spikey

6 hours ago, Kickstart said:

 ... I have had to take the plugs out, get them clean and hot with a blow torch and put them back in to get it running ...

Gosh, I remember doing that on one or two ancient British bikes.  It's fun, isn't it, screwing mad-hot plugs in without starting to cross-thread 'em ...

OK, it's an accumulator.  If not, my money's on his pipe, tin of baccy and stale current bun.

So ,,, what do we think is in the package on the front forks? 😎

9 minutes ago, Hroth said:

Its virtually impossible to eradicate ...

 

I had a feeling that might be the case.  Thank you for confirming it.

A pox on MIcrosoft!  They've had the confounded cheek to install Windows Edge on The Lady Wife's venerable laptop, and going to uninstall it in "Programs" is a waste of time for it gives me no option to unstall it.  

How can we rid ourselves of this unwanted program?

Please correct me if I've got this totally wrong, but it seems to me from Mrs Spikey's perusals of various German news sites that Ukraine is sooner or later to be favoured with the delivery of an assortment of different tanks from different countries.  How many of these promised tanks will actually be in all respects good to go, i have no idea, but it wouldn't surprise me if some of them are nearer to being fit more for cannibalising for spare parts.

Be that as it may, what are the operational implications of such a motley collection?  In particular, do they all use the same ammunition?   Could this face-saving move by various governments actually turn out to be a game-changer for Ukraine, or are there enough potential problems for it to be largely a waste of money?

And while I'm asking, who's making Ukraine's ammo?

Where there's a will ...

1 hour ago, burgundy said:

 ... I should be pleasantly surprised if the answer to your question were much less than 12 months. 

 

I'll be amazed if it's less than 2-3 years.  Right now, according to the German news sites Rheinmetall and Krauss-Maffei are quoting well into 2024 for any new Leopards for the Bundeswehr, and I very much doubt that the UK could do any better.

2 hours ago, Barry O said:

...  uk have, since chieftain always demanded that the turret over a certain arc must be able to keep its best ammunition fired from its main gun out 

 

 Is something missing there, or is it me in need of more coffee?

2 hours ago, whart57 said:

And of course several thousand "boomers" and their descendants owe their lives to Harold keeping Britain out of the Vietnam War despite American pressure.

Indeed.  I was going through flying training in 66-67 and only learned later how hard LBJ was trying with Wilson ...

52 minutes ago, Jonboy said:

Our local tool hire shop is £15 a day for an SDS drill.

Which is fine - if you can easily afford the £15, plus the cost of the appropriate drill bit ...

1 hour ago, kitpw said:

https://www.ukdrills.com/masonry/profi-masonry/profi-masonry-drill-bit... these are reduced shank drill pieces to fit a regular 13mm chuck.  Lengths available up to 600mm (at a price):  the 16 x 200 or 16 x 300 would do for a 14" thick wall.

Oh joy unbounded!  Thank you, kind Sir.  If only my Google-fu was a strong as yours ...

Problem solved 🙂

2 hours ago, kevinlms said:

The Q&A answer says it's tapered. It isn't it's stepped.

And the description says straight shank ...

20 minutes ago, Dave John said:

Any use ? 

 

https://www.screwfix.com/p/erbauer-straight-shank-masonry-drill-bit-16-x-150mm/6040v

It would be if I could get a 16mm shank drill in a 12mm  chuck 🙂

Cheers Kevin but drill isn't SDS and I don't know anyone who could maybe lend me one.  Looking at the chuck end of an SDS drill though, I'm wondering if it would fit in my non-SDS chuck ...

I wish to drill a hole of 16-18mm or so diameter through the stone wall of my humble abode, which is about 14" thick.  I have an ordinary cordless hammer drill with a 12mm chuck, and I have masonry bits of 6 and 12mm which are long enough.  My problem is how then to take the hole from 12mm to at least 16mm without incurring any unnecessary expense.  

I can probably access the 12mm hole from within and without the property in order to enlarge it from both ends with a standard-length masonry bit, but I can't find such a thing as a reduced-shank masonry bit to use with my drill.  And I can't find a source of a suitable star drill chisel to do it the old-fashioned way.

Anybody got any bright ideas?

Oh well ... that's one less patron for the local Waitrose, and one less flash Amercan car in their carpark every so often ...

3 hours ago, Reorte said:

 

I might very well still want to vote rather than spoil my ballot - my stance against compulsion isn't because I don't want to.

 

Never had the Monster Raving Loonies standing where I've voted.

Me neither.  Didn't one of the Beatles have something to do with a candidacy at one time?  Something to do with curing the world's ills by yogic flying (whatever that was)? I seem to recall that if you voted for him, you were guaranteed a decent job, plus you got free spliffs.

8 hours ago, RichardT said:

So, not lamentable English but precision in language. Useful to know ...

Who said it was? 🙂

I've just been on the BBC News website for my daily dose of lamentable English, and it's reminded me that I've been meaning to ask for ages - when did it stop being (for example) a rise of three percent and become instead a rise of three "percentage points".  What's nowadays wrong with plain old percent?

Never seen one of these before, but just how dinky is this?  Love the way the swinging-arm's made...

Much obliged chaps.  Dry verge system it is then.  I had forgotten that I first saw this 7/8 years ago when they built some new back-to-backs affordable starter homes nearby.  They all blew off the end of one of the houses in the first strong wind.  But all turned out well, as a chap with a ladder and a nailgun turned up in due course and solved the problem ...

BTW, ref my observation about fake chimnies in stupid places, I noticed last week that one of the bijou homettes which has a fake chimney on the two-year-old estate nearby has just had an external flue pipe fitted for a stove ...

Yesterday i spent a pleasant while wandering around the new ghetto exclusive development being thrown together built on t'other side of town, sniggering at the way they've stuck the fake chimnies on about a third of the way along the ridges i.e. nowhere near overhead any wall in these tiny little boxes spacious modern homes.  Anyhow, I was much taken with the way in which the concrete-tiled roofs are finished at the gable ends by means of tile-coloured (until they fade) plastic mouldings which presumably clip under the end tiles, then wrap down over the top of the uPVC bargeboards, to which they seem to have been stuck with mastic.

What are these things called, or what is the system called?  And what is supposed to be the advantage over making a proper job in the time-honoured way?  Cheaper and quicker and any Richardhead can do it, or is there perhaps more to it?

4 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

One from the RAF Museum at Hendon, a Humber Mk.III armoured car, I like these ...

I remember seeing those in a big scrapyard somewhere in deepest Lincolnshire in the 1960s.  And loads of Daimler scout cars (Dingos?).  Morris Quads too, plus a few girt big Scammell (?) gun tractors.  Anything with a Rolls or Daimler engine had it whipped out and crated up to be shipped out East via Immngham docks.  We were told they ended up powering junks ...

9 hours ago, Barry O said:

Muzzle reference system...

Thank you, but alas I am an ignorant ex-Brylcreem Boy and as such have no understanding of what one of those might be ...