Generally the roof needs to be designed from scratch to use that sort of spray foam insulation, or extensively tweaked. Or, as you say, you’ll get damp/rot and the roof will need replacing.

Obviously i’d get an expert opinion.

I’m less taken with the chain rehooking thing, that seemed to get huge investment and award…

And it was a copy of something i used to see around in the 80’s. Usually on touring bikes with FAR too much kit hung off them!

Don’t get max/full complement bearings, they are generally designed for high loads and/or reciprocating motions.

Just get better sealed bearings, or carefully pop the seals off and fill them to the brim with grease, or do both.

Lot of manufacturers just spec a basic bearing with a low fill as it’s cheaper.

How many years sooner could you retire if you kept all that depreciation and servicing cash.

Probably about a year. Most of which you’d have already spent grubbing around on the floor under a series of rusty knackered cars… ;)

If, of course, you ever get to retire, which is looking increasingly unlikely for anyone under 50!

You mean people who like warm feet and rooms that don’t echo like a public loo?

Ahhhh, badly installed floors…

@chewkw

If I could turn back the clock I would go to Sweden or Norway in an instant rather than UK because of the space, land and fewer people there.

But since I cannot speak Swedish/Norwegian my only choice is UK.

Swedish is the corporate language of much of Sweden, a good percentage of the population speak better English than many who are born and bred in the UK.

@supernova

I was talking to a migrant family who settled in Sweden and expressed surprise that they left there for the UK since I’d rather live in Sweden, but the racism they were subject to made them leave for the more multi-cultural UK.

Racism/homophobia (a general fear of “others”) is quite polarised in Sweden. The little village i live in voted about 35% for Sweden Democrats, which is the mainstream anti immigration party. Yet across the country it’s only around 17%. Some of the even more rural areas it’s nearer 50%. I’ve even had neighbours comment that i’m ok as i’m the right type of immigrant. They’ve been somewhat educated on the subject.

Though if you get into any of the cities or areas with high and long term immigrant populations, support for the SD is much lower.

My wooden worktops are still fine, 15 years on. Starting to show a bit of wear round the edges/corners though.

Got a decent sink though, goes all the way to the back of the unit and covers the endgrain thoroughly (had about 6 coats of sealant on it before the sink went in).

The rest of the kitchen is pretty much destroyed though, 15 years of very hard use (and a couple of kids) from pretty much the cheapest kit that IKEA could provide…

TBH, the BB5s and 7s i’ve played with are about on a par with ultegra and D-A caliper brakes in the dry for modulation and outright power, in the wet, the mech discs are definitely better, by some chunks. But this is the same for hydro and hybrid discs too.

On the flip side, the rims brakes need virtually no servicing or looking after to keep the performance consistent. Just new pads every few thousand km and new cables every now and again.

The BB5/7 needed a tweak every week or three to keep them consistent. And if you let them go too far, you could suddenly lose braking.

NB. i always do mech braking (and gear) cables properly. Sharp tools, cable ends ground flat, ferrules fitted properly etc etc.

@stevedoc

Whats wrong with people .

Before any activity sports poo..

Back in the dim and distant past, some of my sports activities used to last 48-72 hours in the wilderness. What would you suggest?

(Generally it was buried, deep. And the paper went in the fire, if we had one.)

I seem to remember there’s new legislation forcing white goods manufacturers to make spares available, and make fixing them easier without voiding any warranty. So there’s hope yet.

There is, most of the manufacturers are screaming and shouting and whining about it…

My washing machine failed before Xmas. Unfortunately getting a replacement drum assembly was impossible (the weld between the drum and the hub that carries the drivebelt etc failed).

That was only 18 months after the dishwasher controller turned its insides into its outsides.

Apparently a model that has an easily available and cheap controller (€30, about 10 screws and 2 connectors to change it).

Of course, that doesn’t apply if your machines serial number ends with 7 or 9, in which case they were manufactured in a 3rd party facility, and the insides bear no resemblance to any other model in the range, or anyone elses range either and no spare parts are available, anywhere.
(I’m guessing the internals were from a manufacturer who usually only manufactures for their own local market. So i could have found a controller but it’d have taken 8 weeks to be posted and attracted a 500% import tax and cost £100 in shipping.)

So that’s a couple of repair failures.

The deck lights are working now though.

I’ve done a sidewall slash that sort of size, 10-15mm through the carcass of the tyre, 20-25mm of rubber on the outside gone, rode over the edge of a smashed clay rooftile.
Dental floss to stitch it up, tyre boot on the inside, normal patch on the outside, plenty of cement all over. Wouldn’t have done it except for it literally being the first ride of a £60 tyre.
Rode it for another year or two on and off until i rode over another roof tile (on the same stretch of trail) and put a 40-50 mm slash through the tread…

Sure, so be courteous to those around you and drive at 30. Driving less than that to me suggests one of a few things; New driver, someone not paying attention, or someone for whom driving is still an all consuming business and hasn’t got the awareness to pay attention to everything that’s going on around them.

TBH, everything you’ve said up there has proven to be FAR more applicable to the tailgaters.

If your immediate reaction is “That’s their problem” then why aren’t you thinking; “I’ll just get out f this person’s way?”

because it is their problem. I’m not going to prevent them from passing. But at the same time, I’m not pulling off the road (and then trying to rejoin traffic) just to let them hoon past. (Unless I’m towing something, or driving something that is speed limited.

Did anyone mention rust.

Yes, actually. It’s what hot corrosive shit makes happen faster. And thermal cycling tends to kill paint coatings as well. So in theory (and in testing) it’s better.
But, yes, of course they’ll go rusty. Eventually.

TBH, in durability testing we’ve found stuff tends to last longer in BEVs as things like the mechanical loading from vibration is far lower (no engine buzzing away under the bonnet, plus it’s relatively easier to isolate an electric motor in the first place), plus the thermal cycling is less aggressive (for under bonnet and stuff close to the exhaust at least), less hot corrosive shit being splattered all over the bottom of the car, baking salty road grime onto the underside of the car isn’t healthy in any measure. The hottest bit of an electric car is generally well under 100 degrees, a fuel car might hit 6/700 surface temp on the DPF/Cat and over 200 on most of the rest of the pipe going back from there. That heat has to go somewhere. And you’ve got a couple of hundred kilos of hot stuff. Electric motors cool down relatively quickly, and batteries don’t get that hot (even though they are very heavy!)

The only flip side, it doesn’t really get hot enough to dry stuff out.
And the loss of the heavy rattly noisy thing in the front makes the interior squeaks and rattles far more noticeable.

It’s one reason i rarely do any gardening before june or after the middleish of September, let all the creepy crawlies and flappy buzzy things do what they want. (I’ve also got loads of the garden and the surrounding forest left completely wild)

The other reasons are that i’m really lazy and it keeps raining.

Not only that, once it is sunny, i’d rather sit on the deck with a cup of tea and watch the creepy, buzzy, flappy things enjoying themselves.

@FunkyDunc

I’ve just been on a website and been quoted £36 for a car on Monday

Yeah, that’s greenmotion, i’d rather drive rusty nails through my genitals than ever deal with them again.

Might have been resprayed (badly) in the past.

In true “recommend what you’ve got” i have about half a dozen of the IKEA Molgan lights around the house, not touch to start, but they are motion sensing. Use them inside cupboards, under the stairs and in the shed. Come on as soon as they spot you, go off after about 2-3 minutes. Ideal for little hidey holes etc.

Should be less than a tenner.

Ooooh, a neighbour has a similar table to that, small base and two opposing diagonal legs on opposite sides of the base.

And as above, the base is basically a block of steel with a piece of wood over it. Weighs a tonne.

Not sure how the legs are attached though.

Where mineral oil brakes probably win is that they have the potential to use more environmentally fluid if there is the will to make it.

There was a demo at work a few years ago for a company offering bio sourced and bio degradable oils for automotive use. They had a wide range of replacements for mineral/hydraulic oils in development.

It was an interesting concept, and I’m sure it’s still being investigated by that part of the business. (But a lot of the issues with disposing of oils in automotive is the stuff being carried in suspension in the oil, which this doesn’t solve.)

I’m wondering if it’ll provide enough air to mitigate against some punctures.

As using a tubular (tend to puncture less anyway) with sealant (to plug whatever punctures you do get) and this system (to control the air pressure) could allow a lot more risks to be taken with tyre pressures and lines taken.

It doesn’t matter how you remove them, they’re going in the spidge.

Until the bearing collapses and you end up with the inner race and a load of bearings on the workbench and the outer race still firmly inserted in the housing…

I always try to remove by the outer race if possible.

@sharkbait

:D I have the same issue, CH is somewhat undersized for the house, so during the winter will only bring the house up to 17-18 degrees. Which is ideal for most rooms in the house where i either want it cool (bedrooms etc) or where we have other heat sources (office, kitchen, utility).

The living room needs the fire to bring it up to a comfortable “sitting around” temperature, so 4-6 logs in there will keep the room warm and comfortable for the rest of the evening once it’s gone out. Also have a fan on there so it warms the entire floor of the house slightly.

I’m already triple glazed, 14-16″ of rockwool in the loft and the build generally is far in excess of UK standards (but not to passivehaus levels!).
Turning the GSHP central heating up and driving it harder means that it almost immediately cuts from ground source to pure electricity, and still only adds 0.5 degree to the house temperature. (this is by design, not a fault)
Upgrading the central heating system will cost (minimum) £10k for a larger heater, and i’m not even sure if the ground loop will support it.

Will add a stand alone ASHP this year though.

I do live in the middle of nowhere though, and know how to use the fire.

I don’t have that option

Bugger, i still do.

Yeah, i’ve ripped all my CDs (And DVD/Blurays) and put them on a server, in hindsight i should have just subscribed to two music services, a lot of my CDs weren’t available on spotify, but are available elsewhere (eventually) so i spent weeks ripping stuff, most of which is now available elsewhere.

Also, the position of speakers and suchlike isn’t really that good (i’ve got to have a life as well, so do the kids!), so i could easily cope with just using the poorer versions available online, rather than the .wav i have on the server.

Once the manufacturer and/or network stop supplying updates, you’re out of luck AFAIK.

Nah, i rooted an ancient HTC that had stopped support at 2.3/gingerbread to run 5.0 Lollipop.

It ran. Incredibly slowly, and hot, and took about 2 hours to kill the battery.

So it’s not always a good idea, but it’s doable.
(It wasn’t me only phone, was just an experiment)

which will probably be many years hence.

My 10 year old tablet, which hasn’t received an update since 2014 only stopped supporting netflix just before xmas…

I don’t want to buy another phone as it still seems to work fine

If it still works, don’t bother.
I recently did a double update (Android 10 to 12) on a Samsung and it’s not really anything i’d be desperate to do, all my apps will cover everything back to about Nougat or Oreo. It’s just a bit swishier.

I think I’ve still got a Chromecast Audio sitting unloved in a cupboard, message me if you’re interested, it’ll be cheap 🙂

I bought 4 or 5 of them when they discontinued them, they were on sale as “end of line” at our local electronics warehouse place, about 18 quid each, made a tidy profit when they started appearing on ebay etc.

BTW to the OP, is there anyway you can test without connecting your chromecast via the telly? Just run it straight into the DAC.

I’ve got dedicated Chromecasts (or rPI running Volumio) for each device and on 320kbps it’s *almost* indistinguishable from CD. (If i want indistinguishable i pull music from the server which is stored losslessly.)

@simondbarnes

Try “Device features” -Audio.

Full Dynamic is in there, though, the new interface/options are a bit poor, might have to switch to a rPi if it gets any more limited!

Also, if you’re still only seeing limited features, you might need to reboot/reconnect.

Depends on you TBH, i have a couple of sets of nice shiny handbuilt wheels where i am over the weight limit, in one case by about 20-25 kilos (system weight).
They’ve been perfect for about 10 years, including several years of racing.

I ‘ve had more issues with factory built wheels where i’m under the weight limit…

No even people in the car industry don’t think electric is the answer for long distances

nope, public transport is the way forwards for long distances</car industry person>

You’ll never get the imbeciles in government to do it though.

TBH, my experience of enduro bearings is all bad.
If they were half the price I could just about stomach it…

Depends on the production line and the platforms.

And it’s worth bearing in mind a lot of “all new” platforms are a) sometimes nothing of the sort or b) can be sent down the same line with minor tweaks to the fixtures and c) aren’t designed by idiots, so quite often utilise huge chunks of the existing production line equipment.

…but the point I was making is that profit per unit will not be high as the capital cost of the manufacturing assets are being carried across a smaller number of units.

Except the vast vast majority of manufacturers still in business share the line between multiple products. It’s relatively easy to send both electric and dino juice cars down the same production line, until the volume of electric cars justifies it’s own production line. The separate lines for batteries and motors etc are sized for the volume needed.

The biggest issue at the moment is getting cheap, basic microchips for things like AC, lights, electric windows etc etc

And they go in everything.

@shakeyjake

If that was to be applied evenly, you should also say that people that have doped in the past should be banned for life. I know some people do think this way.

I’ve raced against ex dopers, and depending on the drugs they’ve used, the dosage, how long they did it for, how well they responded and how long it is since they “stopped” (though that is still open to further investigation!) the differences are noticeable for serious amounts of time. Months to years sort of timescale.

@brucewee

For all sports?

No, that’s why everyone keeps saying rules like this are really, really hard to create and are always going to pi55 someone off.

I used to get that switching from pure road to a mix of road, CX and MTB XC racing, added a good 3-4 cm to wrists and about 5 or 6 to my neck. But only 3 kilos of extra weight.

That’s got to be bollocks surely (the inside leg thing). I have short legs for somebody 5ft 9” and would have to have a 29” waist. That would be on the top thin end

29″ waist is pretty much perfect for a 5 foot 9 cyclist…

Yeah, our phones at work (iPhone) are all pre registered and sealed from the factory.
Just means an extra 20 minutes on set up while it downloads the corporate software stuff and integrates it.

we keep getting flyers at work “we pay top money for premium and prestige cars”.

I work at a car factory, that makes premium and prestige cars, 90% of the premium and prestige cars in the car park are company cars…

Is this a thing?

It’s been a thing since Look started making clipless pedals.
Clean the whole pedal and cleat, thoroughly. Make sure the cleat is tight. Then a bit of dry lube or wax on the cleat engagement faces. BITD i used to rub a candle on the cleat and pedal. Have also used lock lube. (Which i believe is graphite powder).

Also, check the axle collar is tight in the pedal. They can creak sometimes.