Sweetpea's pathetic excuses for not fixing the MR2

[georgeb]

The hell with the postie. He only brings bills anyway. Or in our case, absolutely nothing!

We only really get utility bills and they get delivered by their own people. Wonder why?

To be fair, I'd ordered a new security dongle thing from my Hong Kong bank as mine was showing "low batt". My heart sank when I found it was to come via mail. Still, it was posted on January 9, rushed through and ready for collection on February 23. Not bad going!

Anyway, to gates. Strangely looking forward to this one. I need to get out more, I think.

[mercedeslimos]

My postie was getting fairly F***ed off with the amount of eBay tat being delivered (think ten a week, and i’m The only house for miles so a ton of needless trips). Now I get them delivered to work. Apparently I get more parcels delivered via the postal sorting room than any of the 1500 other people on site. Don't know if that’s a problem or a claim to fame

[jamesd1972]

Always best to stay on the good side of the post room ladies and gents !
Occasional box of their favourite method of destroying teeth usually goes down well....
When I worked in an office the companies £10 to post anything contract with UPS covered Car seats and assorted other stuff - made more money on profit on postage than the items sold!

[Sweetpea]

Mrs Sweetpea gets on well with our postie so we like to keep him happy.





Wonder if I should be concerned?

[quickrack1]

I has gates. Rusty, slightly falling apart and much repaired, but I like the idea of them sliding away in short order when I appear.....

[Sweetpea]

Once the snow melted Mark made a start on the walls. It seems to take forever but it keeps raining here which stops the job and the workmanship is second to none.




One of our neighbours had a wall built that was just modern bright orange bricks and it looks hideous. You can just see it in the left of this photo - it's finally starting to weather in thank God. It'd be ok in an area built in the 70s but this area was built in the 30's and bricks were much less consistent then. So we spent ages with brick samples before finally making a choice only to find that it was on a 3 month back order so we had to go with our second choice. But it looks great and doesn't look like it fell off the bottom of a passing space ship so I'm happy.

It's not at its final height yet. We need to get the gates propped in the holes and work out the levels first. It's possible we'll have to step down the top or it'll be too high where the drive gate is.


The rack that fastens to the gate to open it comes with a load of bosses with a threaded holes in them. The idea is that you weld the boss to the gate and then bolt the rack to the boss.
Now my welding is passable but I've not built up a talent for fancy stuff. So, those chaps who weld two aluminium coke cans together with a 200 amp stick welder and a steel rod... I'm not one of them. Therefore it won't come as any surprise to learn that I've not had much success welding steel things to wood. (I think I'm using the wrong shielding gas.) So I wasn't going to try welding the steel bosses to my expensive Iroko gates. Instead I made a load of little plates up and welded the bosses to those.



So the plate / boss gets screwed to the gate and the rack gets bolted to it. Hopefully they'll be strong enough to keep the rack from moving. If not I'll have to try again.
All painted up...



And lastly I've been messing with car stickers for years. Not real ones because I'm too mean and it goes against my ethos of working out how to do it myself. You might have seen test samples on the garage windows over on my MR2 thread. Well, the latest attempt has caused the garage to be renamed.

I did (thinking of overdrive 's Skunkworks reference) occasionally refer to it as the "Smells Faintly Of Cat Wee Works" but now we don't have cats anymore it didn't seem appropriate. And it hardly trips off the tongue.
While surfing Urban Exploration forums I got interested in army stencil fonts so pinching that and ideas from a few photos of derelict military bases we get...



Welcome to "INSTALLATION #651". There'll be a grand opening at some point in the future... Hopefully attended by royalty and A list stars.
Even the Missus hasn't objected too much. She probably thinks it's a minor issue compared to me telling her that I fancy buying a historic 1950s double decker bus. (Anybody got a cheap Bristol Lodekka?)

[jamesd1972]

Humm permissions is one of life's great quandaries, is it better to ask for forgiveness or permission. In the case of a whacking great bus suddenly appearing on the drive I suspect forgiveness might be at quite a premium. How about starting off looking for permission on something really big and stupid (Scammell Explorer ?) first so that a compromise on a bus looks like a sensible option !
James

[georgeb]

I've got semi-automatic gates here. As you approach the house, you optimistically hit the horn and around one time in a hundred someone a) hears you, b) associates the noise with the Range Rover and c) can be arsed getting up from the Tele. The rest of the time, I just get out and open them myself.

[Sweetpea]

To summarise my jobs list at the moment…

The MR2 isn’t getting done because I need to decorate the hall, stairs and landing.

The hall, stairs and landing aren’t getting done because I have to work on the drive and front garden.

The drive and front garden aren’t getting done because Mrs Sweetpea fancied a couple of weeks somewhere warm and toasty. Somewhere she could go snorkelling. Somewhere she could lie on a beach in her swim suite looking cute and eyeing up passing studs wearing budgie smugglers. The Caribbean perhaps? Grand Cayman? Turks and Caicos? Or what about those places in the Indian Ocean where they have little villas on stilts in the sea? Maldives maybe?

Anyway you get the idea. So we wound up here…















Ah plop! That didn’t go according to plan then. Due to various problems booking flights to somewhere hot we wound up in the Canadian Rockies in the snow. The polar opposite you might say.

Flying into Calgary the pilot is warning us that we may be delayed because the Canadians are worried about snow fall. To quote him, “When the Canadians are worried about snow, it's serious”. In the event it wasn’t too bad and we flew straight in but I was getting a bit concerned about driving the car. When I was a kid in Yorkshire I drove in the snow plenty and wasn’t phased by it but that was a long time ago. Last time I tried to get the Lexus out in the snow I couldn’t even get it off the drive. We had a Nissan Rogue with winter tyres (thank God ‘cos we’d have been stuck without them) and it was fine. Actually it was great fun. I miss the snow we used to have in this country.

We drove to Kananaskis the following morning (had to brush the snow off the car first.) They’d had 30cm over night so the back roads were entertaining but perfectly passable.




We’d taken ice cleats with us but after borrowing some snow shoes decided that this was fun and pootled off to Canmore to buy our own. I’m not sure how much use they’ll get in Southeast England but hay, you can’t say I’m not prepared. Now we could get properly away from people and forge our own tracks through the wilderness.




I took the snow shoes off high on this trail and jumped off the side of the path. Straight in up to my ar$e. Well you just have to don’t you? Frost bite on your testicals is no laughing matter though I can tell you.

Didn’t do too badly from an injury point of view. I took a lump of skin off my hand in a fall in Lake Louise. We were on a trail high in the mountains tracking a Lynx when an avalanche….. No, not really. I fell on my bum on the ice in the hotel car park. But that’s not very dynamic and exciting so we’ll stick with the “lynx story” if you don’t mind.

We’ve never been skiing so we thought we’d try nordic (AKA cross country) skiing at the Nordic Centre in Canmore. Hmmm. Mrs Sweetpea fell on her butt pretty quickly and cracked her head. She was a bit nervous after that. I did ok until we came to a slight downhill slope. Mrs Sweetpea declined to ski down it and walked but I was getting my confidence and stuck my skis in the tracks and went for it.
About a third of the way down, with speed increasing dangerously to almost walking pace, and balance becoming shaky I realised that there are no brakes on skis. You can’t do that “snow plough” thing because your skis are in tracks, and frankly, I couldn’t have done it anyway. So I did the next best thing and crashed hopelessly. Wound up laying on my back, skis in the air, laughing manically. Three crashes to get to the bottom of that hill. Three I tell you. Sticking with snow shoes from here on.

The Nissan (or Knee-san as they pronounce it) did really well. There was one day up the Icefields Parkway where it began to struggle. Not for grip but for power. The suspension went really crashy and we had massive wheel unbalance at the back. Getting out soon revealed the problem.
The arches were full of packed snow. The wheel centres were packed apart from the bit the brake callipers cleared it and the lower wishbones were made of ice.




The poor car must have been carrying a huge weight of snow. There was about 3/4 of an inch of suspension travel before the tyres hit the snow in the arches. And when I say snow, I really mean ice. Contrary to the photo above which shows some small success, you couldn’t get the stuff out. You just had to wait for it to wear away or melt, which it didn’t because it was below freezing a lot of the time.

Mrs Sweetpea wanted to go dog sledding. Who am I to argue?




The dogs are nuts. Perfectly calm until you put them on the tow line and then they go potty wanting to be off and running. Most of them are ex-racing dogs. So “Mary” our lead dog used to run the Iditarod when she was younger. She now lives in semi-retirement towing rich tourists like me around Canada.
Apparently the modern sled dog is a cross between a Siberian and a Greyhound. Who’d have thought it? And they have an unnerving habit of taking a dump while on the move. Nice. The company we went with has a chap on a Skidoo following at a discrete distance with a pooper scooper. It’s a Canadian Provincial Park with pristine white snow, you aren’t allowed leave dog plop all over the place.

Anyway, have a picture of some proper snow. Not the couple of inches that brings the South East of England to a slithering halt. Proper, beautiful, magical snow…




Gorgeous isn't it. I just love the way massive clumps of it overhang and cling to the sides. Why does it not fall off?

And just in case you thought we spent all our time doing physical outdoor pursuits. Pushing our bodies to the edge of exhaustion. Well we did relax a little. Canadian winter style where you don’t even need a foot stool to put your feet up.




Next it’s back to the busted sewer under the drive. Happy days!

James

[georgeb]

As excuses go, that's right up there.

Wonderful stuff.

Looks bloody cold though.

[Sweetpea]

The cold was a funny thing. One day it can be comfortably below freezing but no wind and sunny and it feels really warm. In fact it was too warm with your coat on if you were walking.
Then in Banff later in the week, plus 3 degrees, overcast and breezy... Felt bitterly cold.

I see you have moved... Still catching up with your thread even though I've been back a week!

[georgeb]

Apr 8, 2018 15:56:31 GMT Sweetpea said:

The cold was a funny thing. One day it can be comfortably below freezing but no wind and sunny and it feels really warm. In fact it was too warm with your coat on if you were walking.
Then in Banff later in the week, plus 3 degrees, overcast and breezy... Felt bitterly cold.

I see you have moved... Still catching up with your thread even though I've been back a week!

Ah yes, good old wind-chill. I remember it well, tramping along the viaduct of the (then) new Copenhagen Metro in the middle of winter. Below freezing and the wind straight off the Baltic! But as you say, on a calm day it was fine.

Yup, shifted again. Not far from where we were, just a bit bigger. Still not what I wanted, but it'll do for a year or so whilst we see which way the job wind blows - yes, I've still got hopes for the port .

I remember now why I always went for fully furnished since I shifted to Asia. Put your suitcase down, and you've moved! Now we have four years of detritus and furniture to lug around, even more after buying new stuff for here. Ah well...

[taz20]

great thread and great story telling mate. my wife wont go anywhere cold on holiday she would be cold in a sauna

[Sweetpea]

Apr 9, 2018 16:00:55 GMT taz20 said:

great thread and great story telling mate. my wife wont go anywhere cold on holiday she would be cold in a sauna

Thank you! Although it puts pressure on for further posts. I'm not sure how I'm going to make "digging a hole" entertaining but I'll have a go.






Anyway, I came home from work last night and in the evening twilight....



Faaaaarkinell...







In an unexpected change to the plan Mrs Sweetpea has abandoned the block paving and started digging a tunnel to... Well I don't know where its going. But judging by the spoil heap it's a long way. I swear the heap is so big it's got it's own weather system. There are clouds round the summit - honest!

But before this happened I still need to tell you about fixing the drains and the mystery pipe...
Building up suspense you see! 

James

[MiataMark]

To make an omelette first you have to break the eggs...

We had the whole of the front lawn/drive dug up to replace with block paving (we can now park 4 cars in our 'car park') there was some impressive digging at the beginning.

[Sweetpea]

Apr 13, 2018 9:59:40 GMT MiataMark said:

To make an omelette first you have to break the eggs...

I hadn't expected the chicken to be quite that big!

[Sweetpea]

Unfortunately this thread is mildly out of date. I may need to start an ‘excuses for not writing the excuses’ thread. But that’s going to be even more tedious than this one and I can’t believe you are reading this. There is a whole world out there to explore. You should get out and enjoy it!

But read this first…

When we got back from our trip the chaps had got the walls up and then stopped work.




We’d agreed that’s what would happen. We are doing this job a little on the fly and rather than them do something wrong it was better to wait so we could natter about the next steps.

My first job when we got back was to sort the drains out. Remember Drain-O-Cam showed I had a problem. We call them ‘issues’ at work. We don’t have faults or problems, just issues.




I’m not allowed to fix things that are broken either. But I can ‘resolve Issues’.
Which massive bell end decided to change the English language anyway? And what’s the modern phrase that means ‘massive bell end’?

Sorry. Went off on one there!

So I dug a hole and found a mystery.




Apart from fixing t'drain the other reason for digging down was to find where the services were and what condition they were in. Well there they are. As expected they are in the same trench as the sewer. But I seem to have one too many pipes. This confused me for a while. It was in poor condition so if it was still in use it needed to be replaced. As luck would have it, the following day a hole fell through the top and nothing happened so it clearly wasn’t used.

My most likely guess is that it was an old water pipe to some historic outbuildings (ones that have ceased to exist). Our street is built on a brown field site. Behind where our house now stands was a very large country house. By the early 1900s it was getting badly abused and in the late ‘20s it was demolished. There is a story that there were outbuildings, possibly stables, along the road side under what is now our front garden. Maybe the water pipe serviced the old buildings? But then why didn’t they rip it up when they built our place?

The old country house sort of lives on. Some of the bricks in the hidden bits of our house - the supporting walls under the floors and the parts of the chimneys - have soot and evidence of plant growth on them so the bricks were almost certainly from the old house. And under our back garden is this…




Which we believe to be the footings of the greenhouses from the old estate.

Anyway, the drains. Come on, concentrate would you! We’ll be here all night.




Incoming on the right, outgoing on the left. The collar has broken off the left pipe and the incoming has sunk.
After a bit of discussion and advice we decided that the best, most reliable, fix was to break up the dropped section and replace it with plastic.




I had considered digging the whole drain up and replacing it with plastic but it’s in such immaculate condition that it would be a waste of time and money.




The chaps found a drain bung and flooded the pipe back to the house. It all holds water so the issues with the drains are are now well and truly resolved. (Arrgh - “resolved” - what a dreadful word.)

Then, for a bit of light relief, I hung the gate for the postman.




And had the chaps dig the hole for the soakaway right behind it.




That’ll teach the barsteward if he was being over friendly with my missus! I have no evidence that he was but you can’t be too careful.

James

[Sweetpea]

First job of the day, correct the cock up from the day before yesterday.

But first I ascended the large mountain of mud in the front garden, planted a flag in the top, and named it “Mount Sweetpea”. Although “Mount Sweetpea” might also have been an optimistic plea to the nice ladies who walked past looking in awe at my mountaineering skills. None of them did. .

The following day a truck turned up and literally moved the mountain.

Mrs Sweetpea told me that they were also delivering “Type 1” at the same time. I was so excited at the prospect of some form of historic VW being dropped off…




Hmmph. Truck load of rolled stone.

This did mean that there was no more paddling mud into the house. Now we are paddling endless dust into the house instead. Mrs Sweetpea would like to know why these things are so messy.




Stone vibrated down.
Tell you what. It’s a git to dig it up again. I had to run a tube from the far gate post with a cable in it for a sensor. Anyway, for various reasons the stone went down first so I had to dug a little trench.

Next on my job list was to calculate where the gate motor box was going to go. We spent ages positioning four stainless threaded rods in exactly the right place before carefully concreting them down. And then checked them again.




Perfect!
The following day we mocked up the drive gates in the hole.




Nice eh?
At this point I realised that I’d messed up the positioning of the motor box. Not so perfect. It was way too close to the gate. Dear God, how did I mess that up?
In the manual it suggested that the edge of the motor box needed to be 22mm from the gate so that’s were I put it. In reality it said that the distance should be 22mm + the width of the rack that screws to the gate. I had to read the manual another 3 times before I spotted this. I’m about 30mm out.
You see this is what happens when an Italian writes a terrible manual that an English bloke doesn’t read properly.

I never trust the manual. I always do a quick measure to make sure I’m in the ball park. Except this time. Muppet!

Only one thing for it. Dig the concrete out and try again.

Like hell.

Bend the studding.




No, the motor won’t be that high. I’m just leaving everything long until I know exactly where it all goes.

James

[Deleted]

James - It's all very nice but is it not a little too posh for your road - you will be drawing attention to yourself again if you keep this up

[jamesd1972]

Don’t worry he’ll lower the tone back to more suitable levels once the MR2 comes home.
James