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May 19, 2024 11:27:35 GMT
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Day of the Triffids haunts you too then ! It was the rattling noise.... James Oh don't..get..me..started..! So , where was i ? OH yes , the trees , oh but first the digger .. On Wednesday , hottest day of the year , i got underneath and finished undoing the big 35mm nut , and managed to extract a metre of twisty rubbery snakey metal rubber pipe barstard from hell,here it is all undone from itself .. I had to use the Big vice , if you look closely you might see the tiny pinhole .. I whizzed off down to the local tractor place and ,while i waited ,they made a new one with new ends for 35 quid ,no idea if that's a good price but i think it was worth it . Came back and put the pipe back together , then tried to insert it into the digger .. Now , i cannot remember if i have shared the camera down the throat experience i had a few years ago ,but it was a bit like that ,without the sexy french dr , and three very nervous philippino nurses of course . i did not realise when i went for this test , that the camera , which i thought would be the size of a petit pois , was actually the size of a small taxi . i went in with my, must be zen, calm as possible ,mind set , and appreciated my french lady dr a lot , but may have turned 4.271% paler when she brought out the alien stealth probe from hell , on its multi jointed black aluminium meter long arm ! i thought gawd if they put that in me they'll see my long toenails and no mistake ! At this point i was surrounded by Philippino nurses , not, as i at first suspected , trying to do my nails , and ask me if i had girlfrenn, but to rub my back and hold my hand , and cradle my head as they inserted a frankly revolting surgical pink gum shield, with a worryingly big hole in it , presumable to stop me clamping down and biting off the end of the probe . now , being an avid student of psychology, and body language , i could not help but notice , that all these nurses where waving strong worry flags , and giving off a fundamental sheer terror mind frequency . i realised , here i was a 6ft 190 lb male , about to be invaded with a alien stealth probe , and they must have had occurrences when the victim had hurtled off out of the room , the hospital , and down the road , while till equipped with the borg interspace antenna ! ! i found this thought so amusing i nearly smiled , however , that the last time i was about to smile for a loooonngg time .. my nice lady doctor turned to me with a charming french smile, slightly coquettish and tempting , hopelessly attempting to distract me from the grim reality she was carrying in her french polished hands ,yes , it was the probe , about 15mm across and a meter long . i, as i said, paled , there may have been 4 white showing around my eyes , however i was now surrounded by the girlfrenn beauty chorus , so i did my zen breathing and tried not to look as it came closer and closer to my gumshield orifice .... everything went into slow motion , as she started feeding it through , it had a spotlight on the end , which was nice , i wondered if it could change colours , and give me a disco tummy effect down the clubs , but then went back to my breathing , and in fact got my pulse down to 77 from the 78 i started with , and all the time the ladeeez are rubbing my back and telling me how well i am doing . So , the antenna for Robqutus of Borg is now about 17 ft in , and she says , can you just swallow , so it goes down the right hole . this had obviously been a breaking point for men in the past , as one of the nurse involuntarily sank her 2" nails ,in a fetching metallic swirl pattern with a smiley face on each nail, into my wrist , not sure which one because i have my eyes tightly close at this point , and i manage to swallow and feel the invading stalk of death click past my lung tube into my tummy tube succesfully . did i mention i had no anaestetic ? Anyway , madamoisselle sexy keeps on feeding the darkness down me , until at long last its all in , i wiggle my toes to see if its in my shoes but no its ok , ,at least its ok until she sexily announces in her french accent , "hnow whee joost ave to takk thee sampless yeeess?" "yuo arrr doing sooo weeelll monseur" at this point i am able to point out that , no matter how sexy a female french doctor may be , having a metre of borg technology stuck right down you, effectively precludes any sort of masculine responses ..AT ALL . i feel a weird gripping sensation as she grabs pincerfuls of upper gut and secrets them in the special roberts upper gut samples case , , and then i am relieved to feel her start to extract the devils finger of blackness. i start mentally counting down to defcon 1, and it's now a race between her getting her finger out ,so to speak , and me doing a runner , bedraped with hanging on phillipinno nurses gabbling about do i want my nails polished too.. or not . luckily the probe wins, finally coming to the surface , and shining its bright white led eye into my red ,dim with horror, eyes. so Yeah , getting this tube on digger in was like that . then connecting it up , with a 4 bolt flange to the pump , which is an ally body, so easy to cross thread , all without taking the front cowl off , or oil cooler out , was a finger twisting laugh a minute . but it's all on , and once i have filtered the water and leaves out of the oil, i can see if it leaks . then back to the trees . Along with the two ash trees left to take down was a hawthorne barstard tree from hell , about 20ft tall and 6 seperate trunks all tangled and very straveller . I set too with the leccy saw , and my rope and weight ,and apart from repetitively getting the weight tangled up and having to climb up to extract it , it went well .. and cleared the decks for the next days fun of taking down the 50 ft ash trees . we started by roping the limbs over the bt cable , and mr C went up with the leccy saw and bow saw and one by one we removed them me hauling on the rope .. starting point .. slimmed down .. then it was time , mr c very kindly did the cutting while i hauled on the rope to try to get it to fall in the narrow alleyway we were aiming for , so as not to hurt the fruit trees .. here i am hauling on the rope ,doing the easy job , while mr c cut a v shaped notch and then a back cut .. and stuff my boots , it fell in just the right place !! we did the same with the next tree , and that was it ,success . here they are ,gone . We measured the taller one and it was 53.5 feet long ,to celebrate we scoffed some goodness from the local chippy .. huge thanks to Mr C for his help . regards robert
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Last Edit: May 19, 2024 19:29:27 GMT by ivanhoew
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Robert, your new weird plant is Cuckoo Pint. thank you crockpot , looks like a terminator triffid to me, i swear its moved closer to the house overnight
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Ouch. Glad it wasn’t any worse. On the positive side, ash burns beautifully and that lot should keep you warm for a while. Thanks glen , yes i was very lucky to get it out of the way before much more damage occurred . there definitely will be a lot of firewood , although of course i am sending mr C away with as much as he can get on his trailer. His house is blimmen freezing , usually about 2 c colder than outside ..i think it may be built on top of a space time anomaly . i keep telling him he should rename it "Kelvin Cottage" rgards robert
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You can switch 240v through the float switch (if it's rated for it) but I'd recommend 12v (or 24v) much safer, especially outside and near water Thank you Jimi , i think i'll take your advice and do that, new power supply on the way . I reckon that's a full time job trying to keep on top of all that, but amazing place to live an as for 4 acres....luv it Great work Robert an thanks for taking the time to share it with us buddy My pleasure otolux , and thank you ,yes, if i ever move again , (which won't happen) it'll be a desert i'll buy lol. it's a constant mental battle of what to work on next, while the blimmen green stuff won't stop growing . it's worth it though, to look out of the window and see how pretty it is . Speaking of which ! there are 3 tall ash trees in the garden , that have to go . here's a winter piccy showing them , once they are in full flower , thy block the light for all the fruit trees , i estimate them at 40-50ft high . so on monday mr C came over , and we set too with chain saws, bow saws , and ladders to cut them down . here i am up the ladder trying to cut the big limb off the biggest tree ... This didn't go quite to plan , and for those of a squeamish disposition , particularly the japanese ladies netball team who i know follow me avidly , i would advise skipping the following paragraph .i'll colour the script green when it's safe to return . What happened was this... The top of the ladder was ratchet strapped to the limb of the tree ,twice . i did an undercut with the leccy chain saw , and then proceeded to cut the top of the limb , which was about 10" thick . as i cut , suddenly the limb started to fall , so i held on to the chain saw with my left hand and wrapped my right hand round the top rung of the ladder ,so i didn't fall 20 ft to the ground . the falling limb , did not snap off at my undercut , but peeled a 4" slice right back to the trunk 6ft away . to do this it was hindered by the straps holding the ladder to the limb . subsequently , i was alerted to this fact by the experience of having my hand crushed between the ladder top rung , and the limb , and the entire weight of the 15ft limb bore down on the straps as it tried to peel away to the trunk . this it achieved by snapping the ratchet strap , and in doing so malformed the top rungs of the ladder like so .. Now , bearing in mind my fingers where under those rungs , and trapped between them and the tree limb , i didn't find this a comfortable experience . luckily i have ,having been a long distance despatch rider for 7 years ,quite quick reactions , so i tore my ,luckily ,gloved ,hand out from between the hostile faces trying to flatten it . nevertheless , it didn't feel very good , and i imagined taking off the glove as i wobbled down the ladder with a degree of trepidation ,to put it mildly . once i got down , i was asked ,you ok ? and , upon me dragging off my glove ,the comment , "hmm , that doesn't look good " this summed it up nicely , in a understated British manner . Ring finger, a fetching pattern of blood blisters , like it had been shot with a micro 12 bore , middle finger , looked like it was composed of tea bag material , oozing blood out of every pore . but , luckily just the first joint ,no further . it may have throbbed a touch . so a quick cold water finger bathe , and back on with the glove and back to work .the first inch of the glove ,which was a skate glove, three layers ,and thick leather , was soaked through with blood for the first inch , but that was fine . every now and then pressure would build up , but then a feeling like a bee sting , and it would pop a bit more blood out . so , back to work .mr C took up the up the ladder work , and we then cut off the the next limb on the other side .. crushing the fence a bit , but that was ok . i then realised that,if we cut down the bigger trees now , they would get tangled up with the other tree to the left , so we attacked that one first . with each tree component , i was slinging my rope and weight over ,and then pulling to make it fall where we wanted , so we did this with this tree and it worked well , it was two trunks , so we did the left hand one first , and it fell just right .. then the next trunk .. no damage to the fruit trees . we cut up the fallen stuff , made heaps of logs , and a new bonfire heap , and that was the end of that fun day . next morning , was, for me , a bit like that feeling you get after a bike or car crash , with a twanging and aching right arm , and neck , i am guessing the fallout from me violently pulling my hand out of the ladder tree interface . but good news is the finger now just feels like it has been hit with a big hammer , and i'm sure will heal fine . did my shop yesterday , then not much else , felt a bit tired . in other news . the digger with the blown hydraulic pipe , that i could not get undone , well, i got the pump end done , but the fitting underneath was too tight , however my new friend from down the lane responded to a call for a 35mm spanner on the local pb page , and popped up with a 36mm one that ,with him holding one nut with a big adjustable , and me using my foot and leg to push on the 36mm spanner , fnally came up done , hurrah ! It WAS tight ! ..TIGHT !! bit of natural interest now ,...Got a nice piccy on my camera .. and after the thunderstorms on sunday ,some lovely mistyness ,looks like a scene from a lord of the rings chapter .. Regards robert
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Last Edit: May 15, 2024 10:32:07 GMT by ivanhoew
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So jealous 😀... would love that much space and that many buildings, and the time to work on it all!! Thanks for posting your trials and tribulations, I thoroughly enjoy popping in and seeing what you've been up to😁 House has come along brilliantly, can't believe quite how much you've achieved in such a short space of time... What's the next big project🤔😬 Thank you Dave ...very motivating words for me to hear Well this week i have been enjoying fruit juice with my food . apart from that , i got the fire to go using the hydraulic oil soaked sheets i put under the digger .. i was so excited by this i had a mega sweatfest energy FIT , and dragged down all the tree bits we had chopped away so the panels could get light from here .. you cant see them cos thier all gone , but there was a lot heaped up bet$ween the hedge trees . then what's more, i dragged down all the bushes and trees ,i cut out of that copse by the chalet, from here .. you cant see them ,cos they're all gone ! too !! i had to keep wiping my glasses cos thy were full, FULL, of sweat . i tell you . next day i did the shop , then i started on project free the cherry tree . this poor tree is sat in a mass of greenery .. and i thought maybe with a bit of clearing it would have a better chance . sawed and chopped away at it all .. then next day got the strimmer and did a neatness .. also strimmed the boxes and the rose shelf .. so that all worked out well , went through 4 spools of 3mm wire in the strimmer ! next day i did my last trip to oxon for parts , yup , that's it , all done . Car went very well , had to go m5 from worcester cos leominster rd was closed due to bike accident , but it as only 10 miles more . also when i came back i finally filled my tank to the brim , and it took 24 quid , i had put 30 in in the morning so that means by my reckoning it used less that 24 quid for 248 miles, with a load on the way back , so that ok . On friday i thought i would have a nice restfull day .... er no . turned on tap ...no Water . POX. checked the power at the control box yup power there , went down checked the power at the pump house, nope no power there . took control box lid off , had a look and probe with the meter . now what we have here is the control box from the rolling rod pit water pumps, i resued for the water supply here .. it has a 12v power supply for a small 12v pump in the pit on a level switch , then a 240 v supply on a differwet float switch for a bog off big 240v pump . i used a 300w power supply that goes from 240 to 12v , and that is used for the relay to trigger the 240v relay ,and stuff me the blimmen 12 supply has dissapeared ! so for now i just bridged the 240v relay so the pump is switched on by the timer , and bypasses the float switch in the reservoir . decades ago the hs had a 240v contactor , , i could use one of those and run 240 v through the float switch at the ressy , that how it was done back then , but i was thinking 12v to the float switch would be safer , what do you all think ? is it normal to run 240v through a Float operated murcury tumbler switch in a reservoir ? having said all that the float switch in the well has allways been on the 240v line as it goes to the pump . in the afternoon mr Cryo popped in and we discussed th idea of trying to take down the three ash trees about 500 ft tall dominating all the other trees .. this might occur on monday with ladders and saws and ropes and possibly A and E . meanwhile... some sunset action occurred .. i found a new weird plant .. when i ws down in oxon i went to get in the car for the 3.5 hr drive back and found a stowaway .. who had to be cajoled out ,little snuggler ! theres been a rash of huge big hornetty things, one each evening for 4 days on my bedroom window area .. and lastly my little terminator the other day had a good brekka , and then i came out of my room 1 hour later to find rabbit stomach and back legs on the landing ! i.just.don't.know.where.she.puts.it.all..! regards robert
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Shall I do a video walk down the The Prisoner 2.0 film set ?
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Wow, all that space! Apart from the sheer cost of doing them up thats brilliant. How many acres do you own as well? (not jealous at all!) yes its basically like owning my own deserted derelict village , I am the prisoner 2.0 . i have 4 acres of blackthorne groves ,nettles , and demanding grass .
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Last Edit: May 6, 2024 19:39:21 GMT by ivanhoew
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It's not boring Robert, we love watching your progress. Just how many buildings do you have? It looks a full time job keeping on top of nature though. Roses are pretty hard to kill and primroses are great to have in the garden. Excellent thank you mark buildings wise , there's the long barn.. on the right here , thats 58 ft by 15.5 ft . the playbarn on the left there, that's 50 ft by 20ft and weirdly was sort of 90 % finished , but also was insulated under the suspended floor and in the walls .no idea what to do with that , at the moment its full of insulation, wood ,furniture ,windows ,dyno fans ,all the sound panels from the old dyno garage , and general stuff . then the chalet next to it .. bikes and bits in there , oh , and that concrete mixer they left behind works , just need a stand for it , that will be good for the rolling road base and sides . then down by the drive there's the pole barn .. 40' x 20' and the red brick falling down shed beside it .. both those buildings score a 1/10 for safety , I'm not quite sure whats holding them up . then thers what was many years ago the village butchers .. Which , due to a giant Redwood taking up residence now tilts at a jaunty 3.518 degrees out of true . then there's the old pig sty walls , which do have a concrete base ,and the base of the old milking shed .. so not much really ,
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Last Edit: May 7, 2024 14:54:08 GMT by ivanhoew
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The place is looking great Robert, luvin the baths water 'feature', the tinkling sound of water is very relaxing....as long as its not coming through the ceiling beforehand Thank you Oto , yes , water through the ceiling , not so much fun ! The residency is looking lovely now ivanhoew On a different note, copper grease/copper slip has no place on brakes! Get some proper brake grease, or general purpose grease. The copper stuff always goes claggy and allows dust and dirt to stick to it, and goes off and doesn't allow sliding surfaces to slide well i didn't know that Cossie thank you , ill have a try with chamfering the pads and a bit of normal/cv/moly/whatever grease i can find . Nice to see your progress, keep sharing chap. Also gives you a great record of progress. Wish we had more photos of the progress round here. James thanks james , it is nice to look back a bit and realise i have got a bit done over the time ive been here .
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a beautifull example of function and sculpture combined .
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Thanks for the update Robert - a nice bit of archeology, biodiversity, engineering and b....y hard work! My pleasure Phillip , its not very exciting work for my RR feinds to watch ,but it all needs doing ! last week was a pot pourris of bits and pieces and no mistake . did my shop on monday , and still had squeaky brakes , did a bit more wiring on the barn in the afternoon , then tuesday was more wiring and clearing that area by the trench a bit more . To clear the stumps my plan ws to use my electic saw to cut them as close to the ground as possible ,unfortunately my saw was making distressing noises , sounded a bit like a goods train shunting on an icy morning .. oh ..dear.. new brushes found , 12.99 , and will be here thursday . On wednesday i drove to a funeral , 4 hours away , on the rd at 7.30 am , and back at 6 pm . had a spectacular race with a tesla on the last super twisty and steep hilled 10 miles , was great fun , astra was going very well, i think he was a touch bemused by the 1995 astra estate keeping up and catching him when i fell back a bit so as not to terrify him too much. still got squeaky rear brake darnit . copperslip appears to not work ...going to try chamfering the pad next . Ws a bit pooped thursday , but my new brushes arrived so i whopped them in and set too with my titan saw of power .....er..no... even with new pads and cleaned armature , it still had a ring of unholy fie around the spinning to brushes interface , i though hmmm, thats not good , but i managed to cut a few stumps , then the poor old thing burst into flames , i blew them out , and carried on , and it conflagrated anew ,like a young god on an altar of purest white marble . it was dead , i laid it down to rest with black and brown , maybe greyish ,smoke wafting aloft . time for the big guns ! out with the jonsered 1972 chain saw of heavyness. and blimey it actually fired straight up , de stumping continued .. much better . i trimmed back the hedge to give the treelets some light .. its weird being able to see the chalet and barns from the house now . it was a bit thorny.. friday i was back to wiring , i am making three supplies , two for the longbarn ,one with rcd , one without for the flow bench and welder , which trip anything they can , and one to the playbarn/chalet . all the polystyrene and insulation will be gone . saturday was a gardening day before it all ran away from me , things grow so fast here its amazing. some bits of flowernosity have happened .. the white rose i dug out of the ditch infront of the house for drainege appears to be alive .. ditto the little pink one .. and i spent the day mowing and strimming ,mower is much better now , battled its way through ft deep wet veg . heres a general idea of the garden as it now looks .. i hope this is all not too boring chaps . regards robert
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Apr 30, 2024 10:26:25 GMT
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Thank you General ! i had assumed they were robins eggs , after the colour name 'robins egg blue' , however i see now that's only the usa robin , the uk robins egg is nearly white with light blown mottling . i had never even heard of a Dunnock . you learn something new every day ! regards robert
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On friday i decided to attack the mariana trench we had dug for the cable. I was not looking forward to this job ,the stuff dug out had all got a bit hard packed . And it was about 45 metres long , yup thats 148 ft of digging goodness . Anyrdup , i tried with the pick axe and rake , and that worked quite well but was v sweaty work , so i got the fork and stood on the spoil heap , and dug in and levered , this worked much better , and 3 hours later got to here .. halley bloody luyah ... i thought . Following on from that , i decided to clear away the trees and brambles and fire pits and roofing felt heaps i found in there . old fire pit , light bulbs, plastic cat box , bricks ,a spoon , couple of toys , usual stuff .. concrete and roof tiles .. Put all the rubbish in a big, now v heavy , bag. dragged out all the bits of tree and bramble we had cut down for the trench and so on .. then bow sawed and cropped and strimmed to get to here .. that area used to look like this .. I might get a big bags of random bulbs and stick them in the trench . Found this too .. I really like that blue , it might be my new front door colour . In other news , astra brakes . After pulling off the rear wheel and adjusting the wheel bearing , it seemed to squeal even more ! So i took off the wheel again yesterday , before my afternoon strimfest , and pulled the pads out , pumped the pedal , both pistons moved well . so i thought , i wonder if there air in the line and the pads are just lightly patting the disc , like an aunt with a new baby , and getting all glazed ? so i popped on the ezi bleed , and bled the line , a bit of air came out , so i will try it and see . i sanded down the pads a bit too . while i was there i also jacked up the front , and spent a while trying to position the braided lines in a way that had minimum kinkage factor , a slight swivel made them much better .Re bled those as well . Then afternoon strimming . A productive day regards robert
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simon on the lpg forum is selling a complete pump setup for 385 quid i think it is .. www.lpgc.co.uk/ the local 48 kg bottle here is 79 quid , it works out at 80 pence a litre ,which i thought was quite good since my local stn is 76.5 ppl. re ignition timing , i would find the curve for the original engine , and the vacuum advance ,make a map like that , then add 4 to 5 d below 2000 , and take off 4 from the max above 2500 , put in a touch more vac advance than it had on petrol , and see how that goes . if it rattle on throttle tip in , drop the advance at that map point . of course if you now have a much higher cr , then the whole map might need dropping down to suit .id expect for example a 12:1 cr to need about 2 to 4 degrees less all over . regards robert
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These fuel efficiency figures are impressive I've got twin tanks giving 140l LPG in the transit to get around 400 miles, on the plus side I've got anothee 140l tank to replace the 80l one. Which should push it to over 500 miles Should fit a V8 it would be more efficient. that's a lot of gas ! re economy , the things i feel are most contributory are , A) coldest air intake you can get , because there is no petrol evaporation cooling the inlet , lpg is very sensitive to hot air , in the astra it always feels like it has about 15 % less power after parking, until the chargecooler has time to cool the air coming in . if running direct air flow from front of car to the filter , you have to compensate the lpg regulator by sealing the back plate and running a hose to the ram air inlet so it sees the same pressures as the mixer ring/blos. i highly recommend a wide band or even narrow band lambda sensor , running v lean for long enough can be unnoticeable and kills valves/seats . B) compression ratio . in medusa i skimmed the heads to make 11.6:1 and 11.2:1 , and i credit that, and the megasqurt , with getting neat 20 mpg out of it on the 140 mile drive up to here from oxon .If i built a non turbo engine for lpg it would now have a 12 to 13:1 cr ......depending on cam . c) ignition timing ....lpg has its own rules , usually about 5 d more low down and cruise , and about 4 less on full power above 2500 . however, weirdly, on the astra on boost it seems to want more timing per lb of boost that a petrol engine would . the good thing about if you can use only lpg is you can junk the carb , and put on a throttle body ,so get more air flow . an engine that i have found to be very resilient is the GM 8 valve , maybe the 2 litre would be good for you ? my 2 litre courier van , with a soft cam and a 10.6:1 cr was around 145 bhp and lbs/ft . regards robert
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Last Edit: Apr 27, 2024 15:41:47 GMT by ivanhoew
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thank you igor , astra wise , well the best i have done is 41 mpg , and the worst is 23 mpg thrashing it to within an inch of its life . on a long trip doing 70 to 80 id guess at 27-30 mpg .
those numbers would give ,
23 mpg ...385 miles 41 mpg ...686 miles 30 mpg....502 miles .
HOWEVER ! i now realize that the front o/s brake , and rear o/s brake , were sticking , prob for a while , and now the brakes are all free the difference is v noticable , it's as if the car is half the weight .On my food shopping trip i came back and went up a long steep hill , in 5th at 55 mph and 2000 rpm , that would have been 3rd gear before .
so i am hoping the mpg is better , and i think 550 miles range is very doable and maybe a fair bit more .
regards robert
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Blimey , a week since my last input ,i am looking forward to a strict "F" from the headmistress i have carried on with the wiring a bit .. you can see the quality eco4 work on the left ..my bit is this one , thats an rcd and fuse , which will work until i try to use the flow bench or the big welder . Then for a change on monday i went to oxonfordshoire and got another load of stuff ,thoroughly enjoying my big fuel tank , i can got there and back 270 miles , with no need to refill .. and for the very first time i parked on my new drive ,here you can see the heavy astra ,full of glass n stuff .. and the stuff i got out of it . all the glass panes are double glazed and v heavy , and so was that lorry silencer .I am pleased to say that , apart from two mini head linings and maybe another couple of panes , if i bother to take em , thats all the stuff from oxfordshire moved at last . i did bother to fill up again on my way back , so now i have a nice fullish tank of 76 litres to last a few months . heres the stealthstra unloaded and back to normal height . what else , oh i did another mow .. surprisingly managed to get through the boggy end of the field . oh i also clipped up all the wires that had been left in the trench , bit neater . apart from that , fixed new fuel pipe on lawn mower , adjusted read astra wheel bearing and greased pads that were squealing , although they were already greased , did the food shop , and thats about it . today i carry on with wiring at the barns , it's just one exciting thing after another ! Oh ! i forgot !! one thing that was particularly fun , was an adventure on the way back from oxon . Now , on the way there i knew there was a closed rd i had to follow the detour around , an extra few miles , but i had noticed that , on the notice , it said closed 8am to 5 pm . So i thought ok, on my way back it will be open ? the closure was for ash die back trees to be removed , and i thought that meant they would not be digging up the rd ,so it would be easy to have it working , and the closed rd sign would be moved ... Er...NO.. got vack to this area about 730pm , big red rd closed sign .... but , just enough of a gap to sneak through ... yup in i went . i drove for about 5 miles , down this deserted dusky rd , past three more rd closed signs , and thought hey i might get through here ,of course all the time your thinking the further i go into the Bermuda triangle , the further i have to drive back again if there is an impenetrable barrier across the rd ... at this point i start sniggering , i have beaten the rd signs goddamit ...... and then i get around a corner and realise why the rd is closed ... On the left hand side of the rd are parked three big 360 caterpillar excavators , arms all over the place , and on the right hand side of the rd are enormous ash trees , at varying angles to the ground ,some at 72 degrees , some at a piquant 45 degrees and some at an aerial removing 23.418 degrees , all looking very VERY heavy . basically it looks like a very accurate concentrated tornado has touched down , for a half hour tea break , and then popped off back to the Caribbean for an encore . between the diggers and the giant Ker Plumk game , is a carpeting of sticks and general tornado related detritus , i didn't actually see a crashed farm house with some striped stockings and witches boots sticking out , but i feel sure it was in there somewhere . i do know for a fact i saw a wooden ships prow and a slowly tolling bell was audible . so what did i do you may ask? Well of course there was really only one choice , and that was to floor it and rocket ahead , screaming "BANZAI", with one hand on my forehead ,into the mealstrom . i zigged , and zagged , and lumped over stuff , and generally looked like a pinball on lsd and speed , and wonder of wonders , i actually hit nothing too bad , and got through with nothing falling on the car . once through, i carried on a few more miles,passing numerous rd closed signs pointing the other way , which made sense ,since i had already negotiated GROUND ZERO , and i came out on my rd to home unscathed , and yes i did snigger all the way home . regards robert
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Last Edit: Apr 25, 2024 9:09:49 GMT by ivanhoew
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The water feature is inspired. Thanks Davey , it's a bit "Scrapyard Nouveau " , but i am enjoying the reflections and gentle tinkling in the back ground when i walk down there .
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Last Edit: Apr 17, 2024 7:44:51 GMT by ivanhoew
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Make sure that you do sit down and spend some time enjoying the view!!...a glass of wine will help as well. Good advice phillip , i don't drink, so maybe a cold ribena or red grape juice as a treat
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You really do, (deservedly,) have a beautiful property, Really enjoy reading these updates, Thank you for sharing your journey with us, Nigel thank you Nigel , it's my pleasure , it getting there bit by bit .
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