Can’t imagine why they’d care – makes no difference to their risk?

They almost always have the ability to wind the shoes back in away from the lip.

I wouldn’t worry any more about asbestos than I do when I’m cleaning the wheels…

Doing it slowly is more scary – hoppity-hoppity-droppity!

Don’t get this. Why is 4wd engine braking any different to the same retarding force applied through the brakes?

As Trail_rat says, if you go for the brakes MOST cars will put 80%+ of the retarding torque through the front wheels. Also, it’s usually quite sharply applied as modern cars are generally over-servo’d. Engine braking with a true 4wd it’s pretty spectacular what you can maintain control on. Naturally it won’t help in an emergency brake situation where you’d not get enough braking from engine braking anyway, but in a “driving around the streets slowly” situation, engine braking is really light years better than just braking. My car has EBD control and that’s pretty good but still nothing compared to 4wd engine braking for smooth slow control. MAybe some of the modern ones that just vary pressure rather than applying slip/grip/slip to wheels might be better – not tried them. 4 wheel engine braking is what the hill descent control gadgetry tries to emulate using brakes on modern 4wd’s, assuming the driver has no skills.

Water levels are “normal” round the Kelvin (According to SEPA).

I would argue that a 2wd car has the same number of wheels as a 4wd car.

But not active in “going” as they are with a 4wd :)

I don’t think you can write it off, but she would have a job claiming any subsequent damage.

If you stuck with the same insurance company the whole time I’d call them and request credit for the difference. Of course you’ll have to prove the difference they applied and get them to pay it out without swallowing it with an admin fee.

Sure, I made sure she got rain tyres with her new car but it doesn’t seem to have helped. Maybe it’s because the snow tyres are still sat on the old car in the drive rotting. I’ll palm them off on someone.

Have had a 4×4 for the last ten years up til last spring, bought snow/ winter tyres for the mundano this winter and we haven’t **** had any snow!!!!

This actually happened with my other half’s car. We had an epic winter (-17, gelled my diesel!) and she decided to invest. Sod all snow ever since.

Ah well, at least you get free trout for a few weeks.

My car got drowned at Strathyre last night, all going well til some **** in a truck decided to see how big he could get his bow wave and flooded three cars in one pass Karma I think for 2 days of almost rain-free riding at nevis range.

Pretty sure that’s a valid reason for reporting him.

4wd is NOT a replacement for winter tyres. 4wd will help you go but won’t do anything to help you stop!

Strictly, 4wd helps you go as well as you stop in snow (by bringing 2 more contact patches into the mix). You just normally stop better than you go with a 2wd :)

By far the biggest risk I see people taking is not getting stuck, it’s ploughing around at stupendous speeds in snow and ice. I spend half my time driving in snow adjusting my own direction and speed to predict where morons will go sailing across junctions and potentially take me out.

4wd with snow tyres, of course.

The section of road is the A6 between Buxton and Bakewell:

Lol, just get a half decent modern car with snow tyres.

For the record I have ploughed around all over scottish snow-covered roads in both a normal fwd diesel and a 4wd sports car with 125mm ground clearance (permanent 4wd with LSDs) and I’ve never got stuck once – it’s largely about how you drive it and sticking within sensible limits. That said I’d rather go out with the 4wd over the fwd, but snow tyres on the fwd make a world of difference. That said, I would rather have a nice tall 4wd with M&S tyres over any of them for those times when it gets really nuts, but it’s not common enough to bother the rest of the year with.

Interesting that that’s the view you form from the media coverage. AS and yes campaign have been very clear that they are willing and want to take on the liabilities as well as the assets.

Not from my point of view based on general TV and radio coverage, not really spent any time digging into their policies in detail because everything from AS currently seems to carry no data to back it up. If they want to be taken more seriously they need to address these areas as it’s a view held by many I know.

Open bath Marzocchi’s .Massive service intervals,bomb proof and great damping.No one bought them because they were 10% heavier than Fox.You bring it on yourselves.

This. I still only run my original Marz’s on my new bikes because they work first time, every time,and have sod all maintenance needs while performing perfectly well for 95% of my riding needs.

And the OP’s mate sounds like an acquaintance. No mate would take a bike to another mate for help and then complain that they broke something (that was already likely to be dead) unless the mate doing the spannering was being a complete tool at the time and clearly not taking care. IF you go to someone asking for free help you need to be prepared for the worst. If you pay a professional you can complain, a little, but not in this case!

What I find quite interesting about this, as a somewhat impartial person from England living in Scotland is…

AS an his bunch are stamping about saying how we’d be better on our own and not run by people with no clue what Scotland needs, playing the political and emotional A game.
When those people say “that’s fine, but if you leave don’t expect us to share your risks and don’t forget you still owe part of this” it’s “that’s so unfair, why are you threatening us? Stop playing a political game to threaten us”? What do they expect? Is he really that naive? Why would it be a one-way process? It affects both of us (badly as far as I can see) if Scotland leaves – of course they will attempt to prevent it, but at the very least they would be remiss if they didn’t minimise damage to their remaining constituents.

I like the Scottish cultural differences, but I like the security and buffers afforded by a union. They currently exist together, they may need fine tuning, but why throw the baby out with the bath water?

Not sure, I’ve just never found a network it couldn’t apparently see all traffic on, be it switch or router based? May be my misunderstanding, docs certainly suggest you can’t see switched traffic with it.

Can’t you just pop a Linux machine on your network and run etherape, you would see in a heartbeat where the traffic was from/to? Is what I do ayt work to identify which machines on the router are hogging the bandwidth.

To be fair to them it’s just wearing parts that are not covered.

Is it a valid test though – does Meindl’s Nubuck leather have the same properties as the leather of my Leathery Castanets?

Well I think there’s only one way to find out, and it’ll make showering slicker!

My missus has the pointy one, I have a GT4 (Currently being converted to a twin-charged setup as the turbo-only got boring!).

I can confirm you can 2 bikes and camping kit in a GT4 too.

Easy enough, yes, we get 2 bikes into the back of the other half’s. Not masses of space but it’s not bad.

You could try beeswaxing your bawbag to see if keeping the boots in a warm place helps?

6.2/0.36 BT, “normal” broadband line.

Stopped riding when i when i went to Uni and started working. Got back into it about 5 years ago but still struggle to find time to ride more than one a week.

This. Worst mistake of my life.So hard to get back into it, so hard to find it exciting anymore as I’m just not fit enough to get fast enough to be fun. Just never find the time any more.

I’ve been using the same stuff, not seen any problems yet but it was the stuff recommended by the seemingly knowledgeable chap for my Scarpa’s.

If I layer it on thick it does exude back out and rub off in use, the shop guy suggested 2-3 light coats rather than 1 thick and not putting the boots anywhere warm as this cracks the leather.

Has it this morning. No info back from surgical team yet but sent home without crutches and told to take it easy for a week and then get back to light exercise. No limits on extension or bending, put weight on it as much as feels safe but don’t sit for hours at a desk, no exercise for a week or two but bring it in slowly and see hw it goes.

Cheers, appreciated!

Looks like a nice idea but I like to jack cars up and use machine tools on the floor of my garage, pretty sure I’d end up either crushed under a collapsed jack or chewing up bits if I used it. But I’d have a nice warm back while I died :)

I had roughly the same question about the whole Jimmy Saville lived there, knock it down nonsense. It’s just a house. Get over it and stop your daft illogical ways.

I think the answer is “some of the above, maybe all, it depends”. Personally I was handed the pills on the first visit to the doc, tried them, had an adverse reaction so bad that it shocked me into looking for other solutions. I hated the idea of having to take pills, having to rely on something to control my thoughts and I decided to deal with it differently. The very thought of having to hand over some of my mental control to something else was somehow worse, like some feeling of failure. Those other solutions were CBT and looking at my situation with a more logical eye, while relying on family and friends to help me through. I felt I’d worked to a solution that made sense and that I could repeat whenever/if ever needed. I still have issues at times but I feel my approach worked well and has better equipped me to deal with the issues. That said, if I’d got much lower I might have needed a more brutal helping hand out of the mire!

It’s done to discourage people owning second homes (at the expense of local folk) I think. It also helps drive prices down in the rental market (you can’t just leave it uninhabited which means you’ll accept lower rent which means more folk have the chance to rent a house) etc.

My fun car currently looks like this:

Wheels,engine, gearbox, driveshafts are all I have for it right now.
And just when I didn’t need it the daily driver (Celica GT4) blew a ringland, so now I’m back to the 306 diesel estate.

Vid about depression

Real depression isn’t being sad when something in your life goes wrong. Real depression is being sad when everything in your life is going right. That’s real depression, and that’s what I suffer from.

lol, im not sure I like reading between those lines!

Cheers!

Well thanks for the comments guys, though one or two are a bit worrying! I’m booked in for an op on Saturday morning. Finally got to see the registrar who said it’s a “complex tear” and that it was very hard to tell what it was like until they are in there but I’m being done by the consultant who is top of the game, so should be positive. What still worries me is that SOME people still have issues and some people are worse afterwards and he said approx 1 in 10 regret ever having it done! At the moment it hurts a lot even on small hill walks but I don’t want it to be worse afterward and I dread the thought of choosing to do something that makes exercise even worse!

Tiger – how you getting on?

But, the vast majority of modern cars have fuel economies that were unthinkable 10-15 years ago

Not really, I can happily get 65mpg from my 2000 pug diesel estate on a run. That’s about what friends get from their similarly sized diesels of today. Some of the extremes have changed, I’ll give you that, but there are not many outliers. There have been no massive advances since commonrails were introduced ~15 years ago, only a handful of smaller lighter cars which naturally win on that front.

Mind you one decent volcano going pop and everything will change.

Not exactly something to use to ignore the issues though. We could have an asteroid impact next month and kill us all, why not let anarchy rule? :)

Seems odd to reinforce a child’s poor behavior by taking them on holiday…
:D

Personally I wouldn’t fit winters to the front only on a car where I don’t know the driver knows what they’re doing. They need to know that the rears are now MORE LIKELY to break loose than they were before, and what to do to control that. IF I don’t know them well enough to know that, they might not have a clue about the risks, then it’s a potential liability suit – just not worth it.

On a personal car level, I just try to remain within the cars limits. IF you’re in a position where you’re panicking about understeer and wanting to control it you’re probably driving too fast for a public road in those conditions anyway.

Yeah those idiots at Lotus and Porsche really should stop running different front /rear tyre widths and naturally oversteering cars. BMW have also had to wrong all along going for 50/50 distribution. 70/30 is far safer isn’t it?

Not quite the same thing, though I can see how it could get confusing.
And yes, 70:30 is safer, have you ever seen anyone trying to drive a BMW in the snow? Lost count of the the number I see spinning each year when most FWD econoboxes plod by happily at the same speed.

You do know that every time you brake the grip on the front is >> the grip on the rear due to weight transfer, amazing we don’t have everyone spinning all over the place every day…….

Yep, and if you fit supergrippy tyres to the front *increasing* forward weight transfer and forward traction while maintaining the same braking torque at the rear contact patch but unloading the rear reducing traction, you increase the likelihood that the rear will break free and swap ends. Same effect as when your rear brake bias valve is stuck in the “laden” position, the increase in brake bias to the rear is minimal but enough to give wet pants if taken by surprise (thanks Renault for a dodgy valve!)