First long road trip

[siteguru]

But Mrs S is adamant we will get a hybrid next time round, because she hates hanging around for the charging.

How does she feel about the massively increased risk of fires that hybrids are prone to?

 

[securespark]

Is that a thing?

 

[securespark]

Maybe she will be tempted back to fossil, then?

I'm still an EV nut!

 

[securespark]

Washed the MG post trip.

Got rid of the most humongous bird poop. Covered several panels with huge splats. Must have been an albatross that had eaten cement. Took ages to soak off.

The insect spatter evaded my washing: the car was not ceramic coated beforehand and I found I had run out of bug removal spray...

Also washed my PiLs car. It was beginning to get on my OCDs t*ts......

Sadly, I forgot to take a before picture. It was all awful, but the roof was the worst. There was gunk in all the nooks and crannies, underneath the roof rails, and the window rubbers were caked with stuff that had solidified. The rear wiper: I had never seen anything like it! It had mud and moss and lichen all along the crevices of the blade and arm and it needed soaking for 30 minutes to even begin to soften it up and start removing the crud.

The lower panels had tar spots galore, some of which I got off with TFR, but I hadn't got anything suitable to actually dissolve the tar.

But.....it looks a whole heap better than it did, and my eyelid doesn't twitch when I see it anymore!

It still needs the tar removing, clay barring, and a flipping good polishing, followed by a wax.

Or a ceramic coating.

I spent absolutely hours on the silver car, but having done 2, I was well up for doing number two lad's car, an i30 estate, but wanted help with it. Went upstairs to see if he was up for it.

He was asleep!
It was Mrs S's 60th birthday party last night and he was in the garden at 4am when I went to bed.... I still got up at 8.30, though!

Might do it tomorrow, I'll see how I feel.
I love taking a really filthy vehicle and making it pop.

 

[Chrisdriving]

Nice!!!

 

[securespark]

Some annoying experiences with the infotainment system while on our road trip. The system won't remember our Bluetooth connections, so we regularly have to re pair them. And they regularly fail to re-pair.

Being a deaf bu99er, I like using the car's speakers rather than the phones', what with all the background noise, especially on a 70 mph road.

Despite buying a variety of leads suggested to me, I still cannot get Android Auto to work.

Let's say we are using the car's SatNav. I am using the Google Maps app and I then plug in my phone to the A socket.
The car's map briefly disappears, to be replaced with the Google Maps app, but then it returns a few seconds later.
At the same time, I get an AA message on my phone screen.

Once the car's screen has returned to its SatNav map, as long as my phone is plugged in and the Google Maps app is open and a route is selected, my phone will refuse to show the route on the screen.
All it will show me is the list of directions. Only when I unplug the phone from the car will the phone then show the route on its screen.

Weird.
Can't believe we are nearly 2 years into this 3 year lease and still can't get the damn thing to work.
When we go for the second service, I'll ask them to demonstrate it for me.