Cynic-al
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Posts posted by Cynic-al
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I put one on a works van, It gets very little use, its a 65 plate and only has 27k on it, mostly short runs to pick up a part etc. It has a tracker and the battery was always going flat. I put a ring panel on (a4 paper size, maybe 10w?) and it's only gone flat twice since, once someone left the lights on in the back and I'm not sure about the other time, probably the same. The panel is on the dash so we always leave it parked the right way, especially in winter when there isn't much light. It was the cheapest way to fix the problem but it's important to remember it's only overcoming the losses from the tracker, it would need to be much bigger to charge the battery. Ideally you could do with monitoring your drain but it's hard to do with such small values.
Do you disconnect the battery when not in use? Can you put a trickle charger on from time to time to top it up? On my caravan I just put it on a timer to power the caravan once a week on a Thursday night so that if we went away for a weekend it was fully charged ready to go.
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What a stunning place!
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I prefer this one
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Same as towbars, I had an Isuzu / Witter towbar on my Isuzu, it started going rusty very quickly, I complained on my first two services and the dealer got the bodyshop to paint it, which lasted about 2 weeks each time. When it was about 2 years old I had it shot balsted, hot dipped then powdercoated. From memory the blast and powder coat was about £35+vat and the hot dip was about £6.67+vat. Why witter don't just get them all galvanised I don't know.
My only reservations with glav an LPG tank, and I don't know enough to know if they're valid, would be you would have to bung it to stop the galv going inside and flaking off or reacting with the gas which might make them difficult to sink in the galv, I assume the oil in the gas would be enough to stop internal rusting? Any expansion in the tank might make it flake off, don't know if that's a thing? Guess paint survives it.
Air receivers only have a visual inspection and a tap with a hammer, x-ray if they're concerned. If I wanted to test one for my own peace of mind I'd fill it with water and take it to 1.5 times working pressure with a hand pump like they do with steam boilers etc.
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That looks a really good job!
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Pretty dull for me, in no particular order with overlaps we have had;
'89 ford escort 1.3 bonus (I think the bonus was the mushrooms that grew in the footwells)
'89 range rover classic
'90 Suzuki sj410 (I'd got it to a 1.6, coil sprung, rock lobster, samarai axle, vitara diffs, disk brakes all around 31" tyres by the time it was stolen)
'92 fiat uno 1.1ies (my first car, happy memories!)
'95 Peugeot 105 1.0 (wouldn't warm start so you had to fill with petrol then push off the forecourt until it cooled)
'98 fiat bravo 1.6 sx
'01 fiat bravo 1.9 jtd
'02 ford ranger double cab 2.5 (full high vis markings, looked classy at my wedding reception)
'03 Hyundai coupe 2.0 (bought it at a year old from a dealer with 30,000 miles and sold it privately at 2 years old with 80,000 miles and lost an absolute fortune on it)
'06 citroen picasso 1.6hdi
'07 ford ranger supercab thunder 2.5
'07 ford s-max (still have it and it broke down on the m1 recently in rush hour, quite the tailback, made it to the traffic news!)
'10 isuzu rodeo doublecab plus 3.0
'10 mercedes vito dualiner 2.2 (still going strong at 196,000 miles!)
'15 isuzu d-max doublecab blade 2.5
'17 vw amarok doublecab 3.0 v6 (current runaround)
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To test them they usually have a look with a torch then put a bit of white paper through the hole and give the thing a tap with a hammer to see how much rust falls onto the paper. If the paper gets ripped out of their hands it's usually a fail.
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The big players are behind on warranty. Isuzu, Mitsubishi and Fiat give 5 years on pickups, 7 years on a Ssangyong, 3 years on a ford and vw
When I had a ford pickup a lot of the parts were only covered for a year. Confidence inspiring!
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My first car was a Fiat Uno ies, they were the last 2 years of production before the punto, I found out when I had a gearbox problem that the ies was a test bed for the punto and had a smaller input shaft on the gearbox. I couldn't get a used gearbox anywhere and ended up using some of my gearbox, some of an older uno gearbox and some of a punto gearbox to get it to work so it's not just land rover who use their customers as a test bed
All this testing is a good thing, but it doesn't replicate 10 years of life, but I guess that's why a warranty is 3 years.
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It surprises me that Land Rover drive them too and from Goodwood, you'd think the show fleet would go on a truck. Unless their plan is they want it to be seen, photographed, shared etc. And is so why is this poor quality image from a naff angle the only one?
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I disagree, that is at the core of a land rover owner. Cargo trousers held up with braces, a t-shirt making your allegiance to the brand and your disdain for every other known brand clear, laced ankle boots topped with an oilskin hat and a multitool on the belt for running repairs, cooking and male grooming.
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The jeep rubicon is on my to own list! I want to see the gladiator when it comes out. Just a shame they're downsizing engines.
most people realise cars are more hassle than they're worth?
Clearly a city person, I've lived in cities and rural and can completely see where she's coming from for cities but not out of cities. If they want to cut congestion people need to travel less. Go back to more local living. Have vans doing deliveries rather then lots of cars going out. Live near where you work etc. There is a jumbo jet regularly comes into the local airport with produce from Mexico and Africa. If you want to cut the food miles you've got to accept you can't have every food year round, you have to live by the seasons of your area. It's a big lifestyle change. A more realistic aim would be to reduce the miles covered by each family, get them down to one car etc. Separate work and private miles. Charge per mile driven and so on.
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I wouldn't worry too much about melting the forming material as the thin plastic cools very quickly so I doubt you'll get enough heat transfer. Maybe window putty or something might be an alternative.
Or build a CNC router instead and hack it from foam
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Do they not have an offroad track at goodwood this year then?
I'd love it if they did all this then on the true unveil it was completely different
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I guess the superbus is ok for long journeys but not sure the 160mph will help around town
We have a few kerb guided bus routes in the UK where the bus has a horizontally mounted wheel either side that runs on the kerb and controls the front wheel steering. It's supposed to allow a higher speed in a narrower space and make stopping more consistent for disabled access etc. I guess that would work for the pantograph etc system and fast charging batteries that they tell us are coming, charge it in the lanes then allow it to go off into the world to do the rest of its route with a full battery
Post ruined again
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I find two nuts with a gap intbetween then fill that gap with weld, however it doesn't look like you have enough stud left. Maybe the bolts Chinese and made up of the black stuff that seems to pop out at you when you try to weld it and blow all the weld out?
I think you'll be fine with 7, my Suzuki only had 3
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That looks fantastic work!
I found ABS sheet easy enough to use.
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I'm not against it, I just don't like how the media do a drag race against something else to show how amazing it is but fail to mention that it can only do it for short periods. For normal driving it's fine, a quick burst to get you infront of a lorry when joining the motorway or overtaking a lorry. However for something that tows where you need more power for a longer period they need to make sure the batteries are big enough and can be charged quickly enough which means the engine needs enough power to drag the trailer at 60mph and put energy back into the battery. In my opinion the hybrid system is suited to people who commute from a suburb on a petrol engine then crawl through the city on electric so that they're not making air pollution worse.
I also find these small engines with amazing power figures have such small power bands that they're only drivable with a quick shifting auto box with 8 or 9 gears.
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That's pretty swish, the driver hasn't got much room for error for keeping it in lane though, I guess to overtake they'd have to drop it, overtake, then raise it again to carry on charging.
To think of the miles and miles of trolley bus lines that were pulled out of towns in the uk in the 60s and now they're thinking of putting them back in as a revolutionary new idea
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You all seem to pretend to be being pirates with just one eye but no eye patch.
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I've just sold one as I had all these great ideas but never really used it. It was a small commercially made machine, it would do a bit bigger than A4 size. A bar heater above the plastic then once it was soft and droopy you raised the parts up into the plastic then turned the vacuum on to suck the sheet down onto the parts. For a deep pull you could blow instead of suck so that it ballooned the plastic, this thinned the material so when you sucked it down you didn't get really thick base and sides then paper thin corners. Then you raised your parts and sucked down with the vacuum as usual.
To make your tool inserts you need to lay them on a sheet of wood and put either a block of wood either side of it for finger holes so you can lift it out or part bury the part so it's only half in the plastic. Then you need to drill a load of small holes around the part so that the vacuum can pull the plastic down. Or use a board with a lot of small holes already in it. If you get the plastic too tacky it will get sucked under say a hammer head and you won't be able to get the part out so you either need to do it when the plastic is a little stiffer or put some bluetac or playdough or something around it so the plastic can't suck under. Finally to get the tray to sit flat in the tool box and not rock around you need to build a lip around the edge so that it has a flat edge to sit on... and drill loads of small holes around that so that it can suck the plastic in the corners.
I'm sure it'll be fun, good luck!
These are a couple of things I did just messing around trying to get the hang of it, the two spanners failed because when I lifted the parts into the plastic the tray didn't latch in place properly so when I turned the vacuum on it sucked the whole try back down. But it also shows how it doesn't get around the part very well without the holes at the edge for the vacuum. The other part you can see the mould for and the holes around the edge so that the vacuum could get into the corner. This was a deep pull so needed to blow first, without down this the corners just tore, you can see a crease at the edges where it couldn't get the material back in.
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It's not just cars that are going down the disposable route, the machines at work now only have a guaranteed spare parts availability of 5 years. Makes you wonder why your buying a quality European machine instead of the cheapest Chinese one you can find.
The thing you have to remember with the PHEV is that they only deliver maximum power whilst the battery has charge, and the PHEVs tend to have a very small amount of battery capacity, usually around 20 - 30 miles. Once they're flat your usually stuck with something like a 1500cc 3 cylinder petrol which is trying to get you down the road and recharge the batteries. Fine for a traffic light drag race once a day but maybe not so helpful for long uphill towing.
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My experience of working with electronic systems on cars is that I'm ok if someone has written a guide that's simple enough for me to understand. If it explains the system of operation then I can usually fault find, I don't understand modern cars well enough to do it without. Unless something is visibly broken I'm a bit stuck. There are a couple of problems with that, firstly no one seems to write good workshop manuals any more that you can balance on the wing and get greasy finger prints all over. It's a case of trawling forums and reading hundreds of wrong answers. Secondly the level of interaction in the systems is becoming so involved I'm not sure my brain could cope anyway. My VW has a fault, VW assist know it's a common fault, VW know it's a common fault, the people who write the software can't (or won't) fix it as it's a generic bit of code by a third party used on loads of different vehicles but it only seems to fault on the model I have. If they can't do it what hope have I got.
My wifes car died last week, blocked the M1 at rush hour, made it to the traffic news, made 3 people plus herself late for work, the first recovery man claims a a faulty in tank fuel pump (it doesn't have one) the second recovery man claims faulty EGR, the garage where it's currently sat say a hose has burst, it's dropped all its coolant, over heated and caused an additional fault which they can't find until they've fixed the coolant leak. They're trained people with the right tools.
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I was helping someone do some work at their age old cottage, think hand made bricks and ranges, turns out there's no footings at all. dug down a couple of courses of brick and that was it, straight under the house, no footings at all. The area is mostly sand too so I guess you fine so long as it's flat and doesn't flood
In comparison the pads they made us put down at the factory where I work were unbelievable. OK the steels hold up the factory roof and overhead hoist but I don't think there's that much concrete on a rocket launch pad. I pity anyone who has to dig it up.
When I had a ford pickup a lot of the parts were only covered for a year. Confidence inspiring!
tool chests
in Tools and Fabrication
Posted · Edited by Cynic-al
I have senator at work which is from Cromwell, used every day and getting on for 20 years old. At home I have the red halfords ones and there is a noticeable difference in quality. https://www.cromwell.co.uk/shop/storage-and-handling/roller-cabinets-and-tool-chests/7-drawer-roller-cabinet/p/SEN5940580K
I did get this offer emailed the other day, no idea what they're like.
https://www.tooled-up.com/brand/kincrome/kincrome/roller-cabinets-tool-chests/594/
I bought a hoist from these people and was pleased with the quality for the price
https://www.sgs-engineering.com/garage-equipment/tool-chests-cabinets
Draws in the senator. Hou can get different shapes obviously.