geoffbeaumont

I love the Picos De Europa - though my laning experience there was limited to getting a lift to and from our caving expedition campsite in the back of a Land Rover (our local contacts ran walking and 4x4 tours out of Arenes De Cabrales). Can't camp up there now, since it became a national park - official camp sites only.

Dehumidifiers don't work well at low temperatures (particularly compressor type), and even if you dry the air you won't get a great deal of evaporation from a cold carpet. A combination of dehumidifier and heater should do a good job of getting things dry in the first place (aiming it's not leaving in faster than you can dry it). In the winter, if you can only run one go for the heater - ideally with some ventilation too.

Well, it appears I was correct in saying replacing the garage was a bit optimistic for 2020... https://forums.lr4x4.com/topic/106620-2020-projects/?do=findComment&comment=953344 The knackered old one is still there. On the plus side, the house is nearly finished - it no longer leaks, just got the kitchen to finish, new water supply pipe (when I can find a plumber who'll actually do it), and inevitably lots of small odds and ends. Then I've just got to find the funds for the garage 🙄

These are both 4HP-24 boxes, Nige.

Wishing you a swift recovery, Stephen!

Our low mileage five year old Fabia keeled over a couple of months back - the throttle assembly had disintegrated (same engine as the equivalent Polo and Ibiza). £750 + VAT for a new one, plus fitting and call out, so the final bill was over a grand. It's not generally been a bad car, but that sort of "German quality" makes me nervous of keeping it long term...

I don't think how it drives is usually a consideration with those sort of thing - it's all about the look. Much the same as massively lifted "monster truck" off roaders that would fall over (or to bits) if they actually ventured off road.

Notched chassis...so even assuming it's structurally sound should almost certainly have been through an IVA. Wouldn't imagine it has! Not entirely clear why it's a "hybrid" - it appears to just be a butchered 90...

Technically a side effect of how it works, but yes, it does and it therefore makes some sense to turn it on when switching to demist. What about if you just want cool air directed at your face? I usually have the screen vents on for this, without my hands getting blasted with cold air, and I don't usually want it cold enough to need air con unless it's hot outside. I much prefer the system on my current car, which has a separate demist button which directs all air to the screen vents, activates air con and sets a minimum temperature and fan speed. Just turning on the screen vents is just... turning on the screen vents.

We used to have a Honda civic that did this. If the vents were set to demist the air con came on automatically when you started the car (no fancy climate control involved). Drove me up the wall! I don't mind air con switching on when I switch to demist, but if I choose to turn it off it should stay off...

Surely that would work the other way round, and compress the track rod in each case?

Sadly, it sells products to a lot of people.

I guess the toe in on series is because the expectation is that if they're traveling at any significant speed they're in two wheel drive?

There will be some customisation involved in handling original/OEM/pattern equivalents, but I wouldn't have thought anything much else custom on the customer facing side of things, so that part should have been nowhere anywhere close to £200k. The big question is whether the project also covered their stock keeping, and what other systems (in house stock control, external suppliers, drop shopping suppliers) it had to integrate with or migrate existing data from. If some of those were similarly antiquated (which is highly likely) then there could have been a lot of work there - as much in figuring out how the existing systems work as anything, usually there's no spec, no-one actually knows and over the years they've acquired a huge number of hideous hacks carried out by developers who didn't know what they were doing. Still, even with a lot of complexity uncovered along the way I'd expect £200k to deliver a fully working system (and tested, but the problem here may have had more to do with putting it live before the job was finished). I wonder if the head of IT jumped ship because he knew he'd Mildly miffed all that money up the wall?

You've got to have a fair streak of masochism to be into Land Rovers in the first place... 😆

We had an 11 hour power cut - but overnight so we were oblivious to most of it. The remains of the kids trampoline are on top of next doors sheds, but that's it for damage. Can't see any damage to the sheds, but it's still too windy to get the trampoline off them. It's never moved before, been there for years (we inherited it with the house), but the new neighbours removed a row of overgrown leylandii when they put the sheds in - I guess they sheltered the trampoline enough. Time for some ground anchors when we get a replacement...

Would have thought most people considering portals would also be using large diameter tyres, so can afford a larger rim? Unless you move the portal inboard of the swivel (and similarly inboard at the back) you'd be pretty limited in what you could fit in a 16" rim?

Anda drive down a nice scratchy lane to remove the mirror finish on the paint 😉

I'd definitely interested once they reach the second hand market - far more than in any of land rovers current products. No way could I justify the cost of a new one, but that's not really a reflection on the grenadier, like @Snagger and @Bowie69 I don't buy new cars.

Not much difference between a soft broom and a wallpaper brush, other than the length of the handle.

Still plenty of Defenders on the farms round here in Lancashire too. Plenty of 4x4 pickups as well, mind.

Sounds good - don't expect to much exciting land rover news from me, though, I've been devoid of any interesting vehicles for a decade now! Maybe one day ...

Only for the last two years - most of which has been a bit limiting!

If meeting up proves to be tricky I'm only five minutes off M6 jtn 31, happy to be a drop off/pick up point.

That's actually a very clever campaign. The human brain is very efficient at filtering out irrelevant sensory inputs so you can concentrate on the ones that you need to perform whatever task you're doing. Scientific studies (no, I'm not digging out the references* right now 😋) have shown that drivers e.g. pulling out of a junction see hazards they're expecting to see - so if they're expecting there may be cars, lorries or buses approaching then they'll notice any of them. But it's likely their brain will filter out the approaching motorcycle. In other words, when someone says "I looked, but he came out of nowhere!", they may well be being completely honest - they weren't being careless, they really did look but still failed to notice the bike. If you can get people to think about motorcycles then their brains include them in the "relevant filter", and they notice them. Obviously, works for anything else too - and is part of the reason even a hands free phone call (or anything else that takes your concentration) increases the risk of an accident - if your brain is focused work/whatever you can manage to filter out pretty much anything! * Somewhere I've got a fascinating, if rather dry, book on the psychology of driving - it's pretty much a collection of scientific papers. That was one of the most interesting.