Actually I’ve have started seeing a fair few 29ers about since spring, and they look like they’ve been bought and are being ridden by normal people…. i.e. bought from Halfords etc, don’t look too high in spec and are being ridden down the street. Far from dead.

It looks like there will be a Nokia Windows Phone with the 41MP oversampling technology coming out soon (July 11th?)

On the current market the Nokia 925 has just come out. There is also the Samsung Galaxy S4 zoom, which is a compact camera with a smartphone attached. Unfortunately the phone attached isn’t a S4 but more like lower spec S4 mini. There’s the HTC One with its Ultrapixels too.

In current market it’s probably Nokia 925, with the down up side that it runs Windows Phone 8

Following a route using a phone and app is a PITA unless the phone is mounted on your bars

kudos100 I’ve been looking for something similar…. but it’s way down my to buy list and I’m not fully committed, some brakes are bit more of a priority, sold last set not bought new!… I think I’m going to go with a Garmin Dakota 20 and get some open source maps

Hypoglycemia?

Where you’ve gone wrong is throwing out the cup and cone bits……… you should have thrown the rest of the brakes out too.

Saying your location would help

…and if it’s Manchester/Stockport then this really is getting out of hand!

B******s regardless though

07 smax titanium with 5300 miles on the clock, dealer wanted 13k for it

+1 for not touching a car like this

My thoughts are it’s not as bad as you think. Proper Bolognese sauce takes hours to cook, needs a good simmer and requires wine…. also compare this with how it tells you to cook the a bolognese on the side of a jar of the sauce. Last one I read was brown mince, add sauce, bring sauce to boil, serve….ummm lovely chewy mince

If they teach them to brown the mince and onions then add sauce and maybe add some veg and let it have a half decent 20-30 mins simmer, then that’s going to be pretty reasonable result. Bolognese using a jar sauce was the first thing I learnt to ‘cook’. I now cook pretty much everything from scratch… including doing Bolognese properly

Also the amount of salt in the sauce is stated on the side, along with the rest of the ingredients. I think you can do much worse than pre-made Bolognese sauce

I have a Trek Cobia. The only things left “stock” on it are the wheels and seatpost. Managed to get some Reba forks off an X-Caliber, the model up, so mantained the G2 geometry.

Come the winter, I’m thinking rigid fork, singlespeed, maybe even Avid BB7 brakes for low maintenance

I’ve found the paint on mine (2011 model) is rubbish. The matt finish doesn’t take much to look quite scruffy in places. This is the only real down side I’ve found to it

I would suggest asking your current insurer for extra cover. I’ve done that before when having 2 cars, i.e. just bought new one and selling old one. Was a lot cheaper than £50 a day. But to back track a bit, are you aware of the law change?->

As part of Continuous Insurance Enforcement (CIE) it is a legal offence to keep a vehicle without insurance unless you have notified DVLA that your vehicle is being kept off the road by means of a Statutory Off Road Notice (SORN).

So you need to SORN it when you get it home

Plus, I always thought that “3rd party on other cars” only applies if the car is insured and owned by someone else. E.g. you can be covered to drive a mate’s car

I didn’t know Rob Brydon was into mountain biking…

I have the same bike and same shock. I was also surprised at how much it costs to service the shock compared to the cost of buying a new one in a sale like CRC has currently or getting one second hand one.

But if you think about it, you’ll still have to service the new shock at some point for the same cost. If the differences between the RP2 and RP23 are slight then you’re spending £62 more than you need too.

Can you see the Pressure Differential reading in the diagnostic tool?

If so, disconnect the sensor from the exhaust, that way it will see atmospheric pressire on both sides. The ECU should the give a differential pressure of zero. If is giving a reading of greater than zero there is either a wiring fault of the ecu is faulty.

If it gives zero when disconnected but a +ve Dif pressure reading when connected up to the exhaust then the DFP is blocking/has a higher resistance than than it should have.

With a freshly regenerated brand new DPF the Dif pressure reading should be almost zero. If it’s not I’d guess the new DFP is faulty/not to VAG spec and this is the cause of your problem.

This makes sense. I will put this to the garage. They probably used similar logic to get to their conclusion that it’s ECU/wiring

When the pressure sensor was changed were the pipes connected to it blown through to check for blockages? Blow an airline down one at a time and have someone listen at the exhaust pipe, one will be louder than the other.

They’ve checked that

Was the pressure sensor genuine and have you tried another? We have had a couple faulty from stock.

Genuine part and I assume it was double checked. Made no difference to error seen and it’s been to 2 different garages, Seat and a VAG independent

I would imagine it will have two sensors, before and after the dfp – unless the ECU calculates the before pressure. If two, which was replaced?

It only has one sensor that takes the pressure before and after, it just gives the difference (piezo transducer, if the pressure is higher on one side it bends the opposite way). This has been replaced.

Is this the same fault that the DPF was replaced? What’s the mileage?

Mileage is 115k. Car didn’t manage to regen the filter on a normally long enough motorway run. It was trying to do it, you can tell as the power dips. Garage couldn’t get a forced regen to work either so condemned the filter

I assume the VAG system uses some form of ‘special’ fluid to enable regeneration. This is normally injected in to the fuel/exhaust – is this system working properly/ Without it the car will not me able to regenerate normally

No eolys fluid on these, it’s a combined Cat/DPF unit.

——————————-

I think the world is against me, for some reason the tech support line I rang the other day for the DPF manufacturer, React, no longer works! Euro car parts also deny it ever existed!

Cheers Michael, I replied without seeing your response first.

Regarding 2, from reading VAG service training materials I have found that the car uses the pressure sensor, the 2 temp sensors and the air mass meter to determine the soot load in the DPF. Apparently, if the car gets no signal from one of these, it does regens on number of miles/hours driven basis for a while then throws a MIL fault further down the line. I have found that if the air mass meter is disconnected, my car no longer puts the light on after 4-5 miles saying it is blocked. So I am assuming it has gone into the per miles/hours regen cycle mode.

Regarding 3, if the ECU was knackered would I not see faults elsewhere?

I will not be deleting the DPF, MoT pass is only one of many potential issues. The others briefly are insurance, tax evasion, VOSA roadside checks and the fact it’s illegal. Lets draw a line under that straight away. I will sell the car rather than DPF delete.

The pressure sensor has been changed, along with one of the exhaust temp sensors and air mass meter (which was swapped and made no difference so was swapped back)

The DPF may not actually be clogging up quickly, it could just be that the car thinks it is

I was confused by “The Rules” and rang SW trains up, but they weren’t much clearer. It seems it doesn’t just apply to going into Waterloo, it’s the stations before too.

People on the train this morning with bikes, they were all folding ones albeit unfolded.

What do XT have over SLX?

Another vote for Shimano
Zee germans = £118.46 plus shipping

Seems like the non finned pads are supplied, anyone compared finned vs. non finned?

Thanks for the replies, I think I’m converted…

Look out for my For Sale thread! :D

You can get XT for that?

A pair? Where?

no

Not being funny but it took me 2 seconds to find the information you asked for from Google

They won’t brew it until closer to Christmas. Look here: Christmas Pudding Ale

Available seasonally. (October to December inclusive)

……

Available in Young’s pubs and Waitrose, Sainsbury’s and Tesco
….

How about selling it at a car auction? Price you get will be closer to px price but unlike px you’ll have the cash rather than just the money off a new car.

Get a valuation from these guys – Sure Sell[/url]. It’s free for valuation. It’s run by British Car Auctions (BCA)

Finally thought I’d try these out for a weekend in North Wales. At £25 a pair for folding tyres essentially made by Maxxis, difficult to refuse. I got the Enduro single compound ones

So last May bank holiday did Coed y Brenin (the Beast) on the Saturday, Penmachno on the Sunday and Marin on the Monday. Bit wet on Saturday and Sunday, dry on Monday.

Have to say the tyres held up well through the rocky sections and had enough grip on any roots/muddy bits. Quite impressed. They seemed similar to the Kenda Nevegals they replaced, rolling a bit faster than those though.

Sounds like she needs more one on one lessons in a resort where the instructor can gradually increase the difficulty of slope she’s on and build up confidence. Can’t really do this in a snowdome as you’ve only got one slope.

Maybe one session there before you go might help though?

You could go later in the season than Christmas, more chance of Bluebird sunny days and the snow won’t be a hard when you fall on it, both good for getting someone to like skiing again.

Are you looking for feedback?

(geddit? feedback..)

The feedback I got on one of my acoustics degree assignments was that I’d done “resonantly well”

I currently do R&D for mobile phones but have done other acoustics e.g. environmental and buildings

Thanks for the replies and ideas. I think the actual issue is that I will be living in the flat with the other half. If it was just me on my own there would be no issue! Feeling a bit more positive about it now

It’s not old enough to have one of those cupboards. I think there is some sort of storage cupboard for each flat in the communal hallway. Don’t think bikes will be safe in there though

The area is Longstone, just off Longstone Road.

Yes quite unlucky! But e.g. DPF and then DMF going would easily top £4500 in two shots at dealer rates.

Guess I’m one of the unlucky ones!

Servicing costs aren’t higher. And DMFs and what not are not disposable items. How you drive has a lot to do with how well these things last, so there’s a lot you can do to preserve them.

Reckons 20k to 30k miles here – Petrol or Diesel I think this is where I originally read it.

My credit card definitely shows evidence of the potentially large bills facing buyers of second hand diesels they mention

I’m sure I have read that unless you’re doing over 20k miles a year modern diesels just don’t make sense anymore due to higher servicing costs and issues such as diesel particulate filters and dual mass flywheels etc.

Personally I have experience to show that!

An old 1.9 VW Golf or Peugeot 306 diesel would be a different story

From what the VAG specialist said it seems to be climbing to 50% way too quickly to be actually filling up.

How full the filter is measured by the difference in exhaust pressure before and after the DPF. Big difference = full filter. This sensor has been swapped for new one (a couple of times to double check the new ones weren’t faulty)

Pretty sick of it now.

Just heard my car isn’t fixed. VAG specialist couldn’t fix it so today it went to a Seat dealer. Seems all Seat have done is change an exhaust temperature sensor and they’re using their get out of jail free card i.e. “Must be the new DPF as it’s non-geniune”. All sensors have been geniune ones.

Something is definitely not right, both garages have said the soot level won’t go below 20% and then pretty quickly gets up to 50% load.

If you have a DPF and the vast majority of the cars use is in town for short trips then, say, once a week drive the car in a lower gear to keep the revs high (say second gear instead of fourth, third gear instead of 5th, fourth instead of sixth). It’ll use less fuel and time than making a specific trip for a motorway run to clean it out.

The DPF regen cycle on my car (VAG/Seat) also requires speed to be above 40 mph for 10-15 mins. If you slow down it restarts the cycle and dumps a load of fuel in the sump apparently

I believe the VAG DPF system is similar to the Mazda one. My Seat has cost £1300 so far in new DPF (that’s a pattern part too, not genuine) and sensors. Hope the OP’s doesn’t go the same way!

What if the build quality was good but the wrong products had been specified by the designer? i.e. not giving correct overall mass, separating strips between finishes etc.

The incorrect spec did cause failures but nowhere near as many as poor workmanship and not following the spec in the first place.

The UK are leaders in other, major, areas of Construction, always looking for innovation to drive costs down.

This is also a very valid point

I used to test sound insulation in new buildings, e.g. between flats. It’s a good indication of build quality. The failure rate was around 30-40%.

I believe it was because build quality had become so poor that sound insulation testing was introduced.

most motorists don’t seem to give a f*** about the law

… until one day they’re caught and prosecuted for an offence. Personally I think most motorists are law abiding.

Thing is DPF removal is offered by lots of places. If it is illegal then why haven’t VOSA taken any action against these companies?