do I have any right to comment on what other people spend their hard earned cash on? No.

You have the right to say pretty much whatever you want, whether people will think you a dick for saying it is another matter. I do much of the former and am surely thought of as the latter just as much..

This morning I went down my local DHish trails with a chap I know. He’s not been riding off road very long, isn’t very confident and to be honest pretty slow. But as he works hard and earns good money he built up an Airdrop something or other, a stupidly light and very capable full sus trail machine. I’m there on my ancient SS hardtail jump bike type thing and leaving him for dead. I derive no sense of achievement from that, he’s learning and not hampering himself with a crap bike (although the carbon cranks are a bit excessive), it’s cool.

He left about lunchtime and I met up with some other lads, the leader of whom was on a high spec DH bike and wearing a neck brace, full face, armour etc. I was also faster than him, which again I didn’t think twice about until he started making excuses about his tyres not being very grippy and saying how good the Muddy Mary I run up front is..

It’s only at that point I started thinking that maybe he’s trying to buy ability rather than working to attain it. It made me think that maybe “all the gear no idea” comes down to attitude more than just the gear/ability ratio.

After killing a Nokia something or other I got a Sonim XP3340. IP68 rated, “shockproof”, battery lasts a good week with regular use and it has a very loud and clear speaker phone. I think all of them are SIM free. I paid £25ish for one used-but-like-new on ebay last year.

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Not a character but a real man!

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Alien vs Predator

Yet some how that didn’t happen to mine and has been running fine now for 2 months.

Then it’s a very slow leak..

Tilting only makes the water in the very bottom of the machine run out so that the float switch no longer has anything to float on. You will still have a leaking machine and it will still need fixing.

That’s interesting JD…. sounds just the same – it would stop will water still in the bottom, but after a reset it would drain just fine.

The control unit will only allocate a given time for the machine to fully empty, if it takes longer than that it will fault. So by the second attempt it may have got rid of enough water to then dispose of the rest.

So as suggested above it’s worth looking for anything that could slow down the draining.  Blocked/gunged up waste pipe/pump or even the houses plumbing are common. It’s worth taking the sump filter out and chucking in a cupful of soda crystals and a gallon of really hot water.

I’ve found that spacing the stem up or down can make a massive difference to how I sit on a bike so yes that’s worth a go.

As an aside; I broke my back a couple of years ago and when I was finally able to get back on a bike I found my long stretch, low fronted xc bike far more comfy that my short stemmed, long travel (a 456 at 130mm) bike. As my core strength has improved I’ve found the 456 more and more comfy to ride sat down. I’m also planning to swap the stem on the xc bike from dropping to rising in response to my improved fitness,

Out of the two I’ve only seen City of God, great film.

What did you watch and more importantly, what dish(es) did you have?

mist cloud over St Ives..

As far as I know it was misty as from Bodmin up to Okehampton today, it never lifted..

I left work at 6 this evening, the first time I have walked out of the building into daylight for months and months – spring is on its way.

The first day of the year when I don’t need lights to drive/ride home is a turning point for me, love it.

Yeah but most people don’t know about all that stuff that goes on daily so the powers that be just carry on normal service. For instance Britain still has every nuclear submarine it’s ever had in service. More than 50 years later they still don’t really know what to do with the decommissioned ones so they sit rotting away in the water.

If they tried to launch waste into space then everyone would know about not only that but light would be shone on how they deal with it now. That would be a bad thing for those in power.

In Cornwall the Snowdrops are coming out, also seeing the first green shoots of the Daffodils and some other flowery things are sprouting. Wasn’t like it weekend before last. I worked in a polo shirt all day today and most of it was spent outdoors, lovely.

I always want the clock to stop at about April and stay like that all summer, I’d happily give up a few extra degrees for a fresh breeze and dry ground. June-August here is generally crap.

Cheezy Peaz.

Brilliaaaant!!!

The way I look at insurance costs is to ask myself how many of the sort of car I’m looking at get wrapped around trees/stolen/chavved up etc. Put it this way my old Mk3 Golf Tdi cost as much to insure as my Jag S-type 3.0 V6, a car driven by ancient golfers, retired farmers and such like.

I vote Berlingo, with the old mechanical XUD diesel for extra reliability.

Lovely music, however I can’t remember the last time I was that relaxed.

As it’s nearly Monday here’s what I’ll be blasting out when I jump in the van at half seven.

https://youtu.be/tPIO86jTrQQ

Every van I’ve driven for the last 15 years has been a considerably better place to sit and drive than a Landrover.

The van at my last job was a 2002 Sprinter 108. Getting in that after my 1990 Discovery V8 was amazing. It cornered and stopped so much better. Thing is the Discovery with half the handling had twice the power to get into trouble with, properly sideways at 45 in it was one of my most terrifying experiences on the road.

BMW E34 M5 Touring. But it would have to be RHD and none of them are..

If the dog was a clear and present danger to your safety then I suppose you could justify kicking it to defend yourself. Otherwise it’s animal abuse and you’d be liable to a good kicking yourself such as I administered to the last person I saw beating a defenceless animal.

All that said I’m not actually that into the Xbox. It depends on your tastes but the Wii is cheap as cheap and with a bit of easy modding can run emulators for all the 16bit and earlier machines and run Wii/Gamecube games of an external HDD just for fun. There’s lots of homebrew software for it and of course lots of Zelda games!

There are only a handful of games with mandatory installation to the HDD. That said I try a game and if I know I’m probably going to play right through it I fully install it (an option for all games) so that the disc drive isn’t flogging away all the time.

It’s worth looking at the last of the “fat” 360’s for a cheap option. Storage space isn’t a problem as the HDDs can simply be unclipped and swapped over rather than taking the thing apart and recoding drives which is nothing but hassle and is the only way with the “slim”. The later fat models didn’t get the “red ring of death” anywhere near as much as the early ones plus they have an HDMI output if that bothers you (component is just as good). But they’re still cheaper, because..

Have a look at GBAtemp for a good guide to all the different revisions.

E; Nothing yet

D; Pistonhead lager, not my first choice but was half price.

L; My stomach rumbling..

Best tensioners I’ve ever used have been old mechs, bombproof, good tension etc. I think the best mod was replacing the jockey wheels with a rubber orange roller from the old school MRP chain guides.

I did similar but just removed one jockey wheel.

I also took the spring out of the pivot and locked it solid so only the cage can move. It saves it all flanging about. Used a 6″ or so length of gear inner to align it.

Got a Gusset SS conversion kit (spacers & sprockets) used for under a tenner and just to be swanky a Chris King alloy 16t sprocket for about a fiver, both off eBay .

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I used to do a little in a recreational fashion. It was very rarely and just for the novelty really, I just can’t get my head around how people can do it as a habit though.

A few years back I went to a free party and had no intention of leaving for a couple of days so got a bit “worse for wear”. The first evening I had some ket and went to the car to get something or other. As I locked it on the key I fell/slipped and in my stupor held on to the key in, I suppose, the hope that it would keep me upright. Well, my key fob was a carabiner/pen knife type thing which cut me right open. Didn’t feel a thing, for a while.. Ended up stitching it up myself, yeah I think that was the last time I used it.

May have to get some for the missus though. At times her neuralgia is just too much for her to take and she’s tough. It’s getting progressively worse and the NHS have been doing F-all for her for nearly a decade..

Love – Woodwork, not particularly good at but love it.

Hate – Plumbing, not very good at that either but really don’t like. Not too keen on mains wiring either. (Didn’t stop me working doing white good repairs for a few years though, the unholy alliance of both hatreds..)

Would that be the Footsy?

Some years ago Ride BMX magazine gave a KHE a bad review, not spiteful, just bad. KHE put loads of pressure on the magazine to try and get them to amend what they’d said. Instead they published all the correspondence to show the bullying and stated loud and clear what a shitty company KHE were. Awesome!

I’ve had my VW Corrado since 2007. Though it’s been off the road for a couple of years following a (none fault) crash which became an excuse for a bigger, tuned up engine and a respray. It has dragged on a bit..

Nope.

A couple of weeks with my missus would have you begging for a stay at Guantanamo..

Seriously though if he’s got a problem that needs sorting then I’m all for him trying to sort it out. We all have different thresholds for these things.

These two statements might be related

Oh they most definitely are. The poor old LT77s do not appreciate the torque the v8 inflicts. I dislike autos hugely but I’m trying to convince her that it really is the way forward in this case. Then it’s just the rest of the drivetrain to worry about.. It does sound damn good though.

I’ve always driven old stuff so the agricultural nature of them doesn’t bother, it’s the rust, the rust.

only when Im cold and stiff.

That’s why you rarely take more than half an hour away then…

I dunno about free but whoever you see go with your gut when you meet them. I’ve found that if someone isn’t the right one for your needs (understandable and commonly occurs) then you can end up leaving in a worse state than when you went in.

Be prepared for them to say that you should break it off and so also be prepared to state why you don’t want to (which it’s clear you don’t). Ask them to explain their recommendations rather than let them assume you’re taking it as gospel.

I wish you and her all the best and I admire you for really wanting to make things better.

I’ve got a very early Discovery (no ARB’s) and it’s like a limo compared to a Defender.

If you’re not going to be loading it to the gunnels then really is worthwhile changing the springs. Most seem to be rock hard at the back and soft as at the front as if to balance it out.. Hence a harsh ride and lots of roll.

The missus has a 130 with a GMC 6.2 diesel which needs a new gearbox (again), it is rough and it is noisy and leaky but the excessive power does make it fun (until the gearbox breaks).

I filled a set of Tektro Auriga’s with bog standard LHM from the motor factors and over two years later they’re still working lovely.

In case you are looking at replacements then JE James (I think) were chucking out Tektro Draco’s for £12.99 per end recently. If they’re as good as the Auriga’s then definitely worth it.

Defending what exactly? I have no reason to defend myself unless I feel threatened, which I really don’t I’m afraid.

Quite. That’s why I gave the example of my Mexican friends experience, though I realise the situation was a little different.

Yes being exposed to abuse such as that the OP was is bad but if what is basically political restructuring is all it needs to come to the surface so easily then we have a far wider problem to look at. I still maintain the mentioning of brexit was just topical and not of some deeper meaning (can you imagine someone who would say such things having a “deeper”?)

There are people in this country who hate others based on ridiculous, petty notions, they are of all colours and creeds.

Damn that was supposed to be a joke but I just looked at the bottle of J&B I bought yesterday and remembered I chose it because of Kurt Russell in The Thing!

I usually only have it for white Russians, ‘cos The Big Lebowski obviously..

It’s alright, I’d already guessed – it was the combination of completely missing the point and being defensive

That assumption says more about you than me.As for defensive, you edited out the line three below where I acknowledged I may well be wrong, how defensive is that?

Still I’m glad you’re around to decide for everyone what the point of things are, you fill a totally unnecessary role very well.

That fool who abused the OP would have still been a selfish racist who felt he was entitled to that car park space  whether we had had the EU membership referendum of not.

Years back I had a Mexican American friend. In about 2004 we went out drinking and he got called an Iraqi POS while (or for) chatting to a white girl at the bar. If Britain hadn’t recently gone back into Iraq it wouldn’t have changed the idiots prejudice he would still have been racist, it was just a topical insult is all.

(I voted leave and am cool with people who aren’t white British. I don’t agree with the ethos of the EU and while I know that leaving has and is going to cause problems and hardship I’d rather take a risk in the hope that things will be better in the long term. I may well be wrong but looking at the disgusting state of our society I figured the risk was worth it)