The grumpy thread

[grogee]

Thought it was Thursday so I put the bins out. It's only frigging Wednesday... 

[High Jetter]

Your neighbours wil already be thanking you for the reminder

[Back_For_More]

While I was sorting the garage a bit.... The GF piped up she'd found something to sort the kitchen - as someone had previously stained the whole worktops..... REALLY REALLY BADLY. 

I came up for a cuppa to this horror show. 

So got the big guns out..... And promptly broke the belt sander 

FUCK IT! 

To top it all - she's off in the morning to UK for family. I'm still fuming..... That's my few days welding the P6 without interruption totally bolloxed. 

[wuvvum]

This evening I definitely didn't* drive the Renault 4 to the ECR meet in Shotley that I didn't realise was cancelled due to the weather because I'm not on Facebook.

It barely made it home.  The offside outer CV joint is utterly fucked - to the point that if I try to drive the car on full lock I'm almost certain it'll break.  I had to do a 7-point turn to get into the parking space, using no more than 1/2 a turn of lock each time.  The whole driveshaft was hot, but the CV joint was almost too hot to touch.  Which is odd as it was fine this morning when I left for the office, and the CV boot is intact so it can't have suddenly shat out its grease.

So it's new driveshaft time - consensus is that it's easier to replace the whole shaft than to try and bugger about replacing the CV joint, if you can even find a separate CV joint for it.  Replacing the driveshaft is supposed to be a twat of a job - although my HBOL isn't a lot of use as it only covers up to 1972 and the later driveshafts are completely different.  So that's another lot of time and expense I really could have done without at the moment.  Bloody French motors...

[wuvvum]

In other news, Renault 4 wipers are shite.

 

[bigstraight6]

1 minute ago, wuvvum said:

In other news, Renault 4 wipers are shite.

 

That’s just taken me back 30 years when I daily drove an R4 between Plymouth and Newton Abbot, I still loved the car though despite it’s deficient wiper tendencies.

[cobblers]

We need to drive to work but they've dug the road up and blocked us in with no notice ffs

[Rust Collector]

20 minutes ago, cobblers said:

We need to drive to work but they've dug the road up and blocked us in with no notice ffs

That happened to me once, although there may have been a notice that had been up for so long that I stopped paying attention to it. I had a Hilux at the time so I straddled the pavement and verge to drive down the road whilst workmen shouted obscenities at me. 3/10, would not recommend.

[Rust Collector]

11 hours ago, wuvvum said:

In other news, Renault 4 wipers are shite.

 

I feel like you'd see more by turning them off 😅

[Remspoor]

12 hours ago, wuvvum said:

In other news, Renault 4 wipers are shite.

 

No triangle of doom there then

[cobblers]

On 8/24/2023 at 12:22 AM, Back_For_More said:

While I was sorting the garage a bit.... The GF piped up she'd found something to sort the kitchen - as someone had previously stained the whole worktops..... REALLY REALLY BADLY. 

I came up for a cuppa to this horror show. 

So got the big guns out..... And promptly broke the belt sander 

FUCK IT! 

To top it all - she's off in the morning to UK for family. I'm still fuming..... That's my few days welding the P6 without interruption totally bolloxed. 

This reminds me of something my mum did when I was about 19.

We'd just got a pressure washer, and I came back from a week at uni to find her jet washing the drive. It was tarmacked and a bit tired, but presentable enough. She'd jetted at a hole and lifted a big lump of tarmac off and found there was "block paving" underneath. So then she spent all afternoon jet washing lumps of tarmac off the drive, expecting to find a pristine driveway underneath 🙄. By the time I got there she'd just ripped massive patches of tarmac off it, exposing what was clearly just a load of old bricks dumped on the ground as a base for the tarmac.

The she "had to go out" and left me to try and deal with the massive pile of tarmac and shit she'd swept onto the pavement, and fill all the holes in with cold lay so that my car would actually get back on the drive!

[MikeR]

a bit of rain and a puddle or 2 causes road closures and chaos ...  its not even up to the sills !

[Zelandeth]

22 minutes ago, MikeR said:

a bit of rain and a puddle or 2 causes road closures and chaos ...  its not even up to the sills !

Not surprising to be honest with how so many people these days are totally incapable of driving to the conditions, combined with the idiotic placement of the air intake on so many moderns.

[richardmorris]

[iainrcz]

According to Herpes my new keyboard was delivered yesterday. At one minute to midnight.

Am I going to have to get upset with someone.

[richardmorris]

4 hours ago, iainrcz said:

According to Herpes my new keyboard was delivered yesterday. At one minute to midnight.

Am I going to have to get upset with someone.

I had dpd uselessness yesterday. Had a delivery of cheese due for the bank holiday, first message was “ sorry we missed you”. I was home! And camera showed no one and no vehicles . It was supposed to have been left even if no-one in as perishable items. But they didn’t even attempt a delivery. Managed to rearrange for pickup at the local coop today. Box has three - perishable items , must be delivered today stickers. Even then the coops dpd scanner didn’t work and wouldn’t accept my qr code from their own app. 
sometimes you can’t win  - get something sent to work because they want a signature and they’ll schedule it for 9pm, send it to home as you’re there for once and they don’t even bother coming.

 

 

[EyesWeldedShut]

OK - riddle me this.

2.2 Hdi Pug Boxer.
2.2 TD4 FreeLander

Suspiciously similar looking hardware under the bonnets but - FreeLoader fuel filter circa £20, Pug Boxer £75?

WTF? Thanks Mr PSA

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

On 24/08/2023 at 21:57, wuvvum said:

In other news, Renault 4 wipers are shite.

 

When I did the NC500 last year in an R4 not only were the wipers that shit, the motor made a sound like two housebricks vigorously mating.

[SunnySouth]

13 hours ago, richardmorris said:

Fuck sake. Shitbags.

[RoverFolkUs]

12 hours ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

OK - riddle me this.

2.2 Hdi Pug Boxer.
2.2 TD4 FreeLander

Suspiciously similar looking hardware under the bonnets but - FreeLoader fuel filter circa £20, Pug Boxer £75?

WTF? Thanks Mr PSA

You should be able to just buy the insert, what year is the Boxer? I don't recall any that you have to buy the complete housing

[RoverFolkUs]

Down the car boot this morning, didn't actually buy anything. That's not the grump.. 

A guy was selling a load of stuff presumably from his shed. He had a bottle of central hydraulic fluid (Ford/Volvo/Audi etc power steering fluid) that was opened but probably still had about 80% left in it. 

It was a 1 litre bottle, it's just over £10 a pop from Halfords. 

I pick it up, ask how much, he storms over, goes "what is it" - (this really pisses me off and it happens all too often, if you don't know what you're selling that's your problem...) and snatches it from my hand.. 

He stands there examining it for a few seconds, and announces "£15 that, it's fully synthetic so be a lot more from Halfords" and hands it back to me..

Well, it's not oil, so fully synthetic as opposed to what exactly? 

I just chuckled and put it down, then he looked at me as if I had landed from space. "What more do you want?" 

Err, it's a tenner a bottle in Halfords, and yours is opened.. 

I'm getting sick of car boots, so many people seem to bring a load of stuff, overprice it, lie to your face about how much it is brand new or whether it works, or whether it's all complete or whatever

Had a similar thing last week, a 5 litre bottle of Ford branded Castrol 5w-30, its about £30 online when I last bought some. 

I asked how much, he said "£25, costs £90 in the shops that does" 

Now £25 is possibly fair enough but it was really dusty and he hadn't bothered to clean it off, good luck selling it at a car boot for that sort of money. Doesn't fucking cost £90 in the shops though 😂

I think these people are probably the sort that appear as subjects for the eBay idiots thread

[cobblers]

47 minutes ago, RoverFolkUs said:

I think these people are probably the sort that appear as subjects for the eBay idiots thread

I see it a lot on our local free-ads facebook group thing. 90% of it are people digging something fairly obscure out of the back of a cupboard and asking more or less what it costs new.

"Small oil filled radiator, only used a handful of times £65" 

"Thule roof bar adapter set 848344 missing some of the bolts and rubber bits. Some surface rust, was £80 new would accept £75"

"George at Asda size 18 sundress, worn twice only, cost £12. I'd take £10"

"Selection of watering cans (all about 20 years old and falling apart) £15 each"

[RoverFolkUs]

21 minutes ago, cobblers said:

I see it a lot on our local free-ads facebook group thing. 90% of it are people digging something fairly obscure out of the back of a cupboard and asking more or less what it costs new.

"Small oil filled radiator, only used a handful of times £65" 

"Thule roof bar adapter set 848344 missing some of the bolts and rubber bits. Some surface rust, was £80 new would accept £75"

"George at Asda size 18 sundress, worn twice only, cost £12. I'd take £10"

"Selection of watering cans (all about 20 years old and falling apart) £15 each"

"TV for sale, has a smashed screen, cost £329 new but will take £150, easy fix for someone who can fix it, been quoted £80 to fix but haven't got the time" 

[grogee]

It's the sofas that get me. "Cost £2700 new 15 years ago, only slight shit stains, will accept £1400"

[grogee]

I've started a thread for us to vent spleen about local chancers trying it on:

 

 

[grogee]

16 hours ago, richardmorris said:

I had dpd uselessness yesterday. Had a delivery of cheese due for the bank holiday, first message was “ sorry we missed you”. I was home! And camera showed no one and no vehicles . It was supposed to have been left even if no-one in as perishable items. But they didn’t even attempt a delivery. Managed to rearrange for pickup at the local coop today. Box has three - perishable items , must be delivered today stickers. Even then the coops dpd scanner didn’t work and wouldn’t accept my qr code from their own app. 
sometimes you can’t win  - get something sent to work because they want a signature and they’ll schedule it for 9pm, send it to home as you’re there for once and they don’t even bother coming.

 

 

Here's my DPD uselessness from yesterday. 

I didn't open the package, that's how it arrived... 

[myglaren]

One of my neighbours had a video camera bought from Amazon delivered.  They left it beside the bin, in plain view of anyone passing, in the pouring rain.   It was soaked when he brought it in.

They sent a text with a photo but he was in.  Was a while before he saw the text.

[iainrcz]

22 hours ago, iainrcz said:

According to Herpes my new keyboard was delivered yesterday. At one minute to midnight.

Am I going to have to get upset with someone.

It's turned up, 2 days late. I'm not sure why it was stated as delivered on Friday, but there we are.

[richardmorris]

1 hour ago, grogee said:

Here's my DPD uselessness from yesterday. 

I didn't open the package, that's how it arrived... 

You win!

[EyesWeldedShut]

6 hours ago, RoverFolkUs said:

You should be able to just buy the insert, what year is the Boxer? I don't recall any that you have to buy the complete housing

2013 Boxer 250 - this one came with a sealed/one piece unit filter fitted.  It's aftermarket and looks just like the original except it's a one piece/sealed moulding. The originals have  a screw off/on lid that's reputed to be a b'stad to seal correctly.  There's a tool for those like the image below to aid torquing the thing up so you don't crack it.

The inserts for the threaded units  will fit the sealed units but you have to 'hack' the fitting to do so. Some of the motorhome guys have done it successfully using judicious force and the tool when the unit looks threaded - but others have had initial success followed by problems with air locks in the system when their re - sealing has failed. 
Rather than tempt fate I went with a new unit that 'screws' so I should be able to swap in a cheap inner when the time comes - that was the price I moaned about above - these are now about £98 as far as I can see. Original PSA ones are circa £200 and the cheap, one piece ones seem to be £45 or so. Secondhand outers are cheap enough if you want to trust 'em.

Theory is that somebody cracked the original and swapped in the sealed unit rather than cough up a few extra pennies and passed any grief down the line. Kind of same as the Bini DV6  cat/dpf when we got that - instead of the factory issue one that splits we found a single piece unit with a shagged DPF in it that we couldn't just split to swap out (or attempt a clean). Annoying.