Happy (early) Birthday to me!

A couple of decades ago I had the wisdom to stick my A1 size MBUK poster of Mint in a fish tank in a clip frame, so it’s preserved on my study wall…..what 30 years old and worth a £5?

I’m local……just get on with it.

I’ve got a Lister D to tinker with, pretty much the Ford Focus of the stationary engine world.

You need to decide if you want a fixer upper or a runner. Recalling that the fun comes from their simplicity and the ability for you to fix easily. Buying a good one just to run might get boring after a while unless you have invested time getting it running.

Having it mounted on a wheeled trolley is pretty much compulsory. They weigh a lot. It sounds like you should be searching for an engine plus pump mounted as a unit on a trolley.

As these engines are old they have often been re-bored. That can only be done so often, not just because of thickness of the bore walls, but also because of the maximum oversize available pistons and rings. Worth asking the vendor.

Make sure the oil used is SAE30 or similar, modern oils that are designed to keep foreign particles in suspension (until they get to the oil filter) don’t work in a splash lubrication system with no filter. Particles need to settle out.

I suggest something with an open crank for maximum injury potential.

I work in a completely different part of the public sector that has many of the same problems.

The answer isn’t just reformation, the primary answer is more tax, mainly for the rich.

So I’ve worked in Forestry for 10 years or so.

In my region in that time there has been one child killed on a log pile.

Take that in the context very few people are misinformed enough to climb on them – and they are always well signed to keep off. So shit does happen.

Talk Talk playing their later stuff live…..which they never did. Or Kate Bush. Or / and Led Zeppelin. Maybe original line up Black Sabbath.

This is good news, following the science rather than emotions and entrenched views. Better for cattle and farmers also, even if some of them don’t see it yet.

Very lucky to have a satellite set just outside my back garden gate.

I drive work Berlingos – it’s the same vehicle. Adblue problems and mileage on electric ones is atrocious loaded or in winter. Someone else may be along to refine what exact engines have the adblue issues. Get a petrol or a pre-adblue model.

https://www.rsf.org.uk/uk-routes-archive/scotland-cape-wrath.html

Those Stirling Castle photographs look like Photoshopped nonsense to me.

Virtual tour of Castle Stalker

Virtual Tour

Findlater

I had Motorway offer me £700 quid for a 14 year old Volvo C30. They wanted me to fix a binding caliper before paying that. I sold it for a grand privately unfixed to the first viewer as a private sale. Moral I guess try and sell a car privately first.

Regarding modern oils lasting 20k miles – I like to keep my ear to the ground on such matters, there seems to be a portion of the trade who think the manufacturer inflate service intervals beyond what is best for the car, because it drives sales and any issues caused are outside their period of liability.

If I change oil and filter – always both – inside the specified time and distance if gives me a warm fuzzy feeling of satisfaction – a form of mechanical sympathy.

Smith and Allan are a good source for oil at a realistic price.

Just read over on the BBC that they are trying to work out a motive for the assassination attempt. I think I can take a wild stab at that…..because Trump is a fascist?

I took any recreational drug I could get my hands on when I lived in Northern Ireland in the nineties aged 18 to maybe 25? I was lucky that the Troubles reduced the availability of the hard stuff, cloud with a silver lining.  Drug use, mainly cannabis and LSD,  probably did hold me back, but you could just as easily say the impediment to growing up/gathering responsibilities at that stage of my life was fanatical mountain biking.

Since moving to Scotland in 1999 mild and now very occasional cannabis use.

Criminalising people for use of any drug is a nonsense. I think people get lost in drugs because of a lack of opportunity.

My very straight edged ex police officer wife who now works as a drug and alcohol recovery nurse agrees with decriminalisation.

I also worked as a sales rep for a major brewer for five years – from what I saw in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee working mens pubs it is a disgrace that alcohol is more socially acceptable than cannabis.

The mental health risk apparent with some drugs is hard to resolve though. That said the government hasn’t outlawed social media that damages kids mental health.

Massive human depopulation. Resolves roads being too busy to cycle on, human caused climate change, and over tourism also. Win win win win then!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_C0axennQw

I had to go on a cruise once to help look after my disabled mother in law.

It was awful, like being trapped in a floating cross between Butlins and a shopping mall, while being forced to take part in an eating competition.

That was a Royal Caribbean massive thing that barely moved, other than in the direction intended.

I suggest you reconsider, taking the environment into account also.

Weekend in Margate perhaps?

Volvo have stopped selling the V60 and V90 estates in the UK due to lack of sales

They’re available again.

Well I think it’s all a con. I just buy cars with a bank loan and keep them a long time. Just sold a Volvo C30 for £1k that I bought for £10k 11 years ago on a 3 year term bank loan. Can’t remember what the repayments were but £9k divided by 122 months of motoring = not very much. Likewise, bought a V90 about three years ago, won’t be long until the loan pays off, then we’ll start gaining real ground on the cost of the desire to have a new motor every few years.

Probably helps that I maintain myself, but I’ve never had a car where averaged maintenance monthly costs in old age got anywhere close to PCP / HP payments.

Ascension Day by Talk Talk is the best song ever for just getting on with the song ending…..

Always test drive. Look at multiple examples to calibrate expectations and quality of individual cars before you buy. Buying from trade gives you more protection/consumer rights but the car costs more – that said any good dealer shall bring a car up to a standard – not always the case with a private sale. At the lower end of the market best to keep some budget to fix faults on a private purchase. You can transfer ownership and purchase tax at point of sale on line – tax cannot pass from one owner to the next.

Log book renewing is a risk but may mean nothing. If in doubt always remember there are other cars. Best to buy the car that you feel 100% confident in.

Apologies for the ‘stream of consciousness’ nature of this post, but I’m about to go to bed. Honda Jazz’s are good cars, especially if you’re a pensioner!

We’re having problems with these in the work fleet. Two vans out of not that many where the dealer is struggling to fix adblue system problems.

Hello folks thanks for the responses. Two adults one collie no kids going in September, unfortunately Clam Cottage isn’t available.

(Got a few bikes but don’t plan on taking any; since we got the Collie I’ve struggled to have the time and energy for walking and cycling / concentrating on hill walking instead).

I’m thinking of voting Green for the first time in spite of not actually wanting them in power. My thinking is thus – mainstream parties seeing an increasing Green vote will be encouraged to adopt more Green policies; some of their ideas about wealth distribution are also fundamentally right; I don’t think the Green party attracts the best political thinkers because they are too far from power, a few more votes might change this and give us an more competent party in the future (we really need better alternatives to Labour and the Conservatives).

Might be worth chucking in that I’m up in the Highlands (Inverness Skye and West Ross-Shire, past MPs Charles Kennedy then Iain Blackford) and Drew Hendry SNP is probably a shoe in here. I’m for Scottish independence but now think that the SNP needs a reset; I also have a dislike for Kate Forbes on account of her membership of a cult and the bad taste from that is putting me off the whole party along with some of the corruption whiff – although nearly all parties smell bad nowadays.

Unfortunately our Liberal Democrat candidate Angus MacDonald is a total grifter. He’s a successful businessman who is actually a Tory but is so power hungry he’s donned a Lib Dem coat. What a shame for the Liberal Democrats that they can’t find someone that any canny Highlander could see straight through. Amused to see him jump out of his liveried pickup to tell off some driver of a wee silver car at roadworks outside Spean Bridge the other day. He managed to get back in his pick up and be last through the green light, leaving me and several others from his constituency stuck by the red light. So I am campaigning against him this electoral cycle, every time I have a conversation with someone local about politics.

There ends my one post on politics for the year.

I think you’re unlucky. I had a 2010 V70 until three years ago and it had no corrosion issues, and that’s up in the Highlands where there is more road salting in winter.

Mind you surface corrosion wouldn’t be unusual on any used 14 year old car. I’d look at a few more examples to calibrate your expectations. When I buy cars I tend to invest a bit of time looking at a few examples until I find one that sticks out as better than most.

I just sold my C30 15 minutes ago after owning it 11 years. Sad.

I’ll console myself with my V40 and V90.

And brilliant news on estates. SUV’s make no sense to my engineers brain and I won’t have one.

Caught a pine marten eating sunflower hearts direct out of the feeder the other day. That was a new one on me. Have video evidence but no idea how to add that (or a photo) to a post so you can just presume I’m lying.

And to continue on that theme in rough order of frequency chaffinch, siskin, house sparrow, starling, greenfinch, sedge warbler, I could go on. A kingfisher flew through once on the way from the river to the loch that I live by. Got ospreys and eagles visible from the garden to. But not on the feeder. Seen the sparrowhawk take birds of the feeder. There’s a badger set 50 metres from the garden.

I’m tedious and straying of the topic, I am very lucky.

Oh, red squirrels come and go also. And we’ve got two male and one female Mallard in residence under the bird feeders at the moment hoovering up scraps.

I’ve finished bragging now. Sorry. We get chats also, just remembered.

I despair, didn’t know this was a thing.

Never seen a dog pram in the highlands. I suspect dogs get run over by tractors in farm yards up here before immobility becomes an issue.

I have sympathy for folk who have an otherwise happy content dog with mobility issues doing this, but the implication of the above posts and links is that people have found a new way to over humanise their dogs – probably reducing the quality of an able dogs life.

So sad – lets roll up the carpet on western civilization and start again.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001zvw4

Just a like a lot of consumer goods, marketed to raise expectations beyond what it actually delivers.

Geology is great but a stopping at everything bike ride around Rousay blows the mind.

My work runs diesel Berlingos. Mine, a 2019 plate, has an ad blue problem that has had it off the road for months. There is another Berlingo in the queue for repair in front of it with Citroen with the same fault, but they don’t seem to be able to fix it. I’m not the work mechanic so not fully informed but something is seriously wrong with Citroens ability to resolve the issue.

I’m very glad that I couldn’t get a Citroen Inverness salesperson to give me customer service when I was last wanted a car – I was in the market for a new Berlingo but given their poor response at the time to sales enquiries* I bought a second hand Volvo V90 that has been perfect.

*During the chip shortage so perhaps their reticence to talk to me was due to having no vehicles……..

I don’t get this thread. If something intrigues you educate yourself. The thread started badly and the tone was set  with:

“1) Syphoning liquid – Yes, I had it explained to me in GCSE physics, and yes, I understand the ‘principle’, but it’s making water flow uphill, and that cannot be natural.”

….when it’s gravity that makes syphoned liquid flow, and hence only ‘downhill’.

Ignore all comments on this thread other than the ones that say speak to your engineer………

I’m a local who uses and recognises Fort Bill as a truncated commonly used name for town. Like every other local I know.

I did a big shop yesterday so I can avoid the festering crowds.

Can I just announce that Fort Bill is full and there is nothing to see here.

Solicitors want contention…..! My opinion above is just that, an opinion, and subject to change……

To keep the thread off topic, I’m a serial Volvo buyer and the only issues I have had are with the one bought from Arnold Clark. Issues that could be traced back to Arnold Clark not prepping the car properly for resale. And the sales process was utterly painful. Arnold Clark Inverness, never again, I’d sooner walk.

Regarding the OP I seem to have an opinion that differs from everyone else – a quote isn’t a fixed price, you still have to pay for the actual work that is required.