Do we think kids today would be able to survive? I rather suspect not….

I still occasionally lust after one of these:

Parking in MK? just buy an EV and there’s a “parking space” right outside the front door of pretty much anywhere you want to go! So much so, that i’m even thinking about fitting a charging socket to our diesel…….

Turntable vs CD is nothing to do with the quality or sound of the music, although each has a distinctive sound associated with it, no, it’s to do with the “act” of listening to music itself.

With CD, you can skip or repeat tracks, using a remote control without getting up from where you are sat, with a record, realistically, you put the needle into the run-in groove and listen, until the needle is in the run-out groove.

That makes the experience very different imo. When you listen to music on a record, the act of listening becomes a thing, and act in its own right, quite separate to the music itself.

Whilst a shortie is a bit easier to get into and out of, ime, what matters more is how well a wetsuit fits you! A decently fitted modern full suit is easy to get on and off, and will keep you hugely warmer.

Warm of course is relative, some people (like skinny minny me) really feel the cold, some people don’t seem too feel it nearly as much. Without wishing to be fatest, the biggger the person you are, the more fat you have, the less cold you’ll feel, due to simple physics.

Being warm during a swim really does change it from a “how soon can i get out” to a “wonder what’s round the bend / over in the next bay / down that little stream” kind if thing.

The only reason to take a thinner or smaller wetsuit is because you are walking miles to get to your swim imo…….

perchypanther: You should taser the wife and buy an Xbox instead.

Can we make this a STW sticky, it seems sensible advice?? :-)

i’d say some sort of small crane ought to do it??

:-)

The only “ex lifeboat” i’d want to captain is one of these:

Proper hull and 3,200 horses to push it around :-)

Vertical radiator, set back from front of vehicle, suggests earlier 1930’s, as by the end of the 1930’s cars started to get sloped back radiators as the “aerodynamics” of aircraft started to creap into their styling.

Top of the rad surround also sloped upwards in the middle, suggests a bonnet that wasn’t flat that mirrored those lines, also seen in the line of the top of the firewall bulkhead. Perhaps suggests “Car” rather than “truck” in terms of coachwork?

Left hand drive, conventional pedal layout (clutch->Brake-> Accel) Art-deco “dash” embossing, Flat style pressed wheels, i’m thinking 1930’s small truck, maybe from the USA? International Harvester or something – looks to be a diamond shaped badge embossed on the radiator surround. It’s not a V8 though, so perhaps not……

Easy, that’s a Landrover Defender…..

:-)

We roamed the Didcot badlands in the mid 1980’s, looking for fuel, taking our chance on the road……… ;-)

too easy! next! :-)

Ok, here’s one, well sort of, here’s my first “car” built, from lots of scrap cars when i was 15, and used to raz around the friendly next door farmers fields (back when they used to let you do that sort of thing….)

Now who can name any of donor the cars from which the parts were taken???? Good luck, you’ll need to be a real 1970’s car nerd to get em!

Upside down car is an Astra or Cavilier SRI by my reckoning?

Vauxhall always used those pressed steel lower wishbones, and 8V C20NE enigne had exhaust at the front and intake at the back,so needed the exhaust to run under the sump, and SRI had a long secondary headers to make good low down torque

Ok, i’m calling it, Nissan Almera, mid 1990’s spec 1.6 petrol

Here’s the GA16 engine

https://bparts-eu.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/ftp/delfincard_2/000/000/932/000000932151.jpeg

https://shopcar.parts/product_images/00145212_3099128804_ga16-engine-nissan-almera-1997-1.6l.jpg?big=1

Cam cover has the crank case breather taping in the right place

Bent “angle iron” engine mount looks right

Alternator in right place, PAS in right place, plate and lump of front cover to access cam chain tensioner in right place

Lifting eye on back of block looks v similar

What do we reckon??

double Chain driven cams in a 4cly transverse engine, which might be a N/A deisel looking at whats left of the exhaust manifold, or that could just be the remains of an EGR system.

Enigne mounts are pretty clunky looking, especially the off side one.

It had power steering, and split fold rear seats.

Rear bumper bar looks very sustantial, too much so for a small car, and the construction of the body looks chunky too, lots of big flat folded welded bits. It’s unibody though, no seperate chassis.

If it’s the exhaust sticking out the back, it’s small and plain

Possibly leaf sprung, as what might be the front spring hangers are visible, certainly not torsion bar, because the fuel tank is where the bars would need to go!

I suspect it’s not that old, late 80’s early 90’s?

Any other identifying features people can spot?

doh! yes, i can’t count, pic is across 14/15

Happy ending? wow she must have been pleased to get her keyfob back……… ;-)

Whiteroom +3

@duncancallum how do you know their bear is cheap? Did he not get his round in?? ;-)

Leave it backwards, when asked, tell people it’s because your whips are soooo sick you actually land back wheel forwards and hence need more tyre grip that way around….

#sickskills

Always makes me lauch when people say “but extracting rare earth elements is polluting”

Yes, yes it is, but:

1) Those elements are not actually “used up” by the vehicle, and hence can be recycled and re-used. If it proves expensive and dirty to extract those elements, then that actually makes it more likely that they will be re-cycled! (nobody throws away a gold watch, everybody throws away a plastic one…..)

2) Do they assume that extracting hydrocarbon fuels is clean? Lets face it, the environmental damage done by the extraction of oil and coal will outweigh that done by any other industry for thousands of years!

Lets face it, even with the help and assistance of the “wardrobe and makeup department” no straight man ever has hair that good for that many years……

/stereotypecity

I’ve just watched the Brexit news sections on BBC, ITV and C4 news.

Each channel interviewed members of the general public, and between all the interviews i saw, there were approx 9 people who voted to leave who were asked “why did you vote leave, and what benefit will leaving bring?” and not one, not one single person, could answer the question.

Lots of Hmm’s, er’s, and “we’re taking back control” sound bytes, but not a single, actual, objective or proveable fact was given in response.

All these amazing ideas and chemes for new tax incentives, new industry, employment and social services. Terrific and all that, but where is the money coming from?

(the answer is of course a rise in taxes……)

The other big concern i have is over energy security. Leaving Europe reduced our “energy catchment area”, as we try to move to renewables, and as our exsiting generation assets age (a lot of our baseload assets are already running well into “overtime” ie are running past their design life today), will we really be able to negate “amazing deals” for energy from our European neighbours.

Immagine the bargaining table conversation:

UK: We’d like to buy some of your electricity
Europe: OK, great, of course, it’s £1 a kWh.
UK: WHOA THERE! what, £1? your’re having a laugh!, we’re oonly gonna pay 10 pence per kWh
Europe: Ok, bye. thanks for asking!
.
.
.
2 years later, and with the lights turning off across the UK

UK: Hey Europe, we’ve changed our mind, we’ll pay that £1 now
Europe: Hah, no, it’s £2 per kWh now……..

If you’d been going a LOT quicker then you wouldn’t have arrived at that corner at the same moment the tractor also did, so you’d have been fine that way too!

#makeprogress ;-)

I’ve driven an EV for 3.5 years.

It’s been charged away from home exactly zero times……….

Return to form i think! Lets see if they can keep it up for the rest of the series…….

@grtdkad all the best drivers crash at Millbrook!

Remember this:

;-)

I think we should be careful with using the word “damage” when what we really me is “a bit muddy”…

All trails wear out, as do all mountains, 5 million years ago Norfolk was not flat! Where our trails have a huge useage (peaks, lakes etc) then i can see why we would need to limit the erosion (erosion not damage) simpy to make access to these trails easy for all, but realistically, the countryside is muddy, it’s not chocolate box picturesque perfect.

Wear the right shoes fit the right tyres and us humans can go anywhere. No, you won’t be able to get out of your white leather faux by four and walk in your high heals, but that’s not how the countryside is, or has ever been.

(as mentioned, certain parts will need to be paved or improved, as for example access for wheelchair or disability users is important, and no we shouldn’t ‘needlessly’ erode our countryside, but to say it’s damaged is eronious in the most part imo)

That was, relatively speaking, a really nice high speed crash!

Lots of relatively small hits, spread over a long period, so no massive deccel or cabin intrusion.

I’ve actually seen much worse in my time working in the WRC, probably the one we all went “wow, how did they walk away from that” was Petter Solberg’s meeting with the infamous hinkelstiens on the Rally of Germany in 2004:

When we inspected the car at Prodrive there were a few cracks and breaks in the cage that simply would not have taken another impact without significant and probably fatal cabin intrusion. After that event we actually redesigned the cage and composite side protection to attempt to put some more strength in certain critical places….. (16 years later i still get a cold chill looking at those pictures of his wrecked car again)

I wouldn’t bet on the Russians too heavily, well at least not historically!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe

Back in the days of the cold war, the Russians took massive risks to try to get ahead of the americans, and it bit them hard!

There was an amazing documentary on, iirc, BBC4 a while back that covered the building of the Forth road bridge 50 years ago!

Found it: https://vimeo.com/channels/1010566/151384767

inc. fasinating footage, from an amature cameraman who “unofficially” documented the build

When we all drive EVs, car fires will actually fall by around 80%.

This is because 80% of the worlds car fires are caused by hot exhaustline components (often the catalyst) setting fire to dry grass or scrub when the vehicle is parked off road after being driven!!

EVs, are of course “cold” underneath,s o even if they are more likely to catch on fire themsleves (they aren’t) the overall number of car fires would go down enourmously

(obviously, in the uk, where it rains and our grass is green, car exhausts setting things of fire is not that common, but i a lot of the world, it’s VERY common!)

She’s not after my money. But if she was, i’d probably still give it to her

the money that is…. ;-)

Who are you calling sad??? ;-)

ok, NOW this thread is going in a proper weird direction!

slowly, slowly, catchy monkey?

(not that i’m suggesting MrsMc is a monkey……. ;-)

Between getting Narc’d and hitting the wacy-backy i suspect that a lot of the crabs do in fact talk if you just know how to listen……..

Ah, it’s so nice to see the STW shoulder is still such a cold and hard place to cry on!

Oh, shes not Thai, she’s from Oklahoma…….

(and the main issue is that she’s basically Moana (from the film of the same name) ie she’s always looking towards the thin line where the Sea meets the Sky, home for her, is NOT where her heart is…… )