Vagueness and the Aftermath - A sporadic diary

[Longines]

I have to wear rigid lenses so luckily tearing isn't a problem but they can get chipped/broken and with a three week lead time the only option was to wear just the one. I now have a spare pair just in case.

I feel fine wearing one, no grogginess, just feels like I'm operating on 90% of normal vision.

[RED-DOG]

I meant I can pass the tests required - number plate at 20 metres, the 6/12 line on the Snellen chart, field of vision etc. etc.

Bugger!

I thought we were in for a tale of you waking up tied to some strange woman's bed, naked, with only the one contact lens and no memory how you got there.

While she's out of the room you manage to reach her handbag, break her compact and hack through the ropes that bind you with a piece of the broken mirror glass.

You search for something to wear but can only find a pair of used panties marked XXL. You quickly slip these on and leave quietly via the fire escape.

Standing on the drive is a 1977 Austin Allegro. Using a short length of wire from an ornamental trellis you pop the door latch, then, after wrenching hard on the steering wheel to break the die-cast ignition lock you do a simple hot-wire, engage first gear, release the clutch and exit the property in controlled slide without bothering to open the gates.

On the way home, you marvel at your ability to drive while wearing only one contact lens, and at the unexpected comfort of size XXL panties.

[Longines]

My dog is now trying to decide if I'm having a laughing fit or a stroke.

On the subject of dogs - Sheep dog sells for £15,000

[RED-DOG]

My dog is now trying to decide if I'm having a laughing fit or a stroke.

On the subject of dogs - Sheep dog sells for £15,000

[/b]


I bet his new owner won't regret a penny of it.

I have considered running the odd puppy on and then selling it fully trained at about 9 months old.

[doubleup]

Tom - you've done a bit of continental driving - I'm doing my first foray next month, any helpful hints?*






*I know about DOTRHS

[RED-DOG]

Tom - you've done a bit of continental driving - I'm doing my first foray next month, any helpful hints?*






*I know about DOTRHS

Ooh! Where are you going and why?


Driving on the wrong side of the road is easy, until you get confident and stop concentrating.

After doing a couple of days and ~ 600 miles of problem free continental driving I pulled into a garage on a quiet country road. When I puled out again there was no other traffic about and I just naturally reverted to driving on the left. It wasn't until a juggernaut almost creamed me that I realised what I had done. As he was hurtling towards us I was screaming, What's this daft bastard doing? He's going to kill someone!" With about 5 yards to go, I realised that the daft bastard was me.

[doubleup]

Tom - you've done a bit of continental driving - I'm doing my first foray next month, any helpful hints?*






*I know about DOTRHS

Ooh! Where are you going and why?


Driving on the wrong side of the road is easy, until you get confident and stop concentrating.

After doing a couple of days and ~ 600 miles of problem free continental driving I pulled into a garage on a quiet country road. When I puled out again there was no other traffic about and I just naturally reverted to driving on the left. It wasn't until a juggernaut almost creamed me that I realised what I had done. As he was hurtling towards us I was screaming, What's this daft bastard doing? He's going to kill someone!" With about 5 yards to go, I realised that the daft bastard was me.

I have rented an apartment in Vienna for 3 weeks.  Going to do the odd trip to the surrounding countries.  Will play a bit of poker in Vienna and generally wander about.

Did you get any "can I see your documents?" - seems that you have to carry about your license, insurance and vehicle reg docs, if online advice is to be believed.  I'm debating whether to take out extra insurance and breakdown insurance (car has done <20k miles).   Did you adjust or mask your headlights (that seems to be another topic of discussion online).

[nirvana]

Used to drive to Innsbruck fairly often. Masking headlights seemed abso fine.

Never had a problem driving on the right except one time. Very first trip, fine when I got off the ferry and fine for the first day driving cause yr kind of alert to what you are about to do. Next morning though I left the hotel, drove away on the left quite happily until it seemed a bad idea.

That first trip was about 32 years ago and I left parts of a supermirafiori all over Germany and Austria - they don't make 'em like that anymore :-)

[RED-DOG]

Tom - you've done a bit of continental driving - I'm doing my first foray next month, any helpful hints?*






*I know about DOTRHS

Ooh! Where are you going and why?


Driving on the wrong side of the road is easy, until you get confident and stop concentrating.

After doing a couple of days and ~ 600 miles of problem free continental driving I pulled into a garage on a quiet country road. When I puled out again there was no other traffic about and I just naturally reverted to driving on the left. It wasn't until a juggernaut almost creamed me that I realised what I had done. As he was hurtling towards us I was screaming, What's this daft bastard doing? He's going to kill someone!" With about 5 yards to go, I realised that the daft bastard was me.

I have rented an apartment in Vienna for 3 weeks.  Going to do the odd trip to the surrounding countries.  Will play a bit of poker in Vienna and generally wander about.

Did you get any "can I see your documents?" - seems that you have to carry about your license, insurance and vehicle reg docs, if online advice is to be believed.  I'm debating whether to take out extra insurance and breakdown insurance (car has done <20k miles).   Did you adjust or mask your headlights (that seems to be another topic of discussion online).

I carried my documents, masked my headlights, took a warning triangle, a spare set of light bulbs and a high viz vest, total cost, about £25. All of which were mandatory in some or other country, none of which were ever requested or needed.

I didn't take out extra insurance but I did let them know I was going abroad. I didn't take out breakdown cover and I don't have it at home.

Anyway, a car with <20k on the clock and a lucky bloke like you, what could possibly go wrong?

[RED-DOG]

Used to drive to Innsbruck fairly often. Masking headlights seemed abso fine.

Never had a problem driving on the right except one time. Very first trip, fine when I got off the ferry and fine for the first day driving cause yr kind of alert to what you are about to do. Next morning though I left the hotel, drove away on the left quite happily until it seemed a bad idea.

That first trip was about 32 years ago and I left parts of a supermirafiori all over Germany and Austria - they don't make 'em like that anymore :-)

OMG! The Supermirafiori. What a blast from the past. I'd forgotten they existed until your post.

I can't believe there is anyone else out there who remembers this ad.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K5Pb2trITQ

[doubleup]

Anyway, a car with <20k on the clock and a lucky bloke like you, what could possibly go wrong?

ffs will have to think about buying it now, tho if it was tikay who said that, with his renowned bokking skills....

[nirvana]

Used to drive to Innsbruck fairly often. Masking headlights seemed abso fine.

Never had a problem driving on the right except one time. Very first trip, fine when I got off the ferry and fine for the first day driving cause yr kind of alert to what you are about to do. Next morning though I left the hotel, drove away on the left quite happily until it seemed a bad idea.

That first trip was about 32 years ago and I left parts of a supermirafiori all over Germany and Austria - they don't make 'em like that anymore :-)

OMG! The Supermirafiori. What a blast from the past. I'd forgotten they existed until your post.

I can't believe there is anyone else out there who remembers this ad.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K5Pb2trITQ

Haha. I really thought it was a great car when I picked it up at an auction. It's first trip to the continent was more or less it's last ever trip. Amazing how badly made the average fiat was back in olden times

[RED-DOG]

I was lost in France.

Worse still I was lost in France in a 1983 diesel Sierra. I had 4 kids on the back seat, My wife and co pilot on the passenger seat, (These were the same person I hasten to add) and a caravan hooked on to the tow bar.

I'd been watching the temperature gauge for some time, and it was already well north of the N for normal. (Drivers of my vintage learn from bitter experience that it pays to watch things like oil pressure and temperature gauges very carefully. Not for us the beep beep alarm and flashing red triangle, if we didn't notice the slim needle silently creeping towards the letter H we had only ourselves to blame when our engines seized up.

Even though it was a scorching day, I turned the car heater on to full and was relieved to feel a blast of hot air on my legs. At least I knew that, for the moment at least, there was still water in the system.

I pulled over and lifted the bonnet. The hoses were hot and pulpy but still intact and still attached to their respective couplings. The radiator was pinging and creaking, but obviously still maintaining pressure.

What was wrong... what was wrong...

Ah ah! The fan wasn't turning. Bingo. No cool air being sucked though the rad. Problem diagnosed. We were halfway there.

The Sierra has what is called a viscous fan. I knew that because I had been reading about them in the Ford agents a few days ago. It works like this. Attached to the engine there is something that looks like the top from an aerosol can turned on it's side. The inner surface is covered with veins like those of a jet turbine. Connected to the fan is another device exactly the same. when they are bolted together and the engine turns nothing happens because the veins don't actually mesh together.

Now we add the viscous fluid. With viscous fluid surrounding the veins, or turbines if you will, when the engine turns, the thick gummy liquid between the veins forces the fan to turn.

Why not just make a permanent connection between engine and fan? Well most of the time the fan isn't needed, and turning it requires a lot of energy, which translates into higher fuel consumption.

But doesn't the presence of the viscous fluid act like a permanent connection and make it turn all the time anyway? No. Because when it's cold, the viscous fluid isn't viscous, it's weak and watery. It only becomes viscous when it gets hot, which is exactly the same time that we need the fan to work. Brilliant eh?

Except that mine wasn't working.

I nursed the car and caravan to the first garage that had a man in greasy overalls. (I found several without such a man but swerved them).

Mr French greasy overall was an excellent mechanic. I knew that because when I accosted him he was fitting tapered bearings into the planetary gears of a limited-slip differential, and anyone who dares to mess with planetary gears is a mechanical genius in my book.

He strolled over to my car and had a quick look and said something like "ventilateur électrique cassé" Which, we eventually discovered with the help of our phrase book, meant, "Your electric fan is broken".

"Non, non Monsieur" I replied, exhausting my entire French vocabulary in one fell swoop, "Is not electric fan, is viscous". He raised a questioning eyebrow...


Now you know how difficult it was for me to try to explain to you what a viscous fan is in English? Well imagine the mess I got into trying to explain it in French. I invented Anglo-French words, drew diagrams on the back of envelopes, swung my arms around and made brum brum noises, all to no avail.

By the time I'd finished he was laughing so hard he could barely stand up. Eventually he composed himself, fetched a fuse from a drawer in his office, used it to replace the blown one in my car and watched with quiet dignity as my apparently not viscous but standard electric fan burst in to life.

I obviously didn't know it had a viscous fan, I just assumed it had a viscous fan. Which just goes to prove, when you make an assumption, you make an ass out of you and umption.


BTW- Mr French Mechanic flatly refused all offers of payment.

[RED-DOG]

Used to drive to Innsbruck fairly often. Masking headlights seemed abso fine.

Never had a problem driving on the right except one time. Very first trip, fine when I got off the ferry and fine for the first day driving cause yr kind of alert to what you are about to do. Next morning though I left the hotel, drove away on the left quite happily until it seemed a bad idea.

That first trip was about 32 years ago and I left parts of a supermirafiori all over Germany and Austria - they don't make 'em like that anymore :-)

OMG! The Supermirafiori. What a blast from the past. I'd forgotten they existed until your post.

I can't believe there is anyone else out there who remembers this ad.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K5Pb2trITQ

Haha. I really thought it was a great car when I picked it up at an auction. It's first trip to the continent was more or less it's last ever trip. Amazing how badly made the average fiat was back in olden times

I'm getting tired of having to re-pigeon-hole you Glen.

Only a certain type of person frequents car auctions and I didn't have you down as one of those.

More info appreciated.

[nirvana]

Likewise, I never you knew you'd mastered foreign languages "Is not electric fan, is viscous".  Chortled

Auction was a one time thing tbf - used to be a big auction in White City back in the day. A couple of mates of my Dad's were pretty wide boys for guys in the RAF and supplemented their incomes buying and selling cars they'd bought at auctions. Somehow led to me and my Dad, I was about 21 I think, heading to White City where we kicked a few tyres, both pretended we knew something and then, really quite naively, somehow managed to actually buy a car.

I now kind of treasure the memory of us doing that as, other than serial standard family gatherings, we didn't really do much 'man stuff' together