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106

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   

107

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.

108

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

109

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 

110

General Discussion Area / Re: Happy Burfday Mr DTM

« on: 28 September 2023, 07:59:41 »

Thanks all!

111

General Discussion Area / Re: UPS and UPS

« on: 27 September 2023, 15:21:40 »

Standard MP2.3-12 battery as used in many house alarms, available in loads of places (including the likes of Toolstation).

Being a fan of Tayna batteries, I would be buying from them

112

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

« on: 26 September 2023, 15:05:28 »

Changed it, now I need to go to a country shop to get suitable attire

113

Omega General Help / Re: Windscreen trim

« on: 25 September 2023, 16:10:20 »

Must be the month for it....

Take a photo of the HUD image projected on the screen before its replaced.

The fitters are using some real cheap shit china glass and its real hit and miss on having the wedge shaded core to get the HUD image to focus and be the correct brightness and size.

114

General Discussion Area / Re: Net Zero

« on: 25 September 2023, 11:57:48 »

The electric arc furnace is primarily for recycling steel, not making it, so effectively Port Talbot will cease to produce steel. Hence the job losses as no coking plants needed and a much simpler/smaller process

115

General Car Chat / Re: Heavy Oil Stain

« on: 15 September 2023, 08:35:47 »

Nothing will remove it all as Concrete is porous and it soaks in, cement may pull a lot of it out

116

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

« on: 12 September 2023, 17:37:08 »

Interesting solution, not seen those before 

117

General Car Chat / Re: Zafira Tourer engine choices

« on: 07 September 2023, 13:09:17 »

Trouble is, as soon as you go van base you lose a hell of a lot of the everyday use refinement

118

General Car Chat / Re: Zafira Tourer engine choices

« on: 07 September 2023, 08:15:09 »

2.0 CDTi is the F40 box and not the M32 so fewer issues (although I put 197k hard miles miles on an M32 with the 1.9 CDti and had no issues and that was the unmodified box, it did get 50k oil changes)  and the later updates have made big improvements to the M32, I personally wouldn't be avoiding them.

The 1.4T is acceptable, more so than I would have expected.

119

General Discussion Area / Re: Any saddos on overnight?

« on: 04 September 2023, 08:01:49 »

It was timing out at 7.05am

120

General Discussion Area / Re: RAAC building concrete

« on: 01 September 2023, 13:24:05 »

Its the usual media flap.

RAAC is a very good structural solution but, like everything, it needs to be looked after. The major issue is maintenance, if its kept dry and was manufactured and installed correctly in the first place, it can last a very very long time. What is being seen is leaking flat roofs (its often used to create structural roof panels and beams as its very strong and also a fraction of the weight of the equivalent concrete) corroding the structural steel rods and blowing the RAAC, there have also been cases where the form was manufactured wrong or installed wrongly (upside down!).

So in summary, its less tolerant to poor maintenance, manufacture and installation.........and that is what we are seeing now.