regmcfly wrote:

2015 Vauxhall Meriva

You can search for the parts on the interweb. A vauxhall dealer should be able to give you the part numbers.. You might find one of the fast fit places like Kwik Fit will give you a cheaper quote. Always get quotes.

Thanks both. Fixter already offering £220 with them collecting and dropping it off, so glad I held off.

If you had the money for the new M3 this has got to be the colour.

Launch control and drift model are two of the most utterly pointless items in modern performance cars. Only car journalists would use it. Trying drifting at a track and you'll get banned and removed.

The next C63 AMG is a 4 pot, BUT, it has a MGU-H from F1. A electric turbo. Bringing its bhp to over 600bhp, from a 4 cyclinder. Insane.

Unlikely wrote:

That Rancid BMW

Since we bought a pressure washer for cleaning our patio, deck, and general stone stuff outdoors, I figured I should really use it on the cars as well. Living in the city centre I couldn’t wash my own cars – just didn’t have any space – so it’s actually nice to get back into doing this.

So I got a snow foam lance for the pressure washer and a few Bilt-Hamber products. Always used to swear by their stuff when I washed cars in the past. I reckon this is pretty good result for the first wash in over a year and the bare minimum of effort.




Although now I can see all the stone chips in the front end and all the scrapes on the wheels. Dammit.

Escape wrote:

Good words.

https://www.dw.com/en/electric-cars-low-earners-may-never-get-to-drive-one/a-50517095

Interesting read. Personally i think EVs are a false dawn and false economy. However theres hope on the horizon for synthetic fuels (which can be used by exisiting combustion engines) and just maybe we might try to use one of the most abundant elements in the universe i.e. hydrogen.

Fuck EV, its bollocks. (Personal opinion obviously).

EVs are at least creating a rapid shift in the industry right now, which is what is needed, even if they don't turn out to be a long term solution. There will be so many EVs by the end of this decade that they will naturally get far cheaper. If competition pushes development of synthetic fuels so existing vehicles can continue to be used in a less damaging way then brilliant. Current hydrogen vehicles are essentially just EVs with an additional hybrid power source so developing EVs will aid future hydrogen technology, if and when it comes in a meaningful way. The infrastructure is going to be the key issue in this country certainly. Hopefully it should just about keep up...

We have a government who can’t even roll out broadband properly after promising to do so. Who can’t even build a simple rail line on time or on budget. Who can’t handle switching to renewable energy within the schedule they set for themselves. Or keep an existing free-at-point-of-care health system running to a fraction of the usefulness it used to.

Yep, we’ll be net-zero in Scotland very soon. Farming in Scotland already is.

poprock wrote:

Since we bought a pressure washer for cleaning our patio, deck, and general stone stuff outdoors, I figured I should really use it on the cars as well. Living in the city centre I couldn’t wash my own cars – just didn’t have any space – so it’s actually nice to get back into doing this. So I got a snow foam lance for the pressure washer and a few Bilt-Hamber products. Always used to swear by their stuff when I washed cars in the past. I reckon this is pretty good result for the first wash in over a year and the bare minimum of effort. Although now I can see all the stone chips in the front end and all the scrapes on the wheels. Dammit.

Great work Pops! I'll be round later...

poprock wrote:

EVs can work for the UK, I think, but they can’t be the only option. Yes, they’re the preserve of the wealthy for now. And probably for at least 10 years.

The main problem is that their batteries won't last long enough to see them down to £1-3k, which is a huge second-hand market for many of us. Or they'll fall into that affordability range with shite charge levels remaining. That article talks about 12yo cars as old, and mine's 23!

Offering a few grand off £40k+ is completely back to front, and I think the bigger push for those Joneses will be green social pressure. Whereas if you offered someone like me a £40k car for 10, I'd be like ‘Cool! Let me save up and I'm there’. (Or would be with somewhere to charge it.)

I mentioned ebikes recently, because another winner for me would be raising their limit from 15.5mph to 30 (or 50km). Then I could buy a Sur-Ron and ride all over my local AONB, which is obviously something I wouldn't do on a petrol with so many protected species about.

You get the moaners about excessive speed, but I'd very strongly argue that 15.5's too slow for safety on our B-roads, and also that 30's around what MTBs reach on downhills anyway (and their riders do use our hills). When I ride my hybrid on the road I average about 20 when I'm fit, but even then I tend to push it up to 25 whenever I hear a car behind. Tearing around blind corners on a cyclepath's clearly stupid, but once again you can easily top that on a roadbike, and this always comes down to responsibility. Just make riders of 30mph ebikes take CBTs.

Reason I whinge about all this is because I won't bother with an ebike because they're simply too slow to be fun in the way I'd like to use one, and if they weren't I'd end up using one instead of my car for a lot of local trips.

Related, in case anyone wonders about dirtbikes on green lanes: you can ride on BOATS — byways open to all traffic, but these are being closed all the time and we've far fewer than we had when I was young. I've so many brilliant places to ride an electric trials around here, but none of them legal!

Back in the Junior Kickstart days we just bought knackers and rode around fields and lanes dodging farmers. Much harder to get permission now, too.

Talking of cyclepaths, our council wasted £100k on a couple of surveys (which I'm sure was a mates thing) about surfacing around 1.5 miles, which was then ruled out for whatever claimed reason. That money could've done a really nice job of it, and given us all somewhere great for walking, riding and running.

Charging stations out here?! Yeah, for the wealthy. Maybe.

The previously narrow half of my favourite running lane was widened and resurfaced last year, to my surprise and joy. No more waiting for individual walkers to slooowly move aside to let me pass.

Locals campaigned for this for ages. The reason it eventually happened? A new housing estate. Ditto our other cyclepath.

Re: fibre, it's available on the other side of my close. I need a 70m underground run from the last available property. They keep saying it's coming, but I'm thinking I might have to wait until they wire up the street behind me instead. The ditch in my garden runs down to it.

It's not even the speed I want (that'll just be a nicety), but the low latency for gaming. I'm quite close to our FTTC cab and mine sucks, and all BT do is swap pairs when someone complains. So even if I get a better connection for a bit (still bad), it's always on borrowed time.

They really fucked it a few years back, when we had people calling a villager on our pub's number. I think my number was an elderly lady's. I had voicemail from an old boy about coming to pick me up for summat.

That Evo VI is a much nicer-looking car than its newer versions. Has a boxy Nova charm, unlike the fussy angular lines we get nowadays.