A rare beauty

[FarmerPug]

Old cars eh they make even small journeys an adventure.

[steve_earwig]

A mate of mine's mum and her mate bought an old air cooled VW combi and drove it across Europe. They took out the best breakdown cover they could, which was handy because it broke down 5 times

[FarmerPug]

My Grannys brother back in the 60s took a vw type 2 and did a round the world tour in it, never broke down once but it did get through tyres a lot. He still has it, rusted badly at the back but intends to have it restored. It hadnt ran in 3 years and he has absolutley no mechanical knoledge (not good if your driving round the world) but anyhow i was at his garage and he wanted to start it but it didnt, the ht leads needed taken out and cleaned and it ran theres a sort of lawnmower clatter from the air cooled engine

[steve_earwig]

There's no water jacket so the cylinders are louder, plus you can hear the cooling fan on top the engine which sort of sounds like a rotary lawnmower. Air cooled VWs have a reputation for always starting (seen Woody Allen's Sleeper?) but when they don't they're really dead.

[FarmerPug]

2 more to add to the collection, of rusty fords:

every suspension mounting point and joint, as well as the engines mounting points were rusted beyond recgonution, the cost to put this back on the road was quoted at £600
now this has a touch of rust here and there nothing at all structural, the cab falling off is purely an optical illusion:


never smoked in and one owner from new

[Welly]

Awww, they don't make them like they used too

[sirwiggum]

Is that escort van ex-BT fleet?

I've seen one before crashed, the rear doors with a padlock being used as a shed!

[steve_earwig]

I was thinking that, it looks like the grey they were before everything was painted white, the same sort of condition too. My one was white (yes, I was white van man That was me thundering past your house at 4am and getting airborne on the mini-roundabout )



Psst. is the lorry for sale?

[Welly]

Grey escort van?

That's white from where I'm sitting.

Speaking of BT, on the way home last night BT had some road works set up over about a 400 yard stretch and *loads* of vans and flashing lights (kinda like an emergency) they had those big f*ck-off lorries full of kit and the big cable reals and there were lots of bodies scurrying about and mini-diggers and stuff.

There was still a guy there at 06:20 this morning (might have worked the night?) and I thought that was impressive really; you know, there's plenty of companies selling you phone services but BT still have all the kit and know-how when things go tits up!

[highlander]

BT still have all the kit and know-how when things go tits up!

Can't... stop... laughing!

[steve_earwig]

Sounds like a major cable breakdown, it's all hands to the tiller 'cos BT not only loose traffic they start having to pay compensation if things take too long, and with thousands of customers on one cable that can get a bit pricey. My bro's a transmission engineer, the last time he was on one of those was because some cable contractor sent their mole cable laying machine off through a main cable chamber outside one of London's main switching centres (cables, fibre optics, the lot, munch munch munch)


Om njom njom

Still looks grey to me

[FarmerPug]

bt seem to always be fixing at a junction box near here, and what seems to happen is one 'technician' sticks his head into the box and gets to work the other 2 stand about doing absolutley nothing except drink tea from flasks. But they do know how to keep their vans serviced, this ex bt escort and a transit van we had were reliable old motors apart from the transits inability to start on cold mornings

[Welly]

Wouldn't wanna sort THAT lot out

Can you make a repair joint in a fibre optic cable?

That van is white I tell you

[FarmerPug]

looks lovely, a dab of superglue would do fine you dont want the customers getting a reliable internet connection

[steve_earwig]

I dunno if it's changed but when they first started using fibre optic cable they used a machine to weld tzhe ends of the glass together. They also had to leave a huge amount of slack because the joints often took a few goes to get them right.

Anyone who thinks BT is crap needs to spend a few months here, HT (Croatian Telecom) make BT look like Rolls Royce.