I have found whether you get charged or not seems to be luck of the draw, depending on how the sender has labelled the value of package and which courier is delivering it.

If there is a charge to be paid you will be notified either by letter or a card through the door, otherwise the package will just get delivered.

I recently did the rings on my gsxr1100 after a low compression test result and a leak down test showing leaking valves, I got the rings from partzilla in the US, even after shipping, VAT and duty they were still almost half the price of buying from the UK and they were genuine Suzuki.

When I measured the ring gaps in the cylinders they were all either out of spec or very close to the top end, you could still see the honing marks in the cylinders, so I was advised just to put in new rings and not have it honed.

To be honest in your case with the ring gaps being OK and the cylinders looking good, I would probably just rebuild it with the original rings and lap the valves in to get them sealing properly.

I have just done my GSXR1100, the pistons and head were caked in carbon, I used oven cleaner on the piston tops and combustion chambers, just don’t leave it on for too long, half an hours probably enough too start to loosen it, then rinse it off with lots of water.

I used a decoking wire brush on a die grinder for the inlet and exhaust ports, took all the carbon out, but wasn’t aggressive enough to start removing metal.

That’s a name from the past, I used to listen to his rock show on one of the London radio stations probably about 30 years ago, got me into some great rock and metal.

When I started reading this thread I thought it was going to be an RIP, glad to hear he’s still going strong:)

I think if you refund a buyer from a Paypal account with no funds in it, there is a delay of 3 or 4 days before the money goes to the person your refunding.

I’ve had this in the past, even with a bank account linked to my Paypal account.

Could only be better without Chris Evans.

Great filming, looks better than TGT.

As before Top Gear Extra straight after on BBC3 seems to have a lot better studio vibe and the piece on there where Chris Harris instructed the ‘celebs’ round the track was probably the funniest part of both shows.

Where’s the ‘news’ section gone? – this was always one of the funniest bits with a nice few minutes of banter.

The news is now on Extra gear on BBC3, I think if they merge the best bits of Top Gear and Extra Gear they would have a pretty good show, especially if CE has gone.

Cheers Footflaps, I’ll take you up on that. I’ll pm you my details.

Do you need a certain make of boot for the yeti gaiters to fit?

I am currently using Exodus, UK Turks and Phoenix.

If what you want isn’t on one of those, it probably isn’t available.

With regards to running ‘The Beast’, make sure you have downloaded the latest version, I think it is 1.6, otherwise you may have trouble with the built in links being out of date.

+1 for myibidder, been using it for years on my android phone, no fees, very reliable.

You need a wave bubble, I found this a few years ago when they were talking about putting things in cars to track your speed, location etc.

Apparently it was designed as part of someones thesis to create a personal ‘bubble’ around you to block phones etc. for use in restaurants and cinemas.

Totally illegal obviously, but quite an interesting read.

http://www.ladyada.net/make/wavebubble/index.html

My brothers got an 06 plate GTI which he bought a couple of years ago, had rot in both front wings but had them changed under the 10 year body warranty.

In my ebay experience a buyer would usually message you to check on the delivery if the item hasn’t arrived in a reasonable time. The fact they have gone straight for the negative feedback and claiming non delivery with ebay and a refund from Paypal does give you the feeling that they saw the item had been sent by a non tracked service and knew they could pull a fast one.

I have just used Black Circles as well, they were the cheapest and if they have a tyre fitting partner near to you they are great.

As a bonus you can also get 2% from Topcashback and Tesco clubcard points from Black Circles.

I bought a Kitsound Boombar from Tescos a few weeks back for £19.99, sounds good and works well, even comes with a travel case.

I Looked at the various Halfords, Machine Mart tool chests last year.

I ended up with a roller chest and top box from Clas ohlson, excellent quality, decent metal, full roller bearing drawers and a 10 year guarantee, currently £340 for the pair. I just checked and they are doing 10% off today. Clas Ohlson tool chest

One of the best things about the chromecast is that if you are a BT broadband customer you can cast BT sport to it from your phone or tablet.

What you need is a wave bubble, a personal jammer that blocks wifi and phone signals in a your local vicinity.

someone did it as a degree project, totally illegal unfortunately.

http://www.ladyada.net/make/wavebubble/

If Guy Martin had hosted it you wouldn’t have been able to keep him away from the spanners:D

I bought the LG G pad for my mum a few weeks ago when they were on special at Tescos, lovely piece of kit she’s really happy with it.

Easy to use, reasonable camera and very nice screen.

I would recommend getting a case as you allways seem to feel like you are about to drop it.

I think that you can plug an HDMI slimport adaptor into the usb socket of the Nexus, so you can connect up to the HDMI socket of your TV.

The Prisoner, love the guitar solo where Dave Murray and Adrian Smith swap over half way through.

Jonah, if you can’t sort out a service to watch the races live, ITV4 have a highlights show on Monday nights.

The red bull tv app works with chromecast, I had a quick play with it but haven’t really checked out whats on it.

It works!

You need to set up the BT sport package on your BT account, its free for existing customers, activate it and then fire up the app on your phone or tablet, then you can just send the live feed to your chromecast.

Tried it last night and the quality is great, looking forward to watching the MotoGP live on the big screen this weekend.

The chromecast is the google HDMI dongle that plugs into your TV, once it is connected to your home wifi network you can send things to it from your phone (or the chrome browser on your PC).

The iplayer app is chromecast enabled so you can watch iplayer on your TV. It basically is a cheap way to make a non smart TV a bit smarter.

I will let you know how BT sport goes.

“You cant polish a turd”, “but you can roll it in glitter”.

Having been an ebay seller for some time, I always wait for the buyer to post feedback before I do. It’s a good way to know that the goods have been delivered and all is well.

As a buyer I always leave feedback as soon as I receive the item.

The only reason for building wind farms is because it is an easy way for the government to meet its emission targets.

Turning up at an energy summit an announcing they can meet the 20% (or some other figure plucked from the sky) reduction every one (apart from the US & China)have voted for by building ‘X’ amount of wind turbines means they can sit back and enjoy the facilities of the 5 star resort they have just flown into along with hundreds of other government ministers, hangers on and journos.

The above may not be 100% accurate, but personally I don’t think it is far from the truth.

Wind farms cost a fortune and have to have a conventional power station ticking over 24/7 to take up the slack.

I prefer the overclocked cards as you usually get a better/quieter cooler set up. I recently got the Sapphire R9 270X toxic, factory overclocked and very quiet, the only thing to watch with these latest cards is that you have the space to install them, the Sapphire is over a foot long.

Fuel duty on LPG was meant to be rising at a certain percentage above whatever petrol went up. With the government having frozen fuel duty for the last few budgets the only price increase has been down to the price of oil going up.

When I first started using LPG about 10 years ago it was only about 30p, those were the days.

Did anyone else spot Gina McKee in the missing persons file denton was looking at?

I noticed that, she was one of the main characters in the 1st series, I thought there may be a link to the current case, but maybe it was just the programme makers playing around.

The identity of the witness hasn’t been revealed yet.

Idris Elba, King of speed was good last night, he was in the US and had a drive in a Nascar. Part 2 is on tonight and amongst other things he is rallying in Finland.

Looking forward to Guy Martin, Clarkson and May’s programmes, probably the only decent things on.

I carried mine in my pocket for a couple of months to log rides with no problems.

Battery and picture wise I imagine it is much the same as the S3, the only downside with the Nexus 4 is that you are stuck with either 8 or 16GB of storage.

I doubt it will withstand water any better than the S3, I have only ever had the odd bit of rain on mine.

Although I have not broken mine yet, the Nexus 4 does have a glass back panel which may make it a bit more fragile than the S3.

Hi, Once you have downloaded it, connect your phone to your PC and copy the kml file into the Oruxmaps tracklogs folder.

Then you can open the route in Oruxmaps.

I use bikehike to plot routes and find it best to save them as a kml file.

Bikehike is good, the only problem is that as it is free they only have limited access to the latest OS map, so you have to get in early as by evening time it reverts to the free 1940’s map.

Actually its quite interesting to look at the old map to see what has changed and what hasn’t.

I dont know if they are still doing them but Tescos had the motorola defy mini sim free for £39 a couple of months back. You had to go in store and they were not on display, I had to ask the chap in the phone section, who was not even aware of the offer, he found one of the phones out back.