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1

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

« on: 27 February 2026, 06:28:03 »

I mean, I know it's your hobby and you'll end up with a really nice car, but is it really worth throwing all this money at? If it were mine, I think I'd be shitting myself about now.
If the unthinkable were to happen, what would the insurance payout be like?

In DG's shoes I'd definitely want an agreed value insurance policy that's for sure!

It's true I could have leased a new Astra for £3,279 down and 47 x £379... So using some spectacular man maths, the 30 months I have had the car for would have cost me £14,649 for the new Astra. I have spent ~£13,300 on the The Proper Car (cost to change, retrofits and maintenance, including the gearbox replacement), so I am still ahead and I own the car

When you put it like that 

2

General Discussion Area / Re: 3D Printer Chat

« on: 25 February 2026, 10:04:37 »

That's useful to know thank you, I'm glad I wasn't missing something obvious in tinkercad.

I haven't played with the proper slicer yet, only the cloud based one and the phone app, so not sure if it's possible there but I will have a play at some point.

The main use case I've got is exactly as you described here, labels, raised text or similar so changing at a specific layer height should work just fine for me. 

3

General Discussion Area / Re: 3D Printer Chat

« on: 24 February 2026, 15:23:45 »

The RFID type you need are MiFare Classic 1k.  In UK, I was struggling to get them for less than around 40p each in quantities less than 50.  Someone on Ebay doing 100 for about £22 delivered.  I've got a load coming from aliexpress, something like £9 for 80 - I can let you know the item number when they arrive and I've tested.

I ordered some off eGay and they work, but aren't cheap enough for me to want to use them as disposable.

I haven't yet found a way of doing multi colour printing of on my own designs out of tinkerCad. Well, I can print in two parts and glue them together obviously, but this seems like a faff compared to just getting the printer to do it. Do you know if there is a way of doing this? Whenever I do a multicolour model in tinkerCad, the stl just comes out as a single piece in a single colour. 

4

General Discussion Area / Re: Concrete mixer - sold!

« on: 24 February 2026, 15:19:57 »

My dad has a 250L diesel one he inherited from a builder who didn't want to come back and fix some snagging, so left all his tools instead  .

I'm not sure how old that one is, but it was made in West Germany, which is definitely an indication. In its 15yrs with us its wanted only for a new set of phosphor bronze bushes. I fully expect to be inheriting that when he passes, and I will warn the lad to expect it when my time comes 

5

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

« on: 24 February 2026, 15:09:07 »

3500 miles a year, you'd be part ex'ing it just because you want to. As you say I'm sure you'd get more than a decade out of it before it started to give you any trouble, probably moreif you got some lanoguard or similar on the non-shiny bits 

I've booked the iX to the local BMW stealer to have some niggles addressed. 3rd March, I wonder what colour the pov spec 1-series they give me as a courtesy car will be... 

6

General Car Chat / Re: I wish

« on: 11 February 2026, 13:25:10 »

The TPMS sensors were showing low voltage, you could reset them and in a few days where showing a fault.

I had to get them changed.

Thanks for the link.

Ah, no worries if you've already had them done. The purpose of the service I linked to is that it removes/disables the TPMS function entirely so the car either doesn't know it has TPMS fitted, or just thinks everything is fine with it. Either way it doesn't matter what the sensors are or are not showing, you'll never see a warning on the dashboard again. 

7

General Car Chat / Re: I wish

« on: 11 February 2026, 13:07:09 »

Christ alive that's a lot of money!

Have you tried the AA website? I used a random 2017 astra reg number (came back as 1.6 diesel) and they quoted £212 to do the fronts and £196 for the rears. Which I still think is a lot, but a big chunk less than you were quoted. You have the option of a man in a nice yellow van doing it on your drive too - which sounds better to me than sitting in a freezing cold waiting room drinking sh!t coffee.

LINK TO AA WEBSITE

Just for info, TPMS can be coded out for roughly £50 using a postal service (they send you a box to plug in, you do the update then send it back) so it will never appear again. Which would be my choice, like others I would argue that if you can't spot that your tyres are flat, you should hand back your licence.

LINK TO ONE SUCH SERVICE


Total for the work doing the above way would be £450 ish - much more palatable   

 

8

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

« on: 09 February 2026, 21:16:49 »

Changed the rear exhaust on the galaxy, a refreshingly easy job.

I say changed, technically the old one removed itself. Which made the job easier 

9

General Car Chat / Re: Electric Motorcycling

« on: 09 February 2026, 11:29:44 »

Seen a few of these about locally....

https://maeving.com/en-gb

These definitely look like they would be ridden by people who work in micro pubs, have top knots and use beard oil. 

Very Shoreditch 

10

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

« on: 05 February 2026, 10:19:07 »

Took the BMW to the local motor factors to collect a replacement for the bits that dropped off the galaxy this week 

11

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

« on: 05 February 2026, 10:18:00 »

With the features switched off, I'd expect no impact of charge level over a few days, as it's only powering alarm, entry system and telematics really.

Been a lurker on Tesla groups, when they were on the short list. There is a 'phantom' drain issue there, but I think it's due to all the cameras and sentry mode etc. Not unheard of for considerable amounts eg 20% of power lost in a week. Other functions like a climate over product to cool if car gets to hot etc are on by default.

To allay any potential concerns - the iX lost about 2% over the week we left it parked at Southampton docks last summer - and iirc yours has a larger battery than mine. I assume waking it up with the app might make it lose more, but I can't see why you'd need to.

12

General Car Chat / Re: Disco Sport TD4...

« on: 05 February 2026, 10:12:54 »

Personally I wouldn't have one of the later 2.0 diesels, based purely off personal experience of a disco 5 that I owned for about a week before it went back to the dealer due to one of the well known issues that TB mentioned (cracked inlet manifold iirc). Also one of the dad's at my son's school had one that gave nothing but trouble. I suspect that was down to issues from improper diesel use but nevertheless, he seemed to always be chasing something, Turbo actuator / MAF, all manner of things were mooted and tested but he never got to the bottom of it. In the two years we were acquaintances it seemed to give him nothing but trouble - ultimately he traded it in rather than fire a big parts cannon at it  .

SWMBO's 2.2 Evoque seemed pretty reliable in the time she had it, a perished hose and some odd electrical gremlins caused by the need for a new aux battery were about the extent of its offences.   

13

General Car Chat / Re: Banger Volvo vs Brand New

« on: 03 February 2026, 12:58:58 »

I'll also add, I have a sneaky feeling that 90% of all brand new EV's on the road are salary sacrifice deals. Soon as support for that is pulled, no one will be buying them new.

Definitely this.

The inflated list prices (which all legacy motor manufacturers are incentivised to do) mean you'd have to be a bit mad to buy or finance one new with your own money.

14

General Discussion Area / Re: 3D Printer Chat

« on: 30 January 2026, 14:08:47 »

Can't remember if I said I had stick on RFID tags for my non RFID spools.  That works well - I know it only takes a few taps to manually enter on the printer, but RFID is proper lazy

I am going to do this, in fact I ordered some, then found out there are multiple standards and ordered the wrong ones because I'm a bit simple. Returned with more are on order. I find the little screen on mine quite fiddly with my shovel hands, so the stickers would be better.  Also, some of us don't have the ability to have 16 rolls on the go at any one time 

I've also ordered 10 reels of Hyper PLA RFID for £84 delivered from Creality, because, well, errr, its a fettish. 

£8.40p per reel for the RFID stuff is a great price. Looking on the Creality store the best I can see is £19.99 with 30% off if you spend 10. Am I missing something? 

15

General Discussion Area / Re: 3D Printer Chat

« on: 29 January 2026, 16:42:33 »

Ah, one question I did have TB, is do you have any sort of isolating feet for yours?

I'm just printing at the standard 100% but the printer doesn't half get a wobble on when going back and forth on narrow parts.