random highlights from the week

A few adventures this week beyond getting the car repaired. The latest is a problem with the idle (that’s how fast the motor is turning around when you don’t have it in gear, and your foot isn’t on the accelerator pedal). At the moment, when you stop at the lights, the car idles at 1500rpm for a while, and then calms back down to 800rpm (that’s about the normal idle). It then does that jump from 1500 to 800 a couple more times before it settles into the good idle. This isn’t great behaviour for a car that has just been serviced, so I took it back to the mechanic. Now we need a new Idle Control Motor, which should be fixed under warranty, but I guess the question remains – how was a problem there missed in a service that included replacing the timing belt?

And let’s not forget that a week ago, I wouldn’t have even understood that question!

Apart from that problem, though, the car is fine. I took it in to mathews tyre service for four new tyres (the old ones had almost completely worn out), and they were ready for me when I arrived, and changed everything within 40 mins – just enough time to wander through Campsie and grab some breakfast.

Also during the week I picked up some second-hand 21″ monitors – five of them – somehow managing to fit them into the car, and driving around without destroying any of them – the main difficulty was in getting the two out of the boot – the Vectra boot is quite large, but there’s no easy way to angle the monitors out again. Thanks to kel’s wisdom, we worked out that the best way was to put them screen side down, and angle them out: I highly recommend it as a logic puzzle if you have the opportunity.

And lastly: working out how to explain a soduku puzzle via email – the people in question were stuck at a particular point, and emailed me a scan of the puzzle; I sat down and worked out how to finish it (to make sure my answer was right) and then explained the step that I thought they were stuck on using FlySketch – a very versatile piece of Mac software.

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2 Comments

  1. Your last post begs for a lot of little lifes’ sayings like “two heads are better than one”, “that’s my girl”, “welcome to the world of owning a motor car” & “welcome to the real world”. What a wealth of information you have acquired this week. I guess thats all part of growing which is pretty cool when you recognise learning . It’s good to reflect on the day or week and ask what did I learn and have an answer.

  2. wow dave it certainly has been a big week of learning! and you know, the best part of you sharing it with us is that we also get to learn but without the hassle and expense that can go along with it. For example, i drove up to my mum’s this last weekend and before i set out on my journey, i checked the water and the oil and i kept my eye on the temperature gauge. The car and I got there and home again without incident 🙂
    thanks also for helping me with the puzzle, i’ve used your method to work out a few other ones too.

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