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

[Gibbo2286]

Zel, your chances of getting something in writing from the DVLA are pretty low, on the two occasions when I've tried to get clarification about the rules (trade plates and towing dollies) I was told "Only the courts have the power to interpret the law."

[CitroJim]

Zel, your chances of getting something in writing from the DVLA are pretty low, on the two occasions when I've tried to get clarification about the rules (trade plates and towing dollies) I was told "Only the courts have the power to interpret the law."

Best example of Teflon covered slopy shoulders I've seen in years... Even by civil service standards that is rather exceptionally inspired

[Zelandeth]

If that turns out to be the case, then so be it. At least I'll have documented evidence that I've made reasonable efforts to get the information in case the question does ever get asked.

Not about to let their administrative incompetence get in the way of this.

[Zelandeth]

Well another grumble about the VW group company car one of our household has...

VWroup really have made a life goal of asking the question "how little space can we fit in this car"

You'd have thought you'd be able to get enough stuff for four people for three days and a couple of folding chairs in the boot of an Audi A4 - never mind the estate version. Not a chance!

...not helped by the electrically operated parcel shelf (why?!?) which because you have to leave it a *totally* free area to work (and to allow the bootlid to close) so you can't cram jackets and other squash able stuff on top. It essentially reduces the capacity by at least 30% in the real world I reckon. Not to mention all the plastic already doing that or the 6" thick bootlid.

We're not even going near the total lack of anything resembling suspension, firstly because it's an Audi, and then even worse it's got an S-Line badge on. The fact that that brings with it "sports" seats just makes that even worse again! I just really don't get it... it's reasonably quick (it darn well should be with 252bhp... doesn't feel anything like that though), but really isn't a sports car. The absolute lack of any sort of flair seems to that... don't understand this obsession Germany seem to have with the belief that making something uncomfortable makes it desirable!

Next company car that's coming this way is a VW Transporter...you have no idea how much I'm looking forward to that after the last few. Might mean the trip up to Livingston in November (little chance of convincing everyone else to take one of my cars...) is slightly less torturous than the last couple of years, as it might have some suggestion of suspension and seat padding. Maybe...not holding my breath.

Shouldn't complain about the A4 too much I guess...at least it doesn't have the amazing spontaneously activating collision avoidance system that the Golf we had before had...

[Zelandeth]

Some progress on the seemingly impossible mission to find someone willing to sort the wings on the Lada.

I was given a recommendation by a random passer by while dropping some stuff off at the recycling centre a couple of weeks ago that I was finally able to follow up today. D&A Automotive, over in the Mount Farm Industrial Estate. Initial impression was that I was in the right place, especially given the Maestro parked outside and the early Silver Shadow on the MOT lift.

Very polite and enthusiastic staff so far, already had one of them try to buy the Lada.

Have booked it in for next week to be given a thorough end to end check over so they can give me a more precise quote, including any work that it makes sense to do at the same time. Had already got that in mind as I knew there was a bit of light surface rust on the rear arches and a bit on the one windscreen pillar that you need the wing off to access. If you're going to have the kit to prep it out and are already mixing paint up, it makes far more economic sense to do all the little bits and pieces at the same time rather than go back later.

Obviously the formal quote is still to arrive and that can always change depending on what horrors are found once the wings are off, but it's looking like my £750 guesstimate probably isn't far off.

Will see what they come back with once they've had a chance to have a closer look.

[CitroJim]

Zel, that's excellent news Not a mob I'm familiar with but it'll be good to know for the future...

[Zelandeth]

Time will tell I guess Jim. Fact that they've got a machine shop on premises is also useful to know for future reference, so if I need to get the Saab's head checked over before reassembling things may well see what they make of it. They definitely seemed like "car people" though, which is always reassuring. They noted right from the off that they'd be getting paint made up to match the car as well rather than just going by the colour code to account for 23 years worth of fading (especially with it being red!).

One of the guys there apparently used to be heavily involved with import and servicing of the old rear engined Skodas as well...There's a great temptation to throw mine at them with the simple order of "For the sake of my sanity - fix it already!"

...If they continue to talk sense with a realistic quote for the Lada's bodywork next week, that may yet happen!

[Zelandeth]

Excuse me while I mutter some expletives to myself.

Had to top up the brake fluid in the Lada today as the light was flickering when I turned into the driveway and bounce comically over the tree roots under the surface. I don't reckon I've actually lost any, reckon it's just dropped a bit as the pads have bedded in - will be checking tomorrow anyway though.

Spotted while doing that however that the brake servo vacuum hose is perishing. Really?!? I know that was new in November, and was from Motorserv as it's not a size I've needed to stock before. 2016 date code on it, so not ancient old stock either.

Think I'll take it back to them and see what their thoughts are...

Getting so sick of this nonsense now that I'm seriously getting tempted to say hang the cost and get some bespoke hoses that are impervious to every known element made up by Pirtek...

[CitroJim]

Gosh Zel, you are having a lot of perishing hoses on the Lada

I can understand your frustration... Did they all come from the same source and what were their provenance? Brand-new or New Old-Stock?

[Zelandeth]

Originally I can see it, simply because there were so many of them, and that any degredation whatsoever resulted in madness and mayhem. Which I reckon is why they originally used silicone ones.

Think that to be honest is the way to go...aside from anything else it's far more visibly obvious if one of them is perishing because it just disintegrates...plus they should last pretty much forever anyway (assuming you get the right sort that's oil resistant anyway).

Not sure why the original Lada white silicone ones always seem to get changed...have never seen those give any problems...the braided ones, sure...but the silicone ones nope, they're usually fine so long as they haven't been actually pierced or ripped apart. They absorb every visible contaminant known to man and look like hell in five minutes flat...but rarely fail.

This most recent failure is a new new stock one showing a 2016 date code, showing as suitable for use in a fuel contact environment, bought from a reputable source rather than a dodgy market stall or eBay.

Some of the other failures have been harder to pin down - though some have definitely been stuff that came from Halfords for one in the near past (no longer as they no longer sell fuel hose as of about a month back).

One thing I am going to check though is that the servo isn't leaking brake fluid into the inlet manifold, as that would wreck the hose in short order.

[van ordinaire]

I think you'd know if you had brake fluid entering the inlet.

[CitroJim]

I think you'd know if you had brake fluid entering the inlet.

Yes, plumes of a very distinctive-smelling smoke...

[Zelandeth]

Relatively little to report as I've been pretty busy. Most exciting thing to happen here lately has been a couple of hardware upgrades to the workstation (now Blu-Ray equipped) to assist me in keeping up to date with the digital backup of our movie archive. I've also done away with the cheap (and precarious) hard drive cabinet for the drive the NAS is hosted on, and have just bolted the thing to the underside of the shelf my workstation PC lives on. Should help with thermal management too I think.

Speaking of the workstation, new printer should be arriving tomorrow. Nothing really wrong with my old HP PSC2179 to be honest...still works just fine both in printing and scanning modes - but I've somewhat outgrown it. Specific things I'm finding that I'm missing are the ability to do duplex printing at the touch of a button (rather than manually reloading pages - then finding out 50 pages in that it's fed through two sheets at once at some point, meaning you've got to start all over again...), a document feeder on the scanner, and the ability to interface with the outside world (or at least the LAN). Technically it can do the latter as it's shared via my PC - however I've not managed to get any of the Windows PCs in the house speak to it reliably.

It's also one of the HP head-in-cartridge printers, and I've never found a bulk ink supply solution for it that works...so even though the cartridges don't last badly for what they are - they're still expensive - especially as I've tried a few brands of both budget or remanufactured cartridges and have never been satisfied with the print quality, cartridge life or both.

The other issue with it is that when scanning at higher resolutions, the fact that it's a scanner from 2003 does show...it's a little on the slow side!

Did a bit of digging around, as I really wasn't sure where to look. I know that HP have gone utterly down the pan in the last ten years or so (and am boycotting them anyway on account of the nonsense they've pulled with the locked down UEFI bootloaders on some of their current laptops meaning that you simply can't install any none-Windows OS on them!), Canon have shockingly poor Linux support it seems (I inherited one of them from my father), Brother a friend of ours uses and has had nothing but trouble with, and Lexmark...well...I'm not even going there. My parents briefly had one of those - in fact, they had several in quick succession as it was cheaper to buy a new printer than to buy new cartridges for it.

I found myself looking at Epson. I swore I'd never buy another one after suffering a head failure in my previous Epson printer (A Stylus 440 - admittedly after about five years use)...though I did have a think about that logic, did some math and realised that declaration was made 18 years ago. Maybe it's about time I got over that grudge?

Ended up going for the Epson ET-4550. The bulk ink supply system (no cartridges!) is a big draw for me as I do quite a lot of incidental printing because I tend to prefer reading long documents - especially technical ones - off paper than screen. If I'm poking around with photo printing as well, I seldom get it right the first time and usually end up printing three or four attempts before I'm fully happy. At £10 per colour for 70ml of ink, I'm much more willing to do that than £30 a colour for 10-20ml or so in your average cartridge!

It's got duplexing, it's got LAN connectivity (wired and wireless), a document feeder, and support for printing from Android devices which I realised when I thought about it actually could be quite handy. It seems like Epson now also provide Linux support officially now as well, which is a big plus compared to where things were a few years back. I'd say it's a "prosumer" product most likely...sort of sitting in the middle of the bridge between high end home and lower volume business area. I found one in store, and it certainly felt well put together and as sturdy as any of the "proper" business printers there. Big deciding factor though was finding generally positive reviews online for it.

Will let you know how it goes. Either way, I'll find a lighter duty role for the old HP (which has out-lasted three supposed replacements!) to retire into. It's still working just fine, so I'm sure we can find a home for it until it eventually does fail. Must be quite a late one in the day really from before HP's domestic stuff really started to go south.


Back on the subject of cars...Not much been going on really. I have however figured out what the odd clonk coming from the rear right hand side of the Lada on roundabouts was though. It was the winding handle on the jack! It was rotating and tapping on the spare wheel well. Wedged it under the securing strap for the jack and the noise has vanished...glad for that as it honestly sounded like it was coming from the exhaust.

Hoping to get to a show over in Brill (if I'm remembering the place name right) on Sunday, so will want to give it a good clean up between now and then. Only really got tomorrow and Friday to do so as I'll be off down to London for an unrelated get together on Saturday so have suddenly realised I don't have much time left! Also need to get that vacuum hose swapped out for the brake servo. It's really quite an awkward hose to fit without kinking, so I think I'm going to try cutting it a lot longer this time and loop it up over the top of the air intake and back down to see if that sits better.

Discovered today that Adrian Flux have *not* taken the Saab and Skoda off cover as I requested them to a couple of months ago. After an hour on the phone to them today I apparently got it *mostly* sorted out - though I still have to send them an email confirming I want them taken off...If you need it in writing, what on earth is all the faffing about with a dozen security questions on the phone for? Not amused.

[Zelandeth]

Just a quick update for today.

In preparation for the run over to Brill tomorrow I treated the Lada to a quick Hoover out and a skim over with some polish. Hadn't realised how matt the paint had turned in some places.

Will make a point of actually remembering to get some shots of my own car there - forgetting to do that is a bit of a trademark of mine!

[CitroJim]

Looking very smart Zel