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The grumpy thread


outlaw118

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6 hours ago, New POD said:

I did my self -assessment, wifes self assessmenr and VAT and  LTD company accounts using the free court WiFi, whilst waiting for people to stop pleading guilty. 

Took the work laptop in and managed to re-schedule to green waste service to accommodate the extra truck we’ve been promised. Unlike many I’m on full pay and my hobbies are practical things such as winemaking and old computers. Sadly there’s nowhere to plug in a BBC micro for a quick game of Elite at the court building

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8 hours ago, Jerzy Woking said:

Why? Is there something special about them?

I know that flat bottomed VW steering wheels cost an arm and a leg. I wanted one for my Transporter as i had changed the seats, not realising at the time-because I was so pleased I had got them to fit the floor runners-that the seat base was 4 inches higher.

Easiest and cheapest way to get around this was to reinstate the standard VW seats.

I’m not sure how much they go for second hand but apparently it was costing BMW around £2500 to replace a steering wheel when it got nicked.

A work colleague has one of those flat bottomed steering wheels in his T5.1, they really do look good.

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48 minutes ago, goosey said:

I’m not sure how much they go for second hand but apparently it was costing BMW around £2500 to replace a steering wheel when it got nicked.

A work colleague has one of those flat bottomed steering wheels in his T5.1, they really do look good.

Piss funny. Is there a shortage on them or something? 

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12 hours ago, Spiny Norman said:

NEVER allow an insurance policy to auto-renew.
ALWAYS shop around every year. It's 10  minutes on a Compare the Scoundrel website, I'm over 50 with 20-odd years NCB and just about every year I find someone £50-£100 cheaper than whoever I'm with. They get the courtesy of one phone call to see if they want to match the lower quote and that's it. Esure lost my business this year because they couldn't be arsed answering the phone so I went elsewhere and paid £220 instead of £270.

If only.

It is a bit of a nightmare as my son is included and uses the car to get to work for nightshift.  No public transport.

Car is in a secure car park that according to insurance company websites doesn't exist (a very large national company with four sites here alone).

Each attempt at entering all the details takes ages and very often the savings are minimal and frequently they are more expensive - as last year, my premium decreased by £50.

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13 hours ago, plasticvandan said:

Just had my insurance renewal come through,£309,about a tenner less than last year,except I now have a years NCB.run a new quote through with the same insurer,increasing mileage from.5 to 9 thousand,£224! So I've just paid for that to start from when the current one ends,why they can't just send me.the best price to start with who knows.thinking this might be the case I had set current policy not to autorenew a few days ago lol

Unlikely as it sounds,car insurance does seem to have gone down presumably due to OMG Covid Chaos.My renewal with Saga (old git) was a reasonable 12 quid up on last year at 190 but I did a Go Compare anyway.A dozen quotes under 150,cheapest Zenith at 126 so they got the business.I too habitually  change each year and always save £££.

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My insurance went up too. Did the online change thing the day we bought the pickup truck. 

Says them - oh yes, SUV being changed for a pickup truck? Reduction in cost because vehicle type you're buying is less to insure.

Renewal paperwork comes in and the underwriter has decided that it should actually be more.

Went from $360 to $373 which is annoying.

A month.

It's all a lot of nonsense really. Expensive nonsense. Still, can't drive about without it so it's a necessary nonsense. There's cheaper insurers but the he cheaper you go the more excuses they provide not to pay out. Friends of ours found that the hard way.

Phil

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On 5/14/2021 at 9:22 PM, Spiny Norman said:

NEVER allow an insurance policy to auto-renew.
ALWAYS shop around every year. It's 10  minutes on a Compare the Scoundrel website, I'm over 50 with 20-odd years NCB and just about every year I find someone £50-£100 cheaper than whoever I'm with. They get the courtesy of one phone call to see if they want to match the lower quote and that's it. Esure lost my business this year because they couldn't be arsed answering the phone so I went elsewhere and paid £220 instead of £270.

I think the insurers are slowly starting to realise that they can't jack up the price and hope we don't notice. 

My last renewal was the same as all the compare sites. 

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The battery for the C2 is too flat to charge with an "intelligent" charger, so I had to get creative to give it enough juice for the charger to work.

20210515_204030.thumb.jpg.a4210d43cab4942143f5c48a07d286e4.jpg

This brought it up to 11.7v after about 20 minutes which should be enough. Attached the charger and over the course of about 5 minutes instead of charging it just dropped like a stone back to 11.2v before I gave up and switched it off. I don't really fancy buying it a new battery as that'll eat into whatever tiny amount of money I manage to make on it. I think the fiesta has the same battery so I might use that and buy the fiesta a new one since that's hopefully actually going to be worth something once it's MOTd. I hate that such small things are getting in the way of me getting stuff done.

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1 hour ago, reb said:

The battery for the C2 is too flat to charge with an "intelligent" charger, so I had to get creative to give it enough juice for the charger to work.

20210515_204030.thumb.jpg.a4210d43cab4942143f5c48a07d286e4.jpg

This brought it up to 11.7v after about 20 minutes which should be enough. Attached the charger and over the course of about 5 minutes instead of charging it just dropped like a stone back to 11.2v before I gave up and switched it off. I don't really fancy buying it a new battery as that'll eat into whatever tiny amount of money I manage to make on it. I think the fiesta has the same battery so I might use that and buy the fiesta a new one since that's hopefully actually going to be worth something once it's MOTd. I hate that such small things are getting in the way of me getting stuff done.

That's frustrating to hear, do you happen to have any scrappies or car breakers nearby because a battery from a scrapper ought to be more like a tenner? It might even have a 3 month warranty, my last one did.

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8 minutes ago, Stanky said:

That's frustrating to hear, do you happen to have any scrappies or car breakers nearby because a battery from a scrapper ought to be more like a tenner? It might even have a 3 month warranty, my last one did.

If not what stanky suggests, I do recommend tayna.co.uk

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The fact that the voltage is dropping is actually a good sign. A shagged battery charges to high voltage very quickly.

Unless it's got a shorted cell but that's not especially common.

I'd persevere with it. How many amps is your charger? Leave it on for 40 hours divided by how many amps the charger is (20 hours for a 2 amp charger, etc)

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19 hours ago, Timewaster said:

I think the insurers are slowly starting to realise that they can't jack up the price and hope we don't notice. 

My last renewal was the same as all the compare sites. 

Yes, the Financial Conduct Authority has recently (finally) helped bring this to their attention.

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18 hours ago, cobblers said:

The fact that the voltage is dropping is actually a good sign. A shagged battery charges to high voltage very quickly.

This.

If I get a slightly shagged battery, when I put my "stupid" charger on it, the voltage barrels up rather high, with sod-all current being drawn.  After about 6hrs, the voltage drops back as it starts to take current.  Often that can be true for 2 days, after which the voltage slowly ramps back up again and the current drops off, eventually getting to about 14.2v where it floats at minimal maintaining current.

Intelligent chargers are a load of crap.  All you really need is a power supply that supplies about 5A at 11v, ramping down to 0.05A at 14.2v and it will completely self-regulate.

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1 hour ago, Talbot said:

Intelligent chargers are a load of crap. 

Amen!! 

 

The worst thing I ever bought was a £120 Sip "intelligent" charger. 

I had a battery that was totally flat, so it ignored it. 

I then dragged out my old charger to get it going a bit. 

Once it got to about 4 volts the sip would finally acknowledge that it was a battery and started to charge it. 

However it also decided that it must be a 6v battery and floated it at 7.2v for 2 days until I checked on it. 

Absolute crap. 

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Finally had a walk round and successfully found our abducted garden waste bin - tucked away on a driveway right at the opposite end of the street. 

It was retrieved and has now been plastered on reflective tape and had the house number and address marked on the lid plus the number on all sides.

1312654829_IMG_20210517_1810212.thumb.jpg.54fcd4db76231f4cbb93047f35a8bd15.jpg

Hopefully that will discourage the gits from trying that again.

Really sick of this sort of suburban nonsense.

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2 minutes ago, Zelandeth said:

Finally had a walk round and successfully found our abducted garden waste bin - tucked away on a driveway right at the opposite end of the street. 

It was retrieved and has now been plastered on reflective tape and had the house number and address marked on the lid plus the number on all sides.

1312654829_IMG_20210517_1810212.thumb.jpg.54fcd4db76231f4cbb93047f35a8bd15.jpg

Hopefully that will discourage the gits from trying that again.

Really sick of this sort of suburban nonsense.

Given that you've had exposed mains wiring near your plumbing recently, maybe you might want to connect the bin up to that as a security* measure....

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My commute is about 8 miles and takes 15 minutes ish under normal conditions.

About 8 weeks back a set of temporary traffic lights appeared on a section of the route which floods regularly as they put better drainage in. Ok fair enough it’s been a problem for years.  Then about 2 weeks ago a second set (a lovely three way control) appear where a normal set have been damaged by a van, and this week a third set have appeared in a village on the route! The last one is a 4 way control too... there’s another route through the back lanes... yep you guessed it temporary traffic lights there too!! 

Today a static caravan on a wagon got stuck at number one... 

So much for a quick commute! 

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13 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Finally had a walk round and successfully found our abducted garden waste bin - tucked away on a driveway right at the opposite end of the street. 

It was retrieved and has now been plastered on reflective tape and had the house number and address marked on the lid plus the number on all sides.

1312654829_IMG_20210517_1810212.thumb.jpg.54fcd4db76231f4cbb93047f35a8bd15.jpg

Hopefully that will discourage the gits from trying that again.

Really sick of this sort of suburban nonsense.

Use of a soldering iron to put the address on, is quite effective. 

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Reading today about one of these nutcase Green campaign groups called the IEA are suggesting that we should be jettisoning the gas boiler and instead have a £10,000 heat pump instead. So instead of a £2000 bill you’ll have a £10,000 bill. Excellent. 

Where do we end with all this carbon neutral drive? What will they want to ban next? I’m hoping whoever thinks these things up doesn’t plan on travel abroad ever again, that’s incredibly polluting. Let’s ban that, let’s ban meat because the manure creates Co2 emissions, in fact let’s ban everything and we’ll all live to be a hundred or at least it’ll feel like it because the environmental impact of everything you do will be analysed.

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I'm sure my landlord would be mega happy to be forced to fit one of those in my house... Probably neccitating me not living here as he rips the existing fully working system out... Then jack's the rent up to get his 10k back

Another idea for those whom £10k is a drop in the ocean! 

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After 11 years faithful service, my cheap Tesco kettle has started to leak from the sight panel. Of course, at the moment I am just ignoring it and mopping up after each brew, but as I see it I have 3 options.

1. Buy a new kettle

2. Use Tiger Seal to fix* the leak

3. Both of the above and have a new* workshop kettle.

 

Hmmmm........

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3 hours ago, sierraman said:

Reading today about one of these nutcase Green campaign groups called the IEA are suggesting that we should be jettisoning the gas boiler and instead have a £10,000 heat pump instead. So instead of a £2000 bill you’ll have a £10,000 bill. Excellent. 

Where do we end with all this carbon neutral drive? What will they want to ban next? I’m hoping whoever thinks these things up doesn’t plan on travel abroad ever again, that’s incredibly polluting. Let’s ban that, let’s ban meat because the manure creates Co2 emissions, in fact let’s ban everything and we’ll all live to be a hundred or at least it’ll feel like it because the environmental impact of everything you do will be analysed.

Most green ideas  are regressive, they bear most heavily on the poor. For example scrappage schemes for green cars. A nice bonus for a middle class person who was going to buy a new car anyway, but useless for the poorer person who will never afford a new car, but has also had part of the source of reasonable second hand cars cut off because of so many being scrapped with years of life left in them.

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