What's made you smile today?

[portland_bill]

I was within sight of the towers on Saturday, and thinking I'd miss them when they went. They were quite a feature. I did not know they were scheduled for demolition, and teh next day they were gone. At least they did not go without a fight.

Power production was not the issue. With cables damaged, power distribution was what blacked out all the homes. If it was a drone strike, if the owner is identified, they'll be facing quite a bill. Quite likely blown out of control by the force of the blasts.

 

[DaveMcT]

I watched Willington Power Station being demolished in the late 1990s. All that remained was the two 200MW boilers, three chimneys and five cooling towers. The boilers and chimneys raised huge palls of dust but there was no debris flying about.

The cooling towers are still there. They might come down some time next year. Then again...

 

[AndyRKett]

Golf PCP is now fully paid up, Saved myself a few quid by paying it off early and now I have more money in my pocket each month......

As long as I can resist buying something else

 

[DaveMcT]

Save up for a Tesla. Can't go wrong they way they are holding value. Main snag is they wont let anyone but them do any work on the car.

 

[portland_bill]

Save up for a Tesla. Can't go wrong they way they are holding value. Main snag is they wont let anyone but them do any work on the car.

They may be very good, but they are characterless. Just very efficient, but unemotional. That'll suit many people, an ever increasing number I think, but most on here are her because of an emotional attachment ot our cars. Irrational, but it is there.

I've had the opportunity to ride in a Tesla model S, it left me puzzled, not knowing whether to like it or not. The Nissan Leaf and e-Golf were both pleasant cars to drive. I think the death of the other makes is not as soon as it might be thought. If they catch up in time.

Intriguingly a guy at the bottom of the road had a Tesla S for some time. Got the charger installed at home, used it daily for 12-18 months. Then it was replaced by a new Clio. Not even an alternative electric car.

I was recalling this morning about a journey last December. At 10:30pm I got a distress call from my brother, needed rescuing in Yeovil. So I got in the car, drove to Yeovil, delivered him to Bristol, and returned home to near Swindon. If I remember correctly, around 190 miles round trip. If I'd used an electric car all day, and was awaiting the cheap period to recharge overnight, I'd have been struggling. It would have needed a short trip to the nearest charging station, wait 40 minutes, then continue. As it was I got to bed around 2:30am.

Not the first time in my life I've done such a trip. Whilst only three times in 44 years on the road, an electric car would make that difficult. So still a little way to go.

 

[DaveMcT]

Personally, for the very few times I need to do an unplanned rescue journey I could accept the need for a top up charge while out. At least a night time event would be easier to find a spare fast charge point. 200 mile range is good for most of the time but 300 would be far better. A bigger battery also lasts longer as it not discharged so deeply.

Many electric cars do have a range problem, but this is where Tesla are already 5 years ahead of the competition. Dyson are going with solid state batteries (probably LiFePo4) as used on lithium engine start batteries. These can take a higher charge rate than liquid electrolyte lithiums without catching fire so less safety margin is needed.

The big issue with Tesla is their refusal to allow anyone else to service or repair them. That pushes up running costs and cuts out the local car garage industry. It will probably take legislation to stop other auto companies doing the same.

The car industry is going electric so like it or not we will all be going the same way. Medium term, the market for ICE cars will go strange. When people know affordable electric versions are on the way, they will hold on to to their ICE rather than chopping in after 3 years. For a while, supply and demand will cause a rise in used ICE car prices and a drop in new ICE prices. But when the electrics do properly arrive, the bottom will fall out of the ICE car market across the board. Anyone running a car service business should cash out while the used ICE cars are peaking. Anyone running a quality car service business should really be getting set up for electrics ASAP.

Car manufacturers who are not ready with some really good electric kit will get slaughtered, which is why I've said (elsewhere) that hopefully Fiat/Chrysler are on the case with electric versions of their models. When GM went broke during the 2008 banking crisis the issue was not their cars or the sales, it was financial. They run on borrowing. When the new debt costs more than the old debt, they rapidly hit the buffers. GM share holders got flattened.

 

[AndyRKett]

Save up for a Tesla. Can't go wrong they way they are holding value. Main snag is they wont let anyone but them do any work on the car.

To be honest, I wouldn’t say no to a Tesla but I’m keeping the golf and I am rarely using my car at the moment (either of them) can’t remember when I last took the punto out, maybe to the supermarket a few weeks ago, I’m not sure a £70k model s is the way to go at the moment.

If I did buy something else it would probably be a replacement for the punto, something a bit more special and maybe a bit of a project.

Watching a few YouTube channels where they are fixing up unloved Ferrari’s, would find that fun but scared by the prices. Something like an old Porsche, Bentley or even a DB7 might be fun plenty of cars about for under £20k

 

[Schumi2001]

They may be very good, but they are characterless. Just very efficient, but unemotional. That'll suit many people, an ever increasing number I think, but most on here are her because of an emotional attachment ot our cars. Irrational, but it is there.

They are so badly built. A complete joke.

I'd go as far as to say a top end Dacia Sandero is higher quality. As for the panel gaps... nowhere near acceptable in a modern car.

Oh, they've also sent out a software update to downgrade some of the earlier cars, too!

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

Well, there's obviously no denying we ARE going electric and it's going to come about pretty quickly. Mrs Jock has just had a very big landmark birthday. Although the fancy card and "big" present has been "sorted" for some time, I was wandering around the Gyle shopping centre in my usual aimless way, hoping to miraculously spot a wee extra something for her. Then, there right in front of me, is a fancy stand with an electric car on it - think it was a Hundai/Kia SUV of some sort? By now my enthusiasm (no, wrong word in this context) for shopping had completely evaporated so I stopped for a chat. Turned out the fellows manning the stand knew nothing about the cars at all but were customer advisers for one of the large electricity supply companies (might have been Scottish Power/SSE). Their mission was to reassure everyone that they were going to be able to supply power for all this new tech at very cheap prices and that lots of charging solutions would be available! I had switched off long before the whole message was delivered but at some point in the conversation the subject of motor bikes came up and it turned out one of these chaps was into classic bikes. I think we must have chatted and reminisced for the best part of an hour and it cheered both me and him up no end!

Thinking on all this sitting on the tram back into town I found myself wondering: Do you think that current IC engine development - in small road vehicles anyway - will now stagnate? We have seen relatively recently the introduction of very high pressure direct injection in petrol engines and both petrols and diesels are essentially "common rail" Almost everything is now tuboed and small capacity with very clever and multiple ECUs all over the place controlling things. Manual transmissions have, mercifully, stayed relatively "understandable" but automatics have gone crazy with automated manual boxes, twin clutch, etc and even if you can find a "good old" torque converter jobbie it's stuffed full of electronics and submerged valve bodies etc - enter at your peril! long gone are the days you could strip down your Borg Warner on the kitchen table and rebuild it with new seals and brake bands. Although electric traction will need electronic control it is now and is going to be in the future much simpler with out IC to worry about - as long as you can avoid electrocuting yourself - and little need for transmissions with anything like the complexity we have now because of the flexibility of the electric motor. Why bother with further investment and development in IC power trains?

Batteries, as ever and despite enormous strides forward, are still the big problem. Not least being the problem of procuring the relatively exotic materials needed to make them and the pollution problems arising from disposal/recycling. Also capacity seems very much to relate to size so getting a big enough battery in a small car, say a super mini like my Ibiza, is challenging. I don't know a lot about electric storage devices but they all seem to drop off in efficiency by quite a bit within a couple of years or so from purchase and if we all insist on rapid charging I presume this degradation will come about more rapidly? Could be that a lot of us are going to find that a car we were happy with when bought causes us distress once it's two or three years old? Mrs Jock and I (now both in our 70's) were just saying we think we will factor in an overnight stop on our regular journeys to Devon and southern England because, after years of doing these journeys in the one day we are now finding it a little tiring. The range issue on an "affordable" electric car - and I don't see an "affordable" one that remotely competes with my current Ibiza - is probably going to force such a stop over on us anyway. Of course it's entirely conceivable that the Ibiza will outlast my "safe" driving days and that will "sort" the whole conundrum!

 

[StevenRB45]

Teslas also rust like the stereotypical 70s Italian car.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/insideevs.com/news/363703/more-tesla-model-3-paint-problems/amp/

Seems we shouldn't have worried about battery deg it'll outlive the rust bucket it's in easily.

 

[Schumi2001]

Watching a few YouTube channels where they are fixing up unloved Ferrari’s, would find that fun but scared by the prices. Something like an old Porsche, Bentley or even a DB7 might be fun plenty of cars about for under £20k

Have you been watching Scott with his 'Ratarossa'?

 

[Schumi2001]

Thinking on all this sitting on the tram back into town I found myself wondering: Do you think that current IC engine development - in small road vehicles anyway - will now stagnate?

No. Not at all.

We tend to think of these things on a local level. The UK is a prime country for adopting EV - we're a very small and very densely populated island with relatively decent infrastructure. (Although, the demands of 50 and 150kW chargers are stretching us a lot - We need to have a 200 amp, 3-phase, supply to a filling station to cope with a 50kW charger and running the site amenities).

However, outside of the UK, where distances are a lot longer and / or where electric supplies are not as advanced, then there will still be a need for ICE.

Think about Spain - in many villages, the whole village is existing on the kind of feed we use for a 50kW charger - in many places, you can't use the oven, kettle and heating all at the same time. Germany and France may have decent electric supplies in populated areas, but distances between cities are vast - it's 600km from Bonn to Berlin.

So we will still see ICE development as there is still a substantial demand outside of the UK. We are a fairly unique case.

I drove a new Fiesta Ecoboost ST-Line this week. I guess it was 1lt / 125bhp, as it went very nicely and had a nice 3-cylinder thrum when pressing on. Cruised very quietly, too - just a shame about the harsh ride (well, it was an ST-Line with big alloys and 'sporty' suspension) and the cheap trim in places - door cards were almost entirely cheap moulded plastic. Wrap them in fabric and they'd be fine!

 

[AndyRKett]

Have you been watching Scott with his 'Ratarossa'?

View attachment 202549

Nope, Samcrac has a 360 spider he’s been having some problems with. Tavarish has hoovies burnt 355 that’s getting a new roof at some point, not to mention the mass of lambo rebuilds on there.

Another car I’d consider, which my neighbour still has is the Maserati GrandCabrio or Grandturismo which are getting pretty cheap now and have a Ferrari v8 for new Ford Focus money.

 

[Schumi2001]

Trouble with this 'exotica for the price of a Focus' is that they can still throw up exotica bills!

Still haven't found the bottle to book my Boxster in for a TipTronic solenoid replacement, new starter motor and a couple of window regulators.

If that's not too painful, next on the list is a new hood with glass window.

I kind of wish I'd bought a 911 now, as the maintenance costs would have been the same!

 

[DaveMcT]

Tesla have had all the problems to be expected with a new car startup and they compounded it by not employing auto insustry specialists at the design stage. But they have move forward tremendously. In terms of content batteries and energy management they are streets ahead. The big advantage they have is that more than enough buyers are happy to put up with the issues because they believe in the brand. It's almost like Apple before the the iPhone was invented. To their Fanboys, nothing was ever wrong with it regardless of the reality. Every time Musk wants more investment money he puts a shout-out via twitter and within a week he's over subscribed. The marketing is pure genius.

The car industry are still not achieving what Tesla was doing in 2013. VW have some lovely looking concepts especially their updated Microbus. The Fiat Panda electric concept looks great with its modular batteries and the new Honda styled after the 1970s Civic also look great. None of them are available to buy. The Koreans also seem to be doing well in the "affordable" cars. Though that's not to say any lekky Kia is cheap.

Lithium batteries are actually easy to recycle which is great, because while lithium is common enough, cobalt certainly is not. I wonder if the cobalt issue is why Dyson cars are going for "solid state" batteries. Could they be using LiFePo4 technology?

Who knows https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/bu_216_summary_table_of_lithium_based_batteries

Tesla (them again) are using time expired car batteries in their "powerwall" energy stores. These store excess energy from solar or wind generators for night time etc. At a price - obviously. Tesla also have a utility scale battery. Again they are the first to market which is becoming a habit.

Tesla do concern me, because they seem to be aiming to corner every market. Do we really want one mega company running everything?

 

[jimboy]

Heading to a well known supermarket this morning, there's a couple of roundabouts quite close together & petrol pumps before you actually get to the car park itself. For some time I've had white van man up my arse revving & generally trying to goad me to go faster, come round the last roundabout & he's backed way off & slowed right down, I just could see his face with a serious look on it. He obviously just spotted the feds at the petrol pumps, filling up their vehicle with fuel... Priceless.

 

[DaveMcT]

White van drivers see Panda and assume slow driver. I tend to not slow down at the first reasonable bend in the road. They can't corner that fast so afterwards leave me alone.

 

[AndyRKett]

White van drivers see Panda and assume slow driver. I tend to not slow down at the first reasonable bend in the road. They can't corner that fast so afterwards leave me alone.

I can just most things round a corner very fast, years of living and working in the countryside I suspect. There is a route along a very twisty road from the dual carriageway to my home town and many times coming off the dual carriageway I get landed with a high power bmw or merc up my arse, doesn’t seem to matter what I am driving, and on that 60mph national speed limit road I can leave just about anything behind, doesn’t matter if I’m was in my old 1.3 multijet punto with 70hp, my wife’s old mini, my diesel golf cabriolet with its bending chassis and heavy roof mechanism, your average driver doesn’t keep up.

I don’t think it has anything to do with a car that is big or heavy or a van or what ever, I just think the majority of people don’t know how to safely and quickly get round corners and make progress when not on a long straight bit of road. I’m sure I can get any van round those bends just as quick. Our local accident and emergency Critical car paramedic and friend of ours drives a VW transporter that he can put round corners like an F1 car (seriously I went out on an obs shift with him once and got out of the car a Honda CRV a couple of times to see the tyres literally smoking)

But it doesn’t surprise me drivers can’t do bends they don’t even understand mini roundabouts and I get fed up with sitting in a Mexican standoff when the car I’m supposed to give way to, just stops, then while loooking at him another car turns up and then no one is moving, I roll my eyes and drive off seeing in my mirror the car behind is now sitting there and no one is moving.

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

I've been deliberating, now that "Twinkle", our '16 plate Ibiza ST, is out of manufacturer's warranty as to whether to hand her over to our local Indy VAG workshop or start looking after her myself. (the downside of that would be no more official stamps in the service book if I decided to sell her) About a week ago I learned that the helpful Haynes people have now produced a manual which covers her. I ordered it online, it arrived this morning and I've been browsing through it and popping out and in to familiarize myself with aspects of the car itself which I've not had to look at so far.

In fact the warranty expired in March this year but so far I've done very little except look at things. So far I haven't seen anything which particularly frightens me and a number of things I quite like. For instance the flex hoses to the calipers all have banjo connectors - Hurrah - and the pollen filter looks very easy to change (unlike my boy's Punto which is a job for a contortionist!). I also notice the clutch slave cylinder is mounted on the outside of the gearbox - just like both our Panda and the boy's Punto - no silly concentric cylinder. Over the next few weeks, before the bad weather starts, I'm going to dismantle the air filter housing and see what the element looks like. Remove the plugs and put a bit of anti seize on the threads (iridium plugs so goodness knows when they need changing? - Oh, there you go, Mr Haynes just "told" me it's every 4 years/40,000 miles so due next service) In fact now I'm looking at this the intervals on many things, like air filter at 4 years for instance, look far too long for me. A quick look at the brake pads through the wheels - which gives a good view - reveals not the slightest sign of anything resembling Cera tec, or similar. What actually have the garage been doing for the quite large amounts of money they charge? I do know they changed the oil and filter because I put a very small paint spot on the filter each time she went in. However They are not able to tell me specifically what the oil is they use beyond it being Castrol - one person told me it was probably 5W-40 as I specified a fixed service schedule - don't believe in extended interval. The extended service uses a 5W-30 which you can use on fixed too.

D'ya'know I think I'm going to do this myself. I've always done my own service and repair work, I'm just feeling nervous because this is the newest car I've owned in years. But now I'm having a good look at both the car and this new manual I'm feeling more confident. As she's been running on Castrol I'm tempted to go for their Edge 5W-40 but it's "big name" seems to attract a high price. I know Fuchs are involved in supplying TPS with their Quantum oils so I may have a look at their offering. Well that's good. decision made. Nice big smile on face! I'm quite tempted to do an oil and filter change soon, probably "fettle" the brakes and other things too, whilst the good weather is still here and "time shift" the service interval to the summer to save my old bones which don't like the cold. I wonder if you can"shift" the service reminder too? Got my oldest boy's Punto next week whilst they are away on their hols. Lots of stuff to do - Big service, Rad fan won't run on slow speed, Gearbox oil leak on N/S (not sure if it's driveshaft seal or gear change yet) Clutch engages and disengages with the pedal quite near the floor. It's been like this without changing for about a year now and as the car only has 40 something thousand miles on it so I think more likely a hydraulic problem - Master cylinder? However I tried bleeding it but this made absolutely no difference. Ah well, surely I can "sus" it out in a week? Got to get all that done before I can turn my attention to Twink.

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

years of living and working in the countryside I suspect.

You might be right Andy. I grew up in the country and learned a great deal about car control bombing round the fields for hours on end in old cars and pickups. Going sideways, learning how to steer with the throttle, and all the rest of it. When I then took up rallying in my late teens (just for a couple of years - work and children put paid to spare time) it seemed quite tame by comparison. Unless you've experienced what it's like to control a car which is going sideways (or any other ways!) and had some practice at it, I would suggest your chances of controlling a car on the highway when things go pear shaped are almost nonexistent. I recon more than half, probably more, of the drivers on the road have never had the chance to practice this (skid pans should be compulsory as part of driver training) and would have little chance of recovering a car once it gets more than slightly out of line. You can read about it and talk about it as much as you like but you've got to experience it to have any idea how to start controlling it.

Last year we were returning from one of our Devon forays early in the year, We had left it late to get underway and had run into heavy traffic in the midlands so didn't get up around Carlisle/Gretna till evening time. It had been dark for hours and we were toddling along on cruise at our usual 72 mph with very light traffic, when I noticed the steering going "light" and a wee bit wandery. Ooops! obviously ice. I disengaged the cruise and, still in 5th gear so as to give slight drag. I just started loosing speed gently on a trailing throttle when a big SUV/4wd thing went past at a good 10 to 15 mph more than we were doing and as it started to pull away, maybe 50 yards in front, it slowly started spinning to the left. It went round 180 till it was pointing back towards us but still gaining on us ( I doubt if I was doing more than 50mph by then and feeling quite in control ) Anyway it continued to slowly rotate and went backwards over the hard shoulder and onto the verge where it quite quickly came to a halt. Luckily didn't roll or do anything more dramatic. I thought maybe we should stop and see if they were OK - could be an old person with heart trouble or anything - Touched the brakes lightly but it all started going pear shaped so I just carried on with my foot off the loud pedal. Looking in the mirror I could see one more set of headlights which suddenly disappeared! I continued slowing down and Mrs J got on the 'phone to the police. It's on these sort of - thankfully infrequent - occasions that vivid memories of flying around those field come back to the fore but more than anything I think it's because it doesn't panic me (raises the heart rate for sure though) just because the car isn't going where I'm trying to point it so leaving my brain and seat of the pants to take control.