Haven’t read the whole thread but agree with the above. I reckon the vast majority don’t even realise they’re doing it or that what they’re doing is risky. I’ve pulled over to let these nuggets thru in the past then they don’t even go any faster than I was, difference is I’m now behind them at a decent distance.

There are however some roadmen that do it deliberately to intimidate.. almost exclusively middle aged blokes. I had it on the way to and back from work yesterday. Both massive pickup trucks with lots of plastic bits, lights, chrome, private reg, words like “barbarian” or “thunder” or some such in big letters on it.. you get the picture. This minority are just idiots and the further away from me they are the better.

The whole what car you drive aspect is definitely a thing. I used to get hustled all the time in my wife’s mini, much less in her 3 series that replaced it.

Having said that I think there is an inverse effect as well.. my current car is a Tesla M3P and it can be a bit of a dickhead magnet.. so even though it’s big/fast I do get some tailgating (again always blokes) trying to goad me into a race I think.

haha! Yeah that one boils my piss too.. had it just now walking through town on my lunch. I actually shoulder check when walking in busy places before changing direction.. anyone else transfer this over from cycling?!

RB reliability strikes again!

Good move, I too was surprised it wasn’t already in there. It’s an absolute pisstake the way he’s been carrying on at restarts so glad they’re clamping down.

Glad to see Vettel come out the garage. This is gonna be tight getting a lap in!

Latifi man! Let’s Stroll thru then immediately tries to get back past causing confusion and (another!) Williams in many pieces. FFS

I’m confused by the VSC Vs SC decision this evening. Couple of cars getting pushed by multiple marshalls on a fast part of the track so even at 40% it’s **** fast. I thought the breakdowns had come just in time to save a few points for Hamilton but no such luck. Merc need to get on top of that car pronto otherwise in a few races it’ll be game over. The Fezzas and RBs will be offskies.

Think verstappen was lucky with that late yellow just as leclerc was mounting a counter attack?

Oh and Latifi FFS lad stop crashing will ya?! On the radio “not sure what happened” really?! Car got away from you and you binned it. AGAIN

1) Tailgating. It doesn’t get you anywhere faster*, it’s dangerous and probably costs fuel through a constant cycle of accelerate/brake. If you wanna get past by all means but if not please **** the **** off.

2) Speeding in car parks and cutting across empty bays to make up a car or two. Just sat in maccys stinking out my car.. with the bairn and seen 2 near misses inside 20 mins, 1 involving a pedestrian who nearly got wiped out by a speeding car!

*if they’re tailgating me there’s a fair chance they’ll get where they’re going considerably slower as I try to slow down and restore a 2s gap.

And just like that LeClerc tops the sheet with next to no porpoising!

Ferrari porpoising quite badly even on this smooth track. Merc as well but not quite as bad. Red Bull looks super stable and no bouncing. They’re gonna walk this.. well as long as they don’t both break down again 😬

My totally uninformed opinion is that surely if Merc have packaged their car so tightly around the sidepod area they could add some hollow sidepod structures quite easily? Doing the reverse would be impossible for someone like Ferrari where I assume there will be rads and other bits in there. When I 1st saw the almost zero sidepod design my initial thought was one of flexibility. This PU thing does worry me though.. I really hope Merc haven’t dropped a ball there.

Thank you for the continued suggestions all. TBH the original idea was to not have steps at all but to achieve that our patio was going to be nearly a metre above next doors garden/patio (to the right hand side of photo out of shot) and we were already treading a fine line with the extension/planning permission for the main building work and didn’t want to take the mick.

Cheers

All good points thank you @timba. Renderer is due to start a week on Monday and it will be coloured (not chosen that yet mind..) so I think a good shout would be getting the retaining wall done at bottom as you say 👍

Understand the point about bigger/in proportion steps that wrap around but I don’t have the tools/skills to be doing masonry work and there’s no way I could get the builder back now anyway, plus there’d be less space for table/chairs etc. You’re right it’s a compromise as is, but one well have to live with.

Cheers

We replaced a very old and large (full room height and over 3m wide) window with triple glazing and it is the best money we’ve ever spent on the house. Granted the old window was blown in a few separate units but the noise reduction was staggering. We live on a main road and wished we’d done it with the other window upstairs that faces the road too. Think it was an extra 400 quid to get triple glazing, absolute no brainer as was only 1 window at the time.

Understood and thank you for replying @redmex 👍. The tread from the French doors (office/back of garage) is small now you mention it, the bifolds larger maybe 400mm.

Aye, shame the tidier bit is getting covered up with render!

Thank you all for the suggestions, plenty to think about there 👍

Nice plant pots/shrubs is probably going to be the quickest way to do it I think.

@redmex – out of interest, what’s the issue with the doors opening out on to the little steps? Or is it the big step down to the grass?

Edit: come to think of it, we did need to get planning permission for the patio as was over 30cm (I think) from grass.

Thanks

Good point, thanks. The grass needs some serious attention anyway so could always do the slope as part of that work. Was planning on levelling, aerating, scarifying, top soil, seeding etc.

Pics only appearing on phone not PC.. FFS. Any advice on diy AND photo hosting (currently using post image cc and hotlink for forums) on this site also very welcome!

Cheers

The Porsche Taycan definitely plays external ICE/race car noises at low speed, have heard a few now when out walking. I assume some legislation came in to play in the UK about low speed audible warning of EVs moving as my Tesla M3 (March ’20 registered) is absolutely silent but my wife’s ID3 (July ’21 registered) makes a weird spaceship noise.

I can’t count the amount of times people walk out in front of my car in car parks.. sometimes for quite considerable amounts of time if they’ve walking the same way as I’m driving! I don’t want to beep and startle them so I just crawl behind them until they’re out the way, so the external noise does seem a sensible idea but I agree the brum brum noises are a bit silly.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy or laughed so much at a live sports event. Howling 😂

Greggs sossy roll, flaming hot monster munch and a bottle of full fat coke. Proper year 9 dinner. Glorious

Mind them mini posh dogs mentioned up thread are absolute **** dynamite. Can dust a box of those delicious little bastards without blinking. Gonna be hunting out those mustard ones next time I’m in too. Sound great

@fazzini 🤣 it wasn’t.. South of the river so technically Gateshead!

1.70 for unleaded and 1.80 for diesel at the esso down the road (small town just outside of Newcastle). Traffic still bonkers.. I do wonder what the tipping point will be to noticeably reduce car use.

@trailrat has it. The model 3 has no fixed mounting points* and aligning the racks per the manufacturer instructions to where they need to clamp is a king size pain in the arse. Plus the 598s don’t play particularly nice with t track and rubber seal thing.

*actually it does but they’re underneath the glass roof and the Tesla bars are £500 and lots of stories of smashed glass so I opted for the Yakima’s.

I’ll have to give that a watch, thanks @stingmered.

It’s interesting how acutely aware you become of just how much energy it takes to move around a big metal box when it’s powered by electricity and not hydrocarbons.

I dread to think how much additional fuel I squandered when I was tooling about in my M135i with racks/carriers for 5 years. Shocking really when you take a step back..

As much as EV driving requires more planning and time I still don’t think I’ll ever go back to ICE unless it’s some very special sports car doing 1k a year as a 2nd car.

WLTP Vs. real world post:

I had a pretty appalling journey in my Tesla M3P week before last from an efficiency perspective.. WLTP for the performance is 329 miles. It was showing 295 miles on 100% charge when I left due to the unique way Tesla calculates range (near perfect conditions). Journey was 105 miles from Newcastle to Leeds and it was raining heavy on the way down maybe 40% of the journey and snowing heavily for maybe 15 minutes. When I arrived at the office in Leeds it had gone from 295 to 125..

Now I do have a roof rack (Yakima aero bars) and 2 Thule 598s up top but even capping my speed at 70 mph other than maybe 2-3 times the battery was draining at a rate of knots. Pulled into Scotch Corner superchargers on the way home with about 20 miles in the battery in order to get home.

Pretty bad that a car advertised as having 329 miles range can’t manage a 210 mile round trip (even with the rack and weather).

I’m driving thick end of 500 miles to Cornwall in June so the rack/carriers will be coming off for sure!!

Not sure if it’s been covered up-thread but I find the frequency at which energy companies bill absolutely preposterous! I logged into the Octopus app at the weekend and noted I had £370 credit, champion. But when I looked at the billing/usage breakdown they hadn’t billed any gas or leccy since 7th and 9th of Jan. So thick end of 2 months gas hit the breakdown at the start of the week so it’s down to £140 and still no sign of leccy coming off but with two EVs it’ll be straight into the red when it does.

FFS they take half hourly readings but then just bill whenever it suits them, sometimes a week apart sometimes 2 months. It’s **** ridiculous. I have to do a load of mental arithmetic to work out a true position at any given time. Or am I doing it wrong?

@binners Aye, it certainly was a terrifying case of money over safety/quality (well money over absolutely everything TBH!).

The bit about how long the pilots had to react to the system before it went into runaway was extremely scary, especially given there was a very very high chance they didn’t even know the system was on the aircraft never mind how to deal with it.. then compounding that with the single point of failure stuff was really shocking stuff.

I’ve just finished the documentary about the 737 MAX aircraft: Downfall – The Case Against Boeing.

Wow. Absolutely horrific, sad, fascinating, mind boggling all at the same time. I remember seeing it on the news when the crashes happened and some of the fallout but I had no idea beyond a very high level understanding at the time. I’m absolutely stunned. Staggering documentary

Eddie Jordan’s comments in that bbc article on the previous page are absolutely wild! Hamilton is too nice which allowed Verstappen to “steal” the title.. WTF?! Ahhhh well aye mate, so if Hamilton had been a dickhead then he’d have his 8th WDC.. righto..

I mean I’m not sure why I’m surprised.. He then goes on to say he’s too nice and nice guys don’t win titles 🤣 talking about the most successful F1 driver of all time. Mentalist

Wow. If they can commercialise that, it will be a game changer. Less reliance on rare earth elements, 3 times the capacity and able to withstand more charge cycles before degradation compared to lithium ion. Seriously impressive stuff!

Our main family car is my Tesla M3P and my wife has an ID3. We’ve done a few longish trips in the Tesla but can count on two hands the amount of times I’ve used the public charging infrastructure. We drove to Glasgow and back from Newcastle last year and charged at the super chargers just outside the city – a bank of 12 150kW chargers and not a single other car in sight 🙂. I’m glad we topped up there as we stopped at Gretna further down the road for food and as above it was rammed!

Real test will be this summer when we have a week in Cornwall booked so thick end of 1000 miles round trip. Even with the supercharger network I still get a little anxious and also worry more generally that adoption will outstrip infrastructure improvements.

The size of modern cars is absolutely preposterous. I walked past an X7 and a new Defender today and they are gargantuan.

I find it incredible that people still buy the **** things. The amount of 71 plate Rangeys (not ewoks or velars but full fat vogue or often SVRs) absolutely blows my mind!

I couldn’t even nearly be arsed to park one of the things. Totally unsuitable for built up areas but they’re literally everywhere.. and the excuses for owning them! I wish people would just say “I like big cars so I bought one”

Anyway I’ll climb down off my soapbox and wind my neck in now

Edit: before I do.. also interested in why only EVs should be limited? ICE cars use a fair chunk of natural resources bouling around at above 70.

YT Capra? Mines an absolute bulldozer.. plenty of travel and single crown forks.

The van next to it has an arguably worse mod.. blacking out the things that let you see other stuff in the dark and others see you.. clever

Thank you ver my much indeed for the replies everyone, they’re really helpful. I think I’ll order one of those up hangers as a first port of call to try and resolve this without too much expense. Thank you for the offer of the dual ended ferrule @13thfloormonk but I’ll probs just add one to my basket when I order the hanger and some other bits I need. I can see the hole in the forks where the hanger will go so looks viable.

Although I’m now wondering if I can get away with peeling back the new bar tape and putting a new run in.. it was my first time wrapping bars and I did a half decent job of it so not keen on doing the whole lot again..

There’s only 1 hole where the callipers mount so no options there and I tried bending back the springs but even then the issue still persists.. nowts easy is it?!

On the V brake point, are these compatible with the 105 levers I have? TBH the cantis were always a bit lacking power so this is something I may look into longer term, but don’t wanna spend a fortune.

The point about the rim being quite wide is spot on and not something I’d thought of before.

Thanks again

Tenet had me absolutely pickled. I stopped even caring/trying to understand waaay before the end..

Thank you very much for all of the replies and suggestions everyone. I hadn’t considered artificial grass but as noted it should do the same job in terms of creating a clean/safe area. I think some form of bark/chippings will be plan b for the mo as assume I would have to do something with the current surface so it didn’t all just get mushed together with the sand.

Thank you @robbie if you’re able to that would be great 🙂

Thank you to everyone who replied on the ID3 braking issue. Sounds like I need to play around with the auto-hold settings!

Thanks @tlr that’s interesting. Does it kick you out of drive/reverse when it applies the normal brake? It’s pretty aggressive when it happens in ours and will just stop you dead in your tracks..