oldgregg

And worse....

I'm not a fan of that. Personally I wouldn't let a Halfords employee touch my car. Headlight covers and the bulb carriers tend to have various clips etc that are easily broken if you're not being careful. I can't really see a Halfords guy saying that he's very sorry and he's broken the clip that keeps the cover on (and rainwater out) or the one that stops the bulb rattling about in the housing and will order you a new one up from the main dealer.

I like the lines actually. I have no idea what it is (I tried to Google the picture with no success) but it looks like a proper cruising car.

Just a reminder that you can filter out topics you don't want to see by changing your settings. That's the great thing about the forum software NBN uses. These are the settings you'll want to look at - You can exclude whole forum sections if you wish.

Yeah that sounds about right. Very interesting guy and I still remember some of the clever techniques he told us about for making candles.

It is, but it had a total refit in 2009 so isn't really comparable with a boat that has an original 1970's fitout. Same story with Escapade and Barbados. Simon would fall foul of the solo hirer rule, though.

Yeah I think to be successful you need to cater for the locals during the quieter months and build up a customer base.

I'd guessed at Fresh Cream Eclairs

What's an FCE?

Here's the thing though... You could have a combi boiler that would give you instant(ish) hot water at mains pressure with no worries about it running out, and simply have a radiator installed in your airing cupboard for drying your washing.

No indeed. And you can usually spot these cowboys as they arrive in a blue van that matches the TV adverts.

Yeah I don't see how that one is feasible, and really is a step backwards. Storage heaters I guess would be what people are forced towards as electric boilers are pretty expensive to run, with instantaneous heaters for hot water. Actually likely to be very reliable compared to gas boilers, but the energy bills would be scary. And I'm sure many on here remember how horrible storage heaters are. And yeah, the power has to come from somewhere. Build a new estate of 1,000 houses that are all-electric and that's an insane amount of energy required out of nowhere - And everyone will need maximum heat at the same time.

I checked what the legislation is and the European Commission say this: That's a very ambitious target and we're going to see a real shift in the industry as they struggle to produce compliant cars. Our government has said they'll just copy what the EU does when it comes to future vehicle legislation, so there's no escaping it here. Plus no-one is going to build cars specifically for the UK market anyway. I can imagine salesmen spinning all sorts of stories to push particular models to customers in order that the manufacturer meets their targets. You can see why the industry wants to move to producing electric vehicles, even if the infrastructure isn't ready.

I think it's a mad state of affairs where people don't trust cars older than three to five years. It's all down to emissions regulations, and car manufacturers trying to work around them - Hence lots of over-stressed three-cylinder engines with high compression ratios and lots of forced induction. They give less tractable power and obviously are much more highly-stressed hence the high rate of failures. Look at the 1.0 EcoBoost in Ford cars, which is reaching almost epidemic levels of failures. Why are they doing it? Because EU law means that the average CO2 output for a manufacturer has to be 130 grams per kilometre or lower otherwise they are fined huge sums of money. That figure drops to 95 grams per kilometre in a couple of years so they are excreting breeze blocks at the moment. You can bet the manufacturer isn't going to want to pay that fine any more, so they have found ways of meeting the test requirements on the day of the test. If it explodes in five years, why would they care? The salesman can flog you another 'quality product' and say how unlucky you must have been while maybe not mentioning their latest car which reportedly does 5493mpg in a lab somewhere is also probably as well engineered as a box of Kellogg's cornflakes. But the marketing guys gloss over it all and make the new models more and more desirable so we must have the latest and the vast majority of the public buy all of their nonsense. Some manufacturers are still spending the money under the bonnet though, rather than on the journalists favourite 'high-quality plastics' and other guff that adds weight and lowers the engineering budget. It's really simple. If the manufacturer doesn't trust their product enough to put a long warranty on it, walk away. VW give just a two year warranty, yet Toyota do 5 with an option for a sixth, Kia do 7 years and their parent Hyundai offers 5. What does that tell you? Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

Yup. This is why manufacturers are ditching mid-size three door cars at the moment. Shame, as stuff like the Focus RS and Megane R.S. look so much nicer as a three door.

I had much the same issue on my old system. PRV leakage was a symptom of the expansion vessel diaphragm having perished so when the water heated up there wasn't sufficient room for the expansion and the system vented itself. Cost was about £50 for a new expansion vessel and replacement PRV. As others have said, once they start opening they don't reseat well. Looking inside the old expansion vessel afterwards, there was nothing left of the diaphragm. Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

I hope that Ferrari have a load of parts to bring to the start of the European season otherwise this year could be dull. There was nothing about the pace of the teams that surprised me at all. It's a long season though so fingers crossed. Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

The RX8 is an awesome car! But yes off the scale in terms of impracticality. I can't think of another car (other than its sisters) that basically wasn't suitable for short journeys unless you warmed the engine up fully and then allowed it to cool down properly. Should never really have made it to production, but they're epic when they're running right. Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

Yeah I did have a short test drive and in the position where I could see out of the screen, my knees were touching the door and transmission tunnel and my elbows were touching the door and the salesman. I wanted to like it, but I'd have needed a Hiab fitting to get me out of the seat after a long journey. Shame really, but just too small.

The MX5 has a great chassis and handles surprisingly well for something that's seen as a hairdresser's car. I did have a look at one last year, it must be an age thing.. They're very popular with enthusiasts, all of whom must be a lot shorter than me as I don't fit in them properly unless I sort of 'squat' in the seat as if I'm sleeping in an old hire boat with short beds. Any once you're in the seat, your forehead is level with the top of the windscreen frame (and above the roll hoop) and you're again squatting to see the road rather than the sun visors. And that's on the MK3 which is considered to be the biggest of the lot. A Lotus Elise fits just fine, bizzarely, although they're a pig to get in and out of with the roof on and the build quality makes French and German cars look good.

To be fair, I don't think Ian is a family of one!

It's south of King's Lynn, what with it being in the Midlands.... Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

They seem to be from just outside Lichfield..... So not up North. In fact south of some of Norfolk.

They're not designed for properties with more than one bathroom, and yes a pressurised system (assuming you mean pressurised DHW) is a fundamentally different concept. Plumbers love them though as they're quick to install and don't require them to do much thinking. Perfect for the 'British Gas' type installers with limited experience.

Being familiar with a boat which is very similar to Serenade, I think you have pretty much no chance at that time of year and will struggle to guarantee getting through and back during the rest of the season as well.