Gliptone, the maker of various leather care and repair products make air fresheners with the leather smell in them to hang in your car. I’m yet to open mine as I keep conditioning the leather regularly and the heat build up in the car releases all kinds of manky leather aromas…

Get some 1/4 inch-ish plastic to screw to the feet. Stops them being sat on wet ground all the time. I’ve found it prolongs the life of anything made of timber that’s left outside.

If it’s a few years old it’ll probably already have a bit of mould that will grow under whatever you paint it with. Wickes do an anti fungal treatment in a 5l container that’s about £15/£16 I think. Worth giving it a going over first and then periodically after to keep it tidy.

Silicone around the outside similar to how you’d do a shower screen I’d imagine; any water that manages to get down the back doesn’t end up trapped behind silicone going manky then. Is there no instructions? There’s usually a diagram with the silicone sealing lines marked on it.

I wouldn’t sit glass directly on tiles. Even a small amount of movement between the two could cause major problems.

Is there not a bracket to screw in to the floor to stop the glass moving that will also raise it up off it?

Be sure to have a place for the ‘cold’ air to get in too. No point having the fan struggling harder than it has to. I fit inline fans where I can. Easier to fit, easier to access and you can put a larger one in for much less effort usually.

Milkie, did you have any sort of diy guide on the water pump replacement? It’s on my list of things to do, not the most pressing thing but I’d like to be prepared ahead of time so I can get it done if I find the time.

Very nice, clean. I like that Daffy. I’d have one in a breath. Currently looking at an e91 335d though….

I’ve dealt with/have had to deal with similar with family recently. Called 111, at the very least you’ll get some info on the services local to you.

Even given our local areas woeful infrastructure I was pointed in the direction of two walk in centres. They can do as little as being somewhere different for you to go, talk, calm down or they have staff on hand for impromptu councilling. One is open during the day and another open later on in to the night. Find out if you have these things available to you. Easier said than done but try have a plan on getting her to go to one any time you feel it’s even slightly warranted.

There are a couple of online help sites. You sign up for one and go through the programme at your own pace. I think it’s available as an app. Silvercloud. You might need a referral or login details providing by your GP. Mention it to them tomorrow, I think there’s a short wait so it’s best to get the ball rolling.

Going forward, whenever you can be sure she’s being kept an eye on by someone, get some rest. It can wear you down if you let it: Don’t.

Take heart in the fact that she has opened up to you. Know that you don’t need go it alone.

I’m really enjoying all the love the 130i’s are getting. Makes me more sure it was the best choice for my first car 😬

Downside being it’s making it even harder for me to part with mine…

Also, that 142,000 mile remark gave me even more confidence in the car.

That Autotrader 130i looks ok at a quick glance. Price seems ok, assuming there’s nothing wrong with it. The mods done to it seem pretty choice as well. Inkeeping with the car and similar to what I’ve done/Intend to do to mine. If you look on Babybmw.net there’s half a chance you’ll be able to find a lot more info about that exact car; maybe even speak to the owner or read a build thread about it.

The lemon interior isn’t as hard to keep clean as you’d imagine, it’s fairly unique and quickly grows on you.

If you buy it and want any help spending money on it when you do, I’ll be glad to offer my advice….

One thing I would say, it’s worth waiting for the right one. They’re not common but there’s enough about so you can have your pick.

Another vote for a 130i. Performance exhaust and golf tee mod (google) on it +20 yob points.

Ive a 130i le and the noise alone turns heads. Comfortable, handles well once you sort the tyres. Surprisingly practical, even though mine is only 4 seats. Bikes fit in the back, I’ve got racks for the roof if I need more space in it. I am considering the 330i, but only because I’ve need of the extra space for DIY purposes.

I’d convinced myself I could make do with the wheelset I’ve got for my 26er up until a few seconds ago…

Cash savings generally. Did it with my car, ~£5.5k. I did intend to get a car finance loan, stick the cash in an account with a direct debit set up for the payments and forget about it. Figured it would have been better to have the cash as a last ditch emergency fund and the interest rates on a loan that size are so low it was worth it purely for the improvement to my as yet practically nonexistent credit history. Ended up handing over a wad of cash straight out of my bank as I didn’t have enough time to organise it. If I come to change the car this will be the plan though. For what it’s worth my cars value looks to be about to start increasing so it suits my situation well.

Second vote for a PD engined car. My old mans Passat has just passed 200,000 miles. Pulls well, comfy, reliable.

Edit: his old apprentice from his spannering day’s has one as well, somewhere north of 275,000 miles I think. That one is definitely well used day to day.

28. Bmw 130i LE.  So far buying a 3.0l engined, rear wheel drive car as my first hasn’t been the bad idea everyone told me it would be. Fuel consumption aside I absolutely love it. Practical and daft at the same time. Bike carriers on roof bars and a hatchback means it does everything I need. Makes me grin every time I start it even after 9 months. I even went to the trouble to retrofit it with an indicator stalk. Paid £5200 for it, which I think is extraordinarily good value; they seem to be increasing in cost too, which is nice!

I still like driving my dads B5.5 Passat though. It was the first car I drove, and the one I did most of my learning in.

I’ve used quite a lot of the things mentioned above on mine trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Bilt Hamber Clay bats work well, are decent value and can be used with only water as a lubricant. Get a big bucket of hot water when you’re using it as well as a wash mitt or spray bottle. Dipping the bar in the hot water makes it a lot more supple, it’s easier and quicker to fold it and get to a fresh surface. The wash mitt or spray bottle is used to get water on the surface.

You can go ahead and spend a lot of time and money on products but I’ve found a good value combo is Autoglym Extra gloss protection after the paint is in decent condition. If you want to add another step in you can apply your wax of choice over the top after its cured for extra gloss and protection as a bit of a sacrificial layer, what you pick will depend slightly on the colour of the car. Poorboys, Collinite and meguiars are all good. For maintenance washing I use whichever neutral snow foam is cheapest at the time, foam gun for the pressure washer and then Gyeon Bathe+ as the final shampoo. It adds more gloss, as well as leaving a hydrophobic coating. It’s not as long lasting as some dedicated dealers but you might as well use it if you’re washing the car regularly anyway.

Make sure to buy yourself a decent microfibre cloth or two. The cheap ones are ok for basic cleaning but for buffing sealant and waxes there’s a marked difference for not much more outlay. Your arm will thank your wallet.

Ive got the same issue in a house my parents are the landlords of. We’re currently renovating so have taken the chance to tackle it. Solution has been to seal it off well from the rooms above, blocking any draughty bits and such. We’ve then installed an inline fan wired straight in to the mains, controlled via a switch in the room above. The fan is screwed in to the joist and vented via a flexible hose connected on to a section of soil pipe. The soil pipe goes up out in to the garden and has a pest guard over the end of it.

The advantages of going with the inline fan are that you’re not as restricted by the size of the hole in the wall (150mm dia fan in ours) it’s easier to access, wire up and replace if it dies and the bigger fans seem to be more reliable.

When the house is ready to be let out or rented again we’ll probably shift the fan from the joists as there is a bit of noise transfer, nothing crazy though.

Make sure your air bricks are clear, not just visually from the outside but all the way through. They’re supposed to have a duct through the wall if it’s a cavity one to make sure crap doesn’t block them at the back.

Not to be the harbinger of dropped tool doom, I will say I’ve seen heavier tools pull their fixings out of 18mm ply over the years. 4lb hammers and the like so nothing crazy. It’s not the weight of the tools as such, it’s the constant impact of them on the things holding them up; it just makes fixing go slack.

Adding more supports to any heavy items would solve this of course.

For what it sounds like you’re using it for that’ll be fine. I’ve been told I overengineer everything I make and I’d be perfectly happy with that.

Any chance you can return the boards and replace with 18mm? Doubling up seems a bit overkill, 12mm does seem a bit thin. I’m sure it would hold most things indefinitely, it’s just the heavier tools that you use often that I’d be concerned about. I could see the clips and fixing working loose.

If that’s not an option, rather than doubling up the entire area it might be worth spacing the front sheet off with some strips of ply where you’re fixing it to the wall to bring it out to 24mm, then some strategic areas of doubling up where you know there will be heavier things hanging. That way you make the most of your 12mm ply.

(edit: I need to be faster with my replies)

Another option would be to fix the clips/hooks straight through the ply in to the wall behind for the heavier stuff if the wall is suitable.

If you’re looking for new Allen keys to replace your knuckle destroyers I’d recommend Wera hex plus. Colour coded, strong and with a patented design that allows more torque to be applied to fasteners without them rounding. I have other good quality Allen keys from my dads days as a mechanic; they never get used no wheels I’ve got the Wera ones.

Have a look on YouTube for some tests/reviews that explain it better.

I’ve used the car detailing products I’ve got in the garage on bike frames I’ve bought before. At the end of the day it’s paint much the same as on a car so the results are similar.

Some sort of cutting compound works well to bring things back to life.  If you’re reducing the appearance of mild scratches and scuffs by effectively removing them I don’t think I’d feel cheated buying a bike off you. As long as you supply some decent res photos in the ad it’s on the buyer really; they can always decide not to buy.

My evolution didn’t cut anything like square out of the box and took some filing of the adjustment slots to allow me to correct it.

The laser isn’t accurate enough for anything other than decking, fencing and general carcassing work really.

Precutting your lines with a sharp blade, something like a Stanley/craft knife will help keep your saws running where you want them and leave a neater finish.

I’ve got 2.6 and 2.8 Nobby Nics on Flows. The 2.6 does have a better profile but the 2.8 is still perfectly fine.

I’ve used diff oil for freehub pawls, works well. 75-90 Castrol Syntrax as I’ve got it left over after changing mine. It’s thick enough to hang around but thin enough so that it doesn’t clag things up. Syntrax is a bit expensive though so anything similar from a motor factors will do for a freehub.

Thanks for this! I’d sort of given up hope on a reply. The wheel is currently sat waiting for me to get time for another go at it so I’ve saved the document for reference.

Recently worked up the courage to take some 7 billion grit wet and dry to a couple of scratches on my car, then give it a full compound and polish.

After the initial shock-horror the gloss started to come back a little bit and the final results were very satisfying. I’ll need to maybe revisit a couple of small areas but I’m very glad I took the time.

edit: the satisfaction is dulled a little when I feel my back twinging from doing the sills and bumper; I don’t know how people do it for a living.

This thread is already making me feel sick…. 🙁

All my spare bricks have already been stolen to use when nicking other peoples fancy wheels. It seems I’m out of luck completely.

As far as the spare is concerned I think I’m safe, unless they really decide they need to break in to the boot and steal the cans of tyre weld I have in there. It’s a daft beemer; no spare!

The really annoying thing is, the area I live in is quite nice. Reasonably quiet and for the most part decent people. It just happens to be not very far from a few places that aren’t so nice, and scrotes don’t crap where they eat so to speak.

I’ll revisit the issue when I come to fit them maybe, see if the paranoia and novelty over the new wheels has worn off any.

I see all your points, for the time being the crap bog basic alloys the came with the car are staying on it until the weather changes… probably some time in June. I’ve also already applied wheel sealer to the new ones.

I know there’s a million ways to get a standard wheel locking bolt off, I was wondering if there wasn’t something that might fill the hole in the alloy stopping or at least hindering those sort of reverse bolt driver attacks. Some of the ones that I’ve seen seem to be almost a solid head with a weird pattern cut to the specific key in them.

To put my concern in to context we had about 20 policemen and police dogs running through our back garden and climbing fences around our street looking for a scrote they’d chased to a nearby cul-de-sac at 4am. Apparently he’d nicked a car, wheels and all!

I went on the local papers website to see if there was a report on it, 3 articles on cars thefts and joyriding later and I still hadn’t found one about what was going on outside my door.

I might be being paranoid but it’s not unheard of for wheels to go missing in the local area, insurance will cover it if it happens to me but the premiums are already high enough.

Could you just blather the back of it in layers of foam double sided and stick it back in place with it, or does the shape/location not lend itself well to that idea?

I don’t know where you’d stand with it being a company car so to speak, but one of the big aspects of the M sport ride being too harsh and crashy can be traced to the run flats. If changing them is an option then it might solve your problem.

Ive got non run flat Goodyear eagle F1’s on mine and it handles pretty much everything fine. They are 17’s, 225/45 so a half decent sidewall, but still, I think just being normal radials is a large portion of the improvement over the standard 18” run flats.

Jagwire cable tends to have linear stranded wire rather than coiled and is advertised as compresssionless. The Ripcord stuff they sell made a massive difference to a set of BB7’s on a mtb. It’s also internally lived and the ferrules are o-ring sealed as far as I can remember. Might be worth seeing if they have an equivalent road version.

R.e ‘the stuff in the woods’, how much riding are you likely to get out of that? Is it easy enough to find and follow?

I called in for 5 minutes just before closing today to have a look at the place. It looks good, if a little short from what I saw up at the top of the Red and Blue trail. I’m just wondering if the stuff in the woods is worth setting aside more time for, say getting a warm up in on the new man made bits then off in to the woods with a quick go on the new section after.

I’ve just this evening bought some GE megalight ultra 130 for my old mans Passat. I’ve had nightbreakers, racing vision, xtremevision and a couple of other ‘high performance’ type bulbs in it over the years. They’ve all been an improvement, I generally go on whatever does best in each years auto tests. This year it’s the GE’s.

Ive found they do dim over time and see them as a consumable. I change them out before they go and stick one of the old ones in the glove box in the box the new ones come in just in case.

I bought the GEs from powerbulbs.com, they’ve got a 20% off offer using 20FEB as the code. I was going to buy them anyway so that was a nice coincidence.

Maybe I’ll wait until the forum is squared away…

http://www.vax.co.uk/vacuum-cleaners/cordless-vacuum-cleaners/air-cordless-lift-solo-vacuum-cleaner

We’ve got one of these; very impressive, especially for the money.
The main body lifts out and retains the all the working bits, hose too. It’s handy for keeping on top of the car and such. Means you’re not trailing an extension down the drive way and you have better access in to nooks and crannies with the hose than the Dyson we have at work.
It also came with a fair amount of attachment which may come in hand, one day.

TheDTs, you beat me with exactly my response by one minute haha.
I’ve done a few bikes at work now, some older ones which didn’t have PDF’s to lift stuff from. It’s a pain redrawing them but the finished product is worth it.

OP, if there’s anything you’re still missing / not happy with I’ll be back in work on Wednesday and might be able to help you out with the redrawing. Send me a PM if you like.

I think the Whippet had a slacker head angle than the Scandal.

I also had one, it’s a great frame. Not the lightest carbon one around but more than capable of a sub 10kg bike pretty easily.
The only problem I can see is getting hold of one if you’re after a 16″ frame. They’re like hens teeth precisely because they take 26″ wheels. I think people buy them to put their old but Gucci kit on for their spawn.
It took me months to get hold of one when I was in a similar position. When I came to sell if before Christmas it didn’t hang around long.

If you’re after an 18″ frame, there’s a dreamer chancer seller on eBay wanting £432.89 + p&p for one….

I used a ‘puncture proof’ inner tube. The outer side of it was almost thick enough to use without a tyre in an effort to make it tougher. Downside being it weighed as much as a tyre.
I cut long, thin sections of it out, rounded the corners and fastened it on with a bit of double sided tape and a clear cable tie at each end.

It looked very neat and worked wonders.

and could probably be served again

Who says you were the first person to eat those leaves?…

Is it the sign on an expert level vegetarian?
‘I’m so dedicated, even my poo is made of leaves’

So….anyone ridden one yet? I’ve just ordered a frame to swap parts on to. Mercury/orange.
Don’t know if I can wait until Thursday, next day delivery being almost standardised has spoiled me I suppose.
Still, I’m sure I’ll manage to not pull a sickie and be found knocking on Cotics door at 7am one morning before then….