Grump of the day

[Penners]

Bad luck, Feltwell!

Still, looking on the bright side, at least the restoration of your motorhome will be a like-for-like repair, so it won't need LBC.

 

[Zebra]

Sounds like all the vehicles planned it in advance Feltwell, and they were all in it together. If I were you I'd punish them severely.
My Grump of the Day is that I've just done the base coat of NHL plaster on the last remaining wall of my kitchen and it's really quite lumpy. And now I have a sore fetlock.

 

[Flyfisher]

Sounds like all the vehicles planned it in advance Feltwell, and they were all in it together. If I were you I'd punish them severely.

Quite right! Sounds like a case for a damn good thrashing . . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78b67l_yxUc

 

[Feltwell]

In fairness to old Basil, if you had the misfortune to own an Austin 1100 then beating it with a stick is entirely understandable.

My vehicular conspirators had better watch out - maybe I should show them that Youtube video so they know what's in store for them if they don't start behaving?

 

[MatthewC]

I sympathise, Feltwell, with you and all your troubles, but I note that you started this thread last year - did you do so in anticipation of so many bad things happening to you this spring?

 

[Feltwell]

That's it. It's definitely a conspiracy. My car, normally as boringly reliable as German cars should be, has now decided to chuck it's power steering fluid out due to a broken reservoir.

Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me. :evil:

Matthew, if you start on the premise that bad things will happen, when good things do it's always a nice surprise.

 

[LadyArowana]

Matthew, if you start on the premise that bad things will happen, when good things do it's always a nice surprise.

Bad things happen randomly and with no effort expended, good things have to be made to happen.

 

[Keith Bowman]

In fairness to old Basil, if you had the misfortune to own an Austin 1100 then beating it with a stick is entirely understandable.

My vehicular conspirators had better watch out - maybe I should show them that Youtube video so they know what's in store for them if they don't start behaving?

Not true and not fair. We had a very secondhand Austin1100 in 1969 when we got married - it took us from Berkshire to Marseille for our wedding and a grand tour all across and up the west coast of France and along and across to Calais on honeymoon and never missed a beat. We had it for another three years after that and it must have been one of the most reliable (if boring!) cars we ever had.

 

[worms]

In fairness to old Basil, if you had the misfortune to own an Austin 1100 then beating it with a stick is entirely understandable.

My vehicular conspirators had better watch out - maybe I should show them that Youtube video so they know what's in store for them if they don't start behaving?

Not true and not fair.

Absolutely! The old A series engine...! My Dad had a second-hand Austin 1100, followed by a second-hand Van den Plas 1100, the real problems started when he traded up to a brand-new Austin Maxi! Now that was a car to give you a grump on almost any day (although he went on to buy at least three more of them over the next ten years or so!).

 

[Feltwell]

Oh dear! I seem to have upset the Austin 1100 fan club!

My memories are tainted by recollection of having to frequently help my Dad fix, or more accurately minding my younger sibling whilst Dad fixed my Uncle's 1100 - one of a series of clapped out unreliable cars that he unwisely purchased.

And also, I confess, due to memories of other awful 70's BL cars that me & my family have had. With 3 very honourable exceptions - a girlfriend's Mini 1000, which was brilliant, despite my struggling to fit in it and hitting my head on the roof over bumps. Like driving a little go-kart, what a car, Issigonis was a genius. And an SD1 3500 V8, which was rather rusty but went like stink and made a lovely noise whilst doing so And finally, a Mini traveller - for purely sentimental reasons, my grandfather died when I was very young but one distinct memory I have is of "Grandad's wooden car" - his model had a visible wooden frame, just like the more popular and larger Morris 1000 Traveller.

 

[MatthewC]

My memories are tainted by recollection of having to frequently help my Dad fix, or more accurately minding my younger sibling whilst Dad fixed my Uncle's 1100 - one of a series of clapped out unreliable cars that he unwisely purchased.

And also, I confess, due to memories of other awful 70's BL cars that me & my family have had.

As did we all in those days, especially with Minis and 1100s, but at least they taught me something about car mechanical bits. I diagnosed and fixed my petrol lawnmower yesterday by applying old Mini principles!

I'm sure that the reason BL went belly up (eventually) was because they had no idea of actually improving their product and so got overtaken by all those clever Europeans and Orientals who did. Of course there were also the appalling management practices, bad trade union relations and some poor government decisions, plus the British habit of brilliant design with no awareness of manufacturing costs or maintenance. I think BL (or whatever) lost money on every Mini for years, didn't they?

Modern cars are great - they don't rust and they hardly ever go wrong, but when they do it's a specialist (= expensive) job to fix them. One passenger door lock on my Vauxhall doesn't work reliably and yesterday I found that I can't even get the manual window winder off to get inside the door!

 

[Feltwell]

One passenger door lock on my Vauxhall doesn't work reliably and yesterday I found that I can't even get the manual window winder off to get inside the door!

Every time I get in my Audi, it beeps loudly at me to tell me that a sidelight bulb has blown.

To change said sidelight bulb means removing the front bumper and the headlight - I kid you not, it's impossible to do without removing the headlight first. Progress :roll:

 

[Penners]

I found that I can't even get the manual window winder off to get inside the door!

The following is a distant memory from my Ford of some 25 years ago! However, for what it's worth, have you tried pressing/springing the interior door trim firmly into the hollow of the door at the point where the window winder emerges through it? I remember this used to slide the plastic trim around the winder shaft back far enough to be able to see the pin that held the winder on to its shaft. This could then be pushed out.

 

[Zebra]

Penners! No helpful advice on this thread! This is for grumps only.......

 

[Penners]

I promise I typed the advice grumpily, Zebra. :evil:

 

[Keithj]

The problem with BL was ... oh, sorry, I was going to quote facts before grumping... that the products were not as good as others on the market, and because of some wacky ways of running the company, they cost more to make than they sold them for. If they hadn't sold so many, they'd have gone bust sooner

 

[MatthewC]

The problem with BL was ... oh, sorry, I was going to quote facts before grumping... that the products were not as good as others on the market, and because of some wacky ways of running the company, they cost more to make than they sold them for. If they hadn't sold so many, they'd have gone bust sooner

Surely if you are losing money on each one, the more you sell the more money you lose, so you go bust sooner?

 

[Flyfisher]

I'm sure that the reason BL went belly up (eventually) was because they had no idea of actually improving their product and so got overtaken by all those clever Europeans and Orientals who did. Of course there were also the appalling management practices, bad trade union relations and some poor government decisions, plus the British habit of brilliant design with no awareness of manufacturing costs or maintenance. I think BL (or whatever) lost money on every Mini for years, didn't they?

Clarkson's take on it all . . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9ztUlve9jc

 

[Flyfisher]

Every time I get in my Audi, it beeps loudly at me to tell me that a sidelight bulb has blown.

To change said sidelight bulb means removing the front bumper and the headlight - I kid you not, it's impossible to do without removing the headlight first. Progress :roll:

My old Mercedes had a similar issue with the nearside headlamp - it was impossible to get a hand in between the rear of the headlamp and the washer bottle to change the bulb, so the washer bottle had to be removed. :evil:

Still, with typical German efficiency, they've solved that problem by fitting fancy new headlights based on nuclear fusion or something that warrants a "Warning - 20,000 volts" label affixed to each of them under the bonnet! So I doubt I'll be changing them myself if they blow. :twisted:

Oh, and despite MatthewC's assertion that modern cars (well, 2001) don't rust, my old one most certainly did!








Still, with typical German efficiency

 

[Penners]

Astonishing to see that on a 21st-century Merc, FF! Your daily trip to work must have taken you through a seawater ford!