Alfa2Evora

Put it this way, I don't bother buying lottery tickets. Biggest worry now is that its MOT test is due in 9 weeks time and I doubt it would pass with the headlight alignment as it sits just now, .

Thanks a bunch, white van man. Come up to a traffic-calming island on your side of the road, with a clear-as-day "Give priority to oncoming traffic" sign on it and just swing over onto the other side of the road why don't you? Never you worry that I had to pull hard left to avoid a head-on and in doing so scraped my nearside rear wheel along the kerb - you just carry on your way as you obviously were in a desperate hurry to get somewhere. I really appreciate you giving me a new 'life experience' although I don't recall this particular one as ever having been on my bucket-list. 50 years of driving and I've never so much as touched a kerb with the wheel of any car, until today. Then I get home to find an email from the bodyshop that will be repairing the damaged front bumper and clam after the car park encounter with an SUV last November, telling me that it's going to be at least another 4 weeks before all the parts arrive - they've only been on order for 7 months so what's another 1? Looks like I can forget my attendance at the first few car shows of the season in that case, .

@C8RKH Finally broke my duck yesterday though Andy, : That'll be it for another year as cars at shows/meets don't count.

Woohoo! Finally spotted another Lotus while I was driving mine, so for the first time in months I was able to exchange waves with a fellow enthusiast. Yesterday, early afternoon, in Linlithgow High Street, a yellow Elise with what appeared to be a private plate - didn't catch what it was as I was too excited at just seeing the car, .

Today, just before 4pm, a Chrome Orange 70-plate Evora heading away from the Broxburn/Uphall area (passing the Houston House Hotel) in the general direction of Bathgate/Livingston. I was about to flash my lights and wave when it dawned on me that it might cause the driver some confusion, my being in our Alfa Giulietta dog-mobile at the time. Typical, despite it having an injured face, I've still done several hundred miles in the Evora over the past couple of weeks but never had so much as a sniff of another Lotus of any model, then the first time I'm in our other car and just 5 minutes after leaving home what should come along?....................... .

@ramjet Oh great! Something to look forward to as I'm showing the early stages of arthritis in several of my joints, .

You want to try a Samsung Ecobubble - it plays what seems like the equivalent of Mahler's Symphony No 3 to tell you it's finished, . Fortunately, ours blew up just before Christmas so I don't have to suffer listening to it any more. The replacement (from Bosch) is so quiet, both when it's running and when it finishes, that were it not for the little flashing tell-tale light on the display, you'd never know it had done anything, . When I was checking out what was available, the salesman was very determined that I needed one with WiFi - he couldn't justify why, only that I would definitely be better off with it. When I pointed out that I don't even use it on my mobile phone so would be highly unlikely ever to need it on my washing machine, he looked at me as if I had just crawled out of the primordial slime, .

What? You mean she won't have personal freedom on the public transport that she's been trying to force everybody else to use?

You lot are just showing off that yours actually works, . I've long since given up on mine. Despite several replacement pedal switches, which were deemed to be the problem, it has never worked properly - go over the tiniest ripple in the road surface and it kicks off which can be a tad disconcerting for anybody following 'in convoy' so I just don't risk using it any more, .

@bogle Bill, you've every right to be thinking firstly of 'numero uno', that's not selfish in the slightest. Fingers crossed that your hiccup is but a minor blip. Keep us posted of your progress, if only so that I don't then feel selfish by only thinking of Jennifer.

JENNIFER : LATEST UPDATE I had originally intended to post this over a week ago when a 'landmark event' was first witnessed but I then thought it best to hold-off until I was sure that I had something truly significant to report rather than what might ultimately prove to be simply a one-off flash-in-the-pan happening. Well, the initial event of last Monday was indeed repeated last Friday and then again today so I now feel it worthy of broadcasting to the world. What is this Earth-shattering piece of news? I'm sure you're all desperate to know. On all 3 occasions, Jennifer spent the entire day without once being in her wheelchair. All her movements around the nursing home throughout the day were on her own 2 pins, assisted by either a zimmer or somebody steadying her arm for balance. I'm not ashamed to admit that when I first saw her up on her feet, my eyes did become just a trifle moist. All those days and weeks of reminding Jennifer of the importance of keeping taking her medication and of keeping getting the maximum nutrition into her, along with all those exercise sessions which were not always met with total enthusiasm if she was having an 'off day', have now paid dividends. She kept saying that she wanted out of the wheelchair and now her dogged determination has produced the result we all wanted to see. I just need to rein her in a bit now. When I was in this afternoon, they were playing Scottish country music in the background and Jennifer suddenly announced that she wanted to get up and dance. Whoa there girl! Little steps, little steps.

Thanks, but I have to admit that they are a little 'rough' in close-up. I think they now have several layers of paint on them, the last one applied by brush by yours truly during lockdown (nothing better to do) so it's on this year's 'to do' list to have a proper refurb done - a full strip back and powder coat by Ecosse then just hope that my hand is still steady enough to pick out the 'LOTUS' lettering again with a fine brush.

@pixelmix I might be a bit late coming to this party and you've already gone ahead and had the refurb done, but I can't recommend highly enough Ecosse Powder Coating in Broxburn. https://www.ecossepowdercoating.com/ I had mine done back in 2015 by TWS in Edinburgh (and also lost a locking wheel bolt soon after - there's a shocker) but after a couple of years they were again starting to look a bit scruffy from just roadrash, never having 'visited' a kerb. Several of the guys/gals at a local multi-club breakfast meet suggested I go speak to Simon at Ecosse and what a job he did. From his standpoint, it's too good a job as 6 years later, they still look virtually as good as the day he did them. His prices are very reasonable - obviously they'll have gone up a bit since I had mine done in 2017 but back then I paid £220 for the 4 (2 x 18" and 2 x 19") in high-gloss Piano Black (sorry, ), but he does pretty much every colour and shade imaginable although some do carry a slight price premium. This pic was taken just last year so looking not bad at all after 5 years and 40k miles of use,

Well, that's exactly one year ago today that Jennifer suffered her stroke. Not exactly how we want to remember Valentine's Day, so I spoiled her rotten to focus on the fun bits of the day - a huge bunch of mixed roses and lilies, and an equally huge selection of her favourite chocs. More importantly, over the past week or so she's got back her appetite that went AWOL when she caught the flu bug that was doing the rounds at the turn of the year. In fact, a couple of days ago she did an 'Oliver Twist' and asked for seconds, . There's still a fair way to go to regain the weight loss of the past month but I'm pleased to say that she has put on 6lbs (2.7kg) in 7 days so that's a good start towards the ultimate goal of getting her back to where she was last February. Meantime, we're keeping the exercising a bit low-key until her muscle mass is restored with only a couple of seated exercise sessions a week and a 10 minutes maximum session on the exercise machine every other day. Hopefully we'll get Jennifer back up to speed on her physio before too long but we'll maybe delay the Tour de France entry until next year, .

That's true - SP were in a league of their own in the customer dis-service stakes. Actual meter readings now substituted by Octopus in place of the estimates that they keep using regardless, and lo and behold, the adjusted bill is now £327.67. Still way up on a year ago but half what they were trying to get me to part with last week so I suppose that makes it semi-palatable.

My chosen repairer (big shout out for Protek, Bathgate) has been brilliant in this respect. My insurer on the other hand was a complete waste of space and wanted the car declared a 'total loss' before anyone had actually looked at it. I told them to close the file as 'For Information Only' and dealt with everything, including tracking down the at-fault driver, myself from then on.

FTFY, .

Most of your points raised have been covered quite comprehensively by others already. About the only additional input I can make is on this subject. Sometimes, the rubber 'string' that tethers the fuel cap to stop it going walkabout can become twisted and coil itself around the hinge/locking/opening mechanism resulting in the issue you describe. It's simply a matter of untwisting it and watching in future that you don't repeatedly rotate the 'string' each time the cap is removed. As has already been mentioned with regards to closing the flap, applying pressure at the hinge end is more successful. While on the subject of the fuel flap, another little quirk (sorry, I mean feature) that you may discover is that on pressing the button, the flap does tend to pop open with excessive enthusiasm which can result in it literally bouncing off the bodywork at the hinge end. I cured this with a little 'surgery'. If you look inside the red circle in the photo, you'll see 2 tiny springs. Carefully remove 1 of these and the flap will only flick up enough to clear the bodywork and you can then stick a finger in under the slightly-open end of the flap and raise it fully manually. p.s. I've got a 2010 NA, bought in 2015 with 32k miles on the clock and is now sitting on 88k miles. Apart from 1 occasion when it briefly went into limp mode due to a fill of rubbish fuel, it has performed faultlessly all this time and even now I have a grin to rival a Cheshire cat every time I get in it, .

I took our 2 dogs into the nursing home today. Jennifer really enjoyed seeing them, as did most of the other residents and staff members and the 2 'pups' lapped up all the attention. On the way out, the path to the car park runs alongside a grassed area in front of some of the rooms, separated from it by a low stone wall. I noticed a woman standing outside one of windows, talking to someone inside but thought nothing of it other than that it was strange she didn't just go in out of the cold. A few moments later, the reason was revealed. From out of the shrubbery in the border below the window emerged 3 Yorkshire Terriers and their ringleader, a Shih Tzu, or as I tend to refer to them, a Little Shit - apologies to anyone with a well-adjusted individual of this breed but all the ones round these parts seem to deserve my name for them. The 'Gang of 4' rushed over to the wall, barking and snarling, turning somersaults and leaping up at the wall. My 2 responded by stepping their front paws up onto the top of the wall, leaning down towards the little yaps and the younger of my 2, who is still a bit nervous around dogs she doesn't know, gave a couple of deep, short, warning to back-off barks before they both returned all 4 paws to the pavement. As we continued our walk towards the car, accompanied by the yapping brigade keeping pace with us on the other side of the wall, the woman supposedly in charge of them who had been shouting herself hoarse but getting zero recall response from her 'charges', decided that she'd better come over and physically retrieve them - no easy task as they were running circles around her but she eventually managed at least to scoop up the Yorkies into her arms. Did she offer anything by way of an apology for her out-of-control pooches? Did she cocoa, and instead rounded on me saying that I shouldn't be bringing dogs like mine into the home as they'll intimidate and frighten any smaller dogs that might be around. The resident she had been talking to through the window was apparently now upset to the point of being traumatised as she believed my 2 were wolves that going to make an afternoon snack of the yaps. I simply walked on, shaking my head, although I did offer to provide her with the details of an excellent dog trainer who might be able to inject some of the social skills 'her' 4 were clearly lacking. Her response to that is . After putting our 2 into the car, I went back inside to spend a bit more 1-2-1 time with Jennifer and the Duty Manager came over to me. She said that, on hearing the commotion outside, she'd gone to a window to see what was going on and wasn't surprised to see the identity of the perpetrators. Apparently, that's why their visits are now confined to outdoors only as they've caused disruption in the past when allowed inside, whereas ours have had and will continue to have unrestricted 'access all areas' within the complex.

@100th_Idiot Glad you've got yours sorted. I'm still waiting on mine but compared to you, it happened fairly recently - September, . Similar scenario to you too, in several areas. Other party's insurance pushing to get the job done at their authorised repairer, who when they phoned me to make an appointment, didn't even realise that they were going to be dealing with GRP and carbon fibre with alloy substructures so that filled me with confidence, NOT! My own selected repairer submitted the estimate and the insurer clearly fell off their chair at the £10k+ figure so pushed for repair not replace. Still waiting on their answer as to how you can repair shattered sections of exposed CF. They eventually relented and authorised replacement panels which are now on order so it's just a case of playing the waiting game while another vein of Unobtainium ore is located, mined and processed.

Our house is relatively modern (1997), triple-glazed (fitted 3 years ago) and heavily insulated (also done 3 years ago), with a newish boiler (installed 4 years ago) and, recently, LED bulbs throughout (apart from the outside security lights that I posted about in the 'Unhappy' thread) so it should now be about as economical to heat and light as you can get. I've turned down the main thermostats and the boiler core temperature and reduced the times that the CH is on, like they recommend, and yet according to their estimated readings I'm now using twice the kWh I was 5 years ago. All I'm asking is that they use the actual meter readings which I submit to them every month, several days before their cut-off point for doing this yet they keep using estimates and I have to persuade them to use what I sent them. Maybe they think what they're trying to bill this month will be acceptable to me because it's about half what they originally tried to get for December (£1495 odd) but it's still double the figure to which they eventually amended the bill (£367 bar a few pence). By my calculations, using the correct readings, January should be about the same or even slightly less than that. After holding for about an hour, I eventually got to speak to them yesterday and they said that they'd amend the billing but I'm still waiting to see that happen - apparently in this modern age of instant everything, it can take up to 5 days for changes to appear on an account, . As I said in my previous post, if you're trying to force me into installing a supposed smart meter Octopus, you're further away from success in that department then you ever were, just on principle if nothing else as you've now fired-up my stubborn streak, .

Dual fuel bill from Octopus for January - £754.36. Get to F...............alkirk! It's a 3-bed bungalow, not Blenheim Palace. If I was depending solely on the State Pension for income, that would leave me a few pence over £85 to survive on for the month, . Oh, but wait a minute. Maybe I've over-reacted. Ah, so once you take off the government subsidy of £67 and the Octopus 'Customer Service Gesture' of £1.52 (their generosity knows no bounds, ), I only need to pay £685.84. That's all right then. Phew! Yet again, they've ignored the meter readings I submitted and used estimates instead - if they think that by continually doing this I'm going to relent and be 'persuaded' into installing a (not-so) smart meter, then they've got another think coming. Sitting 'on hold' for my call that's "important to them" to be answered as I write this.