Definitely crash diet. Go karts weigh bugger all, so if you're slim, you'll have a big advantage.

I would use Plus Gas (better than WD or GT85), hang onto the other crank, put the spanner on and give it a couple of smart taps in the right direction with a hammer weighing at least 2lbs. Undoes everything I've come across. If you're still struggling, order in a can or two of Loctite Freeze'n'release. May be available at your local motor factors, and does a good job of freeing things off when you can't use a lot of heat.

A lot of pedals also have allen bolt heads on the reverse side, giving you two chances at removal.

In all seriouness, the stats show that non-reserve auctions for indentical items end up with higher prices than ones with reserves. I never sell with a reserve, and I've sold a few high priced items on ebay.

Only drawback with driving a Skoda is people automatically attempt to overtake you, regardless of how fast you're going. My wife calls it Skoda rage.

Had the exact same experience in my girlfriend's old Citroen ZX. People would still tailgate like hell through 30mph limits. Disappeared as soon as I was out of them, as a ZX is quicker than it looks…

Hmmm, is this why some mountain-bikers prefer trail centres???

I like a good trail centre. Certainly beats driving behind a load of old gimmers to get out to the peak district. Or trying to link together various local bridleways which are generally covered in people trying to walk / churned up by horses. A standardish ride without too much travelling time, plus a bike shop and a caff for anything you need.

What amazes me most about Lady Gaga is that she looks absolutely awful as a Blonde, really really awful, but lovely as a Brunette. It's wierd.

Good God!

I'm used to buying automotive tools with lifetime guarantees, and that kit looks seriously, seriously overpriced. My advice would be to buy a selection of tools from different makers.

Halfords do a good range of tools called "Professional" which have lifetime guarantees. They tend to replace stuff even when it's fairly obviously been abused with a lump hammer. I'd go there for a set of combination spanners, screwdrivers and allen keys. All Halfords stuff eventually goes on offer – they're like Dell – only buy the stuff that's on a deal.

If you want a torque wrench and socket set, Sealey often has good offers – £20 for a 3/8th socket set, and mine's stood up to abuse for several years. Norbar make good torque wrenches (often on ebay at good prices), but I've always relied on feel without any ill effects.

Knipex make the best wire cutters I've ever had. Get long handled ones if you can – bike cable housings are damned tough. A dremel is far easier for cutting housing, and makes a cleaner cut.

A lot of the bike specific tools are pap – big spanners cut out of sheet steel. They're up to the job, because most bike jobs do not require brute force at all (worst I can think of is undoing old pedals, for which you crack out the proper spanners). But they're not worth spending big money on – buy one of the tool kits that Parker International sell or wait for the same thing to come into Aldi / Lidl for £20. FWIW a lot of Park tools appear to be made by Bondhus, who also offer a lifetime warranty.

Then buy any specific tools you're lacking seperately – I reckon you'd be short of a Hollowtech crank extractor and some sockets for modern bottom brackets, but that'd be about it.

Then buy a nice toolbox – £20 for a plastic one, £60 for a steel one with drawers.

And you'll most likely still have £300 in your pocket. Until you decide you want a workstand, which I definitely would with that kind of budget.

I have no kids, however, I do know this. Unless every time a disposable nappy is used, someone dies, I'd be going the disposable route every time. As others have said, life's far too short to wash shite off nappys.

Black.

If you must have "blingy" then blue, along with a few Gulf stickers. You won't look at all daft.

Most family hatches are fairly grim. I had a 406 which was reputed to handle wonderfully for a car of that class, and whilst it would carry a lot of speed, it wasn't engaging to drive at all. Was a good motorway cruiser so long as you weren't in one of the rev ranges that the dashboard resonated at. As for Renault, most Meganes seem to come from the factory looking like they had a cheap accident repair.

If driver enjoyment is a serious issue, I'd go and try a BMW estate. The 2.0D can do its turbo in 50k though.

Cried it off entirely. :lol:

Not an immigrant, but my view is that it's relatively easy to find a decent primary / middle school as they're smaller. Secondary schools tend to have a massive intake, so you get kids from failing schools & excellent schools being educated together, with predictable results.

If at all possible, move somewhere where your kids can go to Grammar school.

The key thing to remember is that schools vary enormously in quality in the UK, and that school quality has a massive bearing on house prices. One of the few countries in the world where what school you go to has a major bearing on your adult success.

Have a look for UK Business Forum. There are a few on there who work in this kind of service and would be able to give you some more info.

Reading on any smartphone is a bit of a gip. You can get by with powerpoint presentations and the odd webpage, but any kind of document is a complete pain in the neck. More of a "if you have to check something in this .doc" type thing than something you'd actually choose to read on.

Is it that hard to heat them up if they won't come out cold?

Small claims isn't worth it. Payment is very rarely enforced.

Personally, I'd ebay the bits I had, and buy the bits I wanted.

You will not get anything worth having for £2k that's 30 years old if the Irish market is anything like the UK market.

There are a few pre-requisites:
1) You want something that's been looked after – 90% of the time that will mean one of the hotter models in the range, or something fairly luxurious / staid (ie, a Merc or Volvo).
2) You want something that's bearable day to day. You're now narrowing it down most likely to cars that came with fuel injection, and were fairly large and classy.
3) You want something you can still get parts for, and can afford.

Most desirable oldish cars are way over £2k. You might get a Merc W123 in reasonable nick for that money, but tidy MK1 Golf GTIs are £5k+, MK1 & 2 Escorts regularly sell for £10k, and a tidy MK2 Golf GTI is about £2k these days. Same thing goes for any of the old BMWs, SAAB Turbos etc. Obviously, you can get a ruined example for under £2k, but ruined old cars always end up more expensive than just buying a good one in the first place.

Anyone contemplating an MG is clearly completely tonto. Unreliable, slow and leaky. And all the cachet of a beard and a beer belly.

Really, old cars are not a way of saving money. Servicing comes round every 6000 miles at best, and they need a lot of parts which often take a lot of finding.

The best bet in my view is to run something that still has solid manufacturer parts support and a reputation for reliability – Merc and VW both sell parts for a very long time after production ends (at least 15 years for VW, and Merc has a policy of reducing parts prices with age), but £2k won't stretch to a good W124 E class. There are plenty of < £2k VWs and Audis around though.

If he's puked, I'd imagine he'll feel fine. I never have any kind of a hangover after vomming.

TM Lewin shirts are a bit pap.

If a battery's flat for more than a day or two, it'll be ruined. Just a fact of lead acid battery chemistry.

Water will work, but water screws up DOT 4 and 5.1 by reducing the boiling point. You'll find it difficult to guarantee that all of it's out, so you'll have to bleed through and waste a lot of brake fluid. Why not just assemble it and bleed later? Normal car or motorbike DOT fluid is fine, and easy to get.

DOT 5 is NOT interchangeable with other DOT fluids – it's silicone based, and again, screws up seals if the system isn't designed for it. DOT 4 and 5.1 absorb water, reducing the boiling point of the fluid slightly. DOT 5 is not miscible with water, so any water in the system finds its way to the lowest point – the caliper – and boils somewhere around its normal boiling point, which isn't good.

Disagree! Our Office Managers Ka wheelspins anywhere near damp tarmac and it does try to swap ends to readily (apparently).

There's something wrong with it then. They can munch TCA bushes in 10k, the tracking needs to be right and the tyres need to match on the axles. If it's still driving oddly then something's bent or the dampers need swapping. All 3 cars (Fiesta, Puma & Ka) are based on the same chassis, and have similar foibles.

All the Fiestas, Kas and Pumas have great handling. They will oversteer if the back tyres are mismatched or you are really stupid (top tip – left foot braking and saying "watch this" at 60mph is not recommended). They are stupidly neutral handling most of the time, and the steering feel is immense.

Big issues I would watch for are rust & interior wear and tear on any Ford of that age. They get very tired very quickly.

That said, I'd be inclined to go look at the Honda CTR or VTI, or a 3 series.

It takes rather longer for the AA battery on the Falklands to come online than it does for a jet to get from Argentina to the Falklands. Unless they're sat waiting on 24/7 alert, the air defences would be likely to be destroyed before they managed to engage enemy aircraft.

That said, exactly this kind of sabre rattling is the kind of thing that would cause the AA battery to be put on alert :lol:

Raleigh Banana. Cost me £20 and it'll never get nicked.

TBH if I had cash, I'd buy something like a 24 speed Ridgeback with a nice dutch style riding position…

680 and that seems to be very wide to me. Might get some 4 foot wide ones next though.

EN521 seems pretty good to me.

Nope. Can't stand the entire sofa rubbish. I want a proper journo laying into politicians at 7am, not Strictly Pop Factor on Ice chit chat.

Really, really don't go pumping car tyres up to silly pressures. If a car tyre lets go on you, it could easily kill you. I wouldn't be happy about 80psi in an MTB tyre either.

A dirt cheap compressor will do the job for £60. A CO2 cartridge will do it for a quid a pop. Not worth making up your own "ghetto" sytem of doing things unless you know it's rated for the pressure.

Wouldn't want to do Calais to Brittany in one hit. Calais to Honfleur, then on to Brittanny is pleasant.

It very much depends on the car too – you can happily sit at 140kmh on the Autoroutes and people do get out of your way. But if doing that is deafening then it's still unpleasant.

That said, I'd not want to go on holiday to a non-resort or city break without a car.

Another thing to look out for is if your car's up to it. We did 2500 miles in 2 weeks or so in our old Golf, but it does 400 miles a week every week with no trouble. We saw something like 18 broken down cars at the side of the road as we got near Dover, and I'd bet most of them only do a few miles a week and didn't realise that their cars weren't up to doing hundreds of miles fully loaded / spending an hour or two idling on the M25.

Clean rims, decent pads and well adjusted brakes so they aren't yards from the rim and the reach is OK. Most Vees are alright, but some do have plastic arms (and plastic levers), particularly on kids bikes, which are useless.

In my experience the unbranded metal Vees can be a bit naff in their ability to return to the same position every time, but they will stop you.

If you can lay your hands on a pair of parallel push brakes, they are immense. Major improvement over standard Vees.

As for reliability of diesels, it's not a myth, it may be a touch out of date though. In the old days a diesel benefited from being overbuilt, and running at low revs all their lives, but they didn't have to worry about a HT injection system. So no damp start problems, no mixture problems, no carburettor, no fuel quality issues, no spark plug issues, no HT leads etc etc etc.

Spark plugs tend to last at the very least 20k, and fairly often 50k these days, depending on what plug's specified. About the same as glow-plugs. EFI has done away with cold start issues etc. The only thing that a petrol has to go wrong that a diesel doesn't have an equivalent for is HT leads, and that's a fairly rare occurence (with the exception of Mondeos of a certain vintage).

On the other hand, diesels have bits that petrols don't, and seem to manage to lunch Dual Mass Flywheels at a massive rate compared to petrol cars. And the bits that pack up on diesels are expensive!

Perhaps not quite scrap material yet. I'd fix it and flog it though. Headgaskets on Rovers don't always stay fixed.

This may be a stupid question, but can I stick any rotor I like on my brakes? I seem to keep bending Magura rotors and they're a fair whack dearer than Shimanos etc…

Bloke who runs the LBS used to work at Carlton (built Carltons, oddly enough, along with all the top end Raleigh stuff).

A while ago my sister got her hands on an original Burner and he was agog that they were collectable. Apparently he wouldn't sell them back in the day as they were so much poorer than Haros etc. Similarly the 20 odd year old Raleigh Banana I have is about as bad a team replica as you could hope to find – get one, put your hand on the saddle and press one of the pedals to witness incredible frame flex, and they were fitted out with nasty nasty components when new.

I'd say that their decline was due to selling rubbish gear that looked the part and was pricey.

The 1.4 Skoda will be slightly slower than the 1.9 diesel in terms of out and out power.

That said, I don't like the way diesels drive (if I want relaxed, I'll get a car with a V8, LPG and an autobox), and I don't like the complication and weight of them. Dual mass flywheels, extremely high pressure injection systems and a grand's worth of emissions kit do not make for the kind of reliability people talk about. It's always been something of a myth that diesels are more long lived than petrols – maybe in the pre fuel injection days when petrol cars suffered from over rich mixtures and lots of bore wash, but not now.

So my view is that I'd go for petrol every time. If I were buying new, and doing 30k a year, it might work out for me to buy a diesel. Buying second hand and doing sane mileage, you might save a quid or two a week on fuel, but you can be landed with a £500 bill at any time if the DMF, fuel pumps or DPF pack up.

There's a bloke quoted in this article on the amount of CO2 produced by refining diesel:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/green-motoring/7166444/Is-diesel-dead.html

Some kind of tape where the cables rub & a slit inner tube / old tyre cable tied to the chainstay. Inner tube is lighter, old tyre looks flashier… Both should be free.

I use a hosepipe, a watering can or a bucket. Crazy.

Pressure washers are for really dirty cars / alloy wheels. Rest of the time it's not worth getting it out, the hose is quicker.

I use a hosepipe, a watering can or a bucket. Crazy.

Pressure washers are for really dirty cars / alloy wheels. Rest of the time it's not worth getting it out, the hose is quicker.

If my memory is correct, the stock inbred comes with a 190mm steerer and a 20mm spacer, with the FSA XL2 headset. So 173 might needa a 5mm spacer to give you some room to tension the top cap. Bars will be low though.