PhilJ W

They certainly had top of the line luxury models/1600 engine models. There certainly seems to be a lot more Sport and RS models around today than when they were new. The problem with imports is that a lot of the history and sometimes all of the history of a vehicle can be missing, I can't help thinking that many of the top line versions of cars such as these started out as bog standard basic models.

Morning all from Estuary-Land. Looks as if the weather is going to stay fine well into next weekend so no excuses now for not doing anything in the garden. An item in yesterdays paper said that the £35 million pounds Euro-millions jackpot had been won by a UK resident but had not yet been claimed, so I checked my ticket. Bonus numbers matched! first number matched! then it was downhill from then on in so its a tenner if I'm lucky but at least its better than sod all. Commiserations and congratulations where necessary, be back later.

Escorts were the favourite cars for car rental companies in Malta in the 70's and there's still hundreds left. The climate is suitable (no rust!) and they are to British specification and now Malta is a member of the EU there are no barriers to import.

Goodnight all.

Still playing up on Facebook.

Facebook is now up again.

Has anyone tried to get into Facebook? It seems to be down at the moment.

Morning all from Estuary-Land. Despite my attempts to stay awake to watch the Lunar eclipse last night tiredness got the better of me and I retired to bed at 2 o'clock. I did however see a substantial bite taken out of the moon and as Essex C.C. deem fit to switch all the street lights off at midnight I had a reasonably good view. The bins turned out to be useless, mainly due to my eyesight. I have long vision in one eye and short in the other which meant that using the bins I got double vision. No great problem with cloud fortunately as the strong breeze moved them across quite quickly and most were very high and thin. The moon didn't seem any larger than normal to me but in some of the pictures on TV it looked enormous.

Actually I was a bit confused as I was told both 1 o'clock and 3 o'clock. As it turns out it starts at 1.10 and reaches its peak at about 3. I'm going out now with the bins to watch, goodnight all.

Evening all, thanks Jock for explaining what happens in a lunar eclipse as I was just about to explain it myself. Just to add that the red colouring is because of the different wavelengths of the colour spectrum. This is what also gives us red sunsets/sunrises as the light from the sun has to travel further through the atmosphere and the 'red' appearance of the moon is the light diffused by Earths atmosphere. This is also why the sky is blue when the sun is higher in the sky, blue being at the other end of the spectrum. On very rare occasions the same thing can make the moon appear blue, hence the term 'Once in a blue moon'.

Evening all from Estuary-Land. Looking forward to seeing the lunar eclipse tonight weather forecast is good, hope the little bit of cloud expected stays away at the crucial time, about 1 o'clock. At least most of the country will have clear skies tonight.

Correction its about 1 AM not 3.

Not exactly weather but it looks as if conditions are going to be perfect for the lunar eclipse just after 3 AM tonight.

Its also showing the wrong time, about 10 minutes late. Possible these two are connected?

Talking of hearses, a friend of mine once worked for the Co-op funeral service. About forty years ago he was sent to collect a brand new Daimler 420G hearse from the coach builders. Driving it back to the depot he decided to test its performance, which he did until he saw the flashing blue lights in his mirrors. He only just escaped a ban because the magistrate could not believe that a hearse could do 105 mph. I don't think anyones mentioned the 'Funeral car GP' from the funeral episode of 'Steptoe and son' yet.

Morning all from Estuary-Land. Sorry to hear of Sherry's contretemps with the bedside cabinet and I hope that most of the signs of it would have cleared up in time for the welding. It saddens me to hear that your druggie neighbour has a young son, I knew a young lad of 7 who was living with his grandmother and her partner, he resulted from his mothers 'payment' for drugs. This also resulted in him having autism, fortunately it was in a relatively mild form and not readily apparent. As in many such cases it showed itself in other ways, despite being only 7 years old the lad could assemble a quite complicated Airfix kit perfectly without using excessive glue or leaving any fingermarks. Mind you his grandmother didn't seem to worry about letting him use a very sharp scalpel for trimming the parts. When I saw that I quickly took the scalpel off of him and trimmed the parts for him.

The problem with the Vauxhall slant four engines was servicing them. It was virtually impossible to change the spark plugs and have any skin left on your knuckles. It was also one of the first engines, if not the first engine to have a belt driven camshaft instead of a chain and many people had their doubts about that. The performance was remarkable however, I was in a 1600 FD (coke bottle) Victor that achieved 100 mph with 5 persons on board.

Another forum I follow has some mods who can best be described as nervous about anything that could be even slightly political yet some jokes concerning politicians and pigs have not been deleted.

Morning all from Estuary-Land. Bright and sunny this morning and looks as if the good weather will last into next week. Everything is happening in Switzerland today, first with the FIFA scandal and their banning of the sale of VW diesel cars.

Goodnight all.

Adblue has to be in a separate container as it is added after combustion.

Some people have mentioned that smilies are not appearing. This happened to me this morning so I placed a space between the smilie and any script and it appeared as normal.

Morning all from Estuary-Land. Hobbling down to town today, nothing serious just new shoes and nipping into WH Smiths for a couple of magazines that are not normally stocked by the supermarkets, I might even pop into somewhere for lunch to save myself all that cooking and washing up. Sorting through a few bits and pieces yesterday I found a 'forgotten' diecast Volkswagen Golf, now where did I put that smoke unit? When I was at work I used to have annual check ups, on a voluntary basis offered by my employer. One feature was an estimate of 'body age' which in my case was always 12 to 15 years younger than my actual age. I'm not sure whether it applies now, I feel every minute of my 67 years but fortunately my disabilities are either in the appendages or otherwise well under control.

That reminds me of when my dad was driving buses for Eastern National back in the 60's. He was at a stop in Brentwood in a Bristol FLF with passengers loading when his conductor came round and told him that a car had run into the back of the bus. When the (elderly) driver was asked he said he hadn't seen the bus!

IIRC some of the Southern EMU's used the same motors as in the Bo-Bo's.