Kung Flu, Imaginary variants, the media and Boris bloody Johnson. . .

[Phil Perry]

A good take on the chaos from Alex Bellfield.

 

 

[old man emu]

He's quite right about the stairs in English houses being death traps. It's sometimes safer to climb a ladder to an open upstairs window than it is to come back down using the stairs.

 

It always amazes me while watching "Escape to the Country" that the people looking for a new place to live specify that the bedrooms are upstairs because they "couldn't imagine not going upstairs to bed". At their ages is it a case of "Nearer my God to Thee"? They are generally people who are nearing retirement, or have retired. Don't they realise that as you get older your knees and hips start objecting to climbing stairs?

 

And how much time is being wasted because you need a negative COVID test result to travel? Look at Sydney a day or so ago.

That's not peak hour traffic held up by a broken down truck. That's a queue  of people waiting to be tested. Consider the number of Person Hours being wasted there.

[Jerry_Atrick]

Jeepers.. Got my booster jab yesterday in a walk in centre (admittedly, in a relatively sleepy market town of Somerset). Bugger who administered it was a bit of a butcher, but there was parking galore.. and between leaving home about 10 miles away, stopping to get some dinner groceries (aka wine) on the way home (it is Christmas, after all), I was done in 3/4 of an hour (I was going to say 3/4 hours, but I hear there is a Christmas grammar police blitz on at the moment).

 

Re the houses upstairs. Since living here, I can't ever think of the main bedroom at the front of the single storey house (called a bungalow here). Sleeping quarters well separated from living areas is a blessing, especially with teenage kids.

 

[old man emu]

3 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

there is a Christmas grammar police blitz on at the moment

Sure is. Double Demerriment Points apply.

[Yenn]

It is a well known fact that old people who live in two storey houses are fitter than those who never need to climb stairs.

The act of going upstairs to bed means you are getting good exercise.

Another little known fact, or is it trivia is that those who have a sleep in the afternoon will be more likely to end up with dementia than those who don't snooze. So that proves that the exercise of going up to bed can be both good and bad for you.

[old man emu]

The need for a "nanny nap" mid-afternoon can be a result of sleep apnoea. You might think that you are getting a good night's sleep, but if you have apnoea, you are not breathing for short periods that over an eight hour period can add up to a couple of hours. Therefore, you body does not get the regenerative rest it needs, so it makes you have some more sleep in the afternoon.

 

Sleep apnoea is a condition of aging for most people. The muscles of the throat get weak and instead of holding your throat open, they let it collapse. If you snore it's odds-on that you have sleep apnoea. I'm glad that I had to have the test. I've been using a pressure breathing machine every night for a few years and I sleep the sleep of the Just. The only things that makes me sleepy during the day are driving on freeways that don't provide any mental stimulation, and the effects of heat and humidity that drain most people's energy.

 

If you want to get most of your energy back to go at things all day, then see your GP about arranging an apnoea test. Most sleep specialists will loan you the equipment to take home and do the test in your own bed. If you are still flying - RAA or CASA, untreated sleep apnoea will cause you to lose your certificate/licence.

[spacesailor]

I always said  ' skipping a few heartbeats ',  should save that muscle for a bit of longevity. LoL

spacesailor

[nomadpete]

I once worked alongside a terminally logical colleague.

He gave me a lift home once. I noticed he laboured the engine every time he took off, never allowing the revs to get productive. His reasoning was thus:-

The engine, like your heart, is only good for a set number of operational cycles. The less it gets used, the longer it takes to reach it's MTBF.

 

I must phone him, and see how his heart's holding up. I know the car is long gone.

[onetrack]

I can remember a story from long ago (mid '60's?) when a motoring journo wrote in a car magazine, how he hopped into an FJ Holden taxi for a trip - and the driver took off in 1st gear, got the engine to about 1200RPM - then promptly dropped the FJ into top gear, and chugged away down the street!

The journo was appalled at this "engine abuse" he'd encountered, and quizzed the taxi-driver at length about why he used that technique. Avoiding the point that it was most likely because he was simply a lazy bastard (like a lot of taxi drivers), the driver claimed the lack of engine revving, and 2nd gear avoidance, prolonged engine and transmission life - and "besides, the engine's made to lug, anyway!".

 

The journo ended up still appalled at the taxi drivers technique, and felt the drivers opinion and reasons weren't adequate, and that he was simply a lazy bastard anyway - and all the big end bearings in the FJ would be shot in 12 mths time.

But the journo never followed up with another taxi driver interview much later, as to how long that FJ engine and tranny lasted. I'll wager the FJ motor probably did 500,000 kms, and that would have been more due to the fact it rarely got cold.

 

I can recall being in an engine repair shop in the mid-1980's and the repairer had an early (red) 202-engined Commodore taxi in for a head job.

That taxi was on LPG and had done 400,000 kms, and the valves were buggered - but you couldn't see any wear in the bores, thanks to the lack of carbon in the LPG. 

[Marty_d]

1 hour ago, onetrack said:

...Commodore taxi in for a head job.

Bet the prices were the same too!

[facthunter]

Double the price in Tassie I'm told.. Anyhow valve seat recession is normal for non inserted heads. on unleaded fuel or LPG. The valves just run out of clearance and the power dies. Removing the head on those models is about  a 1/2 hour job. You often leave the manifolds and Carb sitting on the exhaust pipe and the fuel pipe and throttle linkage still connected. . Nev

[Marty_d]

Wrong way round, Nev.  2 heads = half price.

[old man emu]

15 hours ago, facthunter said:

Anyhow valve seat recession is normal for non inserted heads. on unleaded fuel or LPG.

When I did up the engine of my old Harley, I had the exhaust valve seats replaced with ones that would withstand the use of unleaded fuel. It was a cheap job. And it is only the exhaust valves seats that need to be hardened ones because it is only them that have hot gases passing over them. The intake valves seats will get as hot as the surrounding head material, but they have "cold" fuel/air passing over them whenever the valve opens. At that time there should not be any hot gasses in the cylinder, and since the cylinder is moving down, the volume of the cylinder is increasing. According to the Combined Gas Law the ratio of the product of pressure and volume and the absolute temperature of a gas is equal to a constant. 

[facthunter]

That's all true but Side valve engines will often blue exhaust pipes more than OHV's do as the combustion chamber is such a $#1tty shape. Nev

[old man emu]

Because the valves are on the side, the combustion chamber is L-shaped. This is a diagram of my 45 cu in engine, viewed from the front of the bike with the exhaust valve depicted. You can see that it is underneath the spark plug and to the side of the cylinder. So that part of the engine would be the hottest and would keep the exhaust pipe hot even before exhaust gasses has passed through.

[facthunter]

The exhaust pipe runs hotter than the engine body and the exhaust valve runs hotter again.. Take the old bus up a hill after dark and look at the pipes.  Side valve motors need the best exhaust valves you can get. the original WLA ones are pretty OK. Nev

[old man emu]

5 hours ago, facthunter said:

the original WLA ones are pretty OK.

My local supplier of NOS parts sold out a year or so ago and his stock has been spread to the four winds.

[facthunter]

Not all New OLD Stock parts are genuine, OEM standard anyhow. Some NOS is not worth using. Inlets don't require such good metal.  Nev

[old man emu]

These were indeed NOS OEM. I know because the place I was buying from had bought out the stock of a shop that had bought their stock at Army Disposal Auctions. I got my first WLA from that mob in 1968 and although I had them paint my tin in contemporary colours, there were some parts on it that still bore Army green.

[facthunter]

A lot of the Harley WD parts were done in tropic proof cardboard and wax. It protected the stuff well. They made enough parts to build 30,000 motorcycles.  I had mates who bought them in crates and prettied them up with modern paint ,colours with panniers and leather tassles... Nev