frighten them away!

Apparently it must be from what I can tell!

How the fuck we're ever going to get the bastard place into a saleable state I have no clue.  It just feels utterly hopeless.  The to do list is longer now than when we started trying to tackle it eight years ago.

The back garden is basically a brownfield site.  The roof's completely fucked.  The heating system is all 41 years old and hasn't been properly serviced in over a decade, and basically all of the perimeter fencing needs replacement (which borders six other properties).  Oh, and the soffit board are all rotten, but hoping that can be rolled in with sorting the roofs.  If we can ever get anyone to do it.

Additional grump: It just took me visits to four post offices to find someone who had a clue how to handle changing the tax class of a vehicle from PLG to Historic.  Second one insisted it was a fully automated process.

So that was a 30 minute job that wound up taking nearly three hours.

[cobblers]

2 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Apparently it must be from what I can tell!

How the fuck we're ever going to get the bastard place into a saleable state I have no clue.  It just feels utterly hopeless.  The to do list is longer now than when we started trying to tackle it eight years ago.

The back garden is basically a brownfield site.  The roof's completely fucked.  The heating system is all 41 years old and hasn't been properly serviced in over a decade, and basically all of the perimeter fencing needs replacement (which borders six other properties).  Oh, and the soffit board are all rotten, but hoping that can be rolled in with sorting the roofs.  If we can ever get anyone to do it.

Additional grump: It just took me visits to four post offices to find someone who had a clue how to handle changing the tax class of a vehicle from PLG to Historic.  Second one insisted it was a fully automated process.

So that was a 30 minute job that wound up taking nearly three hours.

Honestly, just sell it as it is. People these days seem to want to buy somewhere a bit shafted because they think they'll save money that way,  a builder might buy it who can do the work himself etc etc. 

You wouldn't pay to restore a car just to sell it, so why do the same for a house? 

We also have a house to sell, it needs the roof doing, new carpets, kitchen and bathroom aren't the best either. It might fetch £150k in perfect nick, but it'd cost us £15-20k to get it there.

It'll probably make £135-140k as it is. 

My nans house sold recently for £200k. It was KNACKERED, 50 year old wiring, kitchen and bathroom falling apart, roof leaking, severe damp, boiler 100% kaput and it had been vacant for 2 years so the garden was like a jungle. The garage was still full of junk we never got cleared out, you name it. It needed fully restoring, £50k+ of work.

A very similar, but perfect condition house on the same street sold about 2 weeks after hers for £225k

[Mr Pastry]

13 minutes ago, cobblers said:

Honestly, just sell it as it is. People these days seem to want to buy somewhere a bit shafted because they think they'll save money that way,  a builder might buy it who can do the work himself etc etc. 

You wouldn't pay to restore a car just to sell it, so why do the same for a house? 

We also have a house to sell, it needs the roof doing, new carpets, kitchen and bathroom aren't the best either. It might fetch £150k in perfect nick, but it'd cost us £15-20k to get it there.

It'll probably make £135-140k as it is. 

My nans house sold recently for £200k. It was KNACKERED, 50 year old wiring, kitchen and bathroom falling apart, roof leaking, severe damp, boiler 100% kaput and it had been vacant for 2 years so the garden was like a jungle. The garage was still full of junk we never got cleared out, you name it. It needed fully restoring, £50k+ of work.

A very similar, but perfect condition house on the same street sold about 2 weeks after hers for £225k

Totally agree with this.  There is very little added value in doing a house up to sell it, especially if you do it properly, as you no doubt would.  The agent will usually tell you if there is something that makes it unsaleable, but it has to be pretty far gone for that.    Just get it on the market.

[Zelandeth]

Sadly at this end of the market it needs to be reasonably presentable at least superficially unless it will knock a huge chunk off.

Plus we're still a ways away from being really able to look at relocation due to work commitments, and could do without the place actively disintegrating around us in the intervening year or three.  Which it is actively doing!

[SH1TE]

Royal mail 48 hour takes longer than 48 hours. 

Post seems first class is turning up days later from confirmed posting date. 

Are there go slow or strikes? 

[Yoss]

5 minutes ago, SH1TE said:

Royal mail 48 hour takes longer than 48 hours. 

Post seems first class is turning up days later from confirmed posting date. 

Are there go slow or strikes? 

Not yet but there soon will be. First national strike next Friday. We had two ballots,  one over pay a couple of weeks ago,  this achieved a 97.6% yes vote. Then another ballot over proposed changes to terms and conditions. The result, announced this week, was a 98.7% yes vote,  possibly the most resounding yes vote in British industrial relations history. This is going to get interesting*. I wonder who the 1.3% are who think the proposed changes are a good idea! 

Can't comment on your local issues because I don't know where you are but our office is still short staffed and it's not unusual to have a day off (an actual rostered day off I mean,  not just going sick) and come back to find your delivery didn't go out the day before. It started during covid but they can't use that excuse any more. But it seems people aren't queuing up to be postmen and we're having trouble filling the vacancies. And of the ones that do come along, half of them leave again after a fortnight when they realise the job isn't like they've seen Postman Pat doing on the telly. 

[twosmoke300]

I’ve officially had enough of the motor trade . Properly fucked off with the cars and the customers . 
Time to go job hunting !

[SH1TE]

4 minutes ago, twosmoke300 said:

I’ve officially had enough of the motor trade . Properly fucked off with the cars and the customers . 
Time to go job hunting !

Don't miss lorries, vans and crap cars- certainly don't miss dank shite working conditions. 

Fix odd thing if I can be bothered still 

[artdjones]

17 minutes ago, twosmoke300 said:

I’ve officially had enough of the motor trade . Properly fucked off with the cars and the customers . 
Time to go job hunting !

How did it take you so long. Everyone wants their car back within two hours but begrudges paying.

[SH1TE]

Early start tomorrow leaving for hours ride away at 6am at latest. 

To get there I will be up at 3 or 4am as need tablets to kick in to be lugging stuff round for 5 hours.

Come back and unload by 5pm 

Will be "rough as" for weekend,  so have cancelled anything exciting to hobble about and possibly shit for England if heavy lifting. 

Hate opiates and heavy lifting an evil combo. 

[twosmoke300]

54 minutes ago, artdjones said:

How did it take you so long. Everyone wants their car back within two hours but begrudges paying.

It’s the ones that make other plans the day their old shitter is in for mot !

It’s one day a year - maybe don’t book a dentist appointment at 2pm on the same day eh ? 
 

[Stanky]

1 hour ago, Yoss said:

But it seems people aren't queuing up to be postmen and we're having trouble filling the vacancies. And of the ones that do come along, half of them leave again after a fortnight when they realise the job isn't like they've seen Postman Pat doing on the telly. 

 

1 hour ago, twosmoke300 said:

I’ve officially had enough of the motor trade . Properly fucked off with the cars and the customers . 
Time to go job hunting !

I smell a JOB MATCH!

[Fumbler]

11 hours ago, Fumbler said:

PAS pump shit the bed this morning on the way to work, explaining the mystery rainbow stain on the driveway yesterday. The high pressure union backed off somehow and caused fluid to piss out and run the pump dry. We've nipped it back up and refilled it, but the metal sludge I saw in the reservoir yesterday has returned, so the pump is proper lunched. Hopefully I can nurse it home.

Car's home. It did the journey great considering the failure! It seems that exercising the rack and leaving it to sit for a few more hours allowed the pump to lubricate some more and quieten down. I didn't hear a peep from it while driving, although there was some intermittent stiffness while turning. NOS part located for £91. The plan with this one is to get a pail of cheapo PAS fluid, fit the new pump, fill with fresh fluid but divert the return to a used oil container we have to get all the sludgy shit that's currently in the rack out. Then run the car and keep the reservoir topped up with the pail while someone turns the car from lock to lock.  At the moment the fluid looks like slightly silvery mud, which is always reassuring*, but better than the grey-ish silver I saw yesterday before it broke on me today.

[RoverFolkUs]

I wouldn't start the engine with the return line disconnected to flush it out, it will piss out quicker than you can top it up and subsequently run the new pump dry. 

I always flush it until it runs clean by simply getting someone else to steer lock to lock with the wheels off the ground, and more recently when it was my own car I did another flush about 200 miles later using the same process to be sure all the shavings from the fucked pump were gone. 

3 bottles of CHF consumed in the end in my case, that wasn't cheap! 😅 But it needed to be done to fully purge the system

[cobblers]

2 hours ago, twosmoke300 said:

I’ve officially had enough of the motor trade . Properly fucked off with the cars and the customers . 
Time to go job hunting !

it's a frying pan fire sort of thing but everywhere is absolutely desperate for HGV mechanics at the moment. It pays better than car stuff, IMO is actually easier work and you won't have to deal with the customer direct (and the HGV customers aren't perpetually offended if you ask them to spend £29 to keep their car on the road for a year) 

Even without experience on HGVs if you've run your own garage for as long as you have there's loads of places that would love to take someone on who has experience in the trade and can work without have their hand held

[High Jetter]

3 hours ago, SH1TE said:

Royal mail 48 hour takes longer than 48 hours. 

Post seems first class is turning up days later from confirmed posting date. 

Are there go slow or strikes? 

I post stuff regularly, 1st letter or smoll parcel. Signed for. 99% of the time arrives next day. 

[Fumbler]

40 minutes ago, RoverFolkUs said:

I wouldn't start the engine with the return line disconnected to flush it out, it will piss out quicker than you can top it up and subsequently run the new pump dry. 

I always flush it until it runs clean by simply getting someone else to steer lock to lock with the wheels off the ground, and more recently when it was my own car I did another flush about 200 miles later using the same process to be sure all the shavings from the fucked pump were gone. 

3 bottles of CHF consumed in the end in my case, that wasn't cheap! 😅 But it needed to be done to fully purge the system

I got the advice from someone who's done the procedure before on their Volvo with no issue. With the amount of metal in there the the fluid looked like abrasive paste.

A more foolproof method would be to increase reservoir capacity to a few litres so you don't need to constantly replenish it. I have an idea or three on how to do it.

[SH1TE]

8 minutes ago, High Jetter said:

I post stuff regularly, 1st letter or smoll parcel. Signed for. 99% of the time arrives next day. 

Seems there is a shortage of posties locally as always before 11 and now after lunch 

[RoverFolkUs]

3 minutes ago, Fumbler said:

I got the advice from someone who's done the procedure before on their Volvo with no issue. With the amount of metal in there the the fluid looked like abrasive paste.

A more foolproof method would be to increase reservoir capacity to a few litres so you don't need to constantly replenish it. I have an idea or three on how to do it.

It's risky, and unnecessary in my opinion as it can be done manually without an issue. Although increasing the reservoir capacity could work if you wanted to do it that way

[Fumbler]

2 minutes ago, RoverFolkUs said:

It's risky, and unnecessary in my opinion as it can be done manually without an issue. Although increasing the reservoir capacity could work if you wanted to do it that way

I don't much fancy running metal through my new PAS pump myself. It'd bad enough having the rack swimming in it which is why I'd prefer to try and get rid of as much as I can.

Either I do that or try and see if there's a drain on the bottom of the rack somewhere, and use gravity to do the heavy lifting.

[twosmoke300]

41 minutes ago, cobblers said:

it's a frying pan fire sort of thing but everywhere is absolutely desperate for HGV mechanics at the moment. It pays better than car stuff, IMO is actually easier work and you won't have to deal with the customer direct (and the HGV customers aren't perpetually offended if you ask them to spend £29 to keep their car on the road for a year) 

Even without experience on HGVs if you've run your own garage for as long as you have there's loads of places that would love to take someone on who has experience in the trade and can work without have their hand held

I actually served my time on light and heavy commercials so could go back to it.

There is a local garden and horticulture machinery place looking for a tech too . 

[High Jetter]

11 minutes ago, SH1TE said:

Seems there is a shortage of posties locally as always before 11 and now after lunch 

2 deliveries a day? Posh git!

[320touring]

3 minutes ago, Fumbler said:

I don't much fancy running metal through my new PAS pump myself. It'd bad enough having the rack swimming in it which is why I'd prefer to try and get rid of as much as I can.

Either I do that or try and see if there's a drain on the bottom of the rack somewhere, and use gravity to do the heavy lifting.

Use an upturned 2L bottle with the bottom cut off.

Neck of the bottle into the fluid reservoir, then fill the bottle up with PS Fluid .

Will give you plenty extra capacity, the ability to see the rate it goes down at and additional pressure to force the fluid through?

 

I've used this technique when bleeding coolant systems on cars before (looking at you BMW E36!)