Thanks.
Is xda the best place to find a new launcher?

I’m trying not to imagine why you might need to have “easy to clean” garage walls…
Next topic – “How to soundproof a garage” Ulp.

+1 on the “are you sure it isn’t broken?”
My broken wrist took 1 Gp visit and two visits to a+e to diagnose.
There are a lot of small bones in your wrist – mine was broken in two different places (fell off a skateboard) but the first xray missed both.
Breaking my right wrist as a fourteen year old was a VERY big deal!

Some nice product placing for ctek and xcp products in that little video – he learnt a few tricks from discovery before he left…

Our lab ate an entire 12″ fully iced and decorated Christmas cake in about a minute, complete with plastic santa on top.
Being a Yorkshireman, my Dad simply waited for nature to take its course, fished the santa out of the poo, washed it off and declared it was fine to reuse next Christmas.
My Mum chucked it out when he wasn’t looking, my Dad grumbled about her “throwing away a perfectly good santa” every Christmas for years…

jam bo – Member
“that no-one will be killed or seriously injured in a Volvo by 2020”
what about by a Volvo

Post of the week – well done sir.

no, but only because of the expensive problems rather than the polution

But what about the fluffy kittens and butterflies?!

Am I missing something??

Nope.

Pcp is attractive to some people as they can get a shiny new car without a huge deposit or large monthly payments.
Dealers love Pcp as nobody ever buys the car after three years, so they get to sell them another new car.

If the “shiny new car” bit isn’t important to you then save your money.

CountZero – Member 

S’up with the Mokka, then? I see shit-loads of them around.

There are loads about, I think they are heavily discounted – I’ve heard they are pushing the Fiesta close for no.1 sales spot in some parts of the country.
I’ve recovered a few with catastrophic engine failures but mostly it’s the usual build quality problems – loose bolts, plastic clips breaking causing wires and pipes to rub through, that sort of thing.

Rumours today that Peugeot / Citroën are in talks to buy General Motors European operations (i.e. Vauxhall /Opel)
Vauxhalls “that’ll do, let’s go down the pub” design and quality control philosophy combined with Citroën ‘innovative’ electrics – what could possibly go wrong?!

To be fair, you’re setting a fairly low base as your comparison there. Towards the end Rovers were appallingly badly put together – poor quality parts and an unmotivated workforce ( largely due to worrying about their next paypack) were not a great combination.

Fair enough, you’re probably the kind of buyer Vauxhall are aiming the car at.
We’re seeing a lot of problems with Insignias and especially the hateful Mokka, but the Astra seems less troublesome. Seeing as the Zafira is basically a bloated Astra hopefully you’ll be fine.

You bought a Vauxhall? Wow.
I thought people only drove those if it is the only choice as a company car.
I know it is big, but plenty of decent manufacturers make big cars.
Just make sure you put some money in a jar every week to pay for the repairs.

Small Hampshire village…

The one Chinese is a lovely fella who spends most of the year in Hong Kong.
The “other Asian” is the result of next doors son having Zero social skills – so he bought himself a Thai bride.

We went from Whistler to Jasper via Kamloops.
It is a very long way – not so much the distance but your average speed. The roads are certainly not motorways, more like British B roads a lot of the way.
Kamloops is a bit of a dive, it seems to exist only because it is halfway between two much more interesting places and you need somewhere to stop.
We loved Jasper, Banf is a nicer setting but a bit too touristy for my liking.
Lake Louise is stunningly pretty, very popular with tourists but as ever, you only need to walk more than 200 yards from the carpark and you’ll leave 99% of them behind.
I can’t believe nobody has mentioned the beef yet! You’ll never have a better steak than in Alberta. And in Jasper they do a slow cooked pot roast that is to die for…
Enjoy your trip, I’m insanely jealous!

6-8,000 miles a year and you’re buying a diesel?
I’d be looking for a petrol version, it’ll be cheaper to buy and run (and considerably better for the environment, if that bothers you).

Just make sure you’ve got good AA cover. *Cough* email in profile…

Tor browser will get you past all the parental controls.
If you’re not sure how to set up tor, ask your kids…

Just read that back, thought I’d better clarify – when I say my friend was “astonished” by the pay, I don’t mean in a good way – it was considerably less than she was earning at the state school. She negotiated up to parity, but if you’re expecting a pay rise then you’re likely to be disappointed.

Not a teacher, but a parent who has moved their child from a state school to a small (ish -200 pupils) independent school.
My observation is that the teachers have a lot more time to teach, as opposed to managing the behaviour of the class. Having said that, there is a lot more expectation of them. Detailed individual reports every term with data and examples to back up their views are required. Prep ( homework) has to be set individually for each child and marked promptly.
The school is a business so expect to have to negotiate hard to get the wage you deserve, a friend of ours who teaches at my sons school said she was astonished at the salary she was initially offered.
The teachers work hard but seem genuinely satisfied with the job.
The comments about unlimited disposable income are not necessarily true – at some schools certainly but at my sons school there are plenty of parents who are making financial sacrifices to afford to send their kids there. Sure, there is one guy who does the school run in his Maserati, but he is heavily outnumbered by tatty Golfs and Corollas.

Harsh as it sounds, singletrackmind is correct – this is unlikely to be a cheap or easy repair and will probably cost more than the car is worth.
Doesn’t mean you can’t fix it, if you enjoy that sort of thing it would be very satisfying to get it going yourself and prove everyone wrong!
This is quite an informative (if somewhat dull) video explaining how the Cvt gearbox works.
https://youtu.be/W95YjQ7b3ao
I think it is likely that the starter clutch has failed, I know Honda replaced a few under warranty but yours is out of the warranty period the odd mile or two…

Your “Diesel no good for round town stuff” opinion is still very much correct. Diesels of that age are very prone to egr and dpf problems if used predominantly for short journeys.
The vwg 1.6 diesel isn’t a great engine either, we are seeing loads of breakdowns with injector faults and they are £800 each to replace.
Buy the petrol version of whichever you prefer – the 1.4 engine is pretty nippy, fairly economical and much less likely to cause you expensive problems.

All the vans in our company are restricted.
I find it so stressful on the motorway that I now just trundle along behind a lorry instead.
I’m clearly not alone, the company is moaning that the average drive time to jobs has increased a lot recently. The overtime bill must be going up nicely…

I suspect that the lining has come loose from your brake shoe.
This then jams against the other brake shoe, locking up the brake.
You will need to remove the drum to remove the broken lining and fit new shoes.
This is a LOT easier if the drum is turning, if it is jammed it is a right ball-ache.
So,if it won’t go forward you are looking at contacting your breakdown organisation.
Mike (Roadside Patrol for a certain well known yellow motoring organisation)

There looks to be 6mm left on the brakes so that is an option, I’ll have a dig in the garage to see if I’ve got an old 26″ wheel I could test fit.
Thanks for the advice!

The mtb is only 24″ wheels, fine for charging down Queen Elizabeth country park but will never be particularly quick, even with skinnier tyres.

I checked that, there is a fair amount of clearance – not enough for full on mud tyres but plenty more than the 25c tyres on it currently.

Don’t service it!
You’ll be keeping me in a job! (Roadside repair bloke for a well known yellow motoring organisation)
Seriously, get it serviced.
Don’t use a main dealer (unless it’s under warranty), find a good local independent garage.
I can never understand how people will happily spend several thousand pounds buying a car, but then baulk at spending a couple of hundred servicing it.
Servicing makes your car last longer, be more reliable and more valuable when you want to sell it.
Ask around, find a good local garage and get it booked in.
Or, don’t service it – I can offer you a good price on breakdown cover – you’ll need it!

South coast here.
Last year I got fed up of the potatoes taking over my veg patch.
So I dug it up and removed every trace of potatoes.
This year my supposedly bare vegetable patch has about 10 thriving potato plants…
Nothing else is growing yet.

Is he in the AA /rac?
If so, call them out and they’ll plug in the diagnostic for free and advise them what needs doing.
There’s no way to turn off the light without some form of diagnostic equipment.

There is an area of Southampton called Itchen.
The Beaver leaders from there always mumble when you ask which district they are from…

4g is a lot faster, I wouldn’t go back to 3g.
Also bear in mind that all the investment by the phone companies is into 4g – on my company phone which is 3g only coverage and speed has got noticeably worse over the last few months.

Have you got a BT landline?
If so try BT mobile – I pay a tenner a month for 500 mins, unlimited texts and 2 gig of data. I was with giffgaff before and I find that 4g is far better on BT.

We’ve got an AEG dishwasher, bought to replace a Bosch one that didn’t last as long as I hoped.
Big mistake. It’s a cheaply made piece of rubbish. The seals don’t fit and constantly leak, the wheels for the runners are made of a cheap, brittle plastic that lasts about 6 months.
Buy cheap buy twice? – It wasn’t even particularly cheap! Grrr….

A ten year old Vectra?
It’s worth a few hundred quid at the most.
You’d be crazy to spend anything on it, other than the bear minimum needed to keep it running and legal.

I work for one of the large breakdown organisations, ping me an email…

Engine mounts?

The manufacturers deliberately make these circuits difficult to work on because they don’t want diy’ers playing with them. Both airbags and seatbelt pretensioners contain small explosive devices which are powerful enough to cause nasty injuries if you get it wrong.
As said above, disconnecting the battery for a long time is essential, do some proper research (maybe not just a mountain bike forum!?) and don’t be surprised if you have to take it to a garage anyway to get it coded in.

I had a 1.6 diesel for a hire car recently. It had plenty of poke, but only in a 500rpm range, so you were constantly changing gear. The gearshift wasn’t particularly pleasant so it got really annoying after a while having to keep going up and down the box to keep the engine in its sweet spot.
If you let the engine drop below 1500rpm then trying to accelerate resulted in a bit more noise but no more speed. Drop a couple of gears and it’d be fine.
Test drive one and then try the 2.0 – they’re more relaxing to drive.

Fair point.
But I’ve done around 15,000 breakdowns now so you could say my anecdotes are data…

The reliability index is useful, but as ever, you can prove anything with statistics.
I work as a Roadside breakdown patrol for a well known motoring organisation and all I can say is I see a lot of French cars that have stranded their owners at the side of the road.
It may be that other makes have more faults (I’m looking at you, VAG group) but they are less terminal meaning the car is driven to the dealer as opposed to being towed in by me.