Grump of the day

[LadyArowana]

That's not duct tape, it's what we in the RAF called "speed tape". It is basically very strong aluminium foil with some amazing powerful adhesive, and was often used for "get you home" repairs when some panel was loose or not seating properly, or there was a small hole or dents from, for instance, a bird strike. Of course, you had to fit in correctly (press down the edges extra well) and carefully think of "what might happen if it did come unstuck?" NB A lot of holes caused by birds were too big for this, and in one case I know, a black headed gull (275gm) brought down a Harrier aircraft.

Matthew

May I add that not one single word of that reassures me!

I completely agree!

 

[mims&pip]

Oh, good grief!

Actually, I don't think it's even the duct tape that gives me the most cause for concern. It's the apparent pile of scrunched up kitchen foil in the bottom of the engine nacelle. Did someone pop inside there to eat his sandwiches?

I hope they weren't *finger sandwiches*.......back in the mid 1950s my late father was a young, newly married junior officer in the Fleet Air Arm and was working in such a location on an aircraft carrier. He jumped down from the engine, only to catch his wedding ring on something (I never did establish what exactly) projecting from said engine, severing his finger almost entirely :shock: As the finger was never re-attached I thought the chap in the pic might have found it, felt peckish and made use of it :lol:

 

[Penners]

Ah - a finger buffet then!

 

[Penners]

Oops - double post (because of the flippin' "Can't be displayed" problem)!

 

[Me!]

Just been up a ladder in the pouring rain cleaning out blocked gutters

This was the rain on Friday, and it doesn't seem to have stopped much since -


The only dry thing left around here is the very large martini that I'm about to drink!

 

[Penners]

Take heart, Me! We South Folk should be dry by lunchtime tomorrow!

 

[88v8]

http://www.jjroofingsupplies.co.uk/floplast-gutterbrush-4m-length/?gclid=CLKXpszC-cYCFZCWtAodtfMB2w

 

[plasticpigeon]

My house is the very definition of jerry built.

A week of remedial toil awaits me.

And as well as having a shit house I also have a shit car. A mondeo diesel estate that failed its MOT. Most unreliable thing in the world, slow, boring and not as efficient as I'd like. Good riddance to bad rubbish. As I'm not very well off, i am going to risk another banger, but a faster one, a Saab 9-5 Aero turbo (250hp!), and as I'm not a young man anymore I can insure just about any car for roughly the same extortionate price. I also wanted to go to see some live jazz this evening but I had a curry last night and my guts are still punishing me for that decision, and it's raining. People are starving, so I should be grateful for small mercies I suppose.

 

[plasticpigeon]

Also as the above room is the bathroom, the facilities at my disposal now only stretch to a flannel, a kitchen sink, an outide privvy and a bucket if it's the middle of the night. Period living i suppose. Having said that, washing with a flannel isn't so bad, it makes me realise that my normal 15 minute shower with the water constantly gushing when i could wash with a flannel and just a gallon of hot water is wasteful in the extreme.

 

[Flyfisher]

And as well as having a shit house I also have a shit car. A mondeo diesel estate that failed its MOT. Most unreliable thing in the world, slow, boring and not as efficient as I'd like. Good riddance to bad rubbish. As I'm not very well off, i am going to risk another banger, but a faster one, a Saab 9-5 Aero turbo (250hp!), and as I'm not a young man anymore I can insure just about any car for roughly the same extortionate price.

We have a Saab 9-5 2.3 turbo, but not the top-spec Aero model so 'only' 185bhp. It's a 'banger' in the sense of being 17 years old and almost worthless, but has been very reliable in the 12 years we've had it. However, it failed its MoT test for the first time in May because of emissions, which sounded very serious (= expensive) to me and I thought it might be time to seriously consider whether we really need two cars now we're both retired. But the problem was suspected to be a 'blown' exhaust and further inspection revealed it to be quite badly corroded and in need of replacement. However, before spending a couple of hundred pounds on a new exhaust without being sure it would then pass the test, I decided to liberally apply £5's worth of 'gun gum' around the offending exhaust leaks - and it then passed the MoT test with flying colours . . . well, except for the advisories about the corroded exhaust and the brake pads almost needing replacement - but it's all legal! Plus, I suspect I'm even less of a young man than PP, meaning that I can insure the thing for a bit less than £200, so it's a pretty cheap car to run.

Even further investigation leads me to believe that the failed exhaust is the original one, because it has 'Saab' markings and I doubt it was replaced in the first five years of life and I've definitely not fitted a new one during my ownership. So, while it is highly inconvenient, I can't really complain about £200 over 12 years! But the road tax is due this month as well, so that's £230 plus £200 for the exhaust and probably £150 for the brakes (again, can hardly complain about those either) and the thick end of £200 for insurance, which adds up to nearly £800 for a car that's barely worth £500 (said the salesman when we offered to trade it in when replacing our main car earlier this year!).

Cars? Pah!

 

[plasticpigeon]

Thanks FF, that is very reassuring. I owned a saab before and that gave me no trouble in 4 years, until the diesel pump packed up, which was a fortune to replace, so I bought the mondeo. I reckon I've spent over £1000 in repairs in 18 months. It's a terrible car.

 

[Keithj]

It's overcast and wet and the blydi toadstools are growing in the lawn again. I thought the energetic session with the scarifier had removed enough moss to stop the fairies doing their rings thing, but no.
I've got a lousy cough that I've had for weeks. It keeps pretending to go, then creeping back.
The hotel on Mull that we wanted to go to for a little jolly is fully booked, sorry, no rooms available. Nothing else of similar standard is available elsewhere in Western Haggisland either, so that trip's "off".
Boss was called for jury service starting this morning. 2 weeks before her 70th birthday. They just got that in in time.
Hence I have to do my own lunch all week. Might go down the pub...

That's the "Monday morning" grumps done.
The Diesel Mondeo continues to behave immaculately. It's all down to the luck of the draw and not getting a Friday afternoon car, innit.

 

[Flyfisher]

Yes, 'Friday cars' are a risk, though I reckon a bigger risk is how previous owners have treated them. I'm very confident about our current 17 year old / 130k miles Saab, but I know the past 12 years of history and it has been looked after and regularly serviced, plus it only had one previous careful owner (a peer of the realm, no less) and had a full main dealer service history. So, quite valuable to me, but anyone buying it today would just see a risky old car, which is why it's only worth about £500.

We've had four Saabs over the years, for a total of around 350k miles, and excluding wear and tear items such as tyres, brakes, exhausts, batteries etc, I doubt we spent £1000 on repairing things that actually broke. The worst was a head gasket and the only others that come to mind were a front wheel bearing and a belt tensioning pully that seized (well, apart from the one that Mrs FF rolled of course :shock: :lol: ).

I'm one of those sad types who keeps a spreadsheet record of all running costs and have found various cars to be fairly consistent on a overall cost per mile basis - around 40-60p. The highest figure is for our current Saab but is because it's now a little used second car so the annual mileage is very low . . . hence my deliberations about the need for it at all. Cars are expensive - there's no real way around it

 

[Me!]

We have a Saab 9-5 Aero 2.3 turbo, which is our 5th Saab and it definitely seems to be a good car. If it had been our first ever Saab, I would probably have said the 9-5 was a very good car, but it has followed on after a Saab 9000 CSE 2.3 turbo, and that is a very, very tough act for any car to follow. I had the 9000 for 14 years, and it had done 286,000 miles before it finally died of computer failure a couple of years ago. We also have both old and new style Saab 9-3's in the family at the moment, and the 9-5 feels much more solid and better finished than either of those.

 

[kreyszig]

I'd love to join in and have a grump about the costs of running my 12mpg (around town) Jag.. but it's worth every penny!
Smiles per mile, that's the name of the game (as well as having a bulletproof japanese car for doing anything vaguely practical!!)

..that said - I'm not the previous owner who had to replace one head and a couple of cylinders...

 

[Zebra]

Excellent grumping plasticpigeon and Keithj. Well done. The rest of you, no no no, that's not anywhere near grumpy enough.
My current grump is that even though I am not working and Giraffe has booked the week off, the weather is poo so we're not going on holiday. He has gone back to work, and I have gone back to making kitchen cabinets, as there doesn't seem much point in heading for 40 mph winds in Cornwall with climbing gear and a tent.

 

[MatthewC]

That's a pretty good grump, Zebra, so well done to you too.

Back to the subject of cars, I'd like to add a grump about my Vauxhall Meriva which just cost me £630 to get through its MoT :x :x . It's only done 67000 miles in 11 years and every year there is something expensive to fix :evil: :evil: . It's meant to be based on a Corsa but I had one of those new in 1998 and passed it to my daughter in 2010 (when I bought the Meriva) - the Corsa only ever had one problem in 110,000 miles.

Anyone got an Audi A1 or A3, or a BMW 1-series? I fancy a low mileage one of something like those and want to know what to look out for. Post your grumps here, or PM me the good ones (so as not to annoy Zebra!).

 

[Penners]

At the risk of sounding unsympathetic, shouldn't car problems be regarded as self-inflicted wounds... and intentional ones at that? Nobody buys a car by accident, and we all know that - as FF says - cars are an expensive luxury. So we only have ourselves to blame.

For the above reason, I suggest that we have no entitlement to car grumps.

 

[plasticpigeon]

None of us have to own a house either, especially not an awkward historic one. Let's close the forum down.

 

[Zebra]

None of us have to own a house either, especially not an awkward historic one. Let's close the forum down.

:lol: Yes quite. We need an outlet for our unfettered whinges, whether legitimate and deserved or irrational and self-inflicted!