WorcsWuss

I like the look of the Al Ko mowers, so much so I'm going to take my Efco into the dealer tomorrow to see what I can get as a PX against one.... I reckon this one will do me fine....! AL-KO 51BRA Comfort Lawnmower

Best ones I've come across... A girl recently from the gas board, Claire Mycock.... not that funny until you ask for her email, I heard the boss spit his coffee when she told him C mycock... 'I bet you get that a lot.....' I've had emails recently from an Anil Bhanger, that one still makes me laugh, and we used to deal with an Anil Mistry...

You can contra-charge sub-contract labour but you're on shaky ground docking wages. If I were you I would write an official purchase order to each subbie stating their rate, travelling expenses, expected hours etc and note that damage to equipment will be contra-charged. I think you might have to stand plants getting trampled etc, that's just one of those things....

You need to stick to diddling little old ladies Pete...

Where abouts are you in the county? Not sure about the test, my mate did the test itself down Ross way I think, but there are a couple of guys I know out by Tenbury who do the training, both good.

At that price I can't see how you could fail! If it dies it surely won't be before it's saved you 200 quid's worth of professional's charges. And the beauty of your own garden is you can pretty well try whatever the hell you like, so crack on.... I can't wait to be able to afford to move house again so I can buy somewhere that needs knocking into shape.... There's little more satisfying than turning something overgrown into something beautiful....

It's in the transfer box rather than the axle. It can be disconnected [it's what they did in some D2's] but I would suggest your problem is more than likely to be a worn linkage or similar... If you send me your email address I'll send you the proper LR workshop manual for the transfer box.....

Thanks Rog, so I don't need to rush through mine before next year to beat anything I'm likely to want....

This one has a cable operated main stick with separate sticks for boom & 3rd service, no digital proportional controls, they come on machines designated LSU I think which have load sensing hydraulics. Modern machines have less sheet metal work on them and more drawn sections and plastic so are less susceptible to the rot which destroyed wings, mudguards, cab frames and doors on earlier machines. Can't really comment on not buying from a stock farm, ours is a small mixed unit and it does bugger all, there are arable farms which will destroy pumps & torque convertors hauling fully loaded bale trailers or seed out to fields, you takes your pick really, clean and worn out or dirty and potentially worn out!

We have a 2001 Manitou 526 Turbo, brilliant little machine, ours is on huge boots so it's good out on the fields, but round a yard you can shrink them quite considerably with smaller wheel equipment. 2 & half tonne lift, 5m boom, Perkins engine. Lovely tools...

Were you contracting to someone in the construction industry by any chance? There was a big change a few years ago to try to combat tax avoidance through cash payments etc. If you work for a company registered under CIS they will need your UTR number to enable them to pay you the full invoice without deducting tax at source. If you don't have a UTR number then they are legally obliged to stop 20% off your invoice and pay it directly to HMRC, if they forget to stop it they're still liable for the tax....

Well done Rob! Looks lovely mate! [Although those boots are a little big for my taste and I prefer the deep dish alloys....!]

I have a Tanaka version, cheap and cheerful, oiler is crap, leaks when it's hanging on a strop, engine's strong enough but it's no Stihl to start. AV is actually very good in effectiveness but I'm yet to be convinced of longevity [still going mind you] It's quite nicely balanced but it's bulky compared to the Stihl. In fact it's probably about £200 less of a saw, so take your choice really. That said, it's no Zomax either! I'm happy with mine for how much I use it. If I was on it every day I'd go for the Stihl though....

Dave123's comments about spending on something you don't want are exactly right... We're on a job at the moment, DB9 in the garage, client haggling over something very minor which they do need but don't have any emotional desire for, but they just went out and splurged on a hot tub for probably 10 times the value of the essential thing... it's human nature though... Most people would rather spend money on a new TV than tree work, or digging out and repairing stinky knackered drains, re-pointing the walls, fixing leaky gutters.... Ref tree surgery being dangerous, shall we say no more or less dangerous than delivering fuel....? Don't know many tree surgeons who earn £50-odd-k... I reckon that for the investment and the graft most tree surgeons are vastly under-valued and under-paid. This is just an observation I have made from dabbling myself and employing people in the construction industry.... £150 a day for a ceiling fixer? No special insurance, no special tools, no expensive training and certification... rock up, clip some ceilings together.... To my mind a tree surgeon should earn a lot more... Don't think they do though....

Rob, ignore all the comments on what to pay for this truck... and here's why. 300 shape Discos have shot up in value in the last 18 months, so unless anyone has bought one in the last couple of months they're going to be vastly underestimating the value of the car. This is because they're cheap to fix and good ones [which this one is] are few and far between. If the mileage is genuine then it's highly unlikely that you will find another one that low any time soon. The rot in the boot floor is very minor, mine is worse and that flew through it's recent MOT with no advisories. I just wire brushed it down last week, Kurusted it and painted it over with silver primer. It will need doing eventually but not for a while. The rot in the outer arches is also nothing spectacular. My boss just bought one which compared to this is rotten as a pear, has a months MOT left and is nowhere near as tidy for £750, which we think is a bargain. The bits to repair the arches and sills are cheap, they're nice to work on, nice to drive and if I was you I'd take my £1700 quid down there, buy the bloody thing and be perfectly satisified that I'd done exactly the right thing and got a good deal. I paid £900 for mine [albeit a V8] with 6 months tax & a year's MOT, but that was nearly 3 years ago, I'd get pushing for double that now. With the hard winters and regular flooding, these 300 Discoveries have become incredibly popular with people looking for a decent but inexpensive family car which will shrug off all these recent weather patterns. You've got a lot more competition now and the dealer is absolutely right, someone will pay £2k for it. You've already decided it's the right car and I'm inclined to agree completely... get in there....

When I use one I pay my groundie in biscuits and sage advice. This is very tax efficient for all involved.....

A's for me, god knows I struggle enough to drag my unfit ar&e up there as it is.... But then I always kill the saw when it's hanging from a strop, and I always aim for nice work positioning where I can sit in my harness and use the saw in front of me... so if there comes a time when I need to protect the back of my legs then it's definitely time for me to put all my gear on eBay and quit while I'm ahead... and not a headless corpse...

It's always happened Will. Restrictions won't stop human error.... I've had friends killed in 1 litre engined cars in broad daylight. Accidents happen, but when we're young most of us think we're invincible, and thought for the consequences comes too late. Insurance for young people is already ridiculously high, I think pricing young kids off the road isn't the answer, besides it's more often those for whom money is no object who have the accidents anyway, in fast cars Daddy pays for. Making it so expensive to drive that young kids, who leave school and want to take apprecticeships for instance, are unable to get to work won't help anything in my view.... Death on the roads is a sad fact of life but one we'll never completely eradicate. My thoughts are with the lads' families and I just pray this never happens to any of my kids....

Hi Rog As others have said, good threads. I have a simple question of economics and the test. I have been towing trailers since I started driving tractors as a child, trailer handling is fine. I was one of those who unfortunately passed the test in the first year of B only entitlement, when the rules were still not fully understood, and as such I was sent all over the country by my then employers with trailers which, with hindsight and subsequently acquired knowlede, were far beyond that which I was legal to tow. I have a good deal of experience then at real world trailer handling, but I'd like to know how much of the test is actually down to pulling the trailer? I'm reluctant to go on a course to learn something I learned by doing many years ago just because some cretins in Brussels decided that cretins who crash caravans need a license [although I'm pretty sure those who need the test the most actually escaped it...] Question is, would I be wildly cavalier to book in for a test without any training in how to pass it, or is the test really as straight forward as I'm told it is by those who have done it...? Does anyone know of a video on the web which follows a test so I can see whether it's a genuinely effective way of weeding out the dangerous or just a massive load of cash generating tosh..? Sorry, the lack of B+E on my license is one of the things which p***** me off more than anything else....!

B&Q sell bathroom sealant remover, just wipe on, wipe off, that might work. If it's adhesive residue, try to get hold of some 'Big Wipes' squirty super duper cleaner stuff, can't remember the exact name, I have a bottle of it, it's bloody marvellous stuff....

Cheers Jon... just hope it's reliable, got a year's warranty to shake it down though! I was looking at tyres yesterday Matt, the ones that are on there are £210 each + VAT.... so I don't think I'll be having those again.....! Was trying to get the new General AT's but not sure if they come in a 20" yet, they do as a 19".... will have a look for the Wranglers.... Sadly [?! I'm not that devastated mind you!] it's a TD6.... I had a couple of 2008 ish TDV8's lined up to look at which is what I really wanted, but they're all £475 a year road tax, plus any at main dealers were out of my price range... this TD6 came up at Stratstone LR, so if they'd decided it was good enough to retail and were willing to put a years warranty on it then I had to have a punt. It's £270 a year tax too being just before the March 06 increase... I made up for the missing TDV8 with a Vogue SE instead, so everything on it, and it will shortly be JE re-mapped which will add another 45 ish brake and nearly 100nm of torque, kind of halfway to a TDV8.....

Blimey.... I can see me ending up tied in knots and dangling in mid air with no hope of escape if I tried that....! Presumably at some point in this process the line you're hanging on will become crossed over with the line you're descending on...? Or are they the same line, so if you do lose your footing and don't have a strop on as well [which presumably you couldn't or that would get tangled up too] you'll tumble by however much slack you've pulled out to step through....? When I wanted to shoot down for a sandwich... [or a pee, more frequently] I found a branch [easy in a tree], oiked myself up a bit to put some slack in my line, pulled the 8 into the slack then clip onto the bridge with a crab.... very quick, certainly quicker than climbing through massive bights.... To be honest though, since swapping to a VT though I haven't bothered with the 8.....

Another one for the fleet... I'd ordered a new 525d as a company car, but the boss asked if I'd prefer to opt out and take an allowance instead..... So I opted out and did what I've been trying to do for the last 18 months.... This time I got it past the wife... just...

Likewise, I can't see how to change over from hitch to 8 without either taking it off the bridge or threading the line through from the loose end.... going to be 90 degrees out as well....

Jon, all cars break down sometimes mate, I've seen Priuses [Prii???] Navaras, Civics, 7 series, A4's, ML's all sorts or everything on the back of tow trucks at some point.... even Land Cruisers! But I wouldn't say they're all rubbish because of that....! Ref the D3 question, great truck, but to put it into perspective I just bought a Range Rover instead as I reckon they're more reliable... If you can I'd save a few more pennies and go for a D4 [i couldn't], while the 3 is good there are bad ones out there, the D4 seems to have shaken that problem and in my experience is a fantastic vehicle. My boss has a 59 plate 3.0 GS auto he bought new, racked up a few miles now and never missed a beat. His previous 55 plate D3 HSE V8 did give quite a few problems.... Find a D4 mate...