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.

 

[securespark]

Strange thing happened.

Went on a thread elsewhere on this forum about misbehaving Android Auto and decided to buy yet another lead to see if I could crack the problem.

See here: Android Auto Keeps Disconnecting

 

[securespark]

Another road trip to London on Friday, ready to see my youngest play for Lancashire in the U20s County final versus Devon this morning at Twickenham, kicking off at 10:00.

Lancs won 36 22!
What a great game!

The journey down was a bit of a pig, though. Can't be helped really. M25, meet Friday...Friday, this is M25....

But as for planning charging, pah.
Whatever could go wrong pretty much did.

Charging points not working, a site with 7 charging points occupied and all in it for the long haul, a charging point that we couldn't locate on the app and gave up trying.

Ended up having to drive to another BP site in Gerrard's Cross with 2 occupied chargers, 5 pc to spare and having to wait.

When we got onto it it worked flawlessly BUT, not as quickly as the Instavolt ones we used near Winchester.
This one was BP Pulse, 160, like Winch, but took an hour and a half where the Instavolt ones were one hour or a bit less.

Not sure why.

There was one, it didn't have any instructions on it, except the screen said
"TAP CARD HERE"

I tried my debit card, it didn't work.
I tried my Electroverse card, it didn't work. I rang the helpline number and explained what I'd done.
She went off on one. "Well of course it doesn't work, you have to download the app at blahblahblah.com then wave your arse cheeks to the sun God and turn round three times in a clockwise direction while singing Hound Dog."
Or some equally ridiculous sequence.

I told her good luck finding customers who had the time to do that.

Yet some work beautifully.
There's one that just works at Stafford Services, plug in and tap card, I can't remember whose it is.

Why can't they all work like that?
And some BP Pulse do for me and some Shell ones. But, perversely, not all. Why the heck not?

Mrs S booked in the car for its service this Summer. She chatted to staff about hybrids.

Please pray for me.

 

[pjmmk]

I always try to find Tesla 'open to all' chargers if I need a charge on the MG while I'm away from home, even if it means starting a charge at a higher SoC than I would normally. They just work. They're almost always cheaper than the others as well.

 

[Ian Key]

Congratulations to your lad and Lancashire.

I think I would have found a charger 50 or 60 miles before I got to London and charged up with enough to get to Twickenham and back out again.

 

[securespark]

What I really want to know is: who was Gerrard, and why was he cross?



I know it was named after a family that used to live there.

 

[securespark]

Congratulations to your lad and Lancashire.

Thank you.
It's certainly something I'll never forget!