and today i have mostly been...

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

Post by Doggy »

Well done that man!

I may be wrong as the memory plays tricks these days, but doesn't welly have 'previous' with both these makes?

Good job they didn't need help with HVAC etc. or we might never have got him back.
Somehow can't shift the image of Bonnie Tyler playing while wellly smashes toll booths on the Severn bridges.
I is old & confused.
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Welly
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

Post by Welly »

Haha! :cheesy:

I have indeed had 2 x BMW's in the past, a 1998 318tds and a 2001 318i both of those were horrid turds but UNBELIEVABLY easy to sell on :shock: :shock:
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

Post by mjb »

Quite a few bimmers including the E39 5-series have batteries in the boot. And the V8s have a back-breaking BEHEMOTH of a battery!

My 540i touring was so easy to sell on it started a bidding war on ebay which ended quite a bit north of what I paid for the car! :shock:
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highlander
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

Post by highlander »

Today I have mostly been inviting a mobile mechanic to help himself to the contents of my wallet.

Front-right coil spring on my 525i broke on New Year's Eve, which I believe is 2018's way of telling me to go poke it. Turns out the front shocks have crapped out, which meant the bulk of the suspension work was being carried out by the springs. One broke, the other was probably not far behind. So, two new shocks, two new springs, two new top-mount bearings, and a brake backplate. Plus around 4.5 hours worth of labour and VAT.

£900

Nine. Hundred. Pounds.

I have bought *entire cars* for less money than that.

This is just five days after I replaced the exhaust backbox on the lad's Celica, which was decidedly not cheap either.

Oh, and for good measure, the guy says the BMW's discs and pads need doing soon, and one of the front wheel bearings is noisy too.

And, it was bloody freezing outside, too (though thankfully it wasn't raining and wasn't windy).

Thanks 2018, you mostly sucked. Hopefully everyone else is having a better 2019 than I am, so far.
2002 (D9) Peugeot 406 Coupe SE, 2.2 litre Petrol. Scarlet Red/Rouge Ecarlate/Rosso Scarlatto. Black Leather interior. SOLD :(
2008 (E60 LCI) BMW 525i M-Sport, 3.0 litre Petrol. Carbonschwarz Metallic. Black Dakota Leather and Myrtlewood interior.
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

Post by steve_earwig »

I'm afraid that actually sounds reasonable to me, 4.5 hours labour probably makes up almost half of the total. At least you know about the brakes in advance and can shop around for those. You could possibly DIY them too (or are you still on the street with it?) but the bearing could well be a different proposition. No idea on those, might need a press.

I just staggered in here for some shed update pics as I didn't do that for a while. The shed now has an up, erm, ladder. The boards were the usual collection of bananas, ski jumps and propellers, so this is Miloš' method of clamping them up to get them straighter:
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A staple, two wedges and a lot of hammering...
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Almost there
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Finished job
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Note the ladder, it's where I'll be making some stairs
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Imagine...
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For a long time I was pondering where to put them without leaving a huge slot somewhere in the floor upstairs. In the end the 20cm central beam kind of suggested itself as the top step, so it'll be 6 down from that, 3 arround the corner and one more to the ground. I can't wait to get cracking. Oh no, sorry, I can wait to get cracking...

Miloš also fitted the other window while I was collecting tools
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That was back in December. Today I finished wiring it up and finally connected power (that took way too long :( ). I decided to get a fuse panel for the shed, I'd only need 4 fuses (it's also fuse in the panel upstairs), feed for pig sty, feed for the garage bit and feed for upstairs and one for the lights. It's got to be neater than a chocolate block in a box, right? Well no, firstly I've had to wire it the Croat way (each 16 amp fuse covers 1 light and a couple of sockets) as the lowest value fuse they sell here is 10 amps :roll: Plus the fiue panel is more or less an empty box with a din rail and nothing else. I even shook it in the shop to make sure there was something in it, the din rail and the screws as it turned out :evil:
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Also, I got a "sits on the plaster" rather than a "sits below the plaster" fuse panel but the damn thing is still fed from the back, hence the stand offs (aka chopped up broom handle).
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Upstairs is kind of temporary, I still need to board the wall to mount sockets and work out what I'm actually going to use it for before I buy any lights.

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That's how they do it here, all the boxes in the house are sunk into the walls (I think I've posted some pics before of how bloody horrible they are). Light switches for 4 neons in the garage, light at the front and upstairs.

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I thought it would be an idea to move the sockets to the other side, so I don't trip over cables coming down the stairs...

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Pig sty
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Garden light
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Which is something preposterous like 150 watts, it'll get replaced eventually

As will
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The light out the front, which is feeble.

Finally, I thought you'd like to see my folding work bench. Black & Decker it aint, cast iron and oak, it weighs a sodding tonne.
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While I was moving it it fell off the trolley and landed on my foot, ouch :frown:

Now all I need to do is tidy up once again and order in some steel tubes. Oh goody.
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highlander
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

Post by highlander »

The parts cost was pretty high to me - I'm certain the parts and labour on the Coupe was less for all four corners (4x shocks, 4x springs, 2x front top-mounts). The £900 today was just on the fronts.

I can certainly have a go at discs and pads - at least the damn bolts won't all be seized and need heat now, at least if I do it in a couple of weeks or so. At least for the front brakes - the backs would probably be a nightmare. Pretty certain I have all the tools I need except a torque driver - I already have a socket set, screwdriver set, and WiFi that works out into the street for YouTube tutorial purposes...

Yeah, still don't have a garage or driveway - but it is at least a residential car park rather than out on a public road.
2002 (D9) Peugeot 406 Coupe SE, 2.2 litre Petrol. Scarlet Red/Rouge Ecarlate/Rosso Scarlatto. Black Leather interior. SOLD :(
2008 (E60 LCI) BMW 525i M-Sport, 3.0 litre Petrol. Carbonschwarz Metallic. Black Dakota Leather and Myrtlewood interior.
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

Post by Doggy »

Impressive stuff there Steve.

Never tried to build a staircase - when we reinstated the one in the half of the house we now live in I somehow managed to interest a sales guy from a Leicester company to build us a bespoke 14 riser, an overly steep one that met the building regs for about a grand. It was a right arse of a job since I had to fit a doorway into the kitchen under the top step and increase the head height over the lower 4/5 steps to 2m, (about 6" > the 1930's original stairs). Money was tight so ours has MDF treads and 10mm ply risers, but it's solidly built and has stood the test of time. The joints in the wooden frame all have tapered wedges driven into them and are glued together. Took a decent chippie a day & a half to fit.

I feel your pain Graeme. Can you put the brakes off until spring reaches your part of the world?
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've never tried to build one either :shock: I did have a guy lined up to build one but that was before I decided to build it in the corner and it'll have to be built largely in place. I have stacks of wood hanging about and I know it would make more sense to build it out of wood, but I'm crap with wood. I've been gluing bits of steel together for decades though, I can tack it up, see if it works and pull it to bits again if it's no good.

I'll have to hook onto the beam somehow, I'm thinking brackets both sides with bolts through the beam, then either bolt or weld the main tubes underneath. Then it's a shade under 3 meters to the footing at the front, weld brackets for the steps, more tubes at right angles to the floor and then I'm hoping something will occur to me for the turn. This is how they did it up at my place
Image
I could do something similar. I found this calculator online https://www.blocklayer.com/stairs/stairs-toplevel.aspx which I've been using to save my brain power, usefully it throws a wobbly if I try to do anything silly, e.g. it won't let me go above 39.5 degrees or I get a big red warning that the stairs are too steep.
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

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Highlander - that's the parts cost that's higher than usual (BMW innit) that is a bummer but you had no choice and no alternative at the time. The discs and pads can wait as long as the pads aren't already down to the rivets :oops: I did our Twingo's discs and pads following a Youtube guide and although they were fairly straight forward having the laptop at my side to pause/replay whilst I did the work made it childs play to be fair. Plus you kinda take more time to clean everything up and carefully lubricate stuff, that's a thought I used copper slip on the parts that move/slide but most say to use brake grease which I wish I'd have bought in beforehand.

Wiggy - that wiring does look quite different to ours but you have to follow the Croat way! I bet you went into full BT Engineer mode with the cable clips :lol: it all looks good mate I would have enjoyed doing that myself I hope you did. Are the light switches the waterproof outdoors type? they look it. Now the dilemma is what to use that upper loft space for? ...... give it a few weeks and it'll be full of all the junk from the house you've been keeping 'safe' :lol:

Anyone still interested: - Woodwork and especially a staircase is a mysterious art to me, something about the measuring and cutting always fucks up when I try woodwork, I can't work out if you need to be very intelligent or just have a creative mind and get stuck in. I once tried to make a simple wooden box with hinged lid and royally f*cked the whole thing up I don't know whether I'd allowed one or two thicknesses of wood on the corner overlaps or none, but none of it made sense, I am probably thick in the head :lol:
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

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highlander wrote: Wed Jan 09, 2019 8:10 pm The parts cost was pretty high to me - I'm certain the parts and labour on the Coupe was less for all four corners (4x shocks, 4x springs, 2x front top-mounts). The £900 today was just on the fronts.
and the backplate, which'd be a dealer-only jobbie. About £300 for a pug iirc - although they stopped selling them years ago.

Suspension also varies massively by quality. I replaced my E39 540i touring's front springs with £50/side chinesium parts just before I got rid of it, and my god was it a substantial downgrade from 17 year old OEM springs :shock:
Welly wrote: Thu Jan 10, 2019 9:33 am that's the parts cost that's higher than usual (BMW innit)
Actually I've really not noticed much of a price difference for bmw/merc parts, although some dealer prices can be higher due to them using 20 different parts across a range instead of just one (i.e. there's about 16 different variants of E39 rear suspension). Also some assemblies can cost more as there's more parts involved - estate rear wiper for instance is a lot more complicated due to half of it being on on the tailgate and half on the split glass

Of course on the other hand, anything M or AMG-specific gets extremely, utterly ridiculously costly, especially where carbon fibre's involved...
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

Post by Welly »

steve_earwig wrote: Wed Jan 09, 2019 7:25 pm Image
This photo has a certain beauty about it don't you think? even though on the ground floor all you can see is the floor and your random shyte knocking about; the natural light coming in has made it all look deliberate, almost artistic in quality 8)
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

Post by steve_earwig »

Beauty? It reminds me I still need to clear up and make some space so I can get the metalwork in :(

I'm not even sure how you'd do that back in Blighty, maybe a ring main and definitely a separate feed for the lights with a lower amperage fuse ('cos running sockets and lights off a 16 amp fuse seems like madness to me). The wire joints aren't Croat, they twist joint. I was a jointer for BT for a good few years so I know all about twist joints, however we used to use paper and then polythene sleeves to insulate our twists (much lower amperage too), here they use insulating tape. And then hammer it into a box on the wall and forget it :shock: I can only think the reason you don't see many more houses on fire here is because there's very little wood in their construction. I've used chocky block screw connectors, not keen on them either as they back off after a while and need re-tightening but I trust them much more, plus it does give somewhere to test without having to retape or reterm. I did use one GB rose fitting upstairs, I brought some GB stuff with me when I came here 'cos the local stuff is so crap. Again screw clamps but they're fixed in as part of the moulding - amazing!

All the switches, sockets and neons are kind of weatherproof, I think condensation is the only thing I have to worry about though. The sockets are the usual European thing with no thought given on how you're actually supposed to wire them up - take the cable through the rubber and... oh, the socket goes there, erm... Strip the sleeve off 5mm inside the box and either have 5mm of bare conductors going straight to the terminals or take the wires all... the... sodding... way around the box and come at the terminals from the other side.

I thought you did pretty good with that cat hotel! I sometimes have good success with wood, more often than not though I'm still the same old kack-handed motherlover I always was. I think having good tools is a start (I just spent hours resharpening my chisels) but I suspect I just don't have the right gene. When I made those window frames I kept screwing up, cutting the rabbit on the wrong side about 6 times, forgetting to allow some gap so the windows can open or adding way too much, forgetting to add the width of the saw blade, marking out a half cut joint and then cutting the wrong half off... I was starting to doubt my own sanity towards the end of it.
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

Post by highlander »

mjb wrote: Thu Jan 10, 2019 2:17 pmand the backplate, which'd be a dealer-only jobbie. About £300 for a pug iirc - although they stopped selling them years ago.
Thankfully the backplate wasn't too pricey, something like £60. That was the only part the dude had to go to the dealer to get. Thankfully the front-left one was in much better shape than the front-right one was (it basically crumbled as he was undoing the screws). The top-mount bearings were about £110 for the pair. The shocks were about £180 *each* :shock: Can't recall how much he said the springs were, but the bearings, shocks, and springs were all Sachs parts. I didn't know Sachs were owned by ZF.

My 525i is an M-Sport, which means stiffer suspension parts, better handling, and higher prices, whilst not actually going any faster than stock.
Welly wrote: Thu Jan 10, 2019 9:33 amThe discs and pads can wait as long as the pads aren't already down to the rivets
Thankfully not that bad yet. He said that a BMW dealership would basically not let me leave the premises until I'd replaced the discs and pads, but an MOT would probably just issue an advisory saying the brakes could do with replacing soon-ish. I will be waiting til the end of next month for those. I *might* have a go at swapping them myself.
2002 (D9) Peugeot 406 Coupe SE, 2.2 litre Petrol. Scarlet Red/Rouge Ecarlate/Rosso Scarlatto. Black Leather interior. SOLD :(
2008 (E60 LCI) BMW 525i M-Sport, 3.0 litre Petrol. Carbonschwarz Metallic. Black Dakota Leather and Myrtlewood interior.
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

Post by steve_earwig »

I forgot this bit :oops:
Welly wrote: Thu Jan 10, 2019 9:33 am Now the dilemma is what to use that upper loft space for? ...... give it a few weeks and it'll be full of all the junk from the house you've been keeping 'safe' :lol:
Well, indeed. At the moment I'm moving all the bits of chipboard up there (old wardrobes mainly), with which I plan to make shelving. There's actually some decent bits of wood with it too, mostly the few bits of (actually bloody good) wooden shelving the firedrunks chucked out the back. I was told it was spoken for but it just sat there being rained on until I'd have enough, sneaked out and pinched anything that still looked any good. It had all been sat outside under a tarp for almost a year but seems to have mostly survived
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I've no idea what I'll use the upstairs for, probably just mostly storage but the idea of putting proper stairs is so that I can get up there easily to do stuff and don't just chuck stuff up there and leave it all in a big heap.

Stairs marked on the actual corner
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I actually do have loads of tools and stuff stashed away all over the place, this is where the stuff I'm actually using is:
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which is pretty terrible, even worse it was all outside until December under a tarp. I have some proper cabinets up at my place I need to bring here somehow (dismantle, ship and rebuild or hire a van?), they're full of tools too. Plus tools in the boiler room, in the cupboard next to the pc here, upstairs in one of the attics... :roll: There's also a load of plastic shelving but I'll probably leave that where it is unless I really need it (it's shite and will shatter if I try to dismantle it).

In other news, the televidiots are back again, filming their garbage soap opera outside our sodding house. Can I move my car? Err, ok (oh do f*ck off), where? Down the road? The next village? Pluto? Fuckwits. :twisted:
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Re: and today i have mostly been...

Post by Welly »

It's a nuisance sorting all your tools out, mine are kinda divided into 'car' tools and 'house' tools but it seems like everytime I gain a suitable strong container or tray/box it gets filled up and I end up digging through it or emptying it to find stuff, like that elusive 10mm socket or the electricians screwdriver which has been hiding from me for months despite its 'hey here I am' bright colouring :frown:

I once created a tool tray with a handle and sectioned it off to sort out woodscrews into their sizes and red/brown rawl plugs until a few weeks later I stood on it and flipped the whole lot upside down :cry: it took me nearly 2 hours to resort it. Now I have a large carry tray compartmentalised with a proper lid for the screws and stuff.

It still kinda bothers me that you still have another property laid redundant, have you considered renting it out for some income?
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