THe problems largely seem to stem from the electronics and electrical Items these days, and it hits all cars fairly heavily but the Japanese are somewhat more accustomed to small electronics than most. I have always had a Peugeot as a daily driver and never yet has one owed me anything, cheap as chips to own and run, not the lap of luxury but never fails. But I’d be very wary of a newer one as they seem determined to cram them full of failure points that even BMW and the Japanese don’t get fully right.

Oil in your fuel is a very bad idea in a modern engine.

Look around you, what do you see? I see lots of old cars still on the road and very few of them are Japanese. Manufacturers keep spares available for a limited time after the end of production, after that a hard-to-find spare can send an otherwise good car to the breakers

Loads of japanese cars. And I still get all required spares for my 24 year old japanese car. Go into a scrap yard, you will see countless dozens of fords, Peugeot, Citroens and vauxhauls, very few japanese.

My current set is….
F1 Mach1 18.1m2
Best waroo 9
best yarga 13.5
Can’t remember what my 7 is, North I think.

Been so long since I flew them :(

Japanese design philosophy seems somewhat better than European, generally. They’re more expensive when they do go wrong but much much less likely to go wrong.

My gas use has gone down this year. What are your actual values to see if we think they’re sane?

I fully agree with you, that sort of unsolicited data use is just poor form for any site provider. I’m happy with ads of a reasonable size, I actually click through many on here, but even on my broadbean line I have a limited data/plan (I don’t intend to stream anything, I’ve no reason to pay for what I won’t use and its not even offered here anyway). Thanks for flagging this, problem is now solved for me!

There was a time when it was considered rude to impact peoples data use like that, seems basic consideration has gone out the window.

Gearbox worth 4-500 for 70.
Engine worth 1200 for 300.
Supercharger worth 3-400 for 99posted.

No regrets here, reserve or starting price if you care about value, otherwise quit your moaning, seller!

I always find these threads about BT fascinating as I’ve literally never had a bad experience with BT at all. Line faults, broadband faults (even on other providers!) have been resolved in less than a day and with no fuss, billing questions, contract changes have happened without fail.

Maybe I’m in a favoured group.

Because a light coming on would only happen quickly and not in a nice slow progression.

Yes it’s possible, has been for decades. Even the new Maclaren Road car produces 6KN of downforce at full speed, and can go over speed humps.

It’s gonna be less effective but even a hint of light works wonders and streetlights do that

Yep I was really just looking for some recommendations :) To justify, (not that I need to but will anyway for the fun of it!) Is that I am a total light slave. I HAVE to have completed darkness to get to sleep but to wake up I have to have daylight, without daylight I can, and have, slept through someone hammer drilling the wall next to the bed. It would be nice to have them shut at night, or I could do it, but then open with the ‘sun’.

My other option is a daylight/dawn sim setup so I’m just trying to identify options.

Thanks for the pointers those that suggested so far!

Saxo is a good car to take but you could go more simple for security. Personally I’d go carb’d 1.4 pug 205 if I were doing it – almost nothing to go wrong, runs without water for hours, everything is capable of half-working when broken IME :)

How about ticks?
Flu virus?
Tapeworm?

Flu? Whatever, it comes and goes. Tapeworm – never had it. Ticks – get pulled off, but TBH they’re trying to eat me so I’ve no problems putting up a fight. If I’d invited a tapeworm to be my buddy, given it a home and love, I certainly wouldn’t be trying to kill it off – I’d just go into that relationship with open eyes in the first place.

Do you hold all life in the same regard?

I try to, there’s going to be a bit of a conundrum because I eat things but if I don’t want to eat it I treat it as well as I would a family member. I don’t think that’s particularly unreasonable.

I don’t kill insects, I don’t swat flies, I carefully put spiders out, I don’t kill mice if they get in – I just block up the holes and put them outside. If I have a pet I look after it like it’s a kid, I don’t see any excuse not to.

That doesn’t sound healthy, TBH. I’d find a new owner, it’s the least you owe it if you don’t want to get it a new friend.

IIRC there’s some issues with moving the users data from 8.1, be very careful.

http://www.zdnet.com/dont-move-your-windows-user-profiles-folder-to-another-drive-7000022142/%5B/url%5D

Unfortunately, Microsoft begs to differ. Quite vehemently, in fact. Their advice is firm and crystal-clear: Don’t even try to relocate user profiles to another partition or disk on a production system running Windows.

No less ‘ethical’ than shampooing your kid’s hair when they get nits.
Or swatting a fly, taking antibiotics etc.

You could say that about killing people. We’re all just animals. What if I think you’re a bit miserable and I can’t be arsed looking after you?

I’m currently drying my car out, but it’s just got a leaky seal. Even so, it managed to get 4″ of water in the footwells. Then it grew 3mm of mould all over it.

Seats and carpets out to vax, remove the sound deadening and replace. Spray WD40 over as many of the fasteners and wirings as you can find to push the water out, unplug all the plugs etc. Spray with ACF, dry it all out with dehumid, refit.

IIRC Samsung drives come with a package to completely migrate your old drive over, might be worth checking.

very

It’s bound to happen, but it’s going to be the end of my soul. I will resist self-driving cars as long as it’s humanly possible, purely because I love driving. I don’t even mind being stuck in traffic.

As for start-stop because of P-takers – possibly, but with any luck they’ll not be that sensitive and p-takers will have to know to get the hell out of the way as with trams.

They do sag, but not THAT much (my spanking new coilovers sagged ~10mm in the first 2 months and haven’t moved since, but the ones they replaced were about 20mm sagged over stock (but 24 years old!) You’re gonna have to either change the rears to match or prove that they have the wrong springs. Should be pretty easy to prove, the ride height details are usually available for most cars.

Looks like you’re not alone:
http://www.vectra-sport.com/forum/showthread.php?t=80436

I know quite a few people who’ve kept single rats with no problems. I think you’ll find no vet with scruples will put down an animal just because you think it’s unhappy.

I still can’t figure out what that means.

I guess if there were no legislation and it was just done on personal preference, it would be <shrugs>but to legislate that people CAN discriminate, it does seem wrong in the cold light of day. BURN THEM (but I won’t be boycotting a chance to ride there!)

What if it’s the only shop in town and you desperately need something it’s selling?

(Reasonably likely in rural Arizona)

Indeed, tricky. I just can see both arguments to some degree, and while I naturally fall on the side of “that’s wrong” I have a tendency to test a thought by playing devils advocate for a bit.

I don’t see how you can think, in the example given, discrimination should be legislated against for one group ie the unmarried, but not for another.

I think I may have mis-represented what I meant if that’s the view you took of it. I didn’t suggest any preference for any group in legislation? If someone doesn’t want my unmarried ass in their shop, fine, screw them – I don’t care(and while I don’t know for sure, I reckon I’d think the same if I was gay)! My thought was more that if people find something personally offensive, maybe it’s not entirely useful to force people to do those things against their will.

what if they all barred you for being unmarried or no one would serve the gays?

But that’s an extreme that’s not exactly realistic, or even close to as far as I can tell. If that were the case I could see the argument for legislating. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for gay rights (and unmarried couples rights!) but I’m also not for stepping on the toes of people who feel it’s an afront to their stupid religious beliefs for the sake of not offending another group. I’m all for opening their eyes and educating them, but forcing them to do something they don’t want will simply breed further hatred too. Rock. Hard place.

I think the difference between being unmarried and being gay is that one is a life choice that you’ve made the other is who you are.

As a staunchly non-religious person I’d say unmarried partner is “who I am”, to insist I must be married is to insist I accept some religion or notional form of religion that is acceptable to others?

Society marginalises despite laws; education and prevention of physical and verbal abuse is key to turning things round. But not serving someone is somewhat more akin to offending them, in the grand scheme of things. I’ve been refused a B&B room in Edinburgh because the owner didn’t like the fact that I wasn’t married to my other half who was with me, but really it wasn’t worth caring about and I found another up the road (Who also didn’t like it but didn’t feel they could refuse lol). I wouldn’t expect legislation to protect my right to rent a B&B room while unmarried, I will just avoid that B&B and not recommend it?

You may not be able to change their opinions, but you can legislate against their actions.

Yep, but I’m not sure what it gains you other than service by someone who hates you and will likely do everything they can to make you feel unwelcome anyway. Just go to a better shop.

But you’d have to actually state that’s why in the first place.

Ultimately there’s very few of these raging homophobes about, it makes more sense to ignore them until they die out than to boycott states who won’t even notice you’re missing.At the end of the day you don’t change people’s opinions by force, you either can’t change them (so it’s pointless trying and no loss to the world) or you change them with reason and logic.

In the UK people don’t HAVE to serve anyone they don’t want anyway, and they don’t have to state why they don’t want to. There’s no legal obligation to sell things to people?

(not that I’m suggesting it’s OK to discriminate, just that there’s plenty of ways to do it legally anyway)

Yep, but using specific heater repair ‘ink’. Worked fine for as long as I had the car.

No it’s not the same as ABS. ABS provides on-off modulation, engine braking provides smooth constant torque. ABS working its bits off is effectively descent control (super fast actuation of each wheel independentl) and is still not as good as proper engine braking on a locked 4wd, but is a close approximation for most uses. However the key difference is that ABS is designed to allow some slip, as that is where best braking lies on tarmac. In snow you absolutely cannot have slip, it’s a subtle difference that requires slightly different control algos which is why it needs to be specifically engaged on cars that use it. Incidentally cars that use hdc and have low range available usually combine both for best effectiveness.

The big issue is that descent control usually only features on off roaders, whereas gears and engines feature on all cars with similar effect. Of course engine braking is vastly improved if you have 2 axles braking instead of 1, and is even better with snow tyres instead of all season.

If one wheel slips under engine braking, would the other one on that axle not slip if you didn’t have diff lock?

Quite the contrary in some respects but with the same net result yes. Open diffs provide equal torque at the wheel outputs. In a powered situation, the wheel that slips sets the torque that the other wheel sees (basically zero) which is why they are not great. In engine braking the same applies, whichever slips first will cause the other to provide very little retarding torque. But the wheels will still tend to be turning at speeds similar to the passing snow/ice so they are more likely to regain traction quickly again. However the point is not to break traction at all, as this is often unrecoverable. Much like when walking down a snowwy slope in slippy shoes, if you stomp down trying to get maximal impact braking from your feet quickly you will tend to slip, if you try to smoothly maximise braking over 10 steps you probably won’t slip. Of course you still may run into a tree if it was too close :)

ABS waits for traction to be lost, or be about to be lost, then stabs the brakes repeatedly. Hill descent is a much more controlled method and is done different ways by different manufacturers but its aim is to maintain controllable slow descent without ever breaking traction and without large braking inputs.

Applying rear brakes instead of front first wouldn’t reduce dive, dive is caused by the longitudinal weight transfer set up when the car is decelerated, regardless of which wheels trigger it. Its a suspension design outcome. The only way to reduce dive on an existing car with any particular brake setup is brake less harshly!

Maintenance, Improvements, agents & solicitors fees, stamp duty, mortgage arrangement fees and all the rest.

Maintenance – none needed so far in 3 years, but clearly will in 25 years im sure, but I’ll own the property at the end which I wouldn’t with rental so you’ll have to take the maintenance of 25 years from the final house value. Say it needs a full roof retile and a dozen paint jobs it’s still not going to be a loss!
Improvements – not really fair, wouldn’t do a patio for a rented house etc and wouldn’t expect “improvements” from the landlord.
Agents/solicitors fees – 800 one off.
No stamp duty
No fees on mortgage.

A boiler blow up can blow your monthly comparison out of the water

Nah, a new boiler would barely set me back a month’s mortgage and last me a decade.

Also assuming house price growth ahead of income/inflation again would be very ambitious.

I’m assuming it stays the same “value” – i.e. I don’t expect to gain from selling at the end.

I disliked renting for a vast number of reasons. Not least because I got asked to leave because the owner felt like she might want to sell, then didn’t. Not least because there was monthly inspections and no bloody privacy. If I wanted to rent bigger, I couldn’t as there were none around, but a few villages over there were and they were approx 50% more a month. Doesn’t take long for that to grow spectacularly.

I could run the numbers, but I think it only makes sense to rent if you plan to move around a lot or are very indecisive.

Don’t need a witness. Someone needs to have diagnosed the injury as whiplash. Photograph the damage from the incident (the wing mirror) send it to your insurer. Ask them to forward it to the claimant requesting that it be shown to the doctor who has diagnosed the injury and verify that their diagnosis correlates with the severity of the impact that damage suggests

The claimant will of course not do this, either because they haven’t been examined and don’t have a diagnosis or they’ve lied about the nature of the incident and their symptoms to the doctor…. so you won’t hear from them again.

Dont know about anyone else but when I had a real whiplash claim (someone head-on’d me at a closing speed of about 35 in an old car) I had to visit a private doc for the claim to be registered as valid even with MY insurer?! That said, as my symptoms were stereotypical of a whiplash claim, the doctor asked the questions I expected and I gave the (truthful) answers that were textbook whiplash and he signed it off. You don’t have to be a genius to see you could easily fake it.

A friend of mine recently accidentally ran into the rear of a car (foot slipped off clutch, impact at less than walking pace). Details given, apologies given, accepted blame. Claimant claimed whiplash, dash cam footage showed actual accident from mates van. Fraudulent claim rejected in it’s entirety, mate off scott free.

Don’t start that one in here!! I tried a while back but as everyone knows it’s far cheaper to buy (still waiting for a definitive costing from anybody)

On a month-by-month basis? I was paying 450 a month for a 2 bed pokey flat on a main road with no drive, I now pay 410 a month mortgage for a 3 bed semi with 5 car drive space, gardens all round and a garage, 300 yards away from the flat which still rents at the same price. All other bills roughly equal. What additional costing do you want to factor in?