and today i have mostly been...

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steve_earwig
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

Post by steve_earwig »

Well, I can see his viewpoint, it's a bit of a gamble and the first ebay replacement I got for my first yoyo was crap and soon fell apart. Maybe he'll find something here. You're right about it being open, now it'll fill with pocket fluff and maybe some moisture and I was thinking to tell him this, maybe put some tape over it or perhaps some temporary fix involving an inner tube and some careful surgery. I'll be seeing him in about an hour (he has my Yamaha's carbs back from the fixer's, the clever sod arranged one of his delivery drivers to pick them up on his rounds) so I'll tell him.

Yes, we're all ok thanks. We did have some worries with my aunt and uncle who are stuck in an old folk's home (which is more like a prison just now due to all the restrictions) testing positive a while back, it was very scary for a time but it looks like either someone cocked up the test or they didn't even feel it (unlikely I reckon they're both in their 80's).

I hope everyone's ok your end too.
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

Post by Bailes1992 »

Picked up a 2017 Dacia Logan MCV Laureate about 2 weeks ago with 100k on the clock. It belonged to a bus company who used it as a pool vehicle to move drivers around when their tacho time was up. Honestly, it drives like it just rolled out of the factory. I'm seriously impressed with it, especially as I'm under no illusions that this car has no doubt had an absolute dogs life.
2020 BMW 520d MSport Touring My Daily
2017 Dacia Logan MCV 1.5DCi Laureate Wifes
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steve_earwig
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

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Maybe bus drivers aren't hooligans :shock: They are here mind, t'wife even has go at them about it :supafrisk:

And today I sat in Bini :shock: Roni at the part's shop has one (he kind of wheeler dealer's imports on the side) so I asked him what it was like, he reports ok but the seat's like sitting in a 4x4 :shock: :shock: So less than a minute later I was sitting in it (he offered me the keys to take it for a spin but I had lunch waiting). After my sadness sitting in my old D9 and finding the seat way too low, this was much more the ticket, I pumped the seat all the way up and yeah, not bad. Sadly I've no idea which one it is (aren't they all the same?) but my god, talk about cheap plastic interior :frown: I mean cheap toy from China plastic, I'd hate owning one having to look at that all the time.

In other news my Yamaha did a trip to the mountains yesterday (15 miles). Last Thursday the carburettor guy, Matija, came to me to dial them in, then I had some other stuff to do to it but it was finally together yesterday and I took it straight out.
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The bike is transformed! Matija recons the engineering firm who rebuilt the cylinder head might have got the valve clearances wrong so it's a bit poppy at idle but over that she pulls like a train. It's amazing how much more confidence you have if you don't feel like the bike's trying to chuck you off at low speed. And then when I got back to the village here it started popping and farting again, oh ballcocks :( Pulled the plugs - white? :shock: Put them back and fired it up, gave it a rev and.... dead, wouldn't restart either. Spark, check, fuel? It should be flooded by now but I can't smell a thing. Ah, I have an idea - tip another 5 litres of fuel in and off she goes. The fuel pump died, it only needs it when they tank's almost empty and I only stuck 5 litres in. I pulled the pump to bits today and found a bit of crap holding a valve open, phew!!
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

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Great view that, bet it felt good to be out and about in the spring sunshine and have the bike usable again. :mrgreen:

We were just talking about spring having finally sprung yesterday, so it's raining persistently today. :roll:
2002 HDi 2.2 Exec Estate, (2008-12) (wonderful)
2003 HDi 2.2 6-speed Exec Estate (2012-19) (also a gem)
2009 Citroen C5 2.0 HDi VTR+ Estate (godawful heap)
2008 BMW E91 330i touring (great fun - murdered by a reversing SUV)
2007 BMW E91 325i touring (slower smoother quieter)
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

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I think I was too busy worrying about the bike to take much notice of the scenery :oops: It's a good view though, that's outside Svete Jana primary school, there's a convenient straight with pull off for chucking out the ankle biters. Not sure if this works... Before that it's a mix of twists and turns, inclines, declines, I think it's better for trying the bike out than a blast down the motorway, that would tell me nothing.

My bro says it's a nice rainy spring day in Blighty. Here it's sunny but bleedin' nippy, it didn't make 10 degrees today but the day didn't start with frost for a change.
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

Post by steve_earwig »

at the osteopath with my back again, she's very pleased with my progress though.

So, last weekend I was playing with my well. A quick recap, this is the surprise well me and my dad found whilst digging a path:
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I kind of covered it over to finish the path and then decide what to do with it:
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So, what to do? Build a proper well? It'd be a bit in the way, and that open hole, what if a cat falls in it? (Ding dong dell..). Lifty uppy manhole cover? There's that big hole again. Pump with handle? Still a bit in the way. Plumb it somewhere else? Where? Anywhere near the boiler house and I'd have to break up concrete paths. What if it needs maintenance?

Eventually I decided on some sort of small box, say 4" square, with a lid, pipe permanently inside with a push fit connector on the top. We were in Zagreb last week (mainly buying t'wife a new telly for her birthday) so I went to one of the big DIY stores and spent a couple of hours with my tape measure. 7m of pipe bought, a few connectors (btw all this domestic water pump stuff is variously labelled 1", 25mm, 33.3mm or G1 :roll: It's all the damn same thing though :frown: basically an inch pipe thread, although 1" plumbing pipe thread is R1, the difference being G is straight thread, R is tapered) and a whole lot of other stuff (shed now has huge fire extinguisher). I also found a bracket for holding a 4" square fence post, which I thought had potential...

Miloš, our builder buddy, was here Thursday, I showed him the pipe and he suggested I actually tried emptying the well to see how fast it refilled, maybe it was covered over for a reason :shock: So I uncovered it and filled up a water butt,
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measuring before and after more water went into the butt than was lost from the well and 2 hours later the well had refilled. Success! Providing I don't get too greedy.

So I set about making a hole in the lid (it's 6mm steel plate) and making a lid for the post bracket holder thingy. I had to cut 75cm off of the pipe to stop it sitting in the mud at the bottom.
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There's 8" of scaffold pole on the bottom for a weight, without it the pipe just kept curling up and jamming against the sides. The big washer was Miloš' idea, I was going to weld the metal pipe to the lid but he suggested the washer so I could pull the pipe out if necessary without having to dig it all up: Here it all is ready to go:
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Try tripping over that 8)

Yesterday I tested it
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The flow looks pretty weak in the picture but it's not, it's plenty and I was squirting the walnut on the right there :cheesy:
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

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Neat. 8)
Now all you need is a solar powered pump to top up the water butt and a mini hydro-electric genny on the overflow
(Since you're still in the EU you can maybe get a grant) :wink:

I love this kind of stuff, but with me it never gets past the concept stage.

The Citroen from hell rediscovered it's random engine cut out party trick at J14/15 M25 clockwise during Friday's rush hour. High points were getting a push off lane 1 into the chevrons from a young lady who parked her artic behind me. I couldn't thank her enough.

I had this mental image of welly shaking his head as I was panting like an overheated labrador and wondering if the pounding chest would ever stop....

Eventually got going again only to get stuck in lane 3 of 6 while joining & leaving traffic swerved around it from both sides for maybe 10 minutes that seemed like hours. Eventually I got it fired up and having no real choice got it onto the M4W sliproad knowing it to be gridlocked by an accident. Fun started around 4:30pm, got home at 11 with blisters on thumb & finger from churning the starter.

The good news is a price comparison site's just offered me £350 to scrap it - was going to give it to one of the kids but I will not risk anyone's safety with this heap ever again.

FWIW I'm fairly sure it's an intermittent engine ecu fault - engine stops or refuses to run below 2000 rpm with no EML. Next, it will run like a swiss watch for maybe 9 months. I reason that even if I fixed it, I would never really know it was OK and it might well kill someone next time.
2002 HDi 2.2 Exec Estate, (2008-12) (wonderful)
2003 HDi 2.2 6-speed Exec Estate (2012-19) (also a gem)
2009 Citroen C5 2.0 HDi VTR+ Estate (godawful heap)
2008 BMW E91 330i touring (great fun - murdered by a reversing SUV)
2007 BMW E91 325i touring (slower smoother quieter)
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

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I've just noticed that I'm standing on the hose pipe in the last picture :oops: Not that it made any difference. It'll be even more powerful when I unpack the 3/4" hose... Yeah, I'm pretty pleased with it ta. Solar pump? With the solar panels on the roof in the summer that is a solar pump 8) Annually we produce more electickery than we consume, which makes the bills a nightmare because they can't get their heads round it and have actually suggested we use more electric power. The idiots. Anyway, I wouldn't want to leave the hose connected, trip hazard and all that. I put a lot of thought into it and that seems the least likely to give headaches in the future. Obviously there are all sorts of other possibilities, e.g. submersible pump, digging trenches everywhere for pipes... but I think that's ok for now, it only takes minutes to hook up the pump to fill the butts (or wash the car), we probably have ~1500l capacity and none of them are in the way (well, maybe that blue one needs moving...)

Oh lordy, that sounds like a nightmare - you did say you wanted to raise your pulse every day, although I doubt you meant by fear :shock: It's sad that Citroen turned out to be a lemon, a real disappointment. Intermittent faults are a real pain to diagnose, you could probably try cleaning/reseating all the connectors but it could be something inside the ecu itself, you've no way of testing it other than living in fear and nobody needs that, so you may as well get rid of the damn thing.
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

Post by Welly »

Love that Warty Well!

The water pick up and hidy-cover are ingenious, a very well done from my camp sir!

Doggy I reckon with HDi's of Frenchness you either get a good one or you don't, that problem kinda sounds like ignition barrel but guess you've exhausted all the easy-ish checks yourself, not even a very good auto problem-finder magician man would find the root cause, not without a fight.

We gained a pretty shyte trade-in value for the Shitroen but it hasn't been thought about since, just kinda glad it's someone else's now. Weird thing was I was just going through old Invoices for the C4 and saw some not-inconsiderable bills for various failures which reinforced my dwindling love for the poor thing.

Hey I sold the Volvo of many speeds! :cheesy: an enthusiast tuner wanted a clean standard base as a project car and paid me £2,100.00 sheets for it :shock: (I advertised it for £1,875.00 but he REALLY wanted it and paid more to secure the deal) very happy with that and glad someone will take the car further and lavish it with stuff and enjoy the thing. Similarly it's also quite nice to go outside now and not see it just sitting there staring back at me, onwards and upwards chaps.....
Cars in my care:
2021 Kia Spottage 1.6 Pez Turbo Dual Clutch Gearbox Trickery
2013 Renner Twingo - donkey work
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

Post by steve_earwig »

Why thankyou kind sir! 8) I'm very pleased with it myself (even if t'wife didn't notice...).

I'd say I've lost faith in PSA but I think really, almost every make is having issues keeping up with the old cost/economy/emissions balancing act. Actually I hear Hyundai/Kia are the reliable ones now. Who'd have thunk it?

And congrats on shifting the Ovlov (for more than you expected too, that must feel good). Still seems a lot of car for the money but hey, time moves on.
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

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Good conclusion with the Volvo, you did well there.

I'm not a linguist, but strongly suspect Citroen does kinda mean lemon or at least implies some lemonishness.

As you say, onwards and (hopefully) upwards
2002 HDi 2.2 Exec Estate, (2008-12) (wonderful)
2003 HDi 2.2 6-speed Exec Estate (2012-19) (also a gem)
2009 Citroen C5 2.0 HDi VTR+ Estate (godawful heap)
2008 BMW E91 330i touring (great fun - murdered by a reversing SUV)
2007 BMW E91 325i touring (slower smoother quieter)
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

Post by steve_earwig »

I'm not a linguist either but I know someone who is. Or there's always Wiki:
The Citroen family moved to Paris in 1873. Upon arrival, the French diaeresis was added to the Dutch surname (reputedly by one of André's teachers), changing Citroen to Citroën. Citroen comes from a grandfather in the Netherlands who had been a greengrocer and seller of tropical fruit, and had taken the surname of Limoenman, Dutch for "lime man," his son however changed it to Citroen, which in Dutch means "lemon".
Well there you have it :lol:
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

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I had to laugh in the supermarket t'other day.
Image

I can imagine it in the marketing department.
"What should we call it?"
"Well, it's a sprayer and it sprays paint, so why don't we call it..."
OTTER SH!T :lol:
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

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Heeerrrrre cooomes annnnnnnnother one...
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:shock: :shock:
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

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Awww!
Sometimes we really miss having a dog but we're not going to take the plunge and get another just yet.
Son & both daughters have dogs -
1 utterly barmy cocker spaniel
1 ginormous labrador
1 3-legged chihuahua

So we gets our canine fix that way, the lab lives next door and I take him out most of the time, 'cept I'm not sure he'll fit in the BM.....
2002 HDi 2.2 Exec Estate, (2008-12) (wonderful)
2003 HDi 2.2 6-speed Exec Estate (2012-19) (also a gem)
2009 Citroen C5 2.0 HDi VTR+ Estate (godawful heap)
2008 BMW E91 330i touring (great fun - murdered by a reversing SUV)
2007 BMW E91 325i touring (slower smoother quieter)
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