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1

General Car Chat / Re: An Hour to Kill so took a test drive in a chinky MG

« on: Yesterday at 15:24:10 »

This the model 3 and the BYD seal all look pretty similar to me. In a few years this should represent a good chunk of performance for the money 

2

General Car Chat / Re: So what have you done to your car today?

« on: 12 September 2025, 09:27:51 »

Fitted new front wiper blades amongst other things.

I need to work out how to do this on the iX. One of the more dubious design decisions on the car was to build the washer nozzles into the wiper blades, so you only change the rubbers, I'm sure it will be a doddle 

3

General Car Chat / Re: Mercedes ML 280 CDI Project.

« on: 09 September 2025, 23:10:40 »

Still not happy with the door cards, but they're a textured plastic that's a bastid to clean, even with a nail brush. Same for the top of the rear seat back rest....

Excellent progress so far! 

Without wishing to teach you to suck eggs, re. the door card plastics, have you tried getting hold of a £1 plastic bog brush and cutting the handle off? Stick it in a cordless drill and it works wonders on hard plastics with some spray cleaner.

It also fetches ingrained grit out of carpets with relative ease 

4

General Car Chat / Re: So what have you done to your car today?

« on: 08 September 2025, 20:36:27 »

Going to start a new thread for it.

Poundland Panzer gets my vote 

5

General Car Chat / Re: So what have you done to your car today?

« on: 08 September 2025, 17:14:18 »

Continued working through the ML.

It's now actually clean inside. Also investigated the non functioning fuel gauge with a view to replacing both the sender and the pump units... Got as far as opening the tank, only to find that the actual cause was an unplugged connection 

Still at least I now have a spare pump etc...

Replacement head unit has fixed the non functioning radio, but it needs coding as it can't see the phone or the cd changer.

Some good jobs ticked off the list  . Is this going to be added to TPC in your own fleet, or to replace that gad-awful Nissan you were working on?

6

General Car Chat / Re: So what have you done to your car today?

« on: 06 September 2025, 21:26:47 »

EV good idea for old folk and local driving I suppose but no good for holiday trips with a car full adding weight and lowering range.

As TB says maybe a lot of naff coffee consumed if traveling from say Aberdeen to Newquay with a family of 5

Depends on your usage pattern I suppose. As I said I'm c 33,500 into ownership and it's the first time I've paid to rapid charge. Taking that specific example, it's 660 miles and 11hrs (longer if not going overnight). You *could* go straight through in a diesel but I would imagine either nappies would be required or the foot wells would be ankle deep in p!ss by the time you arrived. For me, stopping for 20-30mins every 3-4hrs is no particular hardship.

The farthest I'm prepared to drive with the family in a day is Telford - Paris. Which is roughly 3.5hrs one side the channel and 3 the other. So we *will* stop anyway once during each leg, plus a wait at the chunnel. I'm yet to do it in the iX but I'm guessing it won't add more than 20-30 mins onto the journey time, if that.

Which probably equates roughly to the amount of time I save every 2 weeks by not visiting the petrol station. 

7

General Discussion Area / Re: China

« on: 05 September 2025, 12:14:20 »

A very real possibility of hitting the mountains.

My understanding is this only kicks in if no pilot intervention post decompression.

It also drops the aircraft to the greater of 10,000 ft or Minimum Enroute Altitude, which is route-based and set prior to departure, so barring a system failure, or an incorrect route being set (seems unlikely as significant deviations from route would trigger alerts) then the plane won't drop itself low enough to interface with the scenery. 

I'm sure LC will be along in a minute to offer further commentary 

8

General Discussion Area / Re: Look who's just arrived by rubber boat on the channel

« on: 05 September 2025, 12:05:18 »

Aaannnd off she goes

9

General Car Chat / Re: So what have you done to your car today?

« on: 04 September 2025, 22:57:22 »

I think some of the more popular ones are Tesla only, but the app filters these out 

Tesla drivers get cheaper rates, but even non-tesla drivers pay a pretty low rate

10

General Car Chat / Re: So what have you done to your car today?

« on: 04 September 2025, 15:30:42 »

Yep...I think so.

Up to this point the car had never been charged away from home. Charge speed is only 100 Kw so quite slow by the standards of 2025, with even cars like the mew MG IM5 able to charge at 400Kw.

Tbh, I think 250-300kw should be enough, certainly in Europe - that's roughly 15-20 miles a minute. So 5 mins to go inside and have a pee, then walk back to it and that's 90 miles. A few more mins in line for a coffee and that's 150. Add that to the 250-300 miles these cars will do to start with and you have got >400miles range with one 10 minute stop.

That's easily 6hrs driving in europe and will be more than 99% of people will want to do on 99% of days.   

For me the big issue really is charger availability. Places like I stopped at and Tesla superchargers have it right 15-20 chargers at a minimum, with more at big hubs. I don't mind stopping for a 15min charge, what I don't want to do is queue for a charger then have to charge. 

11

General Car Chat / Re: So what have you done to your car today?

« on: 03 September 2025, 16:53:28 »

The cottage had it's own electric charging point (7KW).This cost 30p per KW which I think reasonable. The Jaaaaag managed 2.95 miles per KW so not bad considering we used the M1, M69, M6, and M42, which f*ucks the range.

30p is about as good as it gets outside the home I would have thought.

We paid 50p/kwh in Winchester which, for rapid charging is pretty cheap and I didn't mind paying it as the place was efficient, much nicer than any motorway services and clearly cost a shed load to build. Also, considering 2/3 of the journey was done on home electric, it only works out to 7p/mile for the trip, or the equivalent of 94mpg on diesel. 

12

General Car Chat / Re: So what have you done to your car today?

« on: 03 September 2025, 10:06:39 »

Drove it to Southampton and back for a few days bobbing about on a boat, 360 ish miles round trip so did require a 20 min charge. Stopped at Winchester on the way down at a place with 40+ rapid chargers and a Starbucks, obviously no need to queue (I think roughly 10 were occupied) and by the time we'd had a pee and a coffee we were off again.   

Honestly the best car I've had for long journeys by a country mile, sadly I will have to start using something else a bit more frequently otherwise I will be on the hook for a big over-mileage bill at the end of my lease  .

13

General Car Chat / Re: So what have you done to your car today?

« on: 25 August 2025, 20:30:13 »

No bloody point watering here. The kids play out there year round. Which is great as they're not parked in front of screens but the lawn's so tiny we have no sodding grass left.

Artificial lawn next year I think.

14

General Car Chat / Re: So what have you done to your car today?

« on: 25 August 2025, 16:35:05 »

Changed the OSR radius arm bush on the galaxy, did the NSR last year but the MOT looms so had to get my ar§e in gear. Not a bad job, but definitely requires a third weetabix prior to starting.

15

General Discussion Area / Re: I'm lost.

« on: 24 August 2025, 11:17:27 »

Sorry to hear that Al, coming on a year since my OH lost her Pug, it is a very hard thing.