Mat's BX Blog

[electrokid]

My my - that's a big picture I'm running 2 monitors (admittedly 4:3 so not widescreen) with the desktop spread across both and that's still not wide enough for that pic

I remember making a point of accurately lining up the propshaft run, including the centre bearing, in my 2 litre Granny after having to replace the Giubo joint. I had to pack the GB rear mounts - I think it improved things.

[mat_fenwick]

Sorry, I'm still working from my phone rather than a computer so not able to check before posting. Pictures taken from Facebook which seems to have skewed the sizes as they were both identically sized images!

There is some adjustment possible on the gearbox mount, but I'd rather weld in the new mount as close to right as possible.

[electrokid]

No worries I am trying to get hold of a couple of widescreen monitors for this computer anyway - funds are limiting the choice but it'll happen soon. Good luck getting back on line.

I think that on my Granny the engine mounts had 'settled' somewhat which meant the need for spacers at the gearbox end to line up the prop er... properly It will have been lined up correctly when new but when I did the job it had around 150K on the clock. If your front engine mounts are new ? then the engine will be at the 'highest' it could possibly be so the only way is down from then on. If you weld the GB mount to exactly the right place for now (assuming older front engine mounts) and then have to replace the front engine mounts then it might be out of line with no fiddle room to adjust. Not sure if I've expressed that very well ?

[mat_fenwick]

That makes sense, engine mounts are new (or were several years ago). They've visibly settled even after storage, but heat and vibration may well settle them further. Hopefully not too much further as the (modified) sump is quite close to the front crossmember, and it was a trade off between clearance and capacity when I cut and welded it!

[mat_fenwick]

Bit of an interesting decision to make now regarding vehicles - a couple of friends have found a good accommodation-only deal on an apartment in the Alps mid-February and I'm not sure what to take to get there.

On one hand I could take the Focus, as that already has winter tyres and I have chains for it. Heated washer jets and windscreen may be handy too, plus I'm less worried about people dragging in snow on their boots and soaking the carpets than I would be in the BX or Disco! But no ABS, and the heater takes several miles to warm the cabin up. Or the Disco - good heater, heated screen and seats, the best vehicle if there is snow but not ideal for the 900 miles of motorway each way - although cruise control swings the balance back a little. Main downside is it would cost twice as much in fuel and work out more expensive than flying, plus I can't take it through the Tunnel.

BX has a great heater, ABS and chains, and that's what I'd most like to drive there in. I could possibly even justify better spares availability over there, although not so sure nowadays. But I'm starting to get a little precious about it, and the last time I took it over in the winter I lost the back end on an icy hairpin bend - chains gripped on the front but the back rotated 180° and into a (fortunately soft) snowbank. All very low speed stuff so no damage and I was able to drive out, but I'd hate for worse to happen.

Probably leaning towards the Focus as the sensible choice as although I enjoy actually driving the BX more, I can maybe enjoy the journey more in a different vehicle, without worrying.

[Stinkwheel]

Take the BX Mat, you know it makes sense

[Jaba]

Having driven my BXs around the Alps for the last 12 winters I can say that they are a very satisfying drive in the snow. BUT only with winter tyres. Do not even think about driving over snowy mountain passes without them. Even if you get up the pass with chains getting down the other side can be a bit too interesting.

I would focus my thoughts on the other car and take that one.

[MULLEY]

I'd take the focus, its already got the right tyres fitted, if you go off & dent it, you won't cry, unlike the red one if that was damaged. So there you go, jobbed

[mat_fenwick]

That's definitely the sensible decision, although I'll resent not putting 2000 more miles on the BX...got to overtake a certain other high mileage red estate!

Another moan now, I'm afraid. The Council put a flyer through our letterbox recently giving the bin collection dates for this year (mixed waste only gets collected every 2 weeks). As it happened they got it wrong and I missed the bin collection, so I had to make the trip to the recycling centre to get rid of it.

That's not actually my moan though. I thought it a good idea to drop off a couple of exhausts and other bits of metal like brake discs and a spring at the same time. But apparently this "isn't household waste" because it's "not from a house is it?" Fine, next time I'll just put it in the bin for landfill then! Is it that rare for people to work on their own cars nowadays? And anyway, it is from a houseHOLD...

On the positive side I added 2 more cameras to the CCTV system, one of them a home-made hidden job. So may catch them if they return, even if they hide their faces from the visible ones

[Thread Bear]

Ever more selective recycling centres are an excuse to pressure you into a payment to remove your unwanted stuff. Plasterboard is banned round here, for instance. Its known for its dangers of strength, rigidity and cunning ability to imitate the Titanic when wet so we need to be protected from every last scrap of it. The hope is you get a skip and pay some tax. In fact enough stuff gets dumped in the hedge to negate any savings. However if it lands on someone else's property it becomes their responsibility. The fun game now is to fly tip leaving some personal effects of someone you do not like in the pile. They then get nicked via the State violence system.

My plaster board was re used as plasterboard because I did my plaster boarding and the excess took 8 weeks of dustbin seeding to remove. But to make a fuss over desirably recycleable steel is just getting silly.

[MULLEY]

I'd have just left the scrap car parts & driven off tbh, idiots.

[mat_fenwick]

Well, actually in the end they did accept them - after me trying to explain that they were not from a business as they obviously thought.
"I do all the maintenance on our cars at home."
"So you're running your own little business there?"
"NO, these are just what I've changed in the last year or so on our own cars"
"Well, you should take it down to the commercial place in Harlech (30 mile round trip) but you'll have to pay. You can leave them here this time but we ain't seen you."

Daft, as there's weigh in value for steel and aluminium parts! As it happens I do the odd bit of maintenence for others, but I always give them the parts afterwards. Firstly so they can see bits have been changed, and secondly to avoid me having more rubbish to deal with. I could just put it in the mixed waste bin but it seems wrong to send it for landfill. And it's impractically far to take it to a scrap merchants unless I'm going that way anyway.

[MULLEY]

As far as i was aware, you could take anything that was from your household as long as the waste wasn't from your business, which you don't have. They probably get loads of chancers trying to offload stuff. Its the same with car tyres, my usual garage has to take them to a specialist place, but on one occassion as they were changing some tyres for me on the cheap, i said that i'd get rid of the tyres so that it didn't cost them anything. I went to the tip down the road & because i only had 2 tyres there was no issue & they didn't know me, but they do know the guy's at the garage as they'd been dropping tyres off regularly (thats what the guy's at the garage told me), before telling them to do one.

[Thread Bear]

My local tip no longer takes tyres. It refused to take four tyres before hand, when it did take them in, via box trailer. They do not like box trailers, either. This on the basis we are all so enfeebled as to not be able to change our own tyres any more so must be a business. They used to charge £4 a tyre, when they took them.
I found the local privately run tyre recycling centre. It is 14 miles from the dump in question. It collects tyres for £1 each (might have gone up due to tax inflation). It takes private citazens tyres at the gate for £1. So the Council are loosing money in a bounty charge, while encouraging the '100 yard a tyre' ditch system in Oxfordshire, meaning they get to pay extra to clear the mess up. At what point does this make any sense to anyone?

The recycling centre goes through the tyres, sorts out exports/remoulds, part worns and scrap. The scrap, I believe, go to the South Yorks tyre boiling plant where they were also charging a £1 a tyre, and which completely recycles the whole tyre, using a portion of the oil in the tyre, as energy to power the system. The owner bought several brand new refrigeration pumps from me and said that he would not build such a unit now, as the amount of Government interference would be to costly an overhead. Fortunately as an pre-existing plant from less officious days, he has little competition, despite that Britain has a gross shortage of these facilities. So there is your green policy in tatters, as well as your chance for investment in a needed industry from entrepreneurs. Meanwhile the hedges of Oxfordshire, at least, will continue to see an autumn harvest of tyres, while we pay people big money not to solve the situation. Vote Idiot.

I always picture the little Welsh town of Llandfyll to be a bit like Blaenau Festiniog in reverse. A place where they are building mountains.

[electrokid]

I always picture the little Welsh town of Llandfyll

It's all a PITA. One of the reasons I have a trailer is to take stuff to the tip without getting the car mucky - they will allow you to bring your household stuff / garden rubbish by trailer but only if you've registered your trailer with the local council first so they can monitor how many times you visit to check you're not doing it commercially.

If you know motor traders locally then it's quite probable that they would let you use their skip for the occasional chuckouts - and yes - it is getting very rare for people to work on their own cars.

Woking tip is about 4 miles from me and arranged in a one-way circle - if you drive past the bin you want, or if there are no parking spaces by that bin then you've missed it and have to walk back to it from wherever you end up parking. Guildford tip is 6 miles away and arranged in a line - wherever you park it's not a problem to walk to the bins you want. And there's another difference - the attitude at Guildford seems to be "where can we put that" rather than "ooo I'm not sure we can take that". Not surprisingly I use the Guildford tip.

A few years ago before the register-your-trailer nonsense I was giving a mate a hand - he had spent weeks tidying up the garden at his place and me with the BX and the trailer were going to do the tip trip in one hit where his Nissan Micra and his gammy leg would have taken a lot longer. Just before I left with the trailer hooked up, I noticed a couple of bits of wood that were from a fence panel that had disintegrated a while back -no more than 2 feet long and no more than a handful - and chucked them in the trailer, but before moving off transfered them to the car -not likely to fall out but they could possibly have done so.

Got to Barry's place and loaded the car and trailer - completely full and with a 6 x 5 mattress on top of the trailer load - it needed chucking and it fitted the 6 x 4 trailer perfectly and kept the garden rubbish bags in place. Got to the tip and went through the 'trailers and vans' lane to be inspected by Herr Oberfurer Waste Management - who informed us (admittedly with a bit of a smirk) that he would have had to turn us away and send us to a commercial tip if the wood from the fence panel had been in the trailer and not in the car