oldgregg

As ever in football it'll be all about money, so it's surely a bad thing.

Yup, they've been doing it for a long time. As excellent as the (now pretty much legendary) B58 engine is in terms of power output and driveability, it has a problem with destroying oil filters mainly because of the ridiculous service intervals and that causes cam chain issues. And yeah, the cam chain and the VANOS (BMW speak for VVT) solenoids are on the back of the engine where they're a complete pig to get at. I know most of the german brands switched their model to making money out of servicing rather than selling cars back in the mid-noughties, but it still seems daft.

Yeah I'm not a fan of the looks, but they do now do the Type R Sportline model specifically for those of us who want something a bit more grown up. It's basically the same car but with smaller wheels, a much smaller spoiler and the seats aren't bright red either. In grey or black it almost looks normal. But yeah, I do prefer a sleeper. M340i floats my boat but it's 50k and still a Bimmer so you know it'd go wrong.

Our other car is a Honda, so a Type R would be fun The Honda is chain cam too, but in six and a half years of ownership nothing has ever actually gone wrong with it. The Mini has done a thermostat housing and timing chain so far this year.... She used to have a Yaris.... Perhaps something nice and sensible like that would be better? I know just the car!

I think the industry has been quite clever in convincing people that belt = bad and chain = good. The reality is that a cheap, poorly-designed chain is worse than a belt, and that a belt is generally much, much cheaper to replace. On cars with a belt I used to get them replaced every 40k miles regardless of what nonsense intervals the manufacturer stated (Ford used to say 100k on Focuses, and there were many reports that funnily enough they'd fail at around 60k). I don't think I paid more than a couple of hundred quid for a belt replacement. I'd rather that than £600 minimum to replace a chain at 60k miles... BMW particularly have an appalling reputation with timing chains, made much worse by their extended servicing schedules that are ultimately designed to save them costs on providing servicing plans to customers. Unfortunately, many customers believed the nonsense assertion that 25k miles between oil changes was achievable because of synthetic oils. Mine has had an annual oil change with fully synthetic and a quality filter, obviously. I hear of so many chain failures on Minis with the N12/N14/N16/N18 engines from Stellantis (formerly known as PSA Peugeot Citroen), and also the BMW N47 2.0 diesel at ridiculously low mileages. I think the F series models with the B38 / B48 modular engines with chain cam are less trouble, but that's a relative thing given that they're still fairly new and I think they do still have cam chain problems. Also, having driven both a current-gen Cooper and a Cooper S convertible (while our Mini was in at the dealer) I noted that the 1.5 three cylinder is a bit gutless and that the MK3 (F series) cars which now use the 1-series platform don't handle anything like the first two generations do. Getting back into ours was like a night and day difference in terms of handling. The MK3 is soft and wallowy and just doesn't feel sporty or planted at all. I'm getting the dates and details together at the moment, but yes there will be records of the date it went in for the work and we're in the process of taking it up directly with Mini. If you want reliability and fun, I think an MX-5 would probably be a much better way of spending your money. Not sure what we're getting when this thing gets sold (and it is going to be sold once it's fixed!) but it won't be a Mini.

My wife has a Mini, which is great fun to drive but it is probably the least reliable thing known to man. I actually think a Fiat, VW (anything after the 1.9PD) or Renault would be less trouble. Having been back to the main dealer four times under warranty because the timing chain didn't sound right (and knowing they have a major reputation for eating tensioners / guides) I was assured repeatedly nothing was wrong with the car even though the independent garage who MOT'd it also said they felt something was wrong with it. Now it's out of warranty and 1,000 miles later the timing chain is finally making the 'death rattle' sound that means the chain needs replacing immediately. What fun.

I'm a former Thunder owner, and yeah Horning Pleasurecraft (as it is now known) is a great spot to moor. You couldn't really ask for a more central location to moor if you want to be based on the North. Everything is within sensible cruising distance, and the actual marina is pleasant.

Yeah, Salhouse has always been a bit of pain in that regard. We've often had problems at forum meets with a whole line of boats moored stern on but sitting diagonally because of a strong wind. With most of the other Broads, give it a good lob and it sinks nicely into the mud. The conical design of a mudweight is deliberate so that a gentle pull (such as from the weight of the boat) will not dislodge it. Places like Womack have mud so sticky that most of the time you have to tow the mudweight off with the boat and then leave it at the surface for a couple of minutes when under way to get it clean.

Yeah it's brilliant and Guenther Steiner is just hilarious. TV audience is the biggest issue F1 has at the moment. The racing has mostly not been very interesting for the past few seasons and it's now only on pay TV. Quite a few of my friends are (or were) diehard F1 fans but most of us are just really bored with it now and don't have the enthusiasm to pay to subscribe and definitely not to spend lots of money and drive half way across Europe (even before COVID) to go to races like we used to. When it was free-to-air people were much more likely to watch and feel interested by it, but Bernie did the sport no favours with the Sky deal. I know Liberty would prefer it to be on terrestrial TV in the UK but the contract was signed before they came aboard and they couldn't get out of it. I think it runs until the end of the 2023 season, at which point Liberty will probably be begging the BBC to take it.

Had you hired the Aquafibre in the foreground? Just curious (and whether you have more pics) as we hired the boat I think that is in 1983.

I hope Red Bull are genuinely quicker but I'm not convinced yet. Lewis is capable of pulling something special out of a rubbish car but I'm not convinced Bottas is. And yet he still finished third, ahead of some very talented drivers. As for the cost of watching, the UK price is ridiculous. The price of F1 TV (which we can't buy in the UK because of the deal with Sky) is around 65 euros for the whole season and that covers multiple devices. And it works on most VPN services.

That’s only the domain registration, but my understanding is that there is no issue with the bills being paid. As Ian has said, we have offered help and will provide it if asked.

Correct. I don't believe funding is an issue.

There have been a few issues with it, and other people have also flagged that up. That's the reality of what happens when websites aren't being actively maintained, unfortunately. I have previously been in touch with people close to Craig's wife and am hopeful that we may hear something about what she wishes to do with the site before too long.

Prices definitely have risen a bit. I booked something yesterday and was a bit surprised by the price, but I get why it has happened and I think as demand falls next year you'll probably see prices levelling.

As I mentioned before, an old iPod with RockBox installed may well do what you need... If the battery is any good it’ll keep playing to itself until the battery dies, if not then it’ll go off with the ignition. I’m tempted to dig my old one out to try it..

It depends on the vehicle, some don’t.

Thinking on the Bluetooth front, I believe the Android Auto app can be configured to automatically play a playlist when it connects to a particular Bluetooth device (like el cheapo one linked to above) that will of course come on with the ignition. It doesn't need to be a high-end device to install the app on, and it isn't just for use with cars that have screen casting. Android Auto wasn't about when SWMBO got her Yaris...

Okay, gotcha. I actually looked for the same thing a few years back - My wife's old Toyota Yaris had a line-in on the back of the stereo and I wanted something to shuffle from MP3 when she started it up. I don't know of any off the shelf devices which work in that way, but obviously that's not to say there aren't any. Having found nothing, what I looked at doing (with my developer head on) was to use a Raspberry PI and a special 12V PSU for it. It'd start up with the ignition and then run a script to randomly play an MP3 from whatever USB stick was plugged in to it. I think I did find such a specific PSU (essentially a UPS) which had a small battery and when power went off it could communicate with the Pi to tell it to shut down cleanly to avoid trashing the SD card. I think the PSU was about £50 so I didn't bother and just got a Bluetooth adapter with aux out (tons on ebay) so she could just stream from her phone. It obviously requires a smartphone and isn't as neat a solution, but it was cheaper and required no effort on my part. Another option which I didn't think of at the time is to use an old iPod and install the custom software 'Rockbox' on it. That may be able to do what you need from an auto-start perspective but it is also a fair amount of faff..

If you fit an aftermarket stereo with MP3 playback (via a USB stick) then if you leave it set to that source they'll usually resume where you left off. Car stereos with MP3/USB have been around for quite a long time now so you should be able to pick a decent one up for peanuts I think? I bought a 'mechless' (no CD mechanism) JVC one back in 2017 for Thunder and that was about £65 new. I doubt that would cost a lot used on the 'bay.... You'd then just need the ISO harness for the car (often available on car groups / forums) and a fascia adapter if necessary.

My view would be that the vaccine rollout is going so well that the media need something negative to report on...

Yeah, I remember the boat graveyard well. I nearly went through the rotten floor of what is now Escapade! I tend to forget the bathtubs as i'm really not a fan, but yeah @andyg you're quite right - A lot of those have had major internal works too and the two you mention definitely look really decent inside.

Yeah, Viscount was a total refit There are a few which have been done to that level. Barbados, Capri, Calypso, Escapade are the ones that spring to mind in the late noughties. And then Melody, Major Gem and various other classes had heavy refits in the mid-noughties. The thing is, if you look at Viscount now she looks great. I'd hire her no problem. And that was a 2009 refit. Sure, it will have cost more. But when a set of mouldings can be getting on for £50K, I don't get why more yards don't do deep refits.

I get what they've tried to do, but I just can't see it looking good in five years. I know the Ricko's refits will have cost more, but those still look good after 15 years.

I suspect these boats will not....