MikeTheThinker

This linky may help.

From The Grauniad: "The Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme is an official grant that provides a 75% contribution – up to a maximum of £350 – towards the cost of a charging point and its installation. The main requirements are that the applicant owns, leases or has ordered a qualifying vehicle and has appropriate off-street parking. From April 2022, the scheme will no longer be open to homeowners living in “single-unit properties” – in other words, detached, semi-detached and terrace houses and bungalows, so the charging point will need to be installed by 31 March and probably booked by February. However, the scheme will remain open to homeowners who live in flats, and people in rented accommodation. The cost of installing a home charging point varies, depending on the type you go for, although quotes typically come in at between £500 and £1,000." https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/dec/18/electric-cars-deadline-nears-to-claim-home-charging-grant

Unknowns with a head gasket leak - especially a long term one - include likely distortion of the head (needs to be skimmed) and possible cracking in the block (remove, weld, reskim). If these turn out to be true it get very expen$ive. Unfortunately the only way to fully establish this is to strip the motor down to take a look-see, by which time you've committed a significant chunk of the repair costs in labour and gaskets etc. My apologies if this has already been mentioned but have you had a compression test done? If you have and it showed a leak I'd get rid. One of the assorted Sodium Silicate head gasket sealers may give you some breathing space but they're not a guarantee and will likely fail again in time as the thermal movement of the engine works on the silicate plug. If you haven't had a compression test done I'd strongly recommend you do one now. In the style of Donald Rumsfeld "Better to have known unknowns than unknown unknowns [sic]". As regards selling & buying, diesel older cars seem to be attracting a premium in the used car market as a) supplies of new cars are slow to arrive at the start of the chain and b) diesels are getting harder to find. It's mainly a sellers market but the usual bargains exist away from the main advertising channels such as autotrader or car sales forecourts. Just FYI Parkers used car valuation site seems to be generally on track with values - https://www.parkers.co.uk/car-valuation/

Another vote for the three legged puller. I found one on Amazon for less than 10 squid and with time, wd40 and careful persuasion I managed the removal. Probably stating the obvious but just in case - put the nut back on the thread so as to give the puller a firm foot to press on and to stop any damage to the threads. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001PN1DB6

If - as you state at the start of the post - your car has failed the MoT then any time remaining on the old certificate is lost. If you use it on the road now before a successful test you are liable for a £100 fine and maybe some licence points.

The cartridge mouldings are clearly different so on the face of it I'd return them as incorrect. Whilst you could potentially look to trim off the additional locator key from the moulding you may face two issues; 1) the cartridge case may be thin and the offending moulding not solid, so if you trim it off you may puncture the cartridge, and 2) the supplier will likely refuse a return if the cartridges have been altered.

I recall from replacing a front wing on one of our preFL Octy 2s that some of the internal bracketry is different. I'll take a closer look when I get back to my PC. Later: From what I can see from the parts diagrams (see below) and my own work on the NSF wind of our 2007 PFL OCTY the bumper moulding is the same although I suspect the plastic connector piece that runs below the headlamp between the bumper and the wing may be different (I couldn't locate the part on the parts catalogue but I do have details of it elsewhwre so I'll follow up anon. Found it; it's part #7 on the front bumper catalogue page. It's shown in outline only on the 2007 page but in more detail on the 2010 page). Wings are a different cutout for the FL headlamp and some or all of the small wing-to-chassis-and-headlamp mount bracketry may be different. One of them certainly is. To move foward, look at the links below which are the parts catalogue pages for a 2007 PFL mk2 Octy and a 2010 FL mk2 Octy. That will tell you which parts are the same and which are different. It's important you know the model year for your donor front and some of the parts differ by year. 2007 mk2 PFL Octy front bumper, front wing, headlamp, bodywork front. 2010 mk2 FL Octy front bumper, front wing, headlamp, bodywork front.

I put Osran Nightbreakers in our mk1 diesel Octy in 2011 and they're still going strong. On the basis of that I fitted another set to our Mk2 diesel Octy a few months ago and so far, so good.

The parts diagram for the rear seats is <here>, and it looks like the attachment bolt for the centre seatbelt is somewhere behind the centre armrest piece.

On a recent trip with ladders on the roof rack I stayed below 65mph, mainly motorway, and the car ('07 Scout BMM mapped to 180) was reporting mid-50s mpg. I didn't do an overall mpg check on that run so my numbers are from the 'on the go' mpg figures.

We have two BMM 2007 Octy estates in the family, one standard and one remapped. Both average 42mpg or 9.25 miles/litre once warmed up, giving around 450 miles per refill if you stay out of the reserve.

I have exactly the same problem with rear window wipers on my Octavia 2 estate. Having tried several wiper blades I'm wondering if it's down to the spring in the wiper arm?

There are two elements in the internet mail chain that are relevent here; firstly, the internet post office box or mail server that handles all mail coming in and going out. It's a bit like your local telephone exchange and it site between you and the wider internet. The other element is your mail tool, or mail reader, which is the element with which you engage directly to receive, read and send emails. These two are functionally separate but are often bundled togther in one wrapper to provide you with an email service. You just don't get to see the inner workings. The domain for an email address - the @somewhere.xxx part - is attached to the mail server, so if you want to keep your existing email you will need to keep the current mail server. Your mail tool (or mail client) can be configured to point to your mailbox on the mail server so that from your point of view it's situation normal (no, not the SNAFU version). Your mail tool needs to be set up to read mail from your server and to send mail similarly. The part where things become a little blurred is where you want to access email from multiple points and from different platforms. To achieve this you need firstly a mailtool that is available across all of those platforms and secondly one which will handle multiple access to your mailbox. Gmail does this by collecting your incoming mail into a gmail mailbox, deleting the email from your mail server's mailbox and you reading your email on gmail. This way the multiple access isn't a problem as gmail manages it for you. Your email history will now be on gmail and not on your mail server's mailbox, and you can have gmail drain your collected emails from your mailserver onto gmail so everything is together in one place. Outgoing email is created in gmail but sent via your mail server (config item in gmail). It sounds worse than it is in reality as gmail is pretty good at guiding you through setup, and your email will live on in gmail for as long as you wish it - and you can always export it if you want it outside gmail. I run several domains for family history purposes and handle all email the way I've described. I've tried a number of other products over the years but never found one that beats gmail.

Are you ok to use a third party email provider or do you wish to establish your own mail host with your own domain? If the former Google's gmail is very good at multiple-device email and doesn't dump much advertising into your mail - especially of you use as ad blocker to strip out most or all of it. Gmail is also free If you want to run your own host/mailserver you again have choices; remote host on t'internet or your own local machine?

Having lived in a dog household almost all of my life I've seen or tried most of the in car dog offerings at one time on another. Our current preferences came about from an investigation into the actual situation of a dog in the car - what freedoms are allowed, what happens in the event of emergency braking or a collision, how comfortable is the dog and how safe are the car's passengers from the dog in normal driving or in a rapid slow/stop. I also checked on the legal position which both mandates and advises some constraints. Our initial findings were thus: 1) The law says the driver must ensure the dog (or any pet) in a car is retrained in such a manner as to prevent interference with the driver {1}. 2) The law advises that the dog is put in the back seat and not in the front (see {1} on interference with the driver). 3) The dog will need to be able to move around whilst in the car (a hard strapping down would be stressful) 4) We will usually want to limit the dog's free movement to that area of the seating which we have protected appropriately. If you're OK with letting them use the whole back seat that's between you and your other half 5) To encourage us to use whatever setup we've chosen (and not to get frustrated with it as too complicated and thus not use it) the attach/detach actions should be straightforward and easy to use, especially in the light of post-walk pooch who could be wet/muddy/sandy or whatever. 6) A restraint attached to the dog's collar (as opposed to a harness) provides only limited restriction of movement (see 1,4 above), may not be effective if put under stress by rapid braking and is also at risk of causing the dog harm in the event of an emergency stop (dog flung forward and held by the neck). 7) Following (6) a harness is the most effective as a restraint and the least likely to cause harm to the dog. The harness should support the dog at the centre of mass (thus minimising the risk of "flailing" and associated injury), be adequately padded to distribute the restraint load across a wider area of the dog to minimise injury and concentrate primary support on the dog's breastbone. It should be easy to fit and remove, be attachable via a D-ring or similar (see 6) and made of materials which will function equally effectively when wet/muddy/sandy etc. 8 ) The most common attachment point for any dog restraint are the either seatbelt female buckles or on the seatbelt itself. 9) ISOFIX points might initially seem an attractive attachment point {2} but see my diagram below about directions of restrained motion during emergency braking. Diagram indicating the differences in forward motion of restrained dog under emergency braking (no, I can't draw dogs). With the above considerations in mind we went looking for solutions and at the time (ten years ago) the Trixie harnesses looked to best fit our needs for our Border Collie. They were hard to find then but have since become much more widely available {3}. In order to address the issues in the diagram above (see (7)) we looked for a better way to attach to the seatbelt and came up with a device from Truelove to safely clip to the seatbelt and support safe but easy attach/detach of the harness {4}. This definitely helped but still meant the attachment point to the seatbelt was too low as the clip tended to slip down the belt under gravity. More hunting came up with a seat belt clip (many types available) to hold the Truelove clip at the same level as the D-ring on the harness so in the event of rapid braking the restraint acted as per example 2 in the diagram. Note the seatbelt clip doesn't have to do anything under load, it's simply there to stop the Truelove clip from slipping down the belt. {5} Links to candidate suppliers below. Caveats: no commercial interest, other brands available, YMMV {1} https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-about-animals-47-to-58 {2} https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHua2ODPGjI {3} https://www.amazon.co.uk/Trixie-20411-Premium-Harness-60-90/dp/B000WFDN66/ref=sr_1_5 {4} https://www.truelove-uk.co.uk/accessoires/60-truelove-security-clip.html {5} https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adjuster-Seatbelt-Stopper-Comfort-Tension/dp/B08MTGV9RV

I have a set of mk2 VRS seats surplus to requirements. Nice washable leather

There's a serious point to consider, here, in that a dog relies on being able to grip onto the surface under them in order to avoid being thrown around by the car's movements. We've found that the usual protective seat covers available aftermarket are great at keep muck and wet off the seats but provide little or no grip for el pooch. Our answer was to always add a towel and/or blanket over the liner which improves things - although it's not a perfect solution as the towel/blanket can slide on the waterproof liner ... I'm looking into a way of securing the cloth cover somehow - probably by fitting some press studs to the liner. Not today's project but I will report back when some progress has been made.

You might want to investigate washable seat covers, too!

Take a look at this link. Alarm is on the right hand inner wing behind the wheel arch liner.

We did a lot of research on this very topic for our two Springers and came up with the system we still use now for our Border Collie. We chose it for control of the dog when travelling whilst allowing enough movement that they won't fret, together with good support for the dog and with particular attention to how the whole setup would both restrain and support the dog in the case of a rapid decelleration in the event of a "Code Brown" moment. I'm not being deliberately mysterious but it's too dark for decent piccies and I can't remember the brands, so I'll take a proper look tomorrow and post FYI.

Take a look on parcel2go.com. They can quote from as low as around 12 squid for parcels to UK up to 25kg and 1m in length. Note that Highlands & Islands and Northern Ireland cost a bit more. Caveat: no beneficial interest, many times previous and satisfied customer.

My wife's night sight is a bit challenged these days and I fitted a pair of Osram Nightbreakers a little while back which she says have improved the headlamp illumination significantly.

Yes, your BXE is a 1.9 PD turbo diesel. Great motor but fussy on oil so use the right grade and change when it's due.

See below, and I'd suggest a read of the whole thread as well ...

I think this post will help: