The grumpy thread

[Pieman]

I don't like fireworks for two reasons, firstly when I was younger I was at a speedway meeting when the club had their end of season display and  a large firework misfired and flew into the crowd (luckily no serious injuries) and then a few years later I was driving back from Birmingham one November Saturday night and some cunt threw one into the road in front of my car - luckily I somehow dodged it.

[GrumpyCat]

Doesn't seem to be a cost of living crisis around here tonight, loads of people with money to burn, literally. 

Also, some daft bastards already have their Xmas light displays up. FFS!

[Metal Guru]

5 hours ago, Talbot said:

Massive overhead fireworks can absolutely fuck off this evening and the absolute cunt who is letting them off in the middle of a modern housing estate deserves to have one shoved up his arse and exploded.  There's a dozen dogs barking their heads off, undoubtedly many more shitscared and cowering somewhere.  One of the fireworks was so powerful it shook windows and set off a couple of car alarms.  Unbelievable.

As per fucking usual, UK legislation is woefully behind the times.  Fireworks available to the public need to be restricted to the sort of things that were done in the 80s.. little volcanoes, Catherine wheels, etc.etc.  not fucking massive overhead displays that need several acres of space.

Utter bastards.

In the 80s, my cousins organised a family fireworks display at their house. Everyone invited was supposed to bring some fireworks to contribute. However, three of them worked on railway maintenance and their contribution was the trackside detonators used to war of approaching trains. They were the loudest fireworks I ever heard outside a public display.

[Remspoor]

11 hours ago, sheffcortinacentre said:

What other countries allow the open sale of light explosives

Spain

Netherlands.

No doubt there area few more countries

[horriblemercedes]

Wow, I was actually thinking I was surprised how nobody seemed to do fireworks this year. I haven't seen or heard even one. 

 

Apparently that's just me! 

[cobblers]

9 hours ago, Metal Guru said:

They were the loudest fireworks I ever heard outside a public display.

We bought a van off some railway maintenance company and when we took the racking out of the back we found about a dozen railway detonators slipped down behind the boards.

Knowing they would be "severe" we took one down into the bottom of an old quarry and dropped heavy lumps of steel and blocks on it from about 20 feet above in order to get it to go off. It took us about 10 minutes to get the fucker to go off.

We were all completely unprepared for the power of it, we daren't do any more, even after our ears had stopped ringing.

[mitsisigma01]

13 hours ago, Talbot said:

Tossers on the estate here

Which part of town are you in, I'm over west side and there is always the same 2 fucktards every year that do it , generally not as many others this year though ☹️

[Metal Guru]

1 hour ago, Remspoor said:

Spain

Netherlands.

No doubt there area few more countries

Last time I was in France on14th July there were far more fireworks than we have here on 5th November. We were going to take some home ( for NewYear) as they were half the price of here but decided they might not store. When we got to the tunnel , there was a security alert they were searching cars for explosives, we might have had some trouble explaining.

[MikeR]

Had our fireworks , then we stood outside clearing up the beer when the football club started sending up the military grade stuff resulting in horizon to horizon star show ! , But overall it was a lot quieter this year .

[Metal Guru]

3 hours ago, cobblers said:

We bought a van off some railway maintenance company and when we took the racking out of the back we found about a dozen railway detonators slipped down behind the boards.

Knowing they would be "severe" we took one down into the bottom of an old quarry and dropped heavy lumps of steel and blocks on it from about 20 feet above in order to get it to go off. It took us about 10 minutes to get the fucker to go off.

We were all completely unprepared for the power of it, we daren't do any more, even after our ears had stopped ringing.

I was surprised the windows in nearby houses survived them.

[beko1987]

I went for a rolly about 10 minutes after our big local one finished and the smoke was thick, could taste the air! Was a good show, can see it from my sofa in the front room 😂

That wasn't the problem. It then rained for about 2 hours, then at about 9pm when it stopped all hell broke loose again as everyone set their huge booming ones off! Poor bird nearly fell off his perch, had him upstairs with me last night and he slept on a Dyson dc40 and didn't cry as much

[Zelandeth]

Housemate has a company car, and has been away visiting friends over the weekend.

It decided to ping up a warning to check the oil level.  So they did, was on minimum on the dipstick.

My advice was to go to the nearest Halfords or similar and just top it off...Could they find anyone even vaguely nearby with the correct spec of oil?  No chance.  Ended up having to call out VW Roadside Assist.  To top up the fscking oil...I guess on the plus side at least this one *has* a dipstick, the previous Audi didn't.  Plus that service is free for us as it's part of the company car package.

Given it's a company car and has all manner of bells and whistles on it in terms of emission control kit, I wasn't willing to tell them to just match the weight and call it good.  Probably would be fine - but do I really want to be responsible for borkage of the engine or DPF if it wasn't?  How about no.  I have nowhere near a good enough understanding of what happens under the bonnet of a car made in 2022 to feel comfortable advising.

If I had any hand in it there would be a rule as part of the type approval process that said that normal consumables like oil and coolant must be of types readily available at any normal motor factors.  Requiring an oil with a very specific special number that VW will only let one company print on the bottle would be an absolute no no.

Definitely has furthered my reluctance to ever buy anything newer than the 2002 Caddy I currently have.

[jonathan_dyane]

Or given that it apparently needs a specialist oil and  you would imagine they would have a good idea of likely oil consumption between changes  it might be a nice gesture if they supplied the car with 2 litres or so of oil for topping up purposes...

[Markeh]

Had the dog I'm looking I'm after shaking and panting for an hour or two on Friday (mainly because of her owner going but also fireworks), three hours last night and about an hour and a half so far tonight. Found detritus on my car this year for the second year in a row, a fine red powder that does at least wash off, but still. You couldn't see for smoke locally last night. Last year, I was 3ft away from being hit by a rocket stick returning to earth as I was walking back from the bus stop. Home fireworks can FRO.

[jakebullet]

Cunt next door is burning all day again today. I guess he thinks he's found a wheeze of charge punters for waste disposal from job, bring it home and burn instead. Fuck the smokeless zone, plastic doesn't smoke much*.

[ETCHY]

Had fireworks going off here again tonight.
I hate the bloody things & how the hell we can call ourselves a nation of animal lovers when we do this shit & terrify the poor buggers every year I dunno.

 

[Dyslexic Viking]

1 hour ago, jonathan_dyane said:

Or given that it apparently needs a specialist oil and  you would imagine they would have a good idea of likely oil consumption between changes  it might be a nice gesture if they supplied the car with 2 litres or so of oil for topping up purposes...

I don't think they dare since how stupid people are today, someone would probably have drunk the oil and they would have been held responsible for it.

[artdjones]

10 hours ago, cobblers said:

We bought a van off some railway maintenance company and when we took the racking out of the back we found about a dozen railway detonators slipped down behind the boards.

Knowing they would be "severe" we took one down into the bottom of an old quarry and dropped heavy lumps of steel and blocks on it from about 20 feet above in order to get it to go off. It took us about 10 minutes to get the fucker to go off.

We were all completely unprepared for the power of it, we daren't do any more, even after our ears had stopped ringing.

They're meant to be heard over the noise of a locomotive working hard.

[GrumpiusMaximus]

@cobblersYou've brought back a fond childhood memory of a school assembly when a chap from the railways came in and warned us of the dangers you could encounter if you wandered around on them.  This included the hilarious video of the chap losing his shoes after getting an electric shock - if you were born in the 80s, you'll probably remember the one.

Amongst the numerous things in the talk, he also brought in a set of detonators and warned us never to touch them or play with them.  Nice to know that he was right.  Don't play with those fuckers!

[artdjones]

1 hour ago, jonathan_dyane said:

Or given that it apparently needs a specialist oil and  you would imagine they would have a good idea of likely oil consumption between changes  it might be a nice gesture if they supplied the car with 2 litres or so of oil for topping up purposes...

From reading VAG handbooks in the past, they say that up to a litre in 1000 miles is normal. Probably to avoid warranty claims when owners get sick of paying £200 for top ups between services. 

[Spiny Norman]

Most local news pages this morning were full of stories of little wankers fighting the fire brigade and shooting fireworks at them when they tried killing out of control bonfires and the like.

The sooner a law gets passed where emergency service workers are allowed to robustly defend themselves from drunks, fuckwits and other assorted oxygen thieves while in pursuit of their duties the better.

https://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/glasgow-news/firefighters-attacked-20-youths-fireworks-25447088

[CaptainBoom]

22 minutes ago, GrumpiusMaximus said:

@cobblersYou've brought back a fond childhood memory of a school assembly when a chap from the railways came in and warned us of the dangers you could encounter if you wandered around on them.  This included the hilarious video of the chap losing his shoes after getting an electric shock - if you were born in the 80s, you'll probably remember the one.

This one perchance?

The fact that this version is introduced by Keith Chegwin is more traumatic than what happened to Robbie...

[horriblemercedes]

1 hour ago, ETCHY said:

Had fireworks going off here again tonight.
I hate the bloody things & how the hell we can call ourselves a nation of animal lovers when we do this shit & terrify the poor buggers every year I dunno.

 

I didn't know we did call ourselves a nation of animal lovers

 

I'm indifferent to them, for example 

[GrumpiusMaximus]

@CaptainBoomI think that's one of them!  I also remember this one and the headphones flying into the air...
 

Yeah, I never messed about on the railways...

[ETCHY]

37 minutes ago, horriblemercedes said:

I didn't know we did call ourselves a nation of animal lovers

 

I'm indifferent to them, for example 

We're known as a nation of animal lovers it's a fairly accepted term.

I'm happy for you to be indifferent, I'm not.

[artdjones]

49 minutes ago, CaptainBoom said:

This one perchance?

The fact that this version is introduced by Keith Chegwin is more traumatic than what happened to Robbie...

A great little film to lift the mood on a Sunday night.

[Metal Guru]

6 hours ago, jonathan_dyane said:

Or given that it apparently needs a specialist oil and  you would imagine they would have a good idea of likely oil consumption between changes  it might be a nice gesture if they supplied the car with 2 litres or so of oil for topping up purposes...

I would imagine any decent fully synthetic oil around 0/5W30/40 would be ok. Halfords own branded oil used to have various manufacturers specs quoted on the label. I couldn’t find anything with Subaru on it, but it did have  a Porsche spec quoted , so I guessed that’s good enough.

Could be a marketing ploy so you only use main dealers but the service interval is probably 18000 miles , so they don’t want you using the cheapest 20W/50 mineral oil. Most likely aimed at Americans who seem obsessed with mineral oil and consider synthetic the devil's work.

[artdjones]

Maybe VAG could design an engine that doesn't need topping up between services. Everyone else seems to be able to do that. Out of our last 10 family vehicles only one has needed a top up between changes, and that was only a litre in every 4000 miles.

[myglaren]

13 hours ago, horriblemercedes said:

I didn't know we did call ourselves a nation of animal lovers

 

I'm indifferent to them, for example 

They are nice in sandwiches.

[Metal Guru]

56 minutes ago, artdjones said:

Maybe VAG could design an engine that doesn't need topping up between services. Everyone else seems to be able to do that. Out of our last 10 family vehicles only one has needed a top up between changes, and that was only a litre in every 4000 miles.

I’ve had two Passats , a 2000 1.9TDi and a 2012 2.0TDi. Neither used any appreciable oil between services.