The grumpy thread

[MarvinsMom]

Apparently tomorrow is Drive It Day.

i had forgotten all about it, and while we may* have a functional car, i dunno cos i have not tried it since it was last tinkered with.....

all of which is a moot point anyway cos we don't have a run to go on tomorrow anyway!

[Fumbler]

26 minutes ago, Tadhg Tiogar said:

Er.....how badly?

Cranks really slowly but the body electrics work perfectly- the car cut out as I was pulling into the carpark and wouldn't crank well afterwards. When I did get it started, it cut out again.

I suspect a bad engine earth. I found one that goes from the transmission to the batery so I'll clean that up and see what happens. The wire itself was rather hot.

[Fumbler]

And now the fucker has fixed itself. WTAF?

When I'm home next week I'm going to have a look at the engine earths.

[R1152]

40 minutes ago, Fumbler said:

 I found one that goes from the transmission to the batery so I'll clean that up and see what happens. The wire itself was rather hot.

That'll be our old friend I²R, right there. And it doesn't take much R when I is so big either.

[Fumbler]

5 minutes ago, R1152 said:

That'll be our old friend I²R, right there. And it doesn't take much R when I is so big either.

Precisely, as was my thinking. The connection at that point is a mixture of aluminium and steel corrosion so that's mightily encouraging from a diagnostic point of view. The battery clamp doesn't inspire any confidence at all so I may replace that too. Put simply, the body and engine earth wires are shoved into this lead collet which is part of the clamp. With all the copper on show I have a feeling the connection inside there isn't much better than the ones I can see. When I'm replacing the clamp I may as well replace the wire itself after I baked it a little trying to crank it. The ignition barrel sticking on crank mode wasn't much fun, either. It hasn't done it ever since though. When it did finally start, the battery charged up and the charge light went out after a few seconds, so that's good.

I'm rather surprised I didn't think of just letting everything cool down for an hour when it cut out. From my world of work, poor connections on the neutral/negative side of electrics usually cause a lot of burning- an example would be a loose neutral connection for a shower switch. 40A at 240VAC and a loose neutral is perfect for an exciting fire.

[R1152]

3 hours ago, Fumbler said:

From my world of work, poor connections on the neutral/negative side of electrics usually cause a lot of burning- an example would be a loose neutral connection for a shower switch. 40A at 240VAC and a loose neutral is perfect for an exciting fire.

Ooh, you've experienced neutral burning too. Fun*, isn't it? Up there with a fire in a UPS...

[Fumbler]

19 minutes ago, R1152 said:

Ooh, you've experienced neutral burning too. Fun*, isn't it? Up there with a fire in a UPS...

Best one of mine so far was a mobile shower block connected to 3ph but the neutral bar in the board burned out completely. Shot 415VAC through everything and fried the place.

[Pierre3]

What's up with steel these days. The passenger side step on my 01 Range Rover just fell off, of its' own accord. What sort of bollix is that ? The other half, who weighs about 8 stone wringing wet, goes to get out of the car, puts her foot, as usual, on the side step, and "dong", the whole side just dropped off. It was rusted through on the support arms.

Why can't factories make "never-rust" steel so that old moaners, like me, don't have to put up with big bits falling off their cars. Next week I am going to invent special car steel that will never rust, and that will fix side steps from dropping off. Fortunately, my side step fell off in my drive.

I had to ring my son to call over with his ESAB welder, some 30mm square bar, a few cutting discs to suit my angle grinder, and we welded in new arms, got them painted up with zinc paint, and refitted by after tea. Good job, and very pleased. The arms just need a coat of Hammerite to make it all look neat.

One thing about owning a 20 year old Range Rover is that they give you a great sense of humour. It it didn't I would probably kill myself as the stubborn muley swine likes to just stop doing its' role in life, called driving, at the drop of a hat. The vehicle shares all the DNA of a donkey, but in the end you do love it. Although there is a possibility that I have gone insane, and I just like to spend a lot, lot, lot, of time and money keeping it on the road. If it were a donkey I would have been onto the local vet to make a call with his gun years ago !

Still, nowadays if it goes out it thinks that 10 miles is a long journey, so it usually behaves itself. Happy days - until tomorrow, when it probably won't start, or won't unlock, or the windows won't go down or if they do then they won't come back up, or the air suspension won't lift the car........................ and so on. Thank you God for letting me buy the beast, and, believe me, we will be having words when we meet.

[High Jetter]

Steel corrodes, almost by definition. So does 'stainless', but less rapidly.

[R1152]

1 hour ago, Fumbler said:

Best one of mine so far was a mobile shower block connected to 3ph but the neutral bar in the board burned out completely. Shot 415VAC through everything and fried the place.

😲

Very hot showers, briefly...?

[EightMegs]

My fork ball joint splitter decided to mangle the ball joint boot making replacing bushings without a press somehow even more annoying.

[twosmoke300]

That’s all fork splitters ever do ! Barely ever use one . Good sharp crack with a hammer on the side of the arm by the taper . Some vehicles have soft pressed steel bits in that area ( transits and civics come to mind ) and then I use a wind up splitter with a 2p piece at the end of the bj thread to protect it .

I’ll only use a fork if it’s bloody tight and I’m replacing the joint anyway

[Fumbler]

11 hours ago, R1152 said:

😲

Very hot showers, briefly...?

Funnily enough, the showers survived because their isolators are switched of after use. All the extractor fans, PIRs, the neutral bar itself, fan FCUs, even the lights outside, however, were destroyed! A good weekend's work but I wasn't going to work on Friday or Saturday that time.

[timolloyd]

‘Trayback’ seems to be the new ‘long roof’. FFS it’s dropside or estate.

[mitsisigma01]

On 4/21/2021 at 8:45 PM, Talbot said:

Was in central Horsham, and was a liveried sky Transit.  Unfortunately happened so quickly I didn't get the registration.  I was more shocked that a liveried sky van was being driven in such a manner.

Sorry for the delay in replying, phone outage, reset and work has put me a few days behind.... 

He no longer works at Sky, have you tried head office at Isleworth 🤔

[cort1977]

7 hours ago, timolloyd said:

‘Trayback’ seems to be the new ‘long roof’. FFS it’s dropside or estate.

I thought a trayback was one of these?

(mate)

[timolloyd]

Ah, my bad. Maybe that is an actual thing. Felt sure I’d seen a Land Rover with a dropside bed advertised as a tray back. But maybe it was just that.

[EightMegs]

14 hours ago, twosmoke300 said:

That’s all fork splitters ever do ! Barely ever use one . Good sharp crack with a hammer on the side of the arm by the taper . Some vehicles have soft pressed steel bits in that area ( transits and civics come to mind ) and then I use a wind up splitter with a 2p piece at the end of the bj thread to protect it .

I’ll only use a fork if it’s bloody tight and I’m replacing the joint anyway

The fork splitter was a last resort as several stiff whacks with a lump hammer failed to break the taper.

[Talbot]

11 hours ago, timolloyd said:

Ah, my bad. Maybe that is an actual thing. Felt sure I’d seen a Land Rover with a dropside bed advertised as a tray back. But maybe it was just that.

A trayback is usually a modified Discovery/RR classic on a tubular frame that takes the place of the rear body.

Thusly:

[twosmoke300]

7 hours ago, EightMegs said:

The fork splitter was a last resort as several stiff whacks with a lump hammer failed to break the taper.

Swing harder !

[Supernaut]

1 hour ago, Talbot said:

A trayback is usually a modified Discovery/RR classic on a tubular frame that takes the place of the rear body.

Thusly:

Well that's just misleading.

I prefer the Ozzie version of trayback because there's an actual tray there.

Where's the tray on that Disco?

Not blaming you, just having a whinge about silly terminology.

[MorrisItalSLX]

A genuine Australian perspective:

This is a “Tub”

And this is a “Tray”

[Out Run]

14 hours ago, cort1977 said:

I thought a trayback was one of these?

(mate)

This.

[dozeydustman]

I wanted to fix the exhaust mounts on the Suzuki today. Wife had other ideas. So did the work duty phone (it shouldn’t be ringing at all between 9am and 5pm as civic centre is open). Go shopping, as we had an over exuberant week last week (wife’s birthday) we need to be thrifty, but doesn’t seem to stop the fair sex spending £30-40 on ‘essential’ clothing (yet another work Blouse).

Also FiL came round.

Wouldn’t normally bother me but he came round yesterday, did nothing, and did the same today.

and stepdaughter has racked up one great big fucking phone bill streaming YT, TikTok and god knows what while out and about and didn’t mention she’d hit her data limit (how she exceeded 20Gb a month I have no idea at all; almost double this month) so we’ve got to take money out the mortgage deposit until middle of May

 

[dozeydustman]

1 hour ago, dozeydustman said:

I wanted to fix the exhaust mounts on the Suzuki today. Wife had other ideas. So did the work duty phone (it shouldn’t be ringing at all between 9am and 5pm as civic centre is open). Go shopping, as we had an over exuberant week last week (wife’s birthday) we need to be thrifty, but doesn’t seem to stop the fair sex spending £30-40 on ‘essential’ clothing (yet another work Blouse).

Also FiL came round.

Wouldn’t normally bother me but he came round yesterday, did nothing, and did the same today.

and stepdaughter has racked up one great big fucking phone bill streaming YT, TikTok and god knows what while out and about and didn’t mention she’d hit her data limit (how she exceeded 20Gb a month I have no idea at all; almost double this month) so we’ve got to take money out the mortgage deposit until middle of May

 

Also I am fed up having to wear a poxy mask and gloves when I go in the shops. Hand sanitiser has dried the absolute fuck out of my hands and agravating my eczema; they’re pitted & cracked and red raw in places and no amount of diprobase is helping. Doesn’t help when some miserable old biddy standing guard in the doorway of the charity shop we went in having a go at me for not sterilising my disposable gloves, and protecting my skin from even more damage.

Also I hate Chichester. Can’t wait to move away from here.

[Tadhg Tiogar]

9 hours ago, dozeydustman said:

.....Also I hate Chichester. Can’t wait to move away from here.

How does the idea of Worthing grab you? Or Bognor Regis?

[mitsisigma01]

Bognor needs to get in the sea

[Talbot]

11 hours ago, dozeydustman said:

and stepdaughter has racked up one great big fucking phone bill streaming YT, TikTok and god knows what while out and about and didn’t mention she’d hit her data limit (how she exceeded 20Gb a month I have no idea at all; almost double this month) so we’ve got to take money out the mortgage deposit until middle of May

Get her a "Smarty" monthly rolling contract for £20/month.  Unlimited everything.  I've pulled 700+GB in a month, no additional charges.  Makes budgeting very easy indeed.  It works on the Three network and is currently limited to 3G and 4G at the moment, but given I can get faster download on 3G than I can on some domestic broadband, I don't think that's an issue.

You also get a free "gift" sim that you can give to someone else, which gets you a free month and the next person a free month too.

[Talbot]

2 minutes ago, mitsisigma01 said:

Bognor needs to get in the sea

Most of the south coast east of Portsmouth can get in the sea quite frankly.

[Talbot]

10 hours ago, dozeydustman said:

Hand sanitiser has dried the absolute fuck out of my hands and agravating my eczema; they’re pitted & cracked and red raw in places and no amount of diprobase is helping.

Whilst the face mask is a requirement, sanitising isn't.  Ignore the old biddy.