openspaceman

It may be easier to replace the lot https://www.ks-international.com/isuzu-4x4-and-truck-parts/isuzu-4x4-parts/isuzu-pick-up-parts/isuzu-d-max-tfs86-2-5td-2006-05-2012/clutch.html

Possibly worn master cylinder seals. This won't show a leak as the fluid returns to the reservoir. Symptoms include the clutch gradually engaging when in gear and the pedal down. Also a vigorous stamp operates the clutch but a gentle push doesn't

I'm so used to seeing P schweinitzii on pines but your L sulphureus identification makes more sense if it's on yew

Thanks for the correction, is the tree actually a yew?

A good point as even if its's not chipping it's moving a lot of air and that takes power. In fact a petrol engine at peak torque is more efficient than a diesel, it's less efficient when idling so run in batches rather than kept dribbling bits in should be better fuel use.

http://en.oregonproducts.com/pro/products/bars/prolite_bars.htm is one at least that is slightly ambiguous as it lists replacement sprocket kit under features where it should probably add "available"

It looks like a young dyer's mazegill, Phaeolus schweinitzii, common on older scots pine

Here is a picture of trees in our high street which were shredded up one side and topped quite a few years ago. I don't know the whys or wherefores about the job but it looked stark and ugly for a long time. It still doesn't look good but I'm surprised how the greenery from branches on the untouched side has grown through and softened the appearance. Were I the owner and given the house is just behind the trees I would have bitten the bullet and had the lot out as they are to the south of the garden .

I very much doubt it, the chances of the flywheel being close enough to still run after it has sheared are minimal. If the nut is tight and you can still see the key and it runs it ain't broke. The key is not what holds the flywheel in position, it just locates it and it's the taper and nut that fixes it. This is why you can file some off the key to advance the ignition and it doesn't affect the hold.

Not of suing anyone with PI for negligence but a bit where an insurance company defended a claim, and lost, at great expence.

...and the PI just offsets their cost should you choose to sue for the negligent advice in the unlikely case you can prove it.

This is unlikely in english elm as there is no genetic diversity, all trees are the same clone. Mind there seems to be different english elms as 2002 in Boston (Mass not Lincs) Common (it's not a common) there were trees labelled Ulmus Procera leaves of which which weren't similar to those here.

Me too for short sight but I found I needed reading glasses as well at about 50. Now in good light I can pass the driving test without glasses but need something a bit stronger than reading glasses for close in work.

Have you weighed it? How much fuel? Were you in the cab and was it carrying a spare wheel or truck top? In seven years of working with a fleet of 50 vehicles, half of which were non car-derived commercials, none were stopped for exceeding 50 on single carriageways (or 40 as was the rule) or 60 on dual carriageway. By far the most frequent offence was exceeding 50 in roadworks on a motorway. As I have not heard of anyone found guilty of this offence and you can only find this out if a court report appears in a paper (the police are excused answering questions about speeding offences under FOI requests) my guess is that if you are caught for a higher speeding offence e.g. exceeding 70 on a dual carriageway then you get a more severe penalty than doing the same in a car. Since following the DPV thread on here I have been taking note of commercial vehicle speeds and can say on single carriageways most small commercial vehicles keep up with the traffic if it's a major road and that's mostly between 50 and just under 60mph.

I started at the tail end of the elm disease, so there were a lot of long dead elms to fell for a few years. The thing was the elm retained a lot of their strength, the fibres were strong and hinges worked well. Also branches seldom shed during felling. I feel ash will be a very different kettle of fish as it will have deteriorated well before the decision to fell. The fibres will fail short and the hinge won't stand wedges (and the vibration from hammering them may well cause branches to shed).

You mean he farmed the new piece of land? Yes it looks like someone was a bit economical with what they conveyed.

Never needed to change one on a transit but it's straightforward on most engines as long as you note the timing marks and/or lock the gears from moving. The tensioning is usually a matter of releasing a bolt on a idle pulley which is spring loaded, the spring sets the tension and then you tighten the bolt again. We did have one snap at 100k miles (we think the driver was joining the motorway flat out in 4th and slipped it into 3rd instead of 5th). Once the chain isn't controlling the valves some of them are open and get smacked by the pistons. Parts for the repair exceed the cost of a new engine from Ford (£2000 a couple of years ago) even though there was no distinguishable bore or bearing wear.

Most of all never hit an axe with a hammer, it can cause the eye to split out but grind mushroomed bits off before they fly off.

Grind off the mushrooms or use a gas axe to do it When I started work it was with a couple of 65 year old veterans who worked together during the war, when felling was a reserved occupation. Fred was the feller and Ted the assistant, Ted only had one eye as a bit had come off a felling wedge and hit the other one. Similarly my late mate on the same firm lost the use of his eye from a wedge splinter within the last 10 years

Well as you know I'm a fan of super capacitors and my brother, a carbon scientist, talks of ultra capacitors made of plates of graphene that will offer astonishing energy densities but as yet no one can produce a sheet of graphene bigger than a box of matches and they will need km2 sheets. Also super capacitors are very voltage limited so the array would need lots of them. What I don't know is how much start up current is required, I used to help out on a Stenner 72" bandsaw which ran off the diesel engine from a U boat and that seemed to take ages to switch from star to delta. Presumably the 6 times inrush current to run current decays fairly linearly as the motor gains speed so if it takes 10 seconds that's an average of 3 times the run current for 10 seconds. so your 20kW motor at 380V will need an average extra 100 amps for 10 seconds. That looks like 0.1kWh so may well already be possible with super capacitors.

This is sort of what I was suggesting on the Tesla powerbank thread, the battery-inverter could provide 5kW of extra start up capacity and then the optimum sized diesel provide the running power. The difference in price between a 10kVA genset and a 3kVA one justifying the powerbank cost. Problem is it isn't currently stand alone.

On a related note, a primary school friend used to help his father after school cutting kindling from orange crates, by hand, they had a small lever device which the stiks were laid in and then compressed so they could be banded with string or wire at both ends and sold as pimps. His sister burned the device when she moved into the family home but I recovered the metalwork from the ashes and I think he still has it.

Pete is right but the D&A test is only part of the medical, they test hearing, as you have to be able to hear warnings, sight, particularly colour blindness to red and green and general health, blood pressure, balance, touch toes (I never could) etc. As Pete implies I can see no advantage in getting the PTS competency unless you have a job offer, in which case the company will be your primary sponsor and organise the courses and medical. In my old company it wasn't unusual to have to repay the training expenses you left within a given period, I was never sure how this stood with employment laws.

700C is very hot for a steel walled retort because at that temperature the steel will oxidise on the outside at least. Most of the mass loss is in the temperature range 330C to <500C above 800C the char is almost pure carbon and only 15% of the dry weight of wood used, depending on species. Batch retorts (i.e. those that you initially heat with other means and then they burn their own offgas to sustain the temperature) have given off most of the gaseous pyrolysis products by ~450 C so there is no more fuel to sustain the pyrolysls, as above about 460C the char undergoes a change which requires energy input it tends to not exceed this temperature in the absence of other heat input. This lower temperature char thus still contains some tars which need to be burnt in a flame else they smoke which makes it poor for indoor cooking (indoor use of charcoal is unwise because of the risk of CO but it happens in many less developed urban areas where a wood fire and associated smoke en mass is unacceptable) . From the little I have seen of imported hardwood charcoal it typically is much denser than ours and made at higher temperature, so it is harder to light, burns more slowly and gives off little or no smoke. Incidentally it is the fat dripping onto the hot coals, being partially burnt and then condensing on the food that makes flame grilled meat a source of VOCs and free radicals which are best not eaten regularly.

Hotter drives off more volatiles and increases the fixed carbon content. So hotter means less yield but higher carbon content. Carbon has a higher calorific content per kg than wood. Retorts tend to self limit their temperature because the process goes back to endothermic above about 440C as the structure of the char matrix begins to change and most of the evolution of the hydrogen and oxygen containing species has finished so the exothermic reactions of the initial pyrolysis products splitting and cracking has finished. Char from the centre of a traditional burn is subject to higher temperatures as it is in direct contact with the combustion process. I'm not sure where most imports come from but in those urban areas in countries that still depend on charcoal for cooking our sort of easy lighting , flaming barbecue charcoal is not acceptable because flames mean lots of volatiles still present, so they want denser harder charcoal that burns with a flameless, smokeless heat.