Thanks! That brought the ROK down to a price I could say “what the hell” to :)

Problem I’ve had a couple of times now with non tubeless tyres run at low pressure is they slip on the rim. Which rips the valve off the tube.

So, after strenuous exercise, the people who had consumed less fuel earlier required more later? SCIENCE!!

That wasn’t quite the correct outcome (poorly remembered). IIRC, the half that had diet drinks ate significantly more than the bunch who drank the sugared drinks – i.e. net calories in were something like 25% higher in the diet drinking folk, even when taking the sugary drink into account. Naturally I don’t think this is the fault of the diet drink, but I do find that if I crave sugar (I’m fairly sensitive to blood sugar levels) and reach for diet coke, it leaves me feeling worse than if I hadn’t gone diet, but that is anecdotal. The show claimed the body sensed the sweetness and reacted to adjust for expected blood sugar levels which then never changed (due to the drink being cal free) and so the body over compensated and left you effectively feeling more of a deficit than if you hadn’t drunk anything.

It seems feasible on the face of it but I don’t know of the reality of the mechanism – does taste trigger biochemical reactions to control blood sugar content or does that only occur once the food hits the stomach?

I guess it would depend on if they are secured inside somehow. If not dangerous driving, so prosecutable.

Hardly. DD would be for driving offenses, surely you would be got under construction and use regs instead.

Either way, it’s stable, wont come out unless you’re in an accident and doesn’t protrude far, it’ll be fine.

the (Road Vehicles) Construction and Use Regulations 1986 indicate that loads must be secured, if necessary by physical restraint other than their own weight, so they don’t present a danger or nuisance.

If you cannot see why they want this [ whether you agree or disagree] then there is little point anyone explaining it to you.

I can see why they want it, I’m just baffled by complete irrationality of it and why the “authorities” seem to be following the stupid lead.

Yes, that’s dodgy advice, in a sense, but it does assume you’re already in a situation you can’t get out of (i.e. if you’re already skidding toward a vehicle you’re going to hit). At which point you have little other choice and ABS will help you out. I presume they’re trying to avoid what a lot of people seem to do and let go of everything and gingerly touch the brakes leaving the avoiding bit way too late (meaning the impact is at a higher speed than it needed to be). In a similar way to the fact that some modern ABS systems actually ram the brakes on 100% for you because our natural reaction is to be careful even in an emergency brake situation, oddly.

Swedish teachings;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadence_braking

That’s dodgy advice if you have ABS, nothing makes ABS more pointless and struggle to control the car more than constantly fluctuating command signals by the driver!

ABS will stop you faster in just about any situation other than thick snow, gravel and solid ice. From my own experiments in stopping distances (I like to know how my car reacts):

No ABS stops you fastest but with least control over direction if you close your eyes and hold the wheel straight.
No ABS with counter-steering is possible and stops you in about the same distance, but it’s hard to keep straight and that’s assuming you don’t have a 9 year old on a sledge in front of your car.
ABS takes quite a lot longer to stop (IIRC about 2 car lengths from 30) but allows full control of the steering and keeps the car straight if you hold the wheel straight, meaning you could steer around the child. Which is pretty much exactly what it was designed to do.

If you hit ice there’s nothing you can do, ABS won’t help, you’ll be spinning wildly so plan an exit strategy (i.e. if something looks like an icy patch approach it in a way that means that if you lose control you won’t exit into a pavement full of kids). Or if it’s that bad weather, don’t drive unless you have to.

The advice I was always given and stick to (seems to work) is drive carefully, to the distance you can stop not to the speed limit, and if you have to brake do so gently and no harsh actions, if your ABS kicks in keep your foot planted and steer to safety. Otherwise, use your gears to decelerate and plan well ahead.

I love driving in snow, it’s a genuine joy of mine – I’ll get up and go for a drive for fun at 3am if it starts snowing!

Indeed, I see no issue with cat poo in gardens. Assuming it’s your own cat I’m not sure why you do either, the alternative is to train it to use a litter tray. Forcing it to use other people’s gardens isn’t exactly nice is it? If you don’t want it, no-one else will. That said, I don’t care about cat poo, especially as it’s usually in the soil which is helpful for the plants. I find dog poo in the middle of my grass more of a problem (and far more common!).

FWIW from experience, the more you try to put smells down to stop cats weeing and pooing in a certain area, the more you force them to do it (territory marking etc).

I can just about cope with the poo but the garden birds have stopped coming now

It’s winter, they stop coming so much over winter :) But all jokes aside, we had 3 cats (2m, 1f) over 20 years (all 3 at the same time for abotu 10 years) and about 5 other local cats visiting, and a healthy garden bird population without regular killings, it’s unlikely to be linked.

Three week phone bill accounted to £350, I was told we get a £5 expense a day for calling home, not so much when you look at the cost of mobile to mobile calls from the US! Any way, long story short, I had to foot part of the bill to get the expenses claimed after much back and forth via email. The cost wasted with me messing about far surpassed that the company saved.

To be fair if I called my wife each night and still do so from abroad knowing it costs a fortune I’d consider myself to have a problem!

When I was away with work abroad you got nothing but your food allowance and basic board costs, you want to phone home you do it on your own wallet. You want to get a taxi into town for a beer, go for it, but don’t charge the business. I don’t think that’s unfair, anything more is a perk, not a right. Things like phonecalls home are personal expenses – why should joe get an extra £5 a day to call home if jim doesn’t have a family to call, can he save it up and blow it on hookers instead?

Because most common pets are dogs and like it or not dogs in general smell and leave places hairy and musty. Which takes a lot of cleaning and never goes away smellwise. Previous place I rented had a dog before us and vowed never again. And all the carpets and mats stank. Plus there are issues of people having pet allergies, meaning the next tenants may leave. Same goes for a bought house of course, but rented houses are really just money making machines so they limit expense and problems. Plenty of folk in the market to rent, they can pick n choose.

FWIW I’m used to riding in wet and cold for long periods without guards or any of your namby pamby waterproof nonsense, and love it…

[/url]
Me in Snow[/url] by j.buckle[/url], on Flickr

(But still re-visited this thread to look for commuter mudguard recommendations :) )

Still don’t understand this thought, with a reasonably quick flashing light I have absolutely no problems judging the speed of a bike. If the flash is 1Hz and the bike is moving stupendously fast, then sure it might be harder, but otherwise no.

In fact, I think it’s EASIER to judge, the fixed frequency of flash means you can very easily (if subconsiously) identify a bike slowing or accelerating by the relative position of the flashes.

Hell, if flashing lights are hard to judge speed on someone had better alert the emergency services.

The two ratings is a strange one! Never seen that before.

imnotamused : you have to match the voltage exactly (there’s a few exceptions but I wouldn’t recommend exploring them without knowing!) and ensure your adapter has AT LEAST the mA rating of the product at the specified voltage.

In this case, your pink object requires 9V potential to drive it and it will draw 300mA of current. So your adapter gets set to 9v and since it can provide 1100mA, it has capacity to spare and will be happy.

Have fun!

no. sorry. time to move on.

Indeed, you can’t do this in the UK without special installations of anti-islanding hardware (much like is provided by some renewables power conversion systems). Your house has to be pulled from the grid when it is generating (for a number of reasons, but primarily so you don’t kill people working on nearby lines off the same phase). Likewise if you get the power coming back on while your generator is on, your generator will without a shadow of a doubt lose the battle between it and the megawatt scale generator at your local plant. And go bang.

Humanitarian and health work was good until the US chose to conduct secret bin laden hunting under the guise of a charity doing vaccination, now they are prime targets.

To be fair.if he does work on confidential papers on the way and work late, he has a point.
I’m less bothered by his car use, more bothered that he gets free taxi. Any normal person would have to drive himself.

When for the same money as an 8yo car with very low mileage you can get one several years newer which has done rather more miles. Even if you ignore the actual disadvantages of very low mileage, that results in rather poor value.

:D of course, unless you want the older car rather than the newer ones (which are invariably ugly, over-controlling beasts these days!). To be fair my background does mean I’d not really be phased even if something pretty catastrophic happened to it providing I’d got it for a decent sum, which does sway my advice I suppose. My advice is treat each car on its own merits, don’t rule out high or low mileage, new or old, for generalised reasons.

Full service History is a must on most old cars, remember it is a monthly/annual thing to.

But dont be silly about it use your common sence. I work with a guy who has bought cars with full service history, with the opinion this is good. but they hadn’t had the major work carried out they just had a stamp.

To be honest I generally ignore the service history, seen quite a few in my car hunting (for me and others) that have been shockingly badly looked after despite having FDSH. Seen enough stupid mistakes made by dealer mechanics that I don’t trust anyone else with my cars, FSH means little. To anyone who isn’t confident I suppose it’s the only hope they can cling to, but IME it’s not worth much unless it accompanies an immaculate car.

Recently went to see a Toyota with a FDSH that looked like it had been dragged through a hedge backwards and left in a ditch for 12 months, rattled like a bag of spanners and had corrosion all over the subframes etc (2006 car). Compared to a private car 5 miles up the road with no SH which was pretty much flawless with zero corrosion, zero rattles and 3 years older.

know of 3, 2 have had issues with not powering up properly, requiring a 30 second hold of the power button but other than that they seem lovely.

indeed, condensation based “mayo oil” is totally different to sludge and HG failure mayo, with a little experience it is easy to spot. I’m glad there are plenty of people who are worried about low mileage cars, plenty for me to choose from. :-)

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I’m ignoring you now so I can continue in my own delusions.

Does that mean that you just leave it to pile up unopened until there is enough of it to be worth the effort to deal with it ?

If you got a letter from the bank today, how long would it be before you opened it ?

About a month, roughly. Don’t get any ideas, I check all my bank transactions online pretty much daily :)

You would have received one.

But I reckon if it was for Direct Debit you hadn’t just set up a day or so earlier, you might have remembered it better

:)

Generally mayo sludge is a failed headgasket, but I suppose the two look reasonably similar.

New door, cheaper.

Do you open your post regularly ?

Honestly, no. I rarely get anything by post anymore. I set up a DD between my bank and my credit card and I don’t remember getting a letter for that, maybe I did and shredded it but I don’t remember it at all.

I’m assuming you elected to never use a cheque book in the past too?

Sometimes you just have live on the edge!

:) I did once own a chequebook. Only used it once to send a cheque to my brother. It’s recently been shredded.

The oil will not turn to sludge lol.

To be fair this is a known problem with certain engines, certain oils and certain usage cycles, but not something I’d worry about with a BMW that has been dealer serviced.

http://www.schleeter.com/oil-sludge.htm

Sure it’s a small risk, but the outcome could be very significantly damaging and hard to disprove across a group of organisations (credit agencies etc). Whereas cloning my car I really couldn’t give a **** about as the worst that could happen is them accuse me of something I could almost undoubtedly disprove in an instant (I’m either at work with colleagues or at home with the missus!), and they still wouldn’t have access to my bank details or cash :)

15

Well. He didn’t sign it did he ?

So it was “unsigned”

I wasn’t talking about Clarkson’s, I was talking in general and pointing out it could be signed just incorrectly, so even from an individual or small business it could still get through. If they even bother checking.

And as such he is covered by The Direct Debit Guarantee and is entitled to a…

“full and immediate refund”

And if, as you suggest, they “didn’t check” then that’s their error, and the Direct Debit Guarantee covers that also.

You might get a refund, if and when you spot it. But it still means you have to keep your eyes peeled like a hawk. Plus you then have to prove that you didn’t sign it as the bank won’t want to write that cash off easily. All a bit too faffy and risky for me. I’d rather just not give those details out if there’s other options.

Not to mention that fact that with a few extra details you can apply for loans in someone elses name etc.

Game, set and match right there.

Erm. no. And I don’t believe standing orders are covered by the same rules as direct debits, but I don’t have time to prove that, but I can see where he got confused with the clarkson comment.

still a risk.who says it is unsigned? I doubt they check, they don’t with cheques.

generally 5-6 years is about the recommended limit ignoring duty.

indeed, but to be honest you should enter any car buying with she same level of paranoia, hence to me it makes no odds.

http://www.natwestinternational.com/downloads/nw/natwest_standing_order_new.pdf

only thing you need to know is source and destination account info.

what details do you need to set up a standing order to someone? fairly sure she last time I organised one the paper way it only required my signature and account details…

yep, check it could well be a chain.

realised the other week that my car is 3 years and 50kish iirc miles overdue a belt change!

Id be more than happy to buy it but would naturally expect a few issues from standing. That said, my toy car has been standing for 4 out of the last 5 years, nothing has perished and it all works fine. its also 21 years old.

Not putting anyone off, the needle stings bug its not painful, but every time I go I crash, shortly afterwards – dizzy, sick, hot, cold. My body doesn’t seem to agree with losing its fluids.

To me a large portion if the fun comes from getting out, wet and muddy. I would hate riding in the mud if I didn’t at least get a bit covered in mud I would just feel like I had a slow slippery punishment.

never done guards, might do on my commuter but only because no showers at work

won’t work. black road surfaces don’t reflect even medium power lasers very well. Especially when you plant a modern car headlight over the top. I’ve tried it with lower class lasers, anything high enough to see would be illegal to waft around.

I could write you a short book on this subject (a real interest of mine,I’ve mapped a few engines including my own from scratch) but I will simply say for a 1.6 petrol n/a you won’t notice a difference in power or economy worth that price. save your cash. there is plenty that can be achieved but it is almost impossible for an end user to discern the difference in economy or power without falling foul of complicating factors like the placebo effect.

And just to be pedantic, a service won’t give you any gains, it just cuts a few losses.

You can marginally improve some modern engines breathing and efficiency, but not while keeping legal items like cats, or original filtration. Some cars are crippled purposefully, but returning them to their full capacity won’t be easy or cheap generally if they are n/a. plenty of folk will tell you their mods help airflow etc but very few IME have fluid dynamics knowledge and understanding of the resonant tuning used by OEMs.

Ever watched the film Idiocracy!? ;-)