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outlaw118

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Looks like it was the turbo pulling oil through rather than it getting past the rings - the intake pipe is full of oil.  Car is currently dumped half on half off the pavement outside my house where the AA put it.  I've taken the intake pipe off the manifold, and once the oil is nice and cold and viscous again I'm going to start it up and drive it very gingerly down to the car park so I can get it up on ramps and drain the oil off.  I'm going to drain it all out because it's due an oil change and hopefully that way it'll get rid of the oil that has gone places it shouldn't, then I'm going to refill it with the correct quantity of fresh oil, perhaps in a slightly thicker grade out of deference to the car's mileage.  Then I'll see how I get on - hopefully it won't need a new turbo.  They're not hugely expensive but it's not a job I'd relish having to do.

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On 7/7/2020 at 4:54 PM, angle said:

The ultra shonky XM that lived on my road has been missing a few weeks, presumed dead. 

IMG_20180705_090206.thumb.jpg.fdbcb4c912f9ad4184e052b07749dbc1.jpg

At the same time, someone new has moved in round the corner. 

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There goes the neighbourhood. Bloody gentrification. 

Apparently these things cost about 50,000 quid new!

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1 hour ago, wuvvum said:

Currently sat in a field entrance in the Mondeo, waiting for the AA.  Fucking thing ran away on me - clouds of smoke and had to stick it in 6th and stall it.  Probably partially my fault - the oil level is way too high (has been since I bought it) and I hadn't got round to emptying any out.  It has proper pissed me off today mind - it's been doing about 33 mpg rather than the 49 that the computer is telling me.  I semi-deliberately ran it out of fuel earlier just to check it wasn't the fuel gauge talking rubbish - I cunningly had a gallon of diesel in a can in the boot but because of the stupid fucking filler flap design you can't get a fuel can spout in there - or indeed anything that isn't exactly the size of a diesel pump nozzle. 

Fucking moderns. 

There is a tube to put in the filler neck, it is in the spare wheel well with the jack, bottom left below.

This caught me out too, a silly idea!

image.thumb.jpeg.7cf4926e0223ee09124a44c874b275ef.jpeg

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On 7/8/2020 at 7:21 PM, Mally said:

They sent you home and you feel miserable

Good job they didn't keep you in then.

In Southport hospital?  He's lucky to have walked out of that place, it's like bloody Holby... the only way out is horizontally.  I'm from Southport originally, I know about this!  Good luck POD.

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Trying to send two medium to large parcels to Italy. Royal Mail sez these come within International Signed & Tracked, but local post office sez no and tries to divert me to use Parcel Farce.

This then becomes academic when the post office sez Royal Mail won't carry any car parts, new or used, because Covid.

Fuxake.

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18 minutes ago, Tadhg Tiogar said:

Trying to send two medium to large parcels to Italy. Royal Mail sez these come within International Signed & Tracked, but local post office sez no and tries to divert me to use Parcel Farce.

This then becomes academic when the post office sez Royal Mail won't carry any car parts, new or used, because Covid.

Fuxake.

May not help a lot if they won't take car parts at the moment, but I've always found it's been a lot cheaper to use Parcelforce for international stuff by going via one of the parcel websites like Parcel2Go or ParcelMonkey compared to going direct to Parcelforce. May be worth a look at those two sites anyway as they use a variety of couriers so maybe some will have different policies on what they take?

Basically you put in the parcel weight, size and destination and there's usually a decent range of options

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A month or so before COVID we ordered a fitted wardrobe for the bedroom. We'd just moved house and remortgaged and had a some left for home improvements, the wardrobe came in at just under 3k which to me is an eyewatering amount but it should at least last us a few decades. 

We had it all designed, chose the colour and the handles, drank coffee in their showroom and eagerly waited the agreed 3 weeks for the wardrobe to be manufactured and fitted. 

The fitter never showed up and after a call we found the wardrobe wasn't complete and still needed a few bits making to finish, fair enough, then of course COVID took over and we've only recently been able to arrange fitting after lockdown was lifted.

A couple of days were arranged and we endured no-shows and had to rearrange, all juggling work and ensuring someone was in. The wife is a counselor working with the relatives of cancer victims, some of who had to be rescheduled, I work nights so slept on a camp bed downstairs, only for nobody to come round anyway. Phone calls produced the standard excuse of "the last job the fitter was on overran", "the factory made a mistake and are doing it again" ,"they lost a door so had to make it again" ,or "they're just finishing it now". 

Eventually a wardrobe was delivered and the following Friday a couple of fitters installed it. Except there's no doors, and other parts are missing. "we'll get the doors and fit them on Monday" .Of course, today is Monday and the doors still haven't been manufactured (as usual, we had to chase them). Wednesday is the day now apparently but i'm not holding my breath.

To make matters worse, when we looked at what has been delivered and installed it's completely  different to what we agreed on, lots of internal shelving is simply missing and has been replaced with a hanging rail. 

The fitter let slip that the reason the doors hadn't been made was the company had hit their 50k credit limit with the factory and all manufacturing had stopped until they settled the tab.

Overall the whole experience has been a disaster and there's no real sign of it being sorted out. I'd checked the company out online and they had some good and some bad reviews but we had a personal recommendation so decided to go with them. A little more digging revealed a catalog of negative reviews, all similar to our experiences, some were much worse. Households left without a kitchen at all for weeks on end, stuff arriving and not fitting. One guy even has a youtube channel devoted to his botched kitchen installation that never got finished! The company offers to pay some customers to leave good reviews and one 5 star review was even left by the managing director!

One reviewer revealed they had to make a section 75 claim to their credit provider to recover money paid for a botched kitchen replacement.

A look at companies house shows a company with the same name was dissolved in April 2020 but there are several similarly named companies registered at the same address with the same directors listed. All very odd. 

It feels good to have a whine about it all, although i'm absolutely kicking myself now for not doing more research and heeding the bad reviews online. We paid half of the total via credit card so if things do go completely tits up there's always section 75 that we could perhaps claim on. 

Urgh!

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41 minutes ago, neil1971 said:

May not help a lot if they won't take car parts at the moment, but I've always found it's been a lot cheaper to use Parcelforce for international stuff by going via one of the parcel websites like Parcel2Go or ParcelMonkey compared to going direct to Parcelforce. May be worth a look at those two sites anyway as they use a variety of couriers so maybe some will have different policies on what they take?

Basically you put in the parcel weight, size and destination and there's usually a decent range of options

I'll give that a go

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 Grandmother Fumbler's latest display of 83 year-old driving excellence* was discovered when we found out that the central heating pipes in the garage have been squashed and creased to the point of not letting any water flow through them. That explains why her NSF wing is all bent up then!

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Going through a period of unhappiness with the cars just at the minute.  I just want to drive them, I'm fed up of fixing them, chasing mystery faults, and having to stop a job part way through because I simply don't own the tools to complete it.  I mean, this is all normal but still, it's driving me absolutely spare.

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10 hours ago, eddyramrod said:

In Southport hospital?  He's lucky to have walked out of that place, it's like bloody Holby... the only way out is horizontally.  I'm from Southport originally, I know about this!  Good luck POD.

Scarborough General is just the same...... they make Mid-Staffs look ok!!

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1 hour ago, vulgalour said:

Going through a period of unhappiness with the cars just at the minute.  I just want to drive them, I'm fed up of fixing them, chasing mystery faults, and having to stop a job part way through because I simply don't own the tools to complete it.  I mean, this is all normal but still, it's driving me absolutely spare.

That's all so familiar!  Good luck my friend, hope it improves for you.

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2 hours ago, vulgalour said:

Going through a period of unhappiness with the cars just at the minute.  I just want to drive them, I'm fed up of fixing them, chasing mystery faults, and having to stop a job part way through because I simply don't own the tools to complete it.  I mean, this is all normal but still, it's driving me absolutely spare.

Similar here after discovering that the rear brakes on the burds Clio are shot again..

Consoling myself with the fact that even broken, the cars here are still cooler than anything else in the street:)

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3 hours ago, vulgalour said:

Going through a period of unhappiness with the cars just at the minute.  I just want to drive them, I'm fed up of fixing them, chasing mystery faults, and having to stop a job part way through because I simply don't own the tools to complete it.  I mean, this is all normal but still, it's driving me absolutely spare.

It’s been over 4 years since I last drove my Capri. I know exactly what you mean.

Trick is to buy more old cars, many more, so you’ve always got one that works!

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I went out at lunchtime and started the Mondeo so I could move it off the pavement.  It started up after a few seconds of cranking, chucked a puff of blue smoke out of the exhaust while it burned off the residual oil still in the cylinders from yesterday, but other than that it sounded as OK as it ever did, although I didn't rev it above idle.  The plan this evening was to drive it down to the car park (with the intake pipe disconnected from the manifold in case the turbo does start pulling oil through again), drain the oil and refill with the correct amount, but of course as soon as I finished work it started pissing down with rain so that didn't get done.  Hopefully tomorrow. 

Remains to be seen whether the turbo is actually knackered - replacement turbos aren't hugely expensive but I doubt I could be arsed to replace it if it is gubbed.  By the time I've done that and the crank pulley and investigated why it's guzzling diesel I will have spent more than the bloody thing is worth.

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10 hours ago, sheffcortinacentre said:

Strange I've sent & received new & used car parts Inc Canada during vivid with no problem.

If it's a non crown post office then nowadays they don't like anything that's even slightly unusual.

My local PO is run by a family of Iranians. They take their rules and regulations very seriously and even made a point of showing me the internal Royal Mail missive that sez all car parts are banned from being posted via RM for the duration. 

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22 minutes ago, Supernaut said:

ECP really do peddle some complete horseshit sometimes...

IMG_20200714_141337318.jpg

Last I checked there wasn't a specific cure or vaccine for it... so this is just overpriced general purpose anti-bacterial stuff?

Lots of chemicals will splat viruses, Covid included, but unless your surname is Trump you wouldn’t want them inside you which is the problem In developing treatments. It would probably work as sold but how much need there is for it is another question. I think they have just jumped on the bandwagon with two feet.

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I bought two small items from eBay.

The 1st one I thought would be the problem,it was delivered by Yodel & turned up earlier than expected,so a nice surprise.

The 2nd one,the listing said it would be delivered by Hermes,but I could pay a small amount extra to have it by Royal Mail,which is what I did.

I didn't want to use Hermes,as they come to my work anytime after 6.00pm,& we close at 5.30.Last time,I had to hang around at work for nearly an hour after everyone had gone home.

You can guess what's happened?,he sent it by Hermes anyway!

Now I've got to keep looking at the tracking all day,to see where it is,& find out if I need to stay behind again.

I've messaged the seller,but not expecting much there,so quite annoyed ?

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I'm still waiting for a LED lamp, one of 4 stock items I ordered from ECP on June 14th. I have the other 3 bits, and raised a support ticket on June 23rd. I've responded to their automated reply to that after one, two and 3 weeks - still no communication from them. I tried phoning a couple of times, apparently the average wait time is approximately 2 hours FFS! What else can I do?

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On 7/13/2020 at 12:27 PM, Tadhg Tiogar said:

Trying to send two medium to large parcels to Italy. Royal Mail sez these come within International Signed & Tracked, but local post office sez no and tries to divert me to use Parcel Farce.

This then becomes academic when the post office sez Royal Mail won't carry any car parts, new or used, because Covid.

Fuxake.

Recently used DPS to send a heavy parcel of car manuals to Spain.  A lot cheaper than RM/Parcelforce, collected from mine, delivered three days later.  Entirely without hassle.

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Recently swapped houses with my son. Used his broadband for a while (sky).  Changed mine over on Friday (BT)

Fri/Sat/ Sun/ fine. Late Sun night lost the wifi, flashing lights etc, Came back after 10 mins but verrrry slow.

Mon slow but workable at times. Today (tues) rang BT. Yes sir/name /address/problem.  Broadband poor.

Ah you are new, settles down over 10 days. Yes, but it's supposed to go up and down, I've got a speed of 0.11.

Ah1 I'll pass you on, Yes sir/name/address...................  I'// pass you to an engineer.

Yes sir, name/................

Much flashing lights later, seems fine at our end sir, maybe in your property. I'll send someone on.............22 July.

I'm in Spain then, Ah, next Thursday then.  OK thanks.

Can't be my end can it? Sky use BT line do they not? All I've done is plug my hub in and it worked 3 days.

Oh by the way sir, there may be a bill depending on the fault.

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Did the oil change on the Mondeo this evening.  It went fine, but I seem to have lost my 8mm socket.  Can't find the fucking thing anywhere, which is bizarre as I didn't go anywhere with it - I was just laying under the car using it to take the undertray off.  Only thing I can think of is that I've managed to catch it with my foot when it was on the floor and I've booted it across the car park somewhere - although I did have a good look and I can't see it.  A replacement socket is only a couple of quid, but it's still bloody annoying.

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