Today I mostly .....

[Zelandeth]

He's named Tesla. We're a house full of geeks so it had to be sciency.

So far he's actually been pretty good. He is by far the laziest, most laid back puppy I've ever encountered. We do have a bit of a nipping issue at the moment, but we're working on that. Have good recall already trained, sit, stay both trained in and I can put treats on his foot without him taking them. He's bloody clever.

So far the only casualty has been the lead attached to the ground anchor outside which he chewed through this morning.

His favourite thing in the whole world seems to be falling asleep in any way in contact with me, which is to be honest adorable. Even if it does sometimes result in me not being able to move the occasional arm, leg or foot for hours at a time.

Today I mostly...spent the entire day trying to get onto the blasted DVLA website to tax the Skoda. Without success. Will try again tomorrow...

[excossack]

Still disliking Office 2010 and the ribbon menus.
Started reading up on setting up a PKI infrastructure
Found out screen wash does not taste nice.
Got a Aspire One laptop to look at, it got dropped and now when it powers up the screen is half white with lines and half blank. No post, no beeps, and no output to an external screen - Fubar'd

[excossack]

Stripped out the HD, reseated memory, checked cables and no good.
2 year old laptop fit for the bin.
Apparently the owners other half caught the mains cable and then pulled it to the floor - after that no-worky.
Appears to charge OK.

[excossack]

There is always that option.

[Neil Chowney]

... bought a new camera bag......

[Neil Chowney]

I just don't care... i'm that sort of guy!

[Zelandeth]

While the puppy was asleep today routed some network cable between the router and the machine which runs my server and NAS as the inbuilt wifi is slllllooooow. Never been an issue for web server duties, but it struggles to stream video. This solves it though for the sake of a couple of quids worth of cable. Need to see if I can track down a larger drive for the storage at some point too now I think about it...

[Zelandeth]

Added an additional 1TB of storage to our NAS and started to migrate some of the data from the old media store to the new drive.

Also ordered a new expansion bottle cap and HT lead set for the Skoda from eBay. After nearly a year of exchanging emails I've finally given up on ever actually getting any parts from Sko-Parts International. Also stripped down, degreased, cleaned and reassembled my spare carb, as there is obviously some crud floating around in the current one. Fingers crossed will throw this on in the next few days.

Found my K&N pancake air filter for it too so will stick that behind the back seats to go on in the spring. Yes, it will be declared to my insurers as well. Bought that when I had the first 130GL and don't think it's ever come out of the shrink wrap!

[GvidoR]

Finally got my SSD. It's awesome.



Also, I bought a Kenwood head unit today.

[Zelandeth]

Have started to ask myself some very cold questions about the Saab.

MOT is up in a couple of weeks, and I know before even looking that I need the following.

1. All flexi hoses on the brakes - have got away with advisories for corrosion on the ferrules for the last two years...to be honest they look no worse to me now than they did when I got the car...but not expecting to get away with it a third time!

2. Repair or replace the alternator which died a couple of weeks ago.

3. NS lower shock absorber bush is stuffed. Bolt is as round as a very round thing so would probably throw that at a garage.

4. I have a fight about the NS headlight for poor beam every year because the reflector is stuffed - they for some reason seem to be made of unobtanium and fetch silly money. If it was the OS one I'd be laughing as I have two spares.

5. Both front tyres probably want changing as they're worn on the outer shoulder from when the alignment was out.

6. Crankshaft rear seal will probably want doing as it will drip on the tester's head otherwise. I've discovered though that it only seems to drip for about ten mins after you stop the engine. Doesn't lose a drop when running and I've never had to top up since the last service. She's done some pretty serious miles in that time too.

7. Corrosion? Haven't had a chance to look...but it's been three years since I last had to get the welder out and that makes me nervous, especially with how often the poor thing was a submarine last winter courtesy of the drainage systems around Oxford.

8. Indicator stalk is knackered and only stays where you put it by virtue of a bit of rubber pipe wedged in the slot in the steering column. Do have a spare, but it's vanished between it appears during the move.

In addition to these, the doors are starting to rot in tbe usual places, the rear window demister doesn't work (more annoying than you might think!), the central locking is dying, the revcounter only works when it feels like it, (second!) radiator has sprung a leak, and it sometimes starts on three cylinders when warm - which appears to be a sticking valve.

I do wonder given that I seem to be struggling for time these days (not least just now due to puppy, that's just poor timing) if it might be time to pass the car on to someone else. Wouldn't entertain scrapping it, drives far too well for that. Whether I should just concentrate on sorting the Skoda out, given I don't commute now, and hopefully the Aberdeen-MK emergency sprints are done with for now. Frustrating though that is as parts are a pain in the tail to get...that's one area where Lada has a huge advantage over the older Skodas.

Really don't want to sell it on though, this Saab is a car I have become very much more attached to than almost any other I've owned. A lot of memories there - and being totally brutally honest, personal pride totally aside it is the sweetest driving Classic 900 I've been behind the wheel of - and I've driven a few.

Need to crunch some numbers, but it's looking really hard to justify throwing several hundred quid at the Saab right now. Especially as we just discovered that the flashing on part of our roof is knackered...and that's likely to be several grand to sort as it's going to involve scaffolding.

Now...just need to find a Riva Estate 1.5E for sale locally to make me tear me hair out even more...though that I would probably consider swapping the Skoda if it was the right car...

[Zelandeth]

Fun evening.

Radiator cap arrived for the Skoda this morning, so obvious thing to do was see if we had sorted the overheating problem. The procedure for this was simple. Take it out into town and thrash the living daylights out of it. One side of the loop is 70mph dual carriageway with roundabouts every half mile, other side is 30mph with even more of them. Ideal territory for trying to make a car that would boil if you even looked at the throttle do it. After 40 minutes the gauge didn't even twitch from 80C on the gauge. Despite running right to the 5K red line in 1st and 2nd quite a few times. Seemed happy. Given it hasn't been above 40mph in about 8 months nor above 1/2 throttle think the Italian Tuneup did it the world of good too - even if the amount of soot that came out the back from the first roundabout when I booted it was most impressive!

Didn't boil when left for a couple of minutes either and started again - that was always a surefire way to loose half the coolant before.

...cautiously optimistic that this might have sorted the cooling problems. Maybe...will go for a real drive tomorrow afternoon and see what happens.

[GvidoR]

Fun way to test if a car overheats or not.

EDIT: The Kenwood I bought seemed to reset itself every time the ignition was switched off. After 5 minutes of searching the interwebs I found a solution, which was very simple actually. Just had to switch the places of yellow and red wires. Now that it's in the glove box, it switches on and off along with the ignition and goes to AUX input straight away and I control volume on the tablet, I guess I will not see the head unit for a while.

[Zelandeth]

Well it made sense given the behaviour! It would run happily all day at idle, but would readily overheat when put under heavy load. So a darn good pasting seemed to be a good test. Was out in traffic today and it seemed to be behaving just fine so cautiously optimistic at this stage.

Retrieved and fitted a new set of HT leads as well which seems to have smoothed out the idle a bit.

Oil and filter change might follow at the weekend if time permits, the oil in there has got hotter than I would like so it's getting changed sooner rather than later.

[GvidoR]

An oil change can be done fairly quick, the last time I did it on my Bora, it took less than 30 minutes from start to finish and cost only £26 as well.

[excossack]

Got 6 pallets from work. The top of the pallets are 18mm ply and measure 23" x 39" ideal for some storage in the back of the landy.(when cut up and re-worked)