The Dark Wob

Since this forum started, Family Dustman has changed his fleet in its entirety.

The doom blue Saab diesel estate failed its MoT quite spectacularly in mid 2019, mainly bunged up emissions gear & broken swirl flaps. A new exhaust manifold, an exhaust section, CV boot and an ABS ring were required and the car then sailed through.
This was then sold on a bonus ball tombola as I had then acquire this from someone who probably isn't liked on here, but was not wee-wee.
Which was a reliable but rather dull 'an car' - my mileage had decreased significantly and I was only pottering about in town.

The fleet stayed constant until early June this year, when the wife's Toyota decided it no longer needed neither oil nor coolant, and pissed both out. A toss up whether I should pull the engine out and replace or repair it was assessed, but money made more sense that we replaced the car; I would have been looking at £400+ in additional parts to those I had already ordered as I'd have done a full rebuild, but space and time did not allow for this, so sadly after 18 years of ownership and 195k miles my wife scrapped her car.
£250 was a good scrap price. But the wife and stepdaughter both needed wheels, and wifey pants struggled with the Ignis, so I had agreed with another beige forum fella to collect a little diesel Citroen C2.
The day before the collection was due, stepdaughter had booked up to view a Mini R50 diesel. It was cheap, medium length MoT and just needed a good rag down the road and a service, so she bought that as her first own car.
It's got a few little foibles which no doubt I'll get sorted, and it needs a bloody good service so that's on the cards.

Green Ignis was sold today at a meet up just outside of Arundel, and is now heading its way to Hertfordshire.

That's the current state of play at my end, a totally diesel powered fleet, and will update the thread as and when I have news.

Good to hear from you and glad you crossed the road to this den of iniquity.

To be fair Mercrocker I have been a member since mid 2019, but I mainly lurked as I followed threads which continued here. I’m going to be dual nationality from now, as there are good folk on both fora.

I met up today with a dozen or so beige personnel, some are also lurkers/posters on here and once you thin out the crap spouted by the dinlows, yes AS has changed but there is still some very good car content threads on there, as there are on here

dozeydustman wrote: ↑Sat Jul 17, 2021 8:17 pm there is still some very good car content threads on there, as there are on here

Which is why I'm on both. Just here there seems to be more older car content and expertise. I have noticed nowadays that posts with my old cars on AS just have likes and no answers to my technical questions.

Those with dual nationality ...It would be best if their car threads on DW were updated a few days before AS threads...

I just copy and paste between the two with Tapatalk

Earlier this week I fitted a new exhaust to the C2 as the old system was proper rotten.
Middle section was an eBay parts gamble but thankfully fitted fine and the only difference being the shape of the hanger brackets.
This little car performs beautifully and hides its 165k miles well. Might need some welding done in a few years as a few bits are starting to look crusty. MoT is booked for 1st September, initially I cannot see anything which needs attending to but I'll give it a full on look over soon. I'm off to see my parents later so I'll give the thing a good run of 90 miles there today and the same on return tomorrow. I'm keen to break the 70mpg barrier!

I’ve managed to procure a Lexia & Diagbox for the C2. Having trouble getting it to run without an antivirus warning and my Win7 system having a strop.

The mini needed a couple CV joints for its MoT. And it may need a battery soon, and a pair of front dampers for next MoT.

Haven’t done much motoring of late because I’ve turned into a cyclewanker for going to work and most of both sides of the family getting covid (again) not been anywhere or done much!

The dodgy copies of diagnostic software work best on an old XP machine. Just don't use the laptop for anything else. I have a few laptops that just have diagnostics on and nothing else. Also turn off the wi-fi before using them as you don't want them connecting to the net and updating as it can cause the software to stop working. That reminds me has anyone seen a recent copy of autodata the last one was 2014 I think and I really should update but hate the rip off prices of the subscriptions. Bring back the old books I say, I have got some of the last they did from 2011.

I run anything like that on a Windows XP virtual machine. Sandboxed as full of malware and other shit you don't want anywhere near anything personal. Like a ten quid shag, it's cheap for a reason.

Annoyingly virtual box updated itself and my fix to get my copy of autodata to not detect it's running on a virtual machine has failed, so won't run. Not figured where it's detecting it from yet.