It’s not this hard!

Look on the airport website, they’ll have a list of foreign exchanges in the airport. Go on the website of those foreign exchange places, see what their online prices to order Euros are. Order the best one.

Job done…

Order online through Travelex or similar and pick up at the airport. The online order rates are always lots better than the walk up to the counter rates, and as Euros are stocked everywhere, ordering them late shouldn’t be an issue.

You may also be able to order the pre-loaded cards very late for collection.

I am not a lawyer!

I’d put in a data access request for the contract and all recordings of conversations.

To my mind the offer of a refund is an admission of liability and I’d keep pushing. And the confidentiality agreement is definitely an admission that their reputation is worth £ to them. Most no win no fee types won’t want to touch it as it’s not an open and shut case. I’d be inclined to push as hard as possible down normal complaints routes – escalating the complaint to the chief exec and any governing bodies.

Condenser driers kick out warm damp air into the house. You want a standard hole in the wall drier if drying clothes is making your house damp.

I think there are a lot of people who either haven’t read this or are ignoring the actual research. It isn’t a case of people turning up at interview in a tracksuit and not getting the job. It’s people turning up at the interview in a suit, but it’s the “wrong” suit and not getting the job despite being good candidates.

In STW terms, they’re disqualifying half the field from a race because they turned up on Saracens and don’t know where Hebden Bridge is, regardless of whether they make qualifying pace.

It sounds like you have things fairly together considering the situation!

If things do get tight, don’t forget that there are some absolute gits in the world. Take care of yourself, and run if anyone suggests any kind of situation where you need to give up cash (or the van, or take on debt) for a job, they receive wages on your behalf, or where your accommodation is tied into the job.

Keep hold of a bank account and if you get really stuck don’t be too proud to go and hammer on the door of the housing office / sally army etc.

The other thing to do is to get your name down with some employment agencies however you can. If you’re halfway motivated you’ll be the star guy that everyone wants working for them – the bar is set pretty low, so if you can turn up and knock off at the right time and spend less than 25% of your day looking at your phone, you’re sorted.

You can get pretty decent chrome paints. The preparation work is going to be the biggest issue you face – you need to get really really smooth and polished paint underneath the final chrome paint to give a good chrome effect. Get the prep perfect and the chrome effect is pretty damn good. Get it wrong and you’ll see it.

The other option is to use a wrap – this will hide imperfections more, but you’ll have a seam to lose.

Personally, I’d just get the thing powder coated or painted.

The in board pads are usually clipped to the caliper piston. The outer caliper is usually placed on the carrier and held in place by the caliper (most car brakes are single piston, and the entire caliper can slide on pins to give clamping force on both sides of the disk).

Because the outboard pads are basically loose, they can vibrate and whistle or hum. Some pads have anti vibration stuff stuck to the back of the pad, or you can get greases (copper slip, mintex cera-tec etc) that add some damping to stop the vibration making a noise.

This link (not embedded the image as it’s on someone else’s forum) shows where I’d be greasing on a typical car caliper set up.

The pad can stick in the carrier, in which case you need to attack it with a file and grease the pad to carrier contact points.

And the caliper can stick on its sliders – in which case you can either play about cleaning and regreasing the pins and rubbers you have, or you can just put new ones in. There’s a firm called “brake parts” who do the refurb bits or whole replacement calipers for most cars. They’re cheaper than the likes of Euro car parts most of the time, and sometimes they’re cheaper than their own website on eBay…

If it’s the 6 speed, then you’ve got the F40 gearbox (nothing to do with the Ferrari with the same name!).

They’re not the greatest gearboxes in the world – they’re fitted to Alfa 159s and SAABs too, and they’re not amazingly slick changes. The good news is that lots of the SAAB lot will be running 250bhp+ and 370NM+ through them and you don’t hear of them failing – the clutch will go first.

The first port of call is to change the gearbox oil. GM issued a service bulletin to reduce the amount of oil in the gearbox and put fresh in, ending up with 3.something litres of oil in the gearbox. How to do the gearbox oil change is documented on pretty much every Vauxhall and SAAB forum there is. The SAAB forum types all like the Redline MT90 oil from Opie Oils.

The other port of call is that your linkage / turret needs adjusting. On the SAABs the selector turret a known wear point with specific repair kits. There may be a similar setup on the Vectra.

The final thing is that it’s an F40 gearbox and you’re unlikely to get a much better one. Learn to double clutch (ie, clutch down, go into neutral, clutch back up and into the next gear) and you’ll at least avoid crunching it :-)

You want to know two things.

1. What grade of leather you are getting. There is a lot of corrected / textured stuff out there. It can be fine, it can be really poor.

2. What the spec of the frame and cushions are. Nobody will tell you this. But you can have a good guess if you get your hands on the care guide for the sofa. The more they warn you about fluffing things up and turning cushions and not always sitting in the same spot, the more likely it is to wear poorly.

The TSI 1.4 engines went through a serious phase of eating themselves. A replacement VAG engine will run into 2k easily, and second hand ones will be rare due to the fragility. Do some research and see if they’ve fixed it yet.

This is what Georges from IWC thinks. To a large extent all luxury watches are all smoke and mirrors, but if I were buying one, I’d rather not have it rubbed in my face.

One other thing worth knowing is that Swatch / ETA have stopped selling spares to independent repairer, so you may find yourself limited to official servicing providers.

I’d think about buying the black one, but I’d go out and buy a Rolex Submariner instead just because they tend to be rock solid value wise.

You can’t design many things so that they go pop at bang on 7 years old…

You can design things on the basis that you have a warranty of X years and balance the level of failures repaired under warranty against the cost of better performing materials.

But pushing that too hard isn’t a great strategy as residual values are important for most car manufacturers, and cars that fail massively straight out of warranty aren’t going to maintain good residuals.

The people working on developing the cars will have a very good idea of where their competitors test specs are set, but I can’t imagine many coming on here and spilling the beans! I have read that SAAB used to run their engines to the equivalent of 100k on the heavy load test to make sure they were happy with the durability. Vauxhall / GM were happy with 60k.

GM Dexos 2 oil isn’t exactly expensive. You could go and buy the GM oil and filter from them if you were super paranoid and give them to your indy…

I suspect an element of the 20 minute check they do is looking for stuff that should get picked up and sorted at service that could cause knock on failures. Cracking belts and hoses, ancient brake fluid etc.

You don’t need to get your car serviced by Vauxhall.

The EU block exemption rules mean any garage can service a car and maintain the manufacturer warranty so long as the correct parts are used. This has been the case for almost 15 years.

This can also be filed in the bulging wallet labelled “What’s the EU ever done for us”.

If the dealer have been telling you they have to service it, I’d be inclined to go for every avenue of complaint available. Credit card company if you paid with one, social media, watchdog, Vauxhall UK etc.

Search for the guys eBay username. That normally turns up other forums and sometimes email addresses. If you keep going you can sometimes get to a phone number. Keep going from that and you can get to a Facebook profile and a name. If you find any adverts for vehicles for sale, the police can turn that into an address.

Don’t rely on eBay providing information to the police – they don’t do it at all quickly.

The other thing is to push the police to act.

Buy it now will mean the other person can access your address. Only do it if you have an eBay account you can bin, and can get the Police there ASAP.

You may be getting caught out by automatics. The recent 8 speed autos do a very good job of keeping diesels in exactly the right rev range, meaning they’re noticeably quicker than the same engine would with a manual.

My Girl and Sweet Caroline would have got our DJ booted out on the spot. And they’re not songs you can dance to unless you’re doing a slow first dance to one of them.

There is one song you need that’s guaranteed to get people moving. Dancing on the Ceiling.

All drillings on cabinets are at 32mm centres, so at half an inch off you should be fine. There’s also normally about 4-5mm adjustment space on the hinge plates that screw to the carcass.

If all else fails, get new hinges with more adjustment in the hinge plates. They’re all standard sizes, kitchen cabinets are normally full overlay.

I’ve just bought a Jobsworth rack from on one, it’s decent enough, disk compatible and cost a tenner.

There have been a few cheap Boardman panniers on eBay and in TK Maxx, but they don’t have internal dividers.

I’d stay in the car, ring the Police and do everything possible to get it off the carriageway. Drive it on the starter motor, ignore every horrible mechanical noise going, just get it off the road.

Getting out of the car is bonkers. A car has lights, reflectives and crumple zones. You don’t. Even if someone is driving along texting and barrels into you at 80mph, you’ve got a decent chance – there are no obstacles in front of you to get shunted into, and the mass of your car means that you will be using both your car’s crumple zone and the crumple zones in the car that hits you. On foot, you are 100% gone.

The other factor is that a lot of traffic doesn’t actually travel that quickly – in rush hour it’s about 65mph average and the fact that all the other vehicles are moving around you tends to slow the traffic down to 30-40mph near a breakdown.

On a quiet motorway at night most still travel at somewhere around 70-80mph. There are a few people going considerably quicker but they tend to be paying attention at least.

Cheers all. I will want back panels to be rebated or fitted into a groove as I’m hoping to buy nice veneered panels, and I don’t want to spoil that by having a ropey bit of hardboard visibly tacked to the back.

It sounds like the cheapest route is to go down the pocket screw method and buy a cheap router to cut back panel rebates or grooves? A router would open new possibilities – bevelled edges and mitred joints potentially?

No idea on where your costs are for your area, but don’t forget the cost of the money to do the house up.

Depending on where you fall in terms of LTV, it can work out more expensive to buy somewhere and do it up, because you drop into a lower LTV bracket and your mortgage interest goes up. That’s obviously going to be rectified when you re-mortgage and revalue the house, but it can make it painful short term.

I’ve got a soft top and drive it all year round. The hood has three layers – the outer layer, an insulating layer and a headlining. Absolutely no problem driving it all year round. Get a wind deflector and with decent heaters you can have the top down during bright winter days too without having to dress up like an arctic explorer.

My mum has a summer car. It inevitably has a flat battery, flat tyres and rusty brake disks every spring. It’s much better to run them all year round.

In my book, the current bargain convertibles are the BMW Z4, Porsche Boxsters, BMW 6 series and SAAB 9-3s. The Z4s and Boxters are around at £3k upwards, but I suspect you’ll get a nicer BMW for your money. The BMWs don’t look particularly date either. 6 series are getting cheap now for petrol engined models. And SAABs are around for £2k or so upwards – the 2.0T Aeros will remap to 240-250 bhp for around £100 and the 2.0t cars will map to around 200 bhp for the same money.

MX-5s are available for pocket money, but any 2 litre diesel hatch will be miles faster than you, 6 footers don’t really fit with the standard seats, and they rust like it’s going out of fashion. But they are pretty good fun.

One other important thing to note is that diesel convertibles are not cricket.

It’s time.

You want some autosmart bio brisk. It’s awesome for cleaning and the blurb on the front says “specially formulated to tackle blood, vomit and urine”. What more can you ask for?

They use a lot of pieces of timber laminated together to achieve solid wood at the prices they sell at – the back boards are normally finger jointed boards and legs are usually made up of a lot of laminations – flip a small table over and it should be pretty obvious from looking at the bottom of the legs.

We had a 1.6 Mk3 Golf. The gearbox got sticky, seemed to point towards the gearbox / synchros being on the way out, so we got rid.

That was at just under 150000 miles. The car looked pretty tidy even then – the only giveaway of the 70k we’d put on it was that the driver’s seat foam was pretty flattened. Are you sure of the mileage?

Apply for lots of jobs. Job adverts are often not great – the company usually know they have a problem they need a person to solve, but often not even what job title that person should have. As a result, very appealing jobs can have very unappealing adverts.

Buy Perfect CV and Perfect Interview, both by Max Eggert. Short books that tell you how to sort your CV and interview skills out.

I’d go for a skills summary at the top of the CV, pulling all your key skills together at the top of the sheet, particularly when you’re going for a private sector job. Keep the CV down to 2 pages, and lose any old info (ie, roles over 10 years ago that aren’t relevant, A level results unless very relevant etc.).

I’d rewrite your Barclays experience something like the below – I’d expect this job would walk you into a lot of decent account manager type roles if written up right:

Trust and Company Administrator – Barclays Private Bank and Trust IOM

Managed a demanding portfolio of 150 trusts and company structures within the wealth management department of one of the world’s largest banks. Increased turnover / number of clients / KPI performance by xx% (every manager loves to see good numbers, and you can pretty much guarantee one interview question will revolve around this)

* Managed extremely demanding high net worth clients across Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. (every HNW / company director type I’ve ever encountered that made their own money has been very very sharp and demanding, and the recruiting manager will know this too)
* Created bespoke solutions to suit client requirements.
* Displayed exceptional interpersonal skills, acting as direct point of contact for clients.
* Travelled globally for face to face client meetings.
* Rapidly acquired detailed knowledge of specialist subjects, with no prior background knowledge, including: Porfolio and Investment Management, Trust and Company administration, Property Acquisition.

The rims are the same.
I have had out of round schwalbe tyres, maybe try swapping the tyres around and seeing if the problem follows the tyre?

Cheers all, a pair of 32mm tyres have duly been ordered. Lets hope I can bodge mudguards on there…

http://www.ukchicagoblues.co.uk/%5B/url%5D

These guys did our wedding, a really good tight band.

There will be a hefty deposit – I hired a classic Alfa in Italy, probably worth around 30k and the excess was 3k. Typically supercar hire places want 10-20k excess, and will want to see that you’ve got the cash / take a swipe of a credit card.

I’d personally go for a classic – when you’re in a hired motor that costs as much as a house, with a big excess, you don’t tend to go bonkers with the loud pedal.

Nottingham City itself is a bit strange – the city is a bit of a chequerboard of nice and ropey areas interspersed. The traffic in the city is pretty grim, but the trams and public transport are very good. The crime thing is blown out of proportion a bit. Outside of the Nottingham city, you’ve got a few really nice areas.

West Bridgford / Radcliffe on trent / Bingham side of town – Bridgford is very nice with it’s own little town centre, property is very expensive, the further you go out to the east the more rural it gets. Road riding out through the villages on that side of town is pleasant but not very hilly. You’ve got decent access to the A46 and A52, and the A453 has just been upgraded so hopefully getting out to the west isn’t the massive pain it used to be.

Mapperley top / Calverton side of town. The further north / east you go the more villagey it gets. You do have to go through some interesting areas to get to Mapperley from the town centre. You can get onto the A614 pretty easily to head north, but it’s not very easy to get south as you either need to go around town or over Gunthorpe bridge which is a bit of a bottleneck.

The villages between Nottingham and Derby. Good access to the M1 and therefore the M42, puts you in a commutable distance of Derby, Nottingham, Leicester, and Sheffield / Doncaster at a push. Some villages are really nice, some are very expensive. The further North you get the more you get into ex industrial / mining areas, and property gets cheaper.

If you have any intention of going to the shops, gigs or restaurants, or anything else you would want to do in a city, then Nottingham is the place you’ll be heading into. Derby seems like a wasteland in comparison.

Villages around Leicester are nice, but I wouldn’t want to live in the city.

The key thing is whoever does it, make sure they do it to the proper service schedule – ie, the spark plugs, fuel filter and cam belt actually get changed every 60k or so rather than just doing “oil and filter” at every service.

When I’m buying a car, specialist history looks better than a random garage, and will probably help sell the car given it’s previously had full Audi history. If the book is full of random stamps, it’s not going to make much difference who does it.

As for whether specialists are worth it or not, depends on the car and the specialist. The bloke who fixes my wife’s Alfa isn’t cheap, but whenever it comes back from him it runs spot on.

We have a couple of Danish suppliers at work – any chocolates they send around Christmas are like the old minstrels advert… Nice, very nice, nice, AAAARGH WHO PUTS LIQUORICE AND SALT IN A TRUFFLE????

Other driver’s insurance company wants to write it off – so presumably this is a no fault claim.

Push for cash in lieu of repair. You should be able to get most of the car’s value paid out to you (from memory it’s book price less salvage value, which generally works out at 90% or so of book), and keep the car. Repair it with second hand parts and keep running it.

So long as you go for cash in lieu of repair rather than a write off where you buy the salvage back, the car will not be recorded as a write off of any kind.

The key issue if the car is written off is not normally insuring it – it’s that the payout you get if a written off car is written off again in an accident is pretty heavily marked down, as obviously a recorded write off is worth less on the open market.

The circumstances that led to the house being sold weren’t ideal. And no, that doesn’t mean there’s a freshly laid patio too :D