Nominations for the worst bit of design ever.

Sam, you do know that the Italians have taps you can operate with either your feet or your hands, don’t you? Crazy old things with bar levers going from floor to tap. I like your long over complicated critique of a few one line throw away comments though. Your assumption that only you can think about things in terms other than black and white is an interesting view into how your mind works, carry on…

Ssangyong Rodius

the ones where the delay mechanism wore out long ago and shut off as soon as you let go of the bastard thing, so you can only wash one hand at once.

It’s not that hard. Wet hands, soap up and rub without running the water, then rinse one at a time.

I didn’t say it was hard, I said it annoyed me. Which it does, unless you know better than I do what I find annoying?

Is it more or less annoying than arguing with me on STW?

About the same.

I not sure that was ‘designed’.

Ssangyong Rodius

Anyone else noticed the bizzies used one of these in the last episode of The Fall the other night??

Is it more or less annoying than arguing with me on STW?

That’s not an argument, it’s just contradiction.

And, yes, I did wonder…! (-:

The showers at the swimming pool which work* on a similar principle

*don’t

I presume they’re fine when new, but seem to wear out far too quickly and then never get repaired, so that rather than pushing the button and having a shower, then pushing the button again when it stops in a minute or two you have to continuously hold the button in. Though the disabled shower with a handy low level touch pad is even worse – it clearly does work as it sometimes comes on, but I’ve never worked out the magic sequence to get it to do so (my kids like to use it as they can reach the button and don’t have trouble pushing it – youngest has decided that it works if you walk a few metres away before walking back and pressing the button).

My personal aim is to always make it more annoying for the person I’m arguing with – I figure I’m ahead if I manage that. How am I doing?

you can recline yours as well and you have exactly the same amount of space you started with

I can assure you that if you’re pretty much on the limit of an airline seat with the seat in front not reclined, reclining it reduces space whether you recline your own seat or not.

Or more often, you prevent the seat in front from reclining. Mind you, I got an upgrade to business once when the guy in front stopped to a hostess about this and because he was so unpleasant, they moved me instead 🙂

GU10 is a great shout.

I’d add any Audi S-Line spec, why do I want a car with the ride comfort of a horse and cart with solid wheels?

The new look Guardian website (and in same vein the current BBC Sport website).

Yeah New look Guardian website is hideous

DO you think it is like that because so many right wing folk go there to troll and they say they like it when asked?

Oh, oh, oh, I can’t believe nobody else has done this one yet…

This: http://tinyurl.com/6tl3fl7

Haven’t read all the posts but for me it is the useless plastic bags that rice comes in. However careful you are the bags split and rice goes everywhere.

Bindun.

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/nominations-for-the-worst-bit-of-design-ever/page/3#post-6555412

@Malvern Rider
She is wearing those shoes back to front though isn’t she?

Is it more or less annoying satisfying than arguing with me on STW?

FTFY 😉

The mild steel metal coolant pipe attached to my T4 engine.
The coolant is no longer in the pipes as its rusted through.
£70 replacement for a steel pipe too. Why would you use a metal that corrodes so easily.

Been there, on a T4. Also on an A3. Also on an A4.

Cracking pit of pipe that. Tried gluing, brazing, soldering. You have to get a new one to fix.

Aye.. Was an arse of a job.. A real struggle to get some of the pipes off.
Coolant, rust and mud in both eyes too. And to top it off the new metal pipe didn’t have a new drain plug on it so had to put a rusty piece of crappy bolt back on.

Its crap all round. Only plus point is that i became very quick at changing them in the end. An ally version would be ideal.

Why not get one made then?

Will you not get a galvanic issue?

This more money than sense white elephant that’s in the house we bought gets my vote.

Clearly it burns gallons of oil but it’s also crap at its job.
50% bigger than a normal cooker yet it only has one oven (other doors are controls, a blank and a plate warmer).
Oven is far hotter in one corner than the rest.
Temperature control is vague at best.
Should be serviced every year at about £150.
Corroding pretty badly after a decade.

It is also a boiler but at £5000 to buy that’s barely relevant. Bloody awful thing.

The original Gaggia Cubika, anyone who says that the water tank comes out easy, is either a liar, or a gynaecologist, or maybe both.

Luket,
Get an AGA. Amazing piece of kit

But an Aga isn’t a boiler so is an even worse piece of design, it merely cooks and can provide hot water but only at skin stripping temperatures, and then only if you are prepared to wait. Oh and they cost how much? Buy an ordinary cooker and a decent boiler.

Can I add to the list – The RHI Scheme.

Aga? Do you leave your Range Rover running all night just in case you want to pop down the shops? I’m with Bear.

I lived with one as a kid but I never had to pay the bills and hadn’t heard of climate change at the time. They’re good to cook on but no reason a normal cooker should be less good.

I’m wondering whether it’s more irresponsible to the environment to keep using the thing or dispose of it…

Why the RHI? It is a bit silly/crude but we need something to do its job and these mechanisms are never perfect. It’s a means to get people using more sensible technology than Agas and the like!

Because the RHI scheme makes money for those that can afford to install the technologies.

It should be about becoming less reliant on fossil fuels and not a scheme to make money, fine if you use these technologies and they cost more to install, then fine reimburse people up to the value of the install, not beyond (in some cases way beyond).

I have to say as well like many of these things it is a huge paperwork effort and I know of a few where they have qualified but there is no way that they should have been allowed to let the appliances run……

The one way system in Kendal.

If we’re moaning about sink plugs, then the stupid flippy spiny ones get my vote. You have to put your hand back into the dirty water to open it and they get stuck with the tiniest bit of grit.

Yes. Whatever happened to good old plugs with a chain? 😕

Re: those Dyson Airblade hand-dryers, I’ve noticed that when you put your hands in the trough thing to activate it, it is actually quite easy to accidentally touch the plastic at the bottom and therefore compromise the whole point of a ‘touch free’ dryer.

Obviously if you are mindful you can ensure that your hands don’t touch any of the plastic but after several pints in the pub this gets less and less likely I should think.

Brembo monobloc 4-pot caliper brake pad retaining pins. Taper fit steel pins in an aluminium casting that gets soaked by road spray. Very nearly wrote a caliper off last night trying to drift a corroded-in pin out.

In a similar vein: Land Rover’s conteputous use of aluminium and steel in the same structure for a vehicle that was designed to spend its life covered in mud.

Fiat’s rear drum brakes up to about 2004. The official method of adjusting being to replace absolutely everything, then reverse at full speed and jam the handbrake on repeatedly.

The drum assembly that bosch sold fiat to replace the above mechanism. Seemingly designed and built by an out of work Schwartzwald cuckoo clock manufacturer’s incapable apprentice.

Re air hand driers : there was a recent study done that showed using an air hand drier increased the transmission and spread of bacteria which is pretty obvious really when you consider how they operate.

The one way system in Kendal.

good shout

The UK housing stock.

Which has generally taken no account of where the sun is, are often packed in so tightly you never get much sun, and as a result make the entire country even more reliant on vast quantities of stuff dug up from the ground in another country, to keep warm.

The ancient greeks had this stuff worked out a few thousand years ago ffs. South facing windows. Space between houses in north/south direction. Nothing so tall it obscured the sun for houses behind it. Etc.

chainring bolts, tiny fiddly bits of aluminium that chew the little slots in the back if you try to get them off, would be much better to have two flats on the outside of the back bolt to get a 9mm spanner around

The one way system in Kendal.

Its like a mobius strip