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jamesm

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Everything posted by jamesm

  1. Me too, so I'll need to know where you're camped!
  2. Good advice from smo there - and I'd suggest that unless you need the manual control offered by a DSLR (i.e not just using it in auto or program mode) it may be overkill for website photography. Decent quality prime lenses aren't exactly cheap either (ETA: just noticed it wasn't you who doesn't like zooms - it was mmgemini!). The Fujis mentioned above are excellent cameras for the money - I have an old Fuji S5600 which I still occasionally use in preference to my D80 because it's lightweight, not precious and pretty versatile with its 10x zoom. Another benefit is that it takes much smaller filters than a DSLR, which makes a big difference price-wise when you're buying things like circular polarisers.
  3. There certainly was; it was a GMC 6.2 V8 diesel automatic, apparently in excellent shape, and they wanted £3k for it. I hadn't seen one for years, so I took pictures:
  4. How about screwing something like this into the floor?
  5. Be careful when you're undoing the screws on the actuator - mine turned out not to be separate from the water system and I got squirted with rusty water! If you examine the ends of the motorised valve you'll probably find there's a lever for operating it manually, but it may only work the valve in one direction. If that's the case, you can help the actuator do it's job by taking the tin cover off and pushing the gears round with a screwdriver - I have to do this every year to get the system going after summer. Unfortunately, it hasn't worked too well this time and it looks like a new valve is required.
  6. Sounds like a good idea to me. The International forum used to be an entertaining read, but recently it's been... much less of a distraction when I'm at work I'd suggest that if entry was by invitation then such a (possibly hidden?) forum shouldn't be too much of a nightmare to moderate, and if a moron did slip through then the invitation could always be withdrawn.
  7. At that point they wouldn't let you in unless you had gills
  8. I was there from Thursday and had a good time, mainly because I was in very good company! The site was extremely wet and muddy: ...and the show was a lot smaller than in previous years, but at least the toilets and showers felt adequate for the numbers this time. Which was just as well, because the only sign of the promised improvements in those areas was a couple of uncompleted shower blocks which looked to be converted static caravans. The demarcated camping spaces were a big improvement on previous years. Unfortunately I had a large Irish family with feral children on one side, but I suppose someone had to be next to them. That aside, there didn't seem to be as much pond life around - compared to previous years, I saw very few people driving pointlessly around at night or starting up barried end of life Range Rovers every half hour in order to rev the nuts off them. I guess all those sorts of people must be very loyal to LRE Finally, here's a picture of Scrapiron's bridge of waffles. They just had to have a bigger one than anyone else, didn't they?
  9. I hope that wasn't recent - do they realise how much Triple Ds are worth now? Cheffins auctioned one for 66k last year, and istr reading about a scruffy one (painted white, iirc) that made 80k!
  10. I have something fairly similar, purchased in Tchibo for about the same money. I didn't think the cleaning effect was very noticable (at all), so will be interested to hear if yours gives better results!
  11. Agreed - but I think a lot might depend on the type of tyre carcass which is 'inside' the retreads. I've got some 235/85 MTs on my RRC. They're fine off road, and I've no complaints about their road behaviour; they're wearing well, reasonably grippy and behave predictably when cornering, although the speed has to be kept to about 60-65 on the motorway to avoid vibrations because they're so out of balance. They're noisy enough that pedestrians occasionally turn round to see what's making all the racket, but closing the window shuts a lot of that out.
  12. I'm using one on my 200 Tdi, and I like it. Oil changes are made a bit easier and less messy because you drain the waste oil straight into the container that you'll take to the recycling place. (Too bad it doesn't help with changing the filter - I invariably manage to dribble oil all over my propshaft when I'm doing that!)
  13. I thought that was the title, and the book started 'Ecce. In pictura est puella. Est puella Romana.' Turned out that she was called Flavia and the family had a tutor called Davus. The book had a wrinkly soft cover with a funny smell to it that was at the same time musty and sharp. That's all I remember about Latin.
  14. So therefore some of the tax-eating parasites will get made redundant? No, thought not...
  15. I jammed a folded up receipt between the two panes of glass about 30,000 miles ago. I've heard no rattling since, so in my book that's a proper repair!
  16. Thanks - I had been wondering how much genuine rear springs were; I fitted some pattern ones about 3 years ago and they've sagged to the extent that I can now use multi-storey car parks (btw, my tip for changing rear springs without using scary spring compressors is to jack the opposite side of the axle to the one you're changing once the axle stands are under the chassis. Worked for me).
  17. This green bus must be a gas guzzler too, then - but apparently it's OK because there are 5 lentilists on board... Whoever would have thought it?
  18. The recommendation is about every 2 years - but I suspect most people change it less often. Doing this to my RR recently unleashed a lot more stoppingness - made me wonder if I'd just drained factory (1990) brake fluid. Edited to add this tip: Use a pound shop turkey baster to drain the master cylinder, but mind the drips!
  19. The best bit was when he compared the fuel consumption of a Range Rover to a Mercedes S-Class and observed that nobody was campaigning against those*. The dozy hippy clearly hadn't the slightest idea what he was talking about ('Mercedes whatever you said') and he just laughed at her - as did I. * Incidentally, the idea of smoking about in a cheap W140 or W126 is quite tempting on these cold mornings
  20. I've just booked on line. Hope the show's better put together than the webshop - it was the shonkiest I've seen in ages! Too bad about Kelmarsh, eh? Couldn't have happened to a nicer mag
  21. Sounds like you might be interested in one of these!
  22. If you're just after a cheap (ten quid) and temporary way of monitoring under bonnet temperatures, this idea might help: Buy one of these Digital Cooking Thermometers from Maplin. The sensor is easily removed and can be extended by soldering in a length of co-ax. I used a bit cut off a TV aerial lead, and it didn't seem to change the readings much at all. The sensor is a bit on the long side, but can be attached to whatever needs monitoring by trapping it under a bolt head or by using wire or cable ties. I bodged one of these together when I needed to drive a diesel 70 miles with a suspected blown head gasket and wanted to make sure the head didn't overheat. I wasn't too sure about battery life, so just turned it on from time to time during the journey. Worked a treat.
  23. I did mine in situ, but this made it impossible to see what was going on when attempting to drift the upper race out of the arm. The solution was to measure the hole with vernier calipers, find a socket exactly the right size to catch on the lip and whack it with a hammer. I suppose I could have done it by trial and error, but this way gave me confidence that the socket was bearing on the lip rather than the sides of the hole. fwiw, I found that the socket had to be between 20.02 and 22.45mm diameter. If you're modifying an old ball/shaft component to do the job I suppose it would need to be the same size. I also used a screw jack to press a small deep socket into the cover so I could insert the circlip. Worked fine after a few attempts...
  24. I wouldn't worry about it either. The engine will probably use a bit of oil, and draining a small amount via the sump bung is much easier said than done (he says, thinking back to a memorable experience under a Citroen BX ) . The 200 TDi's bung is 32mm, iirc. Greasing the universal joints fairly regularly is a good idea, but be careful with the sliding joints halfway along the propshaft because it's possible to overpack them. You're really supposed to undo one end of the prop and grease them after compressing the joint, but I just give mine a few pumps of the gun every other service and they seem fine.
  25. Quite possibly. I've heard stories about it being possible to make the heater work by adjusting the cables correctly, but never believed them.
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