Zel's Fleet Blog - BX, Jag XJ-S, Sinclair C5, Mercedes 208D & 230TE, AC Model 70.

[Zelandeth]

Been a bit under the weather this week so not a huge amount been going on. The one good day I had was mostly spent decimating more overgrown trees in our back yard.

This afternoon I gave the Skoda an hour or so running at a fast idle to top up the battery a bit and to help drive some of the condensation out of the rocker cover etc. While she was running I took the opportunity to snap a bunch of photos to include with an updated for sale post shortly. Currently undecided whether I can be bothered throwing it at the garage to see if it passes an MOT or not.

In completely unrelated news this evening while fiddling about with some old software I figured out - after using this very computer since around 1996(ish) - how to set the default "what to do with this type of file when you double click on it" on the Amiga.

...Took me long enough. That had always been one of those things I could never work out, but as it was an irritance rather than an actual problem I never got around to researching it. Until today when I worked it out totally by chance. Coming from any other OS mind you, you're not likely to figure it out...(not counting Mac OS as I've never tried on there so have no idea how file types are handled).

[CitroJim]

Hope you're generally feeling well again now Zel...

[Gibbo2286]

Re. your comments on HP printers and ink prices Zel , I've had both Epson and HP printers for the last several years, the Epson died last year and the HP PSC4180 had become a bit less satisfactory in the photo quality colour matching (always a bit too red) so I free-cycled to someone who only needed a text printer.

Replaced it with an HP Envy 5646 which so far produces the best photo prints I've ever seen and it will do the duplex print turning the page on the long side or the short side by choice.

In among the info that came with it was an offer of 'HP Instant ink' a deal that you opt into for a £1.99 a month DD for 50 pages a month and they supply the ink automatically before you run out (The printer tells them via the net when that's due.) unused pages in the month roll over to the next month if you don't use all fifty, there are other options if you're a heavy user for a higher monthly payment.

I reckon at £1.99 a month it's less than the cost of a single cartridge at the retail level so I've signed up for that. We'll see how it works out, you can cancel at any time if it doesn't.

On the old printer I found that you could always buy genuine HP cartridges on Ebay for half price or less than retail but you had to be very careful of the dodgy sellers who were offering unpacked genuine cartridges that were years out of date.

[Zelandeth]

Had a couple of things planned today...then it rained.

So started marking things out for the installation of the false ceiling in my office.

[Zelandeth]

A few photos from the show over at Brill a couple of weeks back...

As I think I've mentioned before, I had a heck of a lot of trouble trying to get decent photos at that event. I reckon it's because there were virtually no clouds in the sky and being a very open show area there's very little diffuse reflected light coming from anywhere...so everything's either in blinding sunlight or deep shadow.

Just sorting through the photos of the Skoda at the moment with a view to putting together an updated advert for it. Despite taking well over 50 photos, already come up with another half dozen that I really need to take to cover all bases!

In other news, while wandering around Hemel Hempstead last weekend I wound up poking around charity shops as I always do...and ended up picking these up for pocket change.

The foam has disintegrated on the bass driver (no surprise there then given the Philips badge and the age), but repair kits are readily available and they're fine electrically. I'd been looking out for something like this as I'm hoping at some point to get the B&O I've got set up in my room - but was lacking speakers to go with it as I didn't want to nick the Pioneers that are set up downstairs. Will get the repair kit and see how these sound then decide what's going where I think.

They're heavy suckers that much I will say (certainly a good bit heavier than the Pioneer CS-585s I'm currently using downstairs). Especially heavy when you've carried them well over a mile back to the car!

[CitroJim]

That's a lovely pair of speakers Zel

[van ordinaire]

Seem to be playing catch-up, not sure why, have I really been away (not in the sense of going anywhere - although there was that 5 days at the Gt Dorset Steam Fair when I was incommunicado) that long?

Anyway, glad it's not just me that had problems with Flux's - I won't go near them since that business with the C15 insurance which they just cancelled, no explanation, no refund - I s'pose I was lucky they gave me 2 weeks notice!

[Zelandeth]

About the most exciting thing that's happened in the last week has been fitting of a new pair of wiper blades on the Lada as they'd started doing the smeary juddery thing.

Have discovered through chatting with Tom at Lada that the fuel tank, pump and HP lineset for the Riva 1.7i (as sold in the Scandinavian region) are actually available off the shelf.

It's about £350 worth of parts, but I'm definitely tempted to just go ahead and get that lot as it should be a proper professional "fit and forget" solution to get shot of some of my decidedly messy bodgery that was only ever intended to be temporarily.

Given the cost of getting custom fuel lines made up, finding a known good Niva pump, adapting it to fit the current tank bung (yay, brazing to something containing petrol residue!) etc...that actually doesn't seem so expensive.

Had never considered this originally as I'd assumed the parts would have been long since NLA! What was that saying? "To assume makes an ass out of you and me?"

Still don't know why they didn't just sell the injected Riva here in the first place!

[CitroJim]

Have discovered through chatting with Tom at Lada that the fuel tank, pump and HP lineset for the Riva 1.7i (as sold in the Scandinavian region) are actually available off the shelf.

It's about £350 worth of parts, but I'm definitely tempted to just go ahead and get that lot as it should be a proper professional "fit and forget" solution to get shot of some of my decidedly messy bodgery that was only ever intended to be temporarily.

Sounds like a very wise thing to do Zel...

Had never considered this originally as I'd assumed the parts would have been long since NLA! What was that saying? "To assume makes an ass out of you and me?"

Still don't know why they didn't just sell the injected Riva here in the first place!

Same reason we never saw the V6 Activa here in the UK - A lost opportunity

[Hell Razor5543]

Had never considered this originally as I'd assumed the parts would have been long since NLA! What was that saying? "To assume makes an ass out of you and me?"

I have a cleaner way of putting that phrase. I say "There is no such thing as a valid assumption".

[CitroJim]

I have a cleaner way of putting that phrase. I say "There is no such thing as a valid assumption".

That's good and very true James I'm going to store that one away for (much) future use

[Zelandeth]

Lada earned its keep yesterday by rescuing a striken Mercedes from the middle of a very large puddle. Suffice to say taken at a sensible speed in a car with sensible ground clearance and with the air intake in a sensible place...no problem.

Not surprised the Merc drowned...air intake is from the front and below the nearside headlight...given the ground clearance (or lack thereof) you hit anything more than a few inches of water and you've had it.

They had two kids in the car so I felt duty bound to at least get them to dry ground to wait for the recovery truck. Also gave them a run down to a nearby garage to grab a couple of cups of coffee.

Driver was somewhat red faced getting rescued by a Lada...his wife thought it was hilarious though.

In other news...started poking around at the idea of adding an old Proton to the fleet. Had totally forgotten about them until I saw one a couple of days back, which reminded me what a decent old car mine was. Sadly I don't even have a photo of it as all mine were lost during a hard drive crash...plan would probably to fill the general runaround duties really and probably to show now and then as they're a pretty rare sight now.

Probably won't happen...but I enjoy thinking about such things. Plus it's nearly 5AM and I've got bored of trying to get to sleep now.

[CitroJim]

Good old Lada

Wasn't a Proton based on a good Japanese car? A Mitsubishi or similar?

[Zelandeth]

Good old Lada

Wasn't a Proton based on a good Japanese car? A Mitsubishi or similar?

Yep. They essentially bought the 80s era Mitsubishi Colt lock, stock and production line as I recall. Stuck a new badge on it, made the metal thicker, then churned them out for several years.

We had one on an L plate (slightly later, by which point it was known as the Proton MPi) at the garage which was used as the loan car. In spite of it getting treated as a courtesy car always is it never needed anything doing to it really until rust started to become an issue. The one issue we did have was the rear silencer becoming blocked resulting in poor performance. It was a huge box for the size of engine and we reckon it never got hot enough during short trips to dry out. I seem to recall it got cut open and the innards ripped out after the second time. Think it was only the later cars this was an issue on.

The earlier cars from before the facelift always felt much more solidly built, reckon after that the cost cutting really started to kick in and the metal got thinner.

I do remember the motoring press struggling to really criticise it for anything beyond being a bit dated at the time...which fair enough it's a ten year old car effectively!

...at least they picked a decent little car to start from, not like Daewoo when they rebadged the Vauxhall Astra (from the same era as the Proton) as the Nexia about ten years later. That was a horrible thing.

[CitroJim]

So my memory was right then...

I drove the original Mitsubishi version once on a visit to Cyprus - always a good testing ground for any car - and I was mightily impressed with it... An excellent car as I remember...

I still see a few Protons running around so they're not such bad survivors. I guess that thicker metal helps...

The Astra-based Daewoo was dreadful. I well remember driving one of those too... And not fondly...