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Two ducks walk into a bar....

Since living in the caravan on the job site I was hearing a screeching from some animal or animals most nights, people said that it was probably an owl but I had never heard anything like it before, it was so loud and so close and sounding like it was close to the ground (unlike an owl) that I decided it had to be something else but what? I spoke to all my neighbours but of course the noise only happened regularly at night and the few times at dusk there was no-one around, then one evening I heard it while with a neighbour, he said it was une chouette and it was nesting in his cabane de jardin. That started me on a Youtube fest and I finally found what was making the noise, they are chevêche d'athene or Little Owl in English, a tiny bird with a huge wingspan and a voice to match. Now when they start gobbing off to each other I can join in with the computer 😃 I will really miss them when I move into the ground floor conversion on the main building this spring. And the noise was close, really close, like 4 feet from my bed! He/she sits on my fence post above the tunnels of the campagnoles (mole rats) waiting for them to come out, its their favorite food and there are loads of them right underneath both my front and rear fences for reasons I know not.

Can you remember the days when it used to be OK to clean your balls at your desk?

Perhaps this should have been spelled 'deleat'?

My new beast. I got I just before Christmas and absolutely loving it so far.

Creating their own EV network is smart, just like it was for fuel stations. 1) it’s can be a loss leader to bring people to your stores 2) or you might make some money off it 3) people will likely do a big shop not a grab an item and fuel. 4) They don’t have to pay the third party so can afford to be cheaper. 5) They already have a bigger estate than any charging company. 6) Maintenance teams regularly visit the sites for store equipment so they should be maintained . 7) Bigger users get better commercial unit pricing. They already have a comprehensive set of sites over the whole country, many with cafe/restaurants. These sites have huge roofs and car parks, perfect for solar/battery to bring down the costs and offset the refrigeration costs of the stores too. Wouldn’t be bad to get some sites wind turbines too. Add 6 high 150kW/350kW to all large sites and a series of 7/11/22kW posts in the car parks and the can clean up. Police the high speed on idle time and charge after 15 minutes and both on being ICE’d and there’s an extra short term revenue stream. Offer a lower price per kWh if you buy something in store, scan your voucher before disconnect. So many stores near the main roads and motorways too, so I’m very pleased to see this. The big players have got too comfortable with some charging silly prices. https://smartcharge.co.uk

Pie night.😍 Steak, Mushroom with Garlic & Onion gravy in a short crust pastry. Started out with browning the meat & mushrooms then adding to the onion & garlic gravy made with Guinness. One for the pot & one for the chef. Then I find out that SWMBO has bought a 4 pack of Guinness & the pie filling was taking a bit longer than expected to thicken up so, time for another can, then another Finally done & in the oven for 30mins. Half for now & half for tomorrow served with broccoli & extra gravy from the filling - & the last of 4 Guinness.

For the Trekkies ...

Tonight was the other half of last night's Steak & mushroom pie. Just as good as the first half. No beer tonight as I have to concentrate on my tiling skills. Measure 20 times & cut once. Currently I'm trying to lay 3m2 of Metro tiles in our kitchen (backsplash) & cut them in around a myriad of light & plug sockets. Took me hours just to set out the first row reasonably symmetrical without leaving some tiny slivers to cut. This is gonna take a while.

I fear for my blood pressure whenever I hear that Trump is back in the running. I rarely feel so angry about anything in my life, especially something that isn't even 'my business'. I'm off to howl at the moon and bang my head on an immovable object !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And, from the nation that's just selected Tronald Dump as a Presidential candidate:

Made a large pot of 'bitsa' soup. Enough to freeze several portions. It was a turkey, bacon, carrot, onion, celery, leek, pea, garlic....more garlic...potato, red lentil mishmash. Plus some herby things and a dash of chilli flakes. Managed to empty my fridge of lots of wibbly soft veg Tasted quite nice after a few hours of simmering

Walking back in from my garage and coming across a couple of objects I'd forgotten all about: No, not the cactus! 😁 To say they're chilled is a bit of an understatement 🥶 G

Call me paranoid, but every time I scroll past this photo I get the feeling I'm being watched! 👀 G

All done, thank god. The worst part was removing the torx screws (2 per side) which attach the front wing to the bumper. There's very limited space. The rest of the job was relatively straightforward. I clamped off the radiator hoses so didn't lose much coolant at all. The old radiator was in a pretty bad state. Leaking from the bottom edges due to corrosion.

Genuine conversation between a colleague and a main dealer's workshop "The van was only in for a service, we didn't touch the wiring for the tracker" "ok then, so why does it say it's still in your workshop when we picked it up last week?"

Nobody's this dense are they? supertanskiii_718p_20240118_013006.mp4

Its becoming more and more a frequent occurrence, perhaps that is how how people communicate on Fessbook groups.

So this thread is going to be a bit of a hybrid! As well as outlining the projects I am doing on my car, Ill supply as much detail along the way for new projects to hopefully allow others to do the same and also to answer any questions you may have. Lets start with the car itself; Car Skoda Superb MK3 TSI Sportline Estate in Laser White Engine Standard 2.0 TSI EA888 with 220bhp Racingline air intake Racingline turbo intake pipe Racingline turbo intake elbow Transmission Standard 6 speed DSG DQ250 Suspension Currently standard original Brakes Audi S3 Front Calipers with plain fascia plates Superb 280 Rear Calipers with vented discs Drilled and grooved black discs OE brake pads Braided stainless brake lines Wheels & Tyres Standard Vega 19 inch alloy wheels with 235/40R19 Bridgestone T005 Spare wheel - Full size, same as above Exterior Standard sportline black pack Maxton side skirts Rear mudflaps Maxton splitter Maxton fog surrounds Interior Rear seat release from boot area LED boot lights White LED boot torch Electric tailgate Heated front seats Heated rear seats Heated steering wheel Ambient LED footwell lights LED front door puddle lights LED rear door puddle lights Electric/Memory front seats ICE & Security Canton sound system Rear door keyless entry Tailgate easy open/close 12 parking sensors MIB2.5 Columbus radio Virtual cockpit 3 zone climate control Heated windscreen Heated washer jets Front and rear dash cam ADAS Adaptive cruise control Predictive cruise control Adaptive lane assist High beam assistance SLA headlights Side assist Cross traffic assist Self park Rear view camera with lens washer As you can see, for a Sportline that started off with only the following optional extras: Electric tailgate, MIB2.5. Its came quite a long way and heres a few photos to show the work done so far, if anyone wants further details on any of the current retrofits, let me know, the future ones will be documented as I go. Lane Assist 3Q0980654 camera fitted as well as a new windscreen - all features enabled and fusion canbus ran to the front radar. Heated windscreen Canton soundsystem An absolutly massive retrofit requiring around 150 meters of new wiring, all corners of the car, a lot of new speakers and a lot of custom made wiring 0 Side assist/Cross traffic detection Another expensive retrofit requiring new wing mirror glass at £400 each side, new radars and brackets behind the rear bumper and all associated coding and wiring Release rear seats from luggage area & Heated rear seat elements 3 Zone climate control Another massive retrofit - stripping the entire dashboard from the car to replace the complete heater assembly to allow the 3rd climate zone, this also gave me a good chance to neaten everything up behind the dashboard and also flush the heater core. pACC/Predictive cruise control Required replacing the front radar and also a calibration of it - done perfectly with any solid smooth object and a few tape measures and patience. Facelift tailights Fitting these allowed for dynamic indicators and unlocking animation - these arent a straight fit and require custom wiring adapters and new wires running to the BCM Virtual Cockpit Quite a specialist retrofit this one, needs access to the main dealer tool for component protection and immobiliser recoding - but so worth it! Carbon clean @ 50k miles Not much a retrofit but after 50k of constant motorway miles i thought it would be a good time to give it a walnut blast. Cost around £40 in parts and my already owned air compressor and garage vacuum LED boot lights and engine styling Nothing too special, just a custom made LED torch, LED lights that dont fault and Racingline air intake and associated parts

I've just watched a lowest common denominator film called Lift, on Netflix. It was awful painting by numbers trash and so felt perhaps it's time for an alternative thread on the flip side of film and tv. Think of a corny film heist trope and it's in this movie. I wrote the following in a different thread, but please feel free to share your rantings on other film and tv shows. Lift. A film written by either a 6 year old or an AI with the electronic equivalent of a lobotomy. Utter, utter, utter nonsense. Predictable, unfunny, ridiculous, naff acting, generic musical score and cinematography. The once wonderful Jean Reno is in it, taking the money for his retirement fund it appears. The list goes on. Honestly, you would be better off counting the number of bricks in your gable end. 1/10 (and that's only because watching it with all my home theatre switched on, warmed my room). It's on Netfilx if you want to avoid it - and you should

@skomaz Re the cordless vacuum cleaner, I had a cheap one which was really really handy for living in the caravan, no space for anything other than compact things that are worth the space they take up. It stopped working a couple of months ago, a circuit board failure that I was not able to fix. The only cheap ones around were double what I had paid so I did something very unlike me and paid a lot of money for a branded one, a Bosch as I am a Fanboy! OK its better made, better quality and has a couple of nice features but where it is light years better than the cheap Chinese one is in its filtration, its is cyclonic like the other one but not only does it pick up far more dust and not lose suction within a few minutes but when I empty it it has huge amounts of very very fine dust in the inner filter which I think was what was blocking the foam filters on the cheap one meaning they had to be washed each time I used it.

Oooh a spot of mash would make that even more epic-er

As I drove home today, getting to the car at 6:30pm after a few hours of below freezing, other co-workers had to wait for their car to warm up and/or scrape ice. I turned on pre-conditioning as I packed up, got to a warm car without any frost and drove off straight away. Similar story this morning. 58 miles return, 8+ hours apart, was just over 3 mi/kWh at -5c in the morning and -2c return. Compared to 3.7 mi/kWh average economy over 1 year. EV's do have small amount of waste heat. After stopping at home, I checked S3XY button app and it showed battery was at 10c, up from 6c when I set off. Coolant going in was at 12c, presumably heat scavenged from motor. If EV motor are 90% efficient and used 20 kW to maintain 70mph, that means 2 kW of heat is available for heating the cabin or battery. Just need a flexible smart system to scavenge that heat and heat pump to raise the temperature to make it useful. Minimise waste, minimise energy used for heating.

Dreams are weird. This morning, just before waking up, I was dreaming that I was at a serious Star Trek convention, with me, Kirk (Shatner) and Spock (Nimoy) all chuckling that the outside of the Enterprise seemed to have the same green plastic as my Bosch power drill. We got a fit of the giggles at finding a small black dome headed screw holding something important in place, and agreed I needed to sit quietly in a corner so as to not spoil the illusion for the masses. It was an unusually light hearted dream for me, and I've been pretty chirpy all day riding on the back of it. Gaz

A-a-at last ................

I am cutting my holiday short and heading home to the North East on Saturday before possible flooding. The last few days forecasts that covered some places south of Perth was just nonesense. When it comes to possible flooding of roads I am taking no chances as last time it was a horror show and I was lucky by a few hours to miss being stranded.

A lot do perform as well. Last winter there was a big traffic jam in a blizzard in the USA and folks were stuck for days. Some ICE cars needed refilling with fuel as they were running out after running their engines for many hours and the EV doom-sayers were going on how you couldn't top up a battery on the road in this manner. I think that furore is what prompted this video. Coincidentally, someone on the ID.3 Facebook group posted today about exactly this experience he faced yesterday, stuck in a traffic jam in Germany for 14 hours in -5 temps. He was worried as his journey plan had been to stop at the next planned charger with 20% battery (58kWh usable full battery on his car). The worry was would he have enough charge left to reach the charger as he 'only' had 20% margin. He turned the heat down to 16C and used the heated seats to keep body warm. There was himself and partner in the car, kids on back seat with a blanket. When the traffic cleared he was able to make it to the next available charger (not his planned stop) with 10% battery spare. Seems a non-issue to me. My ID.4 uses about 2.1kW to heat the car at -1 to -3 and run various systems. I could maybe get that to 1.9kW if I turned the car off and only used stationary heating and heated seats. With a maximum of 75kWh (full battery) I'd be fine for around 38 hours. Of course in the real world, I'd be arriving at the problem with less than that but you can see where I'm coming from. My car does not have a heat pump, cars so equipped will use less power to maintain temperature.

Personally as far as Tesla, big battery cars on UK roads, maybe even oop north in Scotland any of the drivers can cope even getting stopped at Snow Gates for several hours as long as they did plan ahead as far as charging fully before entering the high risk areas. It is the likes of me with a 50 kWh battery or much less like 30 kWh that really needs to decide how bad it can get if roads close or you need to take a diversion. Only maybe 75 to 90 miles range if moving. Bad enough around the A9 or A90 but in Deeside and the Cairngorms getting turned back or stuck on the A93, or A939 or the roads there take you too can be horrible. Instead of going maybe 30 miles a diversion can be more than 100 miles and still in horrible road conditions.

I had exactly this issue. The 'freeing off' basically is just them working the handbrake lever mechanism on the caliper. This jams up over time. I had my brakes jam on with lots of smoke so it's important to get it sorted. I had 2 refurbished calipers fitted by the garage but these were no good after just a year. What happens is the steel rod that connects into the rear caliper to operate the pads gets rust, gunk and scale in between it and the bore it travels in. I have had much better success rebuilding the old calipers myself and fitting new seals and most importantly removing and cleaning out the handbrake mechanism. The handbrake when working well is very effective, but it's a fragile design and so it needs regular inspection. Once the mechanism starts sticking, it's needing service.

This video saved me from going mad when I changed the battery on my key. Hopefully the link works but if not the guy is called the car key man ok YouTube https://youtu.be/5H8nFH-IOUs?si=4zFIP0JndpT7hTB7

Correct. Rear wiper, fuse 66 for example.

Managed to solve it. Got a small paint brush and painted a load of general purpose grease on the mechanism. Took a little while to work it's way in but it's back to normal now

Sounds like faulty ballast on near side headlamp. If the ballasts on both sides are same part numbers then maybe try swapping them around and see if the fault follows the near side ballast. This may help

Just to confirm what NS says I honestly can’t see me changing this car until I absolutely have to.

Thanks the the OT EU posts… They can stop now on this thread thanks.

This is Megan saying stop working on that and feed me, please.

For reference here is a photo of the key with the spring in the correct position. I have found that you do not have to remove the mechanical key to pop the cover off the key as the manual states, you can just pull it off with your finger nails or a small screwdriver, leaving the mechanical key in place and saving yourself a hassle.

Huh? Im a bit confused, the fuel gauge will go up and down as you use it and fill it up? what do you mean false readings? what is it you want from this? Help fixing something? Let people know? People come to the forum to discuss and also get help, to do either of these things you’ll need to give us more than 1 sentence please.

Just manage to snap it as it disappeared behind the clouds🌛

I have the same problem yet I've seen in the handbook that a low performing battery, which I have, can be detected by the Battery Control Module and high current non-essential services (and seat heating is listed as one of them) are suspended. I hope to get a new battery in the next few days so will let you know if that solves the issue.

I see on the telly that the Prince of Wales was driving an Audi e-tron carbon vorsprung. About as near a British EV as the Royals can get.

Thanks Harley. I was in despair. Ploughed through many, many posts with well meaning solutions till I read your one and realised my new Duracell battery had a small red sticker on one side which warned about children swallowing it. Took the sticker off and fob works perfectly! Many thanks.

Satan lives here.