There was actually a very similar cafe in a back street round the back of the main college buildings near the college I attended in London. Mostly frequented by taxi drivers and commercial delivery drivers. The sausages weren't quite so good but the steak pie was it's equal. A big aluminium oven container full of the steak pie meat and lots of gravy which had been cooking for so long the meat had all but dissolved into the gravy with the pastry cut into portion sizes on top - flaky and light on top and deliciously soggy underneath. What wouldn't I give for a portion right now! Around about that time Mrs J and I became a serious item and started living together - ooooh! I was forbidden from eating the steak pie from then on "It's either you or that damned pie" I seem to remember her saying. Always a pot of tea, don't remember coffee featuring much.
Holding the brake pedal down to the floor - perhaps with a "big stick" - should stop the fluid being able to flow from the reservoir through the master cylinder but I prefer not to do that as I don't want to push the piston seals into a part of the cylinder bore where it usually doesn't go and maybe consequently suffer damage. Cutting off air to the reservoir air bleed hole by putting something like a used crisp packet - which seem to be immune to attack from the brake fluid? - over the filler and screwing the cap back on will stop the fluid just as well and it's my preferred way to do it. I avoid pinching off flex hoses as, especially if they are older, it can damage the hose. However I would consider pinching off a hose for fault finding purposes if all other options had been tried first.
So i'm not looking to pinch the hose at all.
I'm not impressed by the modern fast food places, only tried them a couple of times actually and thought the food was not great and prices not value for money. - On the other hand I remember the experience in America being very different. I particularly remember a hamburger joint in New York called the "Blue Max" where the hamburgers were to die for! I don't like large slabs of fish so tend not to frequent fish and chip shops but I do like a Scottish mince pie or scampi or a white or mealy pudding, always available in a Scottish chippy with Edinburgh "Chippy sauce" if possible. If we're away somewhere we tend to use local cafe/restaurants and find them better both food and value wise.
I generally find McDonalds burgers or chips are lukewarm, i do wonder why they can never manage a hot meal. Burger King would sell me frozen burgers if they could lol.
Yup. As the friction linings wear the piston resting positions - on calipers especially, but also drum brake cylinders if the self adjusters are working properly - move further out of their cylinders to compensate for the worn away material. Some of the fluid in the master cylinder reservoir will move into the caliper/wheel cylinder to allow the piston to assume it's new resting position. It couldn't do this if there wasn't an air hole in the reservoir cap. You may have noticed that the reservoir level drops very slightly as the pads wear? I prefer not to top up routinely, unless the level drops appreciably, because if you keep topping up then when the time comes that you need to push the pistons back for some reason you risk the reservoir over flowing if you're not careful. Of course if the level drops quickly you've probably got a leak so just topping up won't help that. I check all my levels and monitor resting battery voltage regularly, once a month at least, along with tyre pressures etc, so get to know the rate at which the reservoir level drops. On my new Scala the level has dropped less than a couple of mm in the nearly 18 months I've owned her. If you're looking for the air hole in the cap it can be very difficult to find on some designs as they incorporate a "trap" to stop dust and "foreigners" gaining entry.
Scottish chip shops are legendary, i nipped into one at Ardrossan a few years ago and pointed to something and said “what’s that please?” There reply was “Battered pizza” Oh yes, we’ll have a bit of that. Blumin lovely it was! Same as Scottish snack vans, whenever i’m in the area i always head for Hermiston Gait to get my “Sausage and Black” on a fresh morning roll, or Glasgow area it’s normally Cumbernauld for a “Bacon and tatty scone roll” all half the price of down south of course
I get it now, i really can't see any hole in the cap, but it must be there. I'll look extra close!
Battered Pizza, i'm lost for words lol.Scottish chip shops are legendary, i nipped into one at Ardrossan a few years ago and pointed to something and said “what’s that please?” There reply was “Battered pizza” Oh yes, we’ll have a bit of that. Blumin lovely it was! Same as Scottish snack vans, whenever i’m in the area i always head for Hermiston Gait to get my “Sausage and Black” on a fresh morning roll, or Glasgow area it’s normally Cumbernauld for a “Bacon and tatty scone roll” all half the price of down south of course
Oh, "tatty scones" (potato scone) cooked in a frying pan along with the bacon - yum yum! There's a chippy at the top of Broughton Street, just off Picardy Place, still advertising deep fried battered mars bars in the front window. I like the occasional Mars bar (but gives me tooth ache due to receding gums) however I can't say the idea of a deep fried one doesn't sound attractive at all. Might be tempted to try a battered pizza though, but Mrs J would never allow it. She doesn't even like me having a mince pie!Scottish chip shops are legendary, i nipped into one at Ardrossan a few years ago and pointed to something and said “what’s that please?” There reply was “Battered pizza” Oh yes, we’ll have a bit of that. Blumin lovely it was! Same as Scottish snack vans, whenever i’m in the area i always head for Hermiston Gait to get my “Sausage and Black” on a fresh morning roll, or Glasgow area it’s normally Cumbernauld for a “Bacon and tatty scone roll” all half the price of down south of course
Tatty scones sounds a bit like the bubble and squeak patty i had a few days ago. Pleasant enough.
Ah! Scottish mince pies bare absolutely no relationship to yours. They are quite a bit bigger, made with a lovely "flat" pastry and contain a well seasoned, quite peppery, minced meat filling mostly mutton/lamb but sometimes beef. They are usually quite greasy and, if you get a good one, are absolutely delicious! Chip shop versions are specifically formulated to survive deep fryers so are a bit different to a "proper" one made in a family bakery but usually very tasty none the less:
The whole "world" of lubricants is enormous and confusing - just trying to understand engine and transmission lubricants is hard enough but the manufacturers are quite good at giving you recommendations and compliant specifications for these. Greases are not so easy - I suppose they recon it's going to be "qualified mechanics" rather than "driveway grease monkeys" using them? Anyway, regarding brakes, used to be that some copper grease solved the problem on pretty much everything and I used it for very many years with no known issues being caused. Then they started saying you shouldn't use metallic greases on systems which had ABS sensors as it's conductivity could cause "issues" and they started selling specialist brake greases with ceramic "dust" instead of ground copper. I used copper grease on cars with ABS brakes and never had any problems at all except that the grease would tend to dry out and become less effective over long periods. Have to say though, never a problem when the vehicle was serviced regularly.
I wish the guidance was a tad better, even if there's a go-to grease that any mechanically experienced person would use, as you mention, at some stage they fitted ABS sensors and then the recommendation changed for some, now I suppose all cars. I think with my recent brake issues it was that the greases had all dried out long ago, but by chance, since I last checked a year ago, the discs and pads were now 1mm or so below replacement value (which is quite a lot left compared to how far you could actually push the discs and pads imo, but Toyota are OTT). I'm surprised the guidance isn't to re-grease those bits at every other service even if the brakes are okay. With those lifts they have... wouldn't be too time consuming!
Used Granville stuff over the years from the motor factors, always good stuff. I was a lot less fussy with the Panda back then, 50% as I had no clue about these things and 50% as I'd just go with the recommendation my uncle made. Never had any issues though. I really do miss the simplicity of that car. It's a shame everything is going complex and not always for a worthwhile reason.
Ah yeah, was well warned about over greasing the pins on some of the videos I watched before doing the job recently. Too much expands when heated up and as you say, bad things happen.. The entire trade is unreliable.. which shocks me when it comes to brakes. Sent me out saying my car needs new pads only, missing the discs being wore down and on one side.. a big chunk missing out of the calliper piston. shocking stuff.
You do have to be very careful about who you entrust your vehicle to, but this is not a new situation - ever has it been thus. There are a lot of so called mechanics who have done some very basic qualification, or none at all, and just picked "stuff" up as they've gone along. Depending on who they've been working with this may be good, but often not so good and poor working practices are learnt.
