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

[Gibbo2286]

My posts are disappearing into the mist yesterday I posted a reply with a quote and couldn't find it, I noted someone else had been typing at the same time, just had the same thing happen again here, Richard W must have been writing his post at the same time as me and it's come up, mine hasn't.

[myglaren]

A bit late for it now but if you see it again use the 'back arrow' to return to your message and re-send it.
I have had this happen but I think I failed to hit the submit button and just went to the next post.

If it is a long post, copy it to a word processor so you have a viable copy.

Van was having similar problems last year but seems to have overcome them now.

[Zelandeth]

You learn something every day. Seems I've got me early/late identifiers backwards then...though I'm hardly an expert on Sevens...

-- -- --

Given we had a??????? clear weekend we decided it was a good excuse to take the van away ?for the weekend.





Only an hour from home?, but stil?l nice to get away f?or a ?bit.?

[Zelandeth]

The sun has actually been out today so snapped another couple of photos of our quiet corner of nowhere.

Currently retreating inside the van as this is approaching...

[van ordinaire]

A bit late for it now but if you see it again use the 'back arrow' to return to your message and re-send it.
I have had this happen but I think I failed to hit the submit button and just went to the next post.

If it is a long post, copy it to a word processor so you have a viable copy.

Van was having similar problems last year but seems to have overcome them now.

What I try to remember to do, if I haven't actually drafted the post as a word document, is simply to highlight the text & hit "copy" before "submit" - then if it all goes wrong, e.g. being told it's "invalid" I can just click on the box & "paste" & try again.

However, do still occasionally have posts that disappear after they've been submitted.

[GiveMeABreak]

The issue may also be due to a timeout - or period of inactivity on the forum - and typing a post isn't counted as activity, as nothing is happening while you are typing a post. Only when you change a page or interact with an area of the forum that sends a request to the server will it count as some activity. If you are typing up a long post - copying the content is wise before submitting, but you can also hit the 'Preview' button (when using the full editor) which will refresh the page and send the request to the server. That will keep the page alive until you are ready to submit your post.

This is sometimes useful if you have attached a load of images - as when you get timed out they are no longer there and you'll have to re-upload them and re-insert them into your text at the correct locations of course.

[Zelandeth]

Now safely home. Glad to report???? the van didn't miss a beat. The relative ease with which 70mph can be obtained for overtaking on the motorway now still surprises me a bit.

Did make one upgrade when I got home. The little 10" TFT (fitted I'm guessing around 2000-2005) was essentially useless. The image quality was basically on par with the little screens you get on airliners about 15 years ago, except with even worse contrast. Input was limited to analogue RF, DVD, composite video or an SD card supporting only a ha?ndful of mostly obsolete file formats.

It was however attached to a standard VESA mount, which meant I could easily swap it out for something else.

Just like this. ?

Being somewhat larger than the old one, this protrudes a bit beyond the wardrobe when positioned for viewing in bed...

...It is still able to fold out the way though.

While definitely a luxury item, it is nice to be able to stick a movie on in the background in the evening, so having something able to handle modern video interfaces is a bonus. Even if the TV being used was literally found abandoned at the side of the road with as far as I've been able to tell, absolutely nothing wrong with it aside from being a cheap and nasty piece of tat...more than sufficient for occasional use like this though.

[van ordinaire]

TV's are usually abandoned because they are too small, i.e. not as big as last year's - although why people are too idle to take them to a charity shop is beyond me.

[van ordinaire]

The issue may also be due to a timeout - or period of inactivity on the forum - and typing a post isn't counted as activity, as nothing is happening while you are typing a post. Only when you change a page or interact with an area of the forum that sends a request to the server will it count as some activity. If you are typing up a long post - copying the content is wise before submitting, but you can also hit the 'Preview' button (when using the full editor) which will refresh the page and send the request to the server. That will keep the page alive until you are ready to submit your post.

This is sometimes useful if you have attached a load of images - as when you get timed out they are no longer there and you'll have to re-upload them and re-insert them into your text at the correct locations of course.

That was probably my problem, particularly with blog installments (one of the reasons I now tend to draft them off-line) - but it doesn't explain the ones that disappear after they've been published (at least once, after someone had responded to it)

[Zelandeth]

TV's are usually abandoned because they are too small, i.e. not as big as last year's - although why people are too idle to take them to a charity shop is beyond me.

Around here they won't touch them unless they're brand new in the box and of a decent brand. I wound up skipping/recycling a bunch of stuff from my father's house when we cleared it. Couldn't even shift anything on Freecycle.

The one possibility of this set I had forgotten was possibly a duff remote... it's one of those sets where the vast majority of operations need the remote and can't be done using physical buttons. So dead remote = a set that's essentially a doorstop.

[myglaren]

My son has one of those, just moved into a new house and I was setting up his TV/DVD/Stereo kit and discovered that there isn't a single control on the TV - not even an on/off button - everything done with the remote.

I have a CD player that is similar - on/of, play/pause/stop. Everything else on the remote and some of the functions stopped working a couple of months ago.
It is a fairly obscure make (Shanling) so was a bit concerned then found the batteries were low, all OK now though.

[Zelandeth]

Have spent most of the day in the garden, and it looks like that will be the case for most of this week. I did manage to sneak away for half an hour in the evening though so thought I'd attack one of the nice simple jobs on the whiteboard in the garage.

At some point the wheels on TPA had been painted with very patchy red oxide primer.

This isn't a good look.

I've decided to go with the same hammered black as I've used for a few other details on the car.

Not a perfect finish by any means, but given there are runs in the paint already on there it's as good as it's going to get for now. At some point (probably in a decade or two) I'll look to get the wheels professionally refurbished. For now this looks better I think.

I doubt that I'll be getting much done this week but hopefully all three wheels will be tidied up shortly. Small details really but bit by bit they add up.

[van ordinaire]

The one possibility of this set I had forgotten was possibly a duff remote... it's one of those sets where the vast majority of operations need the remote and can't be done using physical buttons. So dead remote = a set that's essentially a doorstop.

But you can get a universal remote in a £-shop . . . .

[Zelandeth]

The one possibility of this set I had forgotten was possibly a duff remote... it's one of those sets where the vast majority of operations need the remote and can't be done using physical buttons. So dead remote = a set that's essentially a doorstop.

But you can get a universal remote in a £-shop . . . .

That would require them to put effort into it though...far easier to chuck it out and buy a new TV off Amazon...that seems to be the general thought process involved here.

[Zelandeth]

TPA has been pretty busy today.

Resting after a busy day

Looks much better with the repainted wheels. Here's a better closeup in actual sunlight.

Nice and shiny

That looks "right" to my eye.

Had a bunch of errands to run today all over town...and decided that the best thing for TPA at the moment really is to get some miles under her wheels...so took a brave pill and took her out. 26 miles covered today once I got back.

Odometer reading as of 22nd May 2019

This included some trundling around residential areas, some dodging trucks in busy Industrial estates and a fair amount of high speed dual carriageway work. Gremlin count at the end of the day? Nil.

In fact aside from a bit of grumbling from the CVT (belt flapping about a bit because the pulley surfaces still aren't perfect), she was running well and felt well...happy. Not sure how else to describe it. She's far less of a liability on high speed roads than you would expect, the sheer lack of vibration etc through the car at speed is surprising. Honestly she feels less stressed at speed than the Metro I used to own. The ride is also far better than it has any right to be in such a small lightweight car. Even if the slightly odd way the whole car wobbles over some types of road surface simply by virtue of having only three wheels takes a little getting used to. It actually feels like my country wide tour next year might be less of a mental idea than it originally seemed.

Having got a got a few miles of sustained high speed running done today it seemed a good time to check the plugs. When I first started out I had a bit of a recurring issue with the offside plug fouling up with only deposits. My guess was that this was down to a sticky piston ring due to disuse. The oil consumption seemed to have ceased after the first couple of road tests so I was hopeful that the plugs would be looking more healthy now.

Nearside:

Nearside spark plug condition

Offside (the one which used to suffer from oil fouling):

Offside spark plug condition

Those look reasonably healthy to me. No signs of oil anyway, which ties in with no oil being used any more and smoke being limited to a brief puff when the engine is started from cold.

Given I'm going to be wanting to drive out of town to a car show in a couple of weeks it's nice to have got some decent testing undertaken without incident.

Tomorrow I'll hopefully get the cover out and have a close examination of the CVT belt and see how it's holding up. Before I did the work cleaning up the pulleys the belt had been getting well shredded and started to slip after less than ten miles, so will be curious to take a look to see how it's holding up.

Saw a lot of puzzled looking drivers today!