Cyclists waste petrol

On 09/30/2018 11:08 AM, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
On Mon, 10 Sep 2018 05:15:19 +0100, rbowman wrote:

On 09/09/2018 06:33 AM, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
Have you seen the newest (well last 5 or 10 years actually) Ford
Mondeos? The centre console (where the radio goes) has become ****ing
huge. There's zero legroom anymore. I don't understand why they've got
that big lump in there.

No, and I may have missed my chance. It was called the Fusion in the US.
Ford announced they're dropping sedans in favor of SUVs and pickups in
the US, although the Fusion might live on as sort of a Subaru Outback
thing.

The general public yawned but the cops are ****ed. They really loved
their Crown Vics. That was dropped in 2012 so they have to switch to
Dodges.

They're constantly trying to stop us Europeans from having big cars, but
nobody listens.

Counterproductive, isn't it? We went to Quebec City on our honeymoon.
It's an old city by US standards and I'm told the older part is quite
like European cities. We drove up in my Lincoln Continental, a 5000
pound road beast. After getting the lay of the land I left it in the
hotel parking garage and rented a more suitable ride. (Dodge Colt, a
re-badged Mitsubishi).

The Colt was great for navigating the narrow streets. However in the
country my wife had panic attacks every time I got over 25 mph. With the
Lincoln she was content to take a nap while I cruised at 90 -100.

I should think smaller would be better when navigating cities designed
for donkey carts.

On 10/1/18 8:20 AM, The Peeler wrote:
On Sun, 30 Sep 2018 23:24:34 +1300, Peter Keller, the notorious gay
troll-lover, blathered again:


What?Â* I asked why your lawmakers don't do more sensible things, other
than making everything metric, which nobody gives a **** about.

Liar

No, he isn't, troll-feeding idiot! The troll you like to suck off so much
DID ask that!

He said nobody gives a **** about. That is a despicable lie.
He really is a nasty piece of work, isn't he?

On 10/1/18 10:18 AM, The Peeler wrote:
On Mon, 1 Oct 2018 05:11:04 +1000, cantankerous trolling senile geezer Rot
Speed blabbered, again:



it's ridiculous.

You are.

All THREE of you are, ****ed up mentally deficient idiots!

So you agree that the Macaw is a ****ed up miserable ****..

On Sun, 30 Sep 2018 20:37:49 +0100, rbowman wrote:

On 09/30/2018 11:08 AM, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
Yes. Generally called spark plug wires in this country. They may be a
thing of the past. My Toyota doesn't have any but I don't know how
common that is.

It will, but they're concealed in one tube.

No concealment on the Toyota. It has Coil-on-Plug ignition.

https://troubleshootmyvehicle.com/to...nition-coils-1

Why do they tend to put the coils on the plugs now instead of having one big coil?

The last car I inspected may have had that, I'm not sure, all I know is there was a bar that clipped over all the plugs, with one thick wire leading to it.

On Sun, 30 Sep 2018 20:31:33 +0100, rbowman wrote:

On 09/30/2018 10:01 AM, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
On Tue, 11 Sep 2018 02:47:15 +0100, rbowman wrote:

On 09/10/2018 12:14 PM, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
How many miles did you do in those 12 years? What parts did you replace
for servicing, predicting a failure might happen in the future? I don't
believe you didn't have to change any tyres, brakes, suspension parts,
steering, hoses, etc.


What the hell do you do to cars? Tires are expendable and don't count. I
had to replace a brake hose and heater hose in my 32 year old pickup
because a porpupine ate them. He also chewed at the upper radiator hose
but it's still going strong, teeth marks and all.

I ignore all speed limits and speedbumps and go as fast as I can without
my car coming off the road.

Ah, the washboard road technique...

It's actually more comfortable to go over a speedbump fast than slow. Fast hurts the suspension, slow hurts your back.

It's also better to accelerate as you go over the bump, this lifts the front of the car up and lessens the jolt.

It's also fun to overtake someone who goes slowly over bumps, when they see you bouncing past them they tend to **** themselves.

On Sun, 30 Sep 2018 20:27:05 +0100, Rod Speed wrote:



"Jimmy Wilkinson Knife" wrote in message
news
On Mon, 10 Sep 2018 05:45:16 +0100, rbowman wrote:

On 09/09/2018 01:08 PM, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
I really ****ed off a horserider once. I was driving a very old Range
Rover automatic which had a conversion to LPG. It very often misfired,
made loud bangs, and changed gear without warning. I managed to cause a
small explosion and a loud revving of the engine just as I passed a
horserider coming the other way along a narrow country road. The horse
**** itself, and so did the rider.

I did better than that... I was coming down a narrow road that went past
a dude ranch on my Harley. Coming the other was was a herd of dudes on
their docile refugees from a canning factory led by a genuine wild west
cowboy. ****head's horse had a nervous breakdown while the guests' nags
barely roused from their stupor.

it doesn't take much to set them off. I've worked with horses enough to
know most of them are a neurotic bundle of nerves. If the horse can't
handle public roads, trailer it to a nice quiet horse trail someplace.

Indeed. Horses on roads were fine, before the invention of the motor car.

They weren't actually, lots got killed by them bolting etc.

They're not the brightest of animals.

On Sun, 30 Sep 2018 20:26:26 +0100, rbowman wrote:

On 09/30/2018 10:00 AM, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
On Tue, 11 Sep 2018 03:12:20 +0100, rbowman wrote:

On 09/10/2018 12:53 PM, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:


Are your roads littered with speed bumps? I go over perhaps 200 a day.

That cinches it. No trip to the UK for me. Some of our dirt roads have
speed bumps, aka small boulders, but I've never seen them other than on
private roads.

Round here they put them in the stupidest of places, for example 10
yards from a junction, where nobody could possibly be speeding anyway..

And apparently they cost £10,000 each to install including paperwork.


We have various 'traffic calming' schemes like roundabouts and bulbouts
but speed bumps would really **** off the snowplow crews to say nothing
of the cops.

Even some of the semi-private areas are getting rid of them. I hit one
of the damn things on my bicycle. The sun was in my eyes and I didn't
see it coming so I taco'd my front wheel and did a face plant. I was not
happy.

You should have attempted to sue the council (or whatever you call them over there). Causing injury to a cyclist can't be allowed surely?

I hope I one day catch an old lady tripping over one on my dashcam. I've seen it happen before, a pensioner crosses the road and trips on the stupid thing. But I need proof.

Further north, they have bollards on the narrowing things (we call them chicanes, I assume that's what you refer to as a bulbout). Half of them disappear when the (privatised) snowploughs come along operated by local farmers. You can't see them when there's a few feet of snow. Either that or it's an excuse for them to get rid of the ****ing things.

On Sun, 30 Sep 2018 20:20:34 +0100, Rod Speed wrote:



"Jimmy Wilkinson Knife" wrote in message
news
On Sun, 30 Sep 2018 02:11:54 +0100, rbowman wrote:

On 09/29/2018 03:41 PM, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:

Cost to the customer should dictate ones further away will be less
likely to be bought, so I guess they were different carpets.

Presumably. They were all 12' rolls so I never saw the working side.
Furniture was the same deal. There still are furniture factories in the
south eastern US while most of the furniture I loaded on the west coast
was from Asia.

Other products weren't so easy to rationalize. I don't know about the UK
but the Sunday papers (when people still read the Sunday papers) have a
lot of colorful advertising brochures and other crap that most people
strip out and use to wrap garbage. I picked up a lot of those in Boulder
CO to take to Baltimore MD, which is about 1600 miles. Nobody on the
east coast can print useless stuff?

The whole scheme depends on cheap transportation / cheap fuel. Keep
those container ships and trucks rolling!

If your government put as much fuel tax on it as ours did, that wouldn't
be happening.

It happens in Britain and the EU too.

Britain isn't big enough to travel very far.

On Sun, 30 Sep 2018 20:19:23 +0100, Rod Speed wrote:



"Jimmy Wilkinson Knife" wrote in message
news
On Sun, 30 Sep 2018 02:49:56 +0100, rbowman wrote:

On 09/29/2018 03:46 PM, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:

We have 1,2,5,10,20,50,100,200 pence coins. They're all equally used.
Why use two 25 cent coins when you can use a 50?

No idea. Almost all the coin trays have 5 buckets but the fifth is most
often used to hold paper clips, rubber bands, or other small items.

One explanation is the half dollar was the last of the coins to contain
silver and when the silver prices went up they were hoarded and fell out
of circulation. By the time the composite coins came out people had
gotten away from using them.

Chicken or egg, but most vending machines and the pay phones didn't take
them.

The US did have 2 and 3 cent pieces in the 1800's. There was the naive
thought that a coin's bullion value should match its face value so there
was some jockeying around. The nickel won the popularity contest.

The 20 cent piece didn't last long either. That was a political move by
the silver miners to have the government buy more silver.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_of_Gold_speech

The US has solved that problem. None of the coinage has real worth
although you can make sort of a low grade zamak out of pennies.
Illegally, of course.

Why do you have such complicated terms for your coins? Ours are just
called by their value - 20p, 50p, etc.

Pity about the sovereign, crown, half crown, groat, shilling, sixpence, quid
etc.

None of those are used anymore apart form "quid" which is simply a synonym for "pound".

On Sun, 30 Sep 2018 20:14:02 +0100, rbowman wrote:

On 09/30/2018 09:13 AM, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
On Sun, 30 Sep 2018 02:11:54 +0100, rbowman wrote:

On 09/29/2018 03:41 PM, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:

Cost to the customer should dictate ones further away will be less
likely to be bought, so I guess they were different carpets.

Presumably. They were all 12' rolls so I never saw the working side.
Furniture was the same deal. There still are furniture factories in the
south eastern US while most of the furniture I loaded on the west coast
was from Asia.

Other products weren't so easy to rationalize. I don't know about the UK
but the Sunday papers (when people still read the Sunday papers) have a
lot of colorful advertising brochures and other crap that most people
strip out and use to wrap garbage. I picked up a lot of those in Boulder
CO to take to Baltimore MD, which is about 1600 miles. Nobody on the
east coast can print useless stuff?

The whole scheme depends on cheap transportation / cheap fuel. Keep
those container ships and trucks rolling!

If your government put as much fuel tax on it as ours did, that wouldn't
be happening. A US gallon of gas here is $6.16 US. How does that
compare to what you pay?

It's been running around $2.97 all summer although I think it's up to
$2.99 now.

https://www.gasbuddy.com/USA

This state has a 27 cents / gallon gasoline tax so it's on the higher
end of the range. Distribution costs play a little part in the price
spread but it's the state and local taxes that make up the bulk of the
difference.

California is the flyer. The tax is 30 cents but because of state laws
they get special, super deluxe, designer blends. Washington has a 45
cent tax which explains their cost. Hawaii is obviously a distribution
problem.

Ours is an 80p per LITRE tax. If yours is still that expensive with so little tax, you must VERY expensive gas before tax.