The grumpy thread

[PhilA]

I've come to the realization that a lot of garage are run by people who have less mechanical knowledge than I do, but generally have bigger hammers.

[Parky]

7 hours ago, Remspoor said:

The way to look at this. One it should lower your green certificate as this will be cleaner* than the previous one.

It will look good on any sales waffle. You care about maintenance and a new boiler is certainly much better than one that is x years old.

Have you tried to purchase and then install it yourself? I have done that twice. Once in the UK with a back boiler and more recently here in Spain with a kitchen "Ascot" If the routing of the gas pipe and exhaust are the same no issues. Although maybe not 100% in keeping with any regulations.

It crossed my mind as Dad and I are more than capable but when it comes to Gas it is safer just to let a registered authorised guy do it.

As part of the house sale the boiler needed a gas safety certificate which it never would have got, but even if it had a sharp eyed surveyor might have picked up on it so could have been used to negotiate a couple of grand off the sale price anyway.

When we fitted my gas Hob years ago we had to have an engineer come out to safety check it.  He was a half blind ex alcoholic with terrible DT’s who glanced at the pipework, said “yeah fine, here’s the cert, that’ll be £50 mate”.   I now had a gas safety cert from a registered engineer so the insurance was now happy.  They wouldn’t have been had they seen him..

[Supernaut]

42 minutes ago, sierraman said:

I got to the point I couldn’t be arsed with jobs on the car, so I farmed a lot of work out. After a succession of half arsed jobs I’ve realised it is actually less agg to do it yourself. Even if it means buying a £100 tool and fucking about on the driveway it’s becoming apparent you can’t get a half decent job done at the places local to me. 

Yup.

I traced a leak on the Saab's exhaust recently... to a weld on the new flexi joint I got a garage to put in, and they charged rather handsomely for it. I mean, come on. FFS.

That, plus the garage who did the remedial work for its MOT back in July putting in handbrake cables but not adjusting them up at all (but it still somehow passed). Actually, the MOT site shows it as passing an MOT the day before they said they got the handbrake cables in...

 

 

I've almost always done as much as I can myself (or on a mate's driveway), and I'll continue doing that!

[paulplom]

16 minutes ago, Parky said:

It crossed my mind as Dad and I are more than capable but when it comes to Gas it is safer just to let a registered authorised guy do it.

As part of the house sale the boiler needed a gas safety certificate which it never would have got, but even if it had a sharp eyed surveyor might have picked up on it so could have been used to negotiate a couple of grand off the sale price anyway.

When we fitted my gas Hob years ago we had to have an engineer come out to safety check it.  He was a half blind ex alcoholic with terrible DT’s who glanced at the pipework, said “yeah fine, here’s the cert, that’ll be £50 mate”.   I now had a gas safety cert from a registered engineer so the insurance was now happy.  They wouldn’t have been had they seen him..

You need to register the boiler with gas safe to get your building reglations compliance certificate. You'll need that to sell your house, not a 'safety certificate' It's purpose is to stop any diy experts and cowboys from fitting their own boiler and killing people. 

Nearly every regulation we adhere to is because their was a fatality leading up to it.

I'm not half blind ot an alcohic either.

[somewhatfoolish]

12 hours ago, chadders said:

We were on oil when the First Gulf War started so we've paid our dues, having to forage wood to keep the house vaguely warm that winter for our new baby.

I was in short trousers; was there really a supply issue or just price gouging by opportunist profiteering gits?

[PhilA]

53 minutes ago, somewhatfoolish said:

I was in short trousers; was there really a supply issue or just price gouging by opportunist profiteering gits?

The latter.

 

See how much they sucked out the ground since and at what rate- particularly when Russia decides to have a price war pissing match with them like they did at the end of last year.

[Asimo]

9 hours ago, MorrisItalSLX said:

Corolla just killed its gearbox to death, now stuck in park on the driveway.

Couldn’t have happened at a better time, starting in a new position at work doing a fixed 5.5 days a week rather than my previous flexible 4 days a week.

Cross fingers, hope it is just the selector linkage...

[Zelandeth]

6 hours ago, sierraman said:

I got to the point I couldn’t be arsed with jobs on the car, so I farmed a lot of work out. After a succession of half arsed jobs I’ve realised it is actually less agg to do it yourself. Even if it means buying a £100 tool and fucking about on the driveway it’s becoming apparent you can’t get a half decent job done at the places local to me. 

To be honest the vast majority of the work I do the majority of my own work.  I've just got a rule that if it involves taking apart suspension assemblies that it gets farmed out to a garage.  If bolts are going to shear off, get cross threaded, bushes refuse to go in etc... I'd rather it happened up on someone else's four post lift with a full set of tools to tackle the problem than on my driveway.  Been there, done that, immobilised my car and spent a week fighting to change a ball joint that should have taken an hour...

Exhaust work also gets farmed out generally...simply because I utterly despise doing it. 

Seems to be quite s rush on MOTs at the moment.  Though I could probably go to Kwik-Fit I'd really, really rather not.  Especially after they charged me £350 for work they never did back in 2012.  It's also "fun" taking a 24 year old Citroen to a non classic-friendly garage for an MOT.

It's never good when you have to tell the tester no less than four times that the handbrake does work just fine...but they're never going to get any reading if they keep testing the rear wheels.

[Tadhg Tiogar]

3 hours ago, Asimo said:

Cross fingers, hope it is just the selector linkage...

.....or low fluid level?

[MorrisItalSLX]

5 hours ago, Asimo said:

Cross fingers, hope it is just the selector linkage...

1 hour ago, Tadhg Tiogar said:

.....or low fluid level?

Selector is moving at the gearbox end and fluid still showing on the dipstick.

It was slipping in first under any load and now will not shift out of park, also there is fluid on top of the gearbox from a breather. Diagnosis is not good.

[PhilA]

Just to make me cheerful, I've cracked one of my fillings open. Great. 

Nothing like toothache to make someone real happy.

Phil

[paulplom]

I have a massive phobia of dentists. I was told to leave and get out the surgery the last time I was there.

Instead of trying to calm me down he got all angry and told me not to come back.

Looking back I should have reported the bastard. 

[Agila]

2 hours ago, PhilA said:

Just to make me cheerful, I've cracked one of my fillings open. Great. 

Nothing like toothache to make someone real happy.

Phil

This is some good stuff.https://www.boots.com/orajel-dental-gel-for-toothache-5-3g-10081004?cm_mmc=bmm-buk-google-ppc-_-PLAs-_-(GB:Whoop!)+Orajel-_-(GB:Whoop!)+Boots+Shopping+-+Category+-+Health+and+Pharmacy+-+Mobile&gclid=CjwKCAjw4_H6BRALEiwAvgfzqyUGWG29iIf55EA1OzZ_dnABm3KS2pLJ9RJifFOv_IlEGyryURx1DxoCg_EQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

[MikeR]

Yesterday i trashed two padlocks getting them off some spare chain i had ............

 

Today i found the keys .

[junkyarddog]

Fucksticks!!

Busted my indicator lens on my 205.

[Crackers]

Today has been absolutely fucking monstrously, colossally, biblically shit even though no major problems have occurred. 

I really fucking hate my head. 

There's not many other places I can write that. Sorry. Carry on with your thread. 

[beko1987]

3 hours ago, junkyarddog said:

Fucksticks!!

Busted my indicator lens on my 205.

Scrap it m8

[Tamworthbay]

34 minutes ago, Crackers said:

Today has been absolutely fucking monstrously, colossally, biblically shit even though no major problems have occurred. 

I really fucking hate my head. 

There's not many other places I can write that. Sorry. Carry on with your thread. 

Some good advice/ support here:

Don’t suffer alone.

[PhilA]

House boarded up, garage boarded up, grass mowed, all locked down for storm and there's a car come up for sale that I really want but I can't go see it until at least Thursday. So, likelihood is it's gonna sell before then. Arses.

[MikeR]

1 hour ago, PhilA said:

House boarded up, garage boarded up, grass mowed, all locked down for storm and there's a car come up for sale that I really want but I can't go see it until at least Thursday. So, likelihood is it's gonna sell before then. Arses.

why would you mow the grass before a storm ?

wont the cuttings blow every where

[chaseracer]

One way to get rid without having to rake 'em up... ?

[PhilA]

1 hour ago, MikeR said:

why would you mow the grass before a storm ?

wont the cuttings blow every where

Cuttings all over is the least of my concern. 

It rains so much with a storm that the ground is so sodden you can't mow for about a week afterwards, during which time it's usually sunny so the grass grows like crazy.

Cut it now and there's a chance of it not turning into a wild Jurassic Park scene by the time it's dry enough to mow again.

 

Phil

[mitsisigma01]

20 hours ago, PhilA said:

Just to make me cheerful, I've cracked one of my fillings open. Great. 

Nothing like toothache to make someone real happy.

Phil

I cracked a lower molar pre covid lockdown, made an appointment with dentist, cancelled because of lockdown, mid July more fell off, two weeks to get another appointment, morning of appointment had raging continous cough start, cancelled just in case of covid, mid August, extreme pain, saw dentist, couldn't remove because of infection, course of antibiotics, last week appointment to extract, not a lot left to grab hold of, 2 minutes of wriggling, yay it's out, I now have no matching molars and three front teeth missing (due to having my face smashed sideways in a bike crash over twenty years ago, 1 pin and 3 plates holding my face together), this week feels like an infection in my top molar... Here I go again... One bonus my dentist is a fit as fk young lady dentist ?

[Ghosty]

Smart motorway grump.
Somewhere on the M42 or M6 going north, smart section, gantries off, 70mph. 

I approach a gantry that's lit up, read it, 50mph, workforce in road. Ok, start engine braking.  Then suddenly, as the van in front of me passes under the gantry... 

flash

Fucking camera on the gantry, and it was enforcing the 50mph limit at the exact point it came into force, even though it was nigh on impossible to slow a car down in the given space safely, from where the speed limit was legible to the camera without causing an accident. 
I somehow managed to slam on the anchors hard enough that I didn't set the speed camera off or cause an accident, but WTF? That's just utter bullshit. 
It's also rather fortuitous that on Friday morning the ABS was made to work on the Civic with a new sensor - I bought the car with the ABS light on.... 

Smart motorways are fucking hellspawn. Only the British etc. 

[Zelandeth]

So today I've had a run out in a 2CV for the first time in about 15 years.  I remembered them being huge fun, but had forgotten quite how much (plus actually having some driving experience behind me now probably helps too) fun and what a great noise they make.

Have nearly bought one on several occasions but things just never worked out for one reason or other.

Just had a poke around idly to see what's out there just now.

HOW FLIPPING MUCH?!? 

The first four on Autotrader (yeah, I know it's an expensive place to look but even so...) Are priced higher than I paid for the Pug 107 I bought back in 2009 NEW...and loaded up with quite a few extras.

Last time I looked a couple of years ago there were plenty of £5-7K cars out there, but plenty of decent usable cars in the sort of £2-4K bracket which seems reasonable for a solid car if you aren't too picky about the type of screw heads holding bits of trim on.  But the average price of this evening's findings was £7.5K...Absolutely zip in the reasonable bracket unless you count a solitary £250 example that looks absolutely terminally rotten.

Something tells me that I may have well and truly missed this boat.

Which admittedly isn't maybe the worst thing as right now I need another car about as much as a hole in the head...but it's still depressing!

As is the "I really should thin the fleet out a bit...but really don't want to sell any of them" thought process.

[DoctorRetro]

Sold the Tourer last night but logbook has disappeared. Fucksake. 

Went to take my missus to work this morning and the Fenlander fired then cut out and wouldn't restart. Double fucksake. 

Finally got it started but now it doesn't feel right. ?

[LightBulbFun]

9 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

So today I've had a run out in a 2CV for the first time in about 15 years.  I remembered them being huge fun, but had forgotten quite how much (plus actually having some driving experience behind me now probably helps too) fun and what a great noise they make.

Have nearly bought one on several occasions but things just never worked out for one reason or other.

Just had a poke around idly to see what's out there just now.

HOW FLIPPING MUCH?!? 

The first four on Autotrader (yeah, I know it's an expensive place to look but even so...) Are priced higher than I paid for the Pug 107 I bought back in 2009 NEW...and loaded up with quite a few extras.

Last time I looked a couple of years ago there were plenty of £5-7K cars out there, but plenty of decent usable cars in the sort of £2-4K bracket which seems reasonable for a solid car if you aren't too picky about the type of screw heads holding bits of trim on.  But the average price of this evening's findings was £7.5K...Absolutely zip in the reasonable bracket unless you count a solitary £250 example that looks absolutely terminally rotten.

Something tells me that I may have well and truly missed this boat.

Which admittedly isn't maybe the worst thing as right now I need another car about as much as a hole in the head...but it's still depressing!

As is the "I really should thin the fleet out a bit...but really don't want to sell any of them" thought process.

https://autoshite.com/topic/41818-2cv-will-be-for-sale-soon-placeholder/

here you go  

[MikeR]

2 trips with Waze today .

To and from work .

Both times it tried to go the ram jammed with standing traffic route .......

[Mally]

12 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

So today I've had a run out in a 2CV for the first time in about 15 years.  I remembered them being huge fun, but had forgotten quite how much (plus actually having some driving experience behind me now probably helps too) fun and what a great noise they make.

Have nearly bought one on several occasions but things just never worked out for one reason or other.

Just had a poke around idly to see what's out there just now.

HOW FLIPPING MUCH?!? 

The first four on Autotrader (yeah, I know it's an expensive place to look but even so...) Are priced higher than I paid for the Pug 107 I bought back in 2009 NEW...and loaded up with quite a few extras.

Last time I looked a couple of years ago there were plenty of £5-7K cars out there, but plenty of decent usable cars in the sort of £2-4K bracket which seems reasonable for a solid car if you aren't too picky about the type of screw heads holding bits of trim on.  But the average price of this evening's findings was £7.5K...Absolutely zip in the reasonable bracket unless you count a solitary £250 example that looks absolutely terminally rotten.

Something tells me that I may have well and truly missed this boat.

Which admittedly isn't maybe the worst thing as right now I need another car about as much as a hole in the head...but it's still depressing!

As is the "I really should thin the fleet out a bit...but really don't want to sell any of them" thought process.

There's one on here for £reasonable.

Eventually.

[myglaren]

Got a fixed penalty notice, £25 increasing to £50 in 14 days or £100 in 28 days.

Doesn't say what for.

No date in the date-line.

Says it must be paid by the 22nd - which is only eight days.

I tried to reply with questions about what, why, where but my email provider (BT) blocked it as spam (so why not on the incoming)?

Smells fishy.