Mate, we have pot holes in London and thats not an excuse to buy a 4×4!! Such vehiclles use more resources to be made, more resources to be operated, take up more road and parking space and if you collide with something or someone (someone's child, a cyclist maybe?) you will do more damage than if you were in a lower, lighter, more soft nosed vehicle. Being fortunate enough to live somewhere rural doen't give you the excuse to be so selfish – examine yuor conscience!! They buy something smaller.

I COULD NOT AGREE MORE!

That's why i've been driving a normal car for the past 10 years. One that easily does 65mpg on the run and 40 odd round town. There are lots of weigh saving aluminium components in the running gear and engine (a 1.9Tdi). The car is useless on speed humps due to being so low sprung, unless you proceed with great care. My car has more room than it's 4WD counterpart (by a margin), but most people covet a 4WD over the now "run of the mill" exec, estates.

What we need is a similar vehicle to what I currently have, but can handle the shocking local roads. It's not just urban roads, but rural ones too.

Most modern cars have big wheels and low profile tyres. Maybe we should go back to 14" wheels with deeper walled tyres that will soak up the bumps. Soft suspension is good for comfort, but useless for road handling, so the ideal would be if the **** councils got their fingers out and kept the roads up to standard!

I'm coming round to the idea of a small 4wd. The reason is that councils seem not to be able to fix the roads these days.

The problem I have is the lack of economical options. 4WD's aren't aerodynamic, have big fuel sapping tyres and lots of additional heavy running gear. The smallest 4WD's have almost no carrying capacity.

There is definitely a growing need for a normal car that can handle potholes and other defects, but also take speedhumps in their stride.

If I lived in the Lakes or similar terrain, I'd definitely have a set of winter tyres stored in the garage for when the season changes.

Gold top is lovely on cereal, but i haven't had that for years and years.

I drink semi-skimmed – much nicer for most uses.

Skimmed milk is trully disgusting and as far as i can see, pretty pointless.

I have sometimes wondered what 1/4 fat milk would be like (a 50:50 mix of semi and skimmed). One day I'll drop by my my local store and invest 70p in two pints of each to see what it tastes like.

And what about people who respond to a question by saying "No, yeah……." Do they mean no, or do they mean yes???

"can I get…" is uber irritating too. For ****'s sake, it's "May I have…". "Can I please have….", etc etc.

I bought mine from an English company, but based in Andorra. Had them shipped here, but cost 20% less than the best deal here at the time. I don't even know if the company still exists, but just want to highlight the need to broaden your search.

The skis I bought are Rossignol B2 Bandits – good for off piste and piste alike. As ski technology gets reinvented every year, these are probably way behind the curve, but I love 'em!

There is no detectable lag whatsoever on any of the 1.9tdi VAG engines i've driven over the past 14 years. I am amazed how quick they are to respond infact. Much quicker than any petrol engined car i've had!

Thanks! There are a couple of captive bolts which enable the caliper to float, but the main assembly is held on with Allen bolts.

Hmmmm, 8mm? It's hard to see because they face inwards towards the wheel arch and I was too lazy to go find a mirror. 😆

I bought a really nice chrome vanadium socket set earlier this year and was trying an 8mm hex drive, but it seemed to begin to round and became a slightly loose fit, so I immediately stopped trying to get the bolt undone. I'll worry about this when I am ready to fit the disc, but have a couple of "methods" up my sleeve for stubborn rusted "fecker" bolts. A custom fit allen key is one option seeing as I have several rusting away in a box.

I appreciate the input!

Ok, thanks for the info tron! Nice photos! BTW, mine's an A6 which I believe used the exact same running gear as a Passat.

I just had a tinker and found I can wind the pistons back with a very large pair of adjustable waterpump pliers (taking great care not to wreck the dust seals).

The disc is free on the hub (where the studs fix), so I don't think i've got the wheel bearing variety, but time will tell.

If i do have the legacy type, I have a couple of bearing pullers from the days when I fixed heavy duty mainframe hardware (yes, a lot of machines had hefty bearings in numerous applications – when computers were real beasts! 😆 ).

The caliper assembly is fixed with a couple of allen bolts which if memory serves me correctly, i'll be getting the grinding wheel out to "modify" and old allen key so it fits.

Looks like a pretty easy job, but shan't get too big for my boots just yet! 😉

Yep, they are the rear brakes i'm referring to. I've changed the front pads with ease twice now. This was a couple of years ago and I can't remember which way th rear pistons rotate and only tried this on one of them. The rears were stubborn and i didn't think a pair of pin nosed pliers would be man enough for the job. Maybe i'll try getting hold of some hefty angled ones. I baulked at the cost of a universal wind back tool then and got a garage to fit the pads for me. They charged £25 which was a fair price, but this time i'm replacing the discs. I need to check the rear re. tron's wheel bearing comments, but remember the fronts weren't fixed by anything other than the wheel studs. Once the caliper is out the way, they just slide off. I assumed the rear would be the same, but now better check.

"I'm not being funny, but"! 😆

And all the experts tell us that being morbidly obese will send you to an early grave. 82 is hardly early!

I heard that late in the summer, wasps stop feeding their larvae and then begin to feed for themselves. They are attracted to anything sweet (esp. jam), which they don't consume so readily earlier in the season. I guess it's like feeding babies junk food. 😆

If you get pestered, wave you arm about them GENTLY, but presistently and they will get the message and move off. Stay calm and follow this strategy and you are most unlikely to get stung.

If you want to squish a few, flick a few drops of beer on the end of the table, wait for a candidate to land, then drop you glass on them. 😈

OCB is right.

I don't think you will get a Serial to USB converter with a female USB plug, well i've not seen one. The cable such as the one in the pic at the top of the thread is for attaching serial port (DB9, RS232) to a computer with a USB port.

What you want is something which does the reverse, so go with the PCMCIA card slot option suggestd by OCB. Note that PCMCIA card slots are often called PCI card slots now. I believe they are one and the same, but don't quote me. Best try one out in the shop with you old PC (if it actually has a PCI/PCMCIA slot – if not, have the day off!)

Sometime these apps have an unistall button under the folder in you programs (from the start menu).

You'll have to get into CMD mode and run Regedit, find all offending items and remove them, but this is a high risk strategy.

With XP, in the uninstall programs menu, you can check a box to display on Windows OS programs and uninstall some of them. Windows Messenger is installed by default and can be removed coz i've done this several times. I assume this is what you were trying to get rid of, not MSN. If it was MSN proper, it will have been downloaded at some point since you got the PC and you will be able to unistall this without use of third party software.

Any electrical work carried out in bathrooms must have a certificate of conformity, however I don't know if this is required if the unit is replaced with an identical model. I believe anyone can do the work, so long as an approved inspector passes it off and issues a certificate.

If it's a rental property, you would be mad not to adopt a belts and braces approach even if this is not a legal requirement.

You need to check with someone who knows the law and it is your local council that administers these certificates, so i'd give them a call.

Several years ago I carried out this task at home and I have installed a couple of these in my time. It's not hard if you comply with the installation instructions and fit an adequate supply back to the consumer unit, but then i'm someone with 25 years engineering experience, have refurbed several properties and have some relevant electrical qualifications.

As your unit is a straight swap like mine was, assuming the unit has been set on the tiling rather than in it, the job will be completed comfortably in less than an hour. The Triton T80 i fftted was £90 then, They have gone up a bit since. I reckon you should be able to get this done for around £200-250.

This is an offensive post and should be closed and person who started it banned

Don't be silly! This is "Lefty Track World" 😆

But back to the subject; certain people like to damage the reputation of public figures, for all manner of reasons (who knows their motivations). This is not the first, or last time.

Can't believe how the gutter press attracts so much real news airtime.

Are we all thick, or does the significant majority take this for what it is – journalists whipping up a frenzy to make a name for themselves and a pile of cash for their newspaper.

I'm sure many journalists would argue they deliver a valuable public service. Some do, but most of these don't work for tabloids.

Don't read rubbish comics, get a proper newspaper if you must.

John Sargeant – In Petworth house 2 weeks ago. He was like he is on the telly.

Some D lister who does Louis Theroux sytle interviews, who's name I can't even remember – In Ikea with his son a month ago. Like any other shopper.

Clive James – On the Tube. Like any other commuter.

Over the years i've seen loads of others, including royals, but who gives a hoot?

Celebrities have to be somewhere, so seeing them is inevitable. I even know one or two, but again, who gives a hoot?

Some people get in the media glare, but they are no different from the rest of us.

Why are we so obsessed with fame?

Oh well, guess i'll never know the answer.

Yes, I was thinking I need to get a toast rack.

Toast collapses and goes thin and soggy when it's buttered, if you don't let it cool beforehand. If the toast isn't stood up, it doesn't dry out.

Mind you, the cheapest white bread doesn't do this so readily.

Brown is much better, as are better quality breads, but perhaps I should switch to a healthier option.

Cheers for the advice!

My phone is a nokia 5800 and I have used it to watch BBC content through the fully featured BBC iPlayer app which lets you download and watch up to 7 days after.

The 3.2" screen is adequate for watching content and kills the boredom of train and plane journeys.

I also used the phone for this when I went camping in the Lakes.

I regard this facility as a top feature.

I didn't realize Nokia supplied free conversion s/w. I'll have to look that up.

I use a Windows based PC.

Sorry guys, just not clear at all on why the second animal had to be put to sleep.

PS. I love dogs and have we've had 4 of the little chappies in our family.

Yep, it is very difficult when you loose them as they are like members of the family but, unlike humans, they never get under your skin. We love them because they don't have bad moods and are just brimming with affection and playfulness even when we have a face on!

I don't have a dog now because the vets fees are a stitch up, I don't like locking an animal in the house all day when we are out, or putting them in kennels. Then there's the trauma when they eventually go to that kennel in the sky.

We've just had to put our last one to sleep tonight – a month after the first one. The second one died from being alone.

Call me insensitive here, but didn't the second one die because it was put to sleep?

some maggot whinging to the mods

😆

So you have been banned before too!

I tried a Dremmel and found it wasn't really man enough for the job. so i used a soft wire brush, grout cleaner and a wallpaper steamer to restore the original. Then went over the whole thing with some fresh grout. looked alright to me.

This guy is disrespectful towards religious people

Love the way Atheists always have to quote Dawkins in any argument like this.

He's concerned about the way religion divides people and how it restricts/forbids free thinking. How is fails to accept the truth when it is staring them in the face. I share his exasperation.

I like his unantigonistic respectful approach and rational questioning of those who's beliefs we are accused of not respecting. He politely challenges these beliefs and invites intelligent debate.

There was one example inlast night's show, where one religious teacher had a disproportionately strong reaction to the questioning. Dawkins did not react. The indignation was because someone had dared to challenge him. My question is: why not? If you belive in something, surely you can present a rational argument without loosing your rag!? Is a respectful questioning really disrespect if another person's beliefs? I don't think so, but I think the repsonses by many religious figures is highly defensive, in some cases downright aggressive and disrespectful!

Did you see interview with the Arch Bishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams? Archbishop inteview VideoWhy not watch it and note the bit where Reverend Williams belittles people who live on council estates; his surprise that some are actually quite intelligent. An interesting insight into the attitude of leader of the Church of England don't you think? Not to mention his previous ridiculous comments about how it is inevitable that we must accept the integration of elements of Sharia Law into British Law. Codswallop Wr Williams!!

I respect people believing in a religion. The thing that totally baffles me, with the benefit of several decades of life experience, is why people still actually believe any of that stuff! Each to their own, so long as their weird behaviour and attitudes don't impact on anyone else.

I'd use a foam backed plasterboard if you are dry lining, then spread it after taping the joints.

I reckon a surefire way of getting someone to shunt your rear bumper would be to have a sign in the rear window saying "Wedding Cake In Transit"

Anyone who takes pleasure in harming animals is a bit of a numbskull imo.

In the dark ages, before the masses were educated, before there was a multiplicity of stimulating leisure activities, one can understand how this mindless cruelty became a "tradition", I suspect out of sheer boredom because there was little else better to do.

You can imagine one day, some guy thought, "let's throw a goat out of the church tower for a laugh and see if it survives". The rest, quite depressingly, is history. Bullfighting, fox hunting etc – sad person's entertainment!

Those who still endulge in this sort of stuff are pretty pathetic given the leisure choices we all have these days.

I wonder how we'll feel about this seemingly magnanamous gesture if we ever get the truth about Dr Kelly. I'm sure Blair is trying to paint himself in a better light before the inevitable sxxt hits the fan.

Seems highly suspicious to me that Lord Hutton, instructed to investigate the death by the previous government, ordered all medical reports – including the post-mortem findings by pathologist Dr Nicholas Hunt and photographs of Dr Kelly’s body – to remain classified information for 70 years. Not even the close family know what happened to him. Nice!

Gives you a real sense of a cover up doen't it?

Suddenly donating millions to the British Legion just makes one think there is stinky going on behind the scenes.

Who said "damned if he did, damned if he didn't"? Keeping a low profile, out of the glare of the media without blowing his trumpet about how he's helping the the military victims of the conflict by donating the proceeds of his memoirs would have won him much more support IMO.

While were on the subject, perhaps Mandleson should cough up from the proceeds of his book too.

It's laughable that these people are associated with the Labour party and socialisn as they are just lining their pockets. Like Bob Crow and his recent 10% pay rise and 6 figure income, it puts them firmly in the category of the hypocritical!

Filthy – Member

utter waste… once again the government have proved themselves to be a bunch of useless cocks You missed the word "Labour" out!

Yes, it's too true. The Labour politicians sold us a lie: that all old cars are gross polluters and that new cars are much greener. FAIL!

The energy consumed producing new cars and getting them to the point of sale is vastly more than the possible additional pollution that these older cars might have produced over their modern counterparts.

Then there is the emissions from recycling all these perfectly serviceable scrapped cars.

All this scheme was about was boosting sales (and tax receipts).

Funnily enough, in my experience, this is what ALL green initiatives seem to be about!

I think they should remove the words "Volunatary Excess" and replace it with "Increase Excess to Reduce Premium".

This is the trouble with buying anything these days – vague and misleading wording.

Someone mentioned that one would be niaive to expect an excess to be voluntary in the event of a claim, but why make it sound like there is a possibility that is might be the case?

I support the campaign for Plain English!

When scouring insurance scraping sites, it's pretty clear that there are many pitfalls. The conclusion I draw is that sites like Gocompare, Moneysupermarket, Comparethemarket and Moneysavingexpert are useful for getting a pile of quotes on one screen, but their search software doesn't work properly in keeping to your entered criteria, so you are not comparing like for like. The price ranking therefore isn't much use in this instance. You have to drill down into individual quotes to see what is actually covered, what the different excesses are, any exclusions.

This is all fine if you have all day plus a good memory. Chances are, you won't get the best deal if you take these results at face value and/or are in a bit of a hurry.

Not if it is in your contract that you can't join one! In the five companies I worked for, none would tolerate union membership. None of the engineers would stick their necks out to join one either. What you have to realise is the culture in American firms is not like your average UK council, or unionized industry.

OMG! I used to work in hardware support. I could fill several pages explaining some of the injustices and abuse that my colleagues and I experienced. I worked for five different employers and the form with each was pretty much the same. You get seriously flogged! Working 24hrs on the trot happened often, 36hrs was my longest shift.

Employee abuse in hardware roles is prevalent. I would never accept another role in support, ever! The remuneration is derisory and the job takes too much from you, both physically and mentally. It'll get you in the end if you stick around! I did my 20 plus years, someone has to do this.

The reaction from people in this thread is quite typical. "Join a union","you must be on some serious dough to do that" etc. You need to have done the job to understand how it feels to have no personal space. The company intrudes on your every breathing moment and will not give a damn about the effects it will have on you or you family! The fact is you cannot join a union and you will not get decent pay!!

Hardware support never pays anywhere near enough, they will run you into the ground, then tell you you aren't good enough, withold salary increases, lay off much needed team members, etc. I've seen it all before. It's happend to me and it's happened to others, over and over!

As the maintenace revenues have collapsed, volumes of hardware have increased, they now want to pay peanuts ro do more, but the management and sales teams are still on great money, fantastic money! An insult!!

What these greedy souless feckers don't understand or appreciate, is the talent, intelligence and dedication of their employees working at the coal face! The sort of people who will go the extra mile day after day, week after week, year after year, usually wthout any thanks.

I got a pat on the back for good performance once. They gave me a day trip to Paris on Eurostar (not a stop over, just a day – the tight bastards). I couldn't get a weekend off to take the bloody prize due to standby, scheduled overtime and filling in for engineers in other regions who were off with stress related illnesses. One guy was out working for 24hrs, fell asleep at the wheel and crashed his car on the M25. His boss told him he wasn't up to the pressure of the job! The boss said he was responsible for the hours he worked (funny that! I never had that choice when the pager went off in the middle of the night!). This guy was a good engineer and had a good, professional attitude. He left swiftly. After three months and having a couple of failed chances, i just gave up on the trip to Paris.

Several years later I was refused my annual summer holiday with my wife (she is a teacher too). This was months before the event, but the holiday date was not flexible (arranged for my by my father in-law and a kind of timeshare). As I'd bust a gut for the firm and frequently done overtime for other regions absent engineers and for no pay, given up half my free time (not knowing which half until the last minute), I decided enough was enough. They told me to take my holiday separately from my family!?!? Flexibility is something expected of an employee, a one way street! (considering the times when I had manned an area of 4 men on my own for a month and when not trained). The bullying attitude of the boss was quite unbelievable. HR backed him up, of course! I found that in any dispute, I was always made to feel I was in the wrong, even when I was right. Their polarized attidude only made me resent them even more, but I just got my head down and got on with it.

24 years after taking up the rains, I walked! For three years after, any noise resembling a pager going off made me feel unwell. When I left and started a 9-5 low presure role, it honestly felt like I was on holiday, just because I was having every weekend off. I frequently had 9 week stints witjout a day off, so this was amazing.

I occasionally feel very depressed and regret that i gave so many years of my life for someone else's profit – proper exploitation when it takes up your whole life.

I've since had other jobs where a normal working day (plus an hour or two) is all that is expected of me.

For years I dreamed of a well paid 9 to 5 job , where i had weekends off. It was not to be working for a computer hardware vendor.

My firm advice is get out of it as soon as you can! Retrain, be a teacher, do anything, but hardware support!

If you are genuinely depressed, stressed etc, go sick! Get a note. Stuff worrying about being locked out of the market due to a blemish on your record. You don't want to be employed by these sort of shysters anyaway! Go for constructive dismissal if you can, I regret i didn't, despite people I know urging me to do so!

I wouldn't go to Saudi under any circumstances. You'd have to be nuts to go there!

HoratioHufnagel – Member

I have VAG TDI PD 115 and the engine has failed. The head gasket has gone, which basically writes the car off.

Bought with 80k on, taken to 100k. Worst car i've owned and a huge amount of expensive stuff has gone wrong with it.

Modern cars are complicated, i'd buy a car < 3 years old next time, as they age they can get very costly.

Unfortunate, but if you buy a car that has done 80k miles, you don't know the history and 80k miles is a significant history!

A failure at 100k is not entirely unikelty either. As for the other stuff, I can't comment, but suffice it to say, my current car is due it's 9th birthday in less than a month and all i've had go wrong with it is two perished CV gaiters. Not bad imho, but then I am the original owner and have treated the vehicle with respect from day one.

My wife hahd a petrol engined Golf for 9 years and that was equally reliable. The only issue was the electric window mechanism. A particular plastic component breaks on a certain vintage, but i managed to repair them.

I never heard of a head gasget constituting a total engine failure. Sounds a bit extreme to me, but what do I know.

I once drove a Ford Mondeo diesel and it was shocking. Gutless at certain rev points, noisy and, made by Ford. I have seen a few Fords in my time, they used to be run of the mill, mediocre in almost every respect, but i know the latest iterations are now looking pretty damn good. I'm still a Ford Sceptic, but old age is making me a stick in the mud! 😉

I cut down 10 twenty foot tall Leylandii connifers when i moved into my house.

They were planted 25 feet from my back door, but on a bank 6 feet above the lowest part the garden(at the patio door). They shut out a lot of light, made the garden seem small and claustraphobic. They had been left to grow unchecked, but numpty had cut all the lower branches off, so I couldn't even make a hedge out of them.

Leylandii are just weeds and should be banned due to their high growth rate and invasive roots. People put them in as a quick solution, not realising how they take huge amounts of work to maintain when they get big (which they do very quickly). Moreover, unclipped, they just look plain ugly!

Using a ladder, I first stripped all the branches, then topped them, then cut 2ft sections off leaving about 7ft sticking out of the ground.

I dug round the roots with a mattock and used an axe to chop out the roots, then levered the trunks over to get the remaining stumps out.

I took the whole lot to the tip in several trips in the back of my old company car.

The things you do when you are young and skint!

We've got a double parking space down the side of our house. It's not especially discrete, but hopefully no-one'll complain.

Sounds like a "playing away" opportunity. Hope the soundproofing is good! 😆

(BTW, if you have teenage kids, keep the key safe)

I don't write any articles, but i'm sure I could fill up a couple of pages of newsprint every day.

Can't be that difficult now can it?