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91

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

« on: 23 October 2023, 10:03:42 »

Anyone know how far it is to go around the ford? Other than to stop the halfwits that try to drive though at speed why did they need to block it off? If you have a vehicle  that's capable of driving through the ford when it's at normal water levels why not let them 

It can be a fair trek, the farmers are not happy as they often travel from fields one side to farms on the other, then its a big detour plus single track lanes

92

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

« on: 23 October 2023, 09:08:16 »

I found the video of the tractor going through Rufford Ford at the weekend quite amusing, I did wonder where the concrete blocks that had been placed to close the road had gone, after a minute, it became obvious 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1KhzdLN5FU

93

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

« on: 23 October 2023, 08:37:39 »

Oil and filter change on the F-type, very very easy job! 

94

General Discussion Area / Re: Storm Babet

« on: 20 October 2023, 08:23:25 »

Lots of smashed cars on the commute this morning, two thirds displaying the four circle parking permit on the grill (plus an S class Merc missing its offside), loads of water on the road yet some still hammer along at 80 (what is it with Collins Earthworks van drivers!).

95

General Car Chat / Re: If you Bought a New Car? What Would You Choose?

« on: 19 October 2023, 12:54:41 »

Had a read about the new qashqai e-Power this morning, seems a bit of a con. Engine constantly charging a battery which powers a motor which drives the front wheels. The manufacturer blurb says 55mpg and 1000km from a 55 litre tank of petrol. The reviewer in this report got only 35mpg, admittedly with snow and ice on the roads. But my 1.6 diesel will get 1000km from a 55 litre tank so, at well over £30,000, you'd have to very concerned about what does/doesn't come out of the tail pipe :

https://www.wintonsworld.com/nissan-qashqai-e-power-190-tekna-hybrid-review/

Still probably preferable to the horrible CVT gearbox the owners have to suffer in Nissan products 

96

General Discussion Area / Re: Time for a new mower?

« on: 19 October 2023, 08:14:42 »

YZ - I read the destructions for my mower, and it says to tip mower on side to drain oil out of filler.  I will check if there is a plug underneath next time its out, but guessing from that that probably not.
………

Most of the B & S mowers I’ve worked on have been the older series 35 and Quantum’s with the drain plug but I did come across an article mentioning the lack of drain plug on later mowers. As B & S are now mostly owned by KPS Capital Partners, I daresay removing the drain plug thread from the casting was a cost cutting exercise. 

They were the proper B&S engines, now they are just box and badge it so not up to the same quality

97

General Discussion Area / Re: Luton Airport

« on: 19 October 2023, 08:12:36 »

So if the RR was say under warranty and parked at the time.

Would they not sue the manufacturer? As mentioned it was not being driven at the time. The RR could have been a future call back fault that has not yet been identified.

Which will be Dieselgate all over again; a recall that makes your car worse. Don't Land Rovers us over the air updates which will save the dealers having to argue with you about not wanting it?

Most manufacturers are doing SOTA, JLR being a leader in it, the customer still has to accept the update though as the EU brought in rules stopping silent updates

98

General Car Chat / Re: If you Bought a New Car? What Would You Choose?

« on: 19 October 2023, 08:10:55 »

A plug in hybrid is a total waste of piss and nowt more than a subversive way to get everyone to fit charging ports at home.

A conventional hybrid is practically a much better solution if only because it doesn't require an external power source in order to work.

A plug in hybrid is a conventional hybrid with the ability to charge from the mains and generally a larger battery, so actually far more useful

It would be even more useful if it had the ability to charge from either mains or engine.

It charges under braking, charging from the engine is less economical than using the engine to drive the wheels

And its surprising just how much charge you get from braking alone, as an example, on my commute I can see 9kWh of regenerated energy gained and that's a lot of motorway driving where its constant speed.

99

General Discussion Area / Re: Time for a new mower?

« on: 18 October 2023, 08:07:12 »

Neighbour's identical mower keeps stopping again, so he says I can have it for spares.  Ordered a new diaphram/gasket for the carb, see how that goes.  If it fixes it, he can have it back, as I would have had my £5.29 of fun pissing around with it .

Change the plug also, these smaller engines have a common trait whereby the plug goes OC as they get hot

100

General Car Chat / Re: If you Bought a New Car? What Would You Choose?

« on: 18 October 2023, 08:04:05 »

A plug in hybrid is a total waste of piss and nowt more than a subversive way to get everyone to fit charging ports at home.

A conventional hybrid is practically a much better solution if only because it doesn't require an external power source in order to work.

A plug in hybrid is a conventional hybrid with the ability to charge from the mains and generally a larger battery, so actually far more useful

101

General Discussion Area / Re: Time for a new mower?

« on: 11 October 2023, 07:31:56 »

Downside of older mowers, you have to stick to E5 petrol, which in my case means Tesco 99 stuff.

When rebuilding the carb use the later non rubber gaskets, they run on anything then 

102

General Discussion Area / Re: Time for a new mower?

« on: 10 October 2023, 07:23:50 »

I recently bought a second hand Mac Allister (B&Q own brand) petrol lawnmower which has a 125cc Briggs and Stratton engine, after my trusty old Bosch Rotak electric mower fell apart. 

I've only used it once so far, but once I got going after faffing about filling it with petrol and getting it started, it mowed my lawn nicely and quicker with the wider deck. 

Much heavier than the leccy mower though, and as it's not self propelled, mowing the lawn will be good exercise in future! 

Hence the advice on the Atco, self propelled and the ES  model has electric start   

103

General Discussion Area / Re: Time for a new mower?

« on: 09 October 2023, 16:24:58 »

The battery ones just don't have enough power to get through the grass when its been left for a bit, a good old second hand Atco Admiral petrol would be my suggestion.

104

General Car Chat / Re: Passat Diesel - Cut out

« on: 09 October 2023, 16:22:32 »

Might be air, the VW common rails are a bit shitty for this as they do not self prime and if actually ran out need a bit of work to get them running (usually cranking and popping the return pipe off the filter). The filter housings are easy to crack when changing the filters also.

That said, it could also be a crank sensor showing no output, you will just have to run it and see what happens

105

General Car Chat / Re: Get A Dashcam! Just do it

« on: 09 October 2023, 08:37:57 »

I do wonder why, when so many newer cars have all round cameras that do few (maybe none?) Do what Teslas can do and allow you to record the footage just by plugging in a USB/HDD. Seems like it wouldn't be a hard feature to implement compared to some of the useless sh!te that does make it onto production cars.

Even OH's 8 yr old Evoque has a load of cameras on it, so it's not like it's new technology 

Very simple, and its one that cost Tesla massive sums (as they are rather stupid).

Dashcams burn out the flash memory, this mullered a pile of Tesla main controllers a few years ago.......and probably still is. So a Dashcam setup needs replaceable memory.

There are other challenges also, a dashcam is a complete standalone solution with its own power etc, this is critical as it does not write to flash continuously, rather in chunks, so lose the power supply during an impact on a car wide system, and you can corrupt the whole flash device and would certainly miss the 'interesting bit', the internal battery/super-cap on a standard dashcam removes this issue.

Its a feature we keep looking at trying to get a solution to but, its got major issues and you can image what would happen in the courts if a system failed to record