u/pbrmason

I want to pay tribute to the humble banger.

We recently sold our diesel SUV since we’d stopped driving long distances after our little one arrived and with diesel going through the roof. For a long while we were planning to get a used EV to make use of our new driveway, but at the last minute we changed course because I had second thoughts about dropping £16k on a car which is going to have to do a lot of renovation grunt work for the next year or so. Instead, we got a 2011 Grand C-Max (1.6 petrol - not ecoboom) with 125k on the clock for 1/8th of our original budget.

Now I love this car. It’s got loads of useable space and handy sliding doors, it’s been well looked after and seems mechanically sound (got a new timing belt at 90k and sailed through the MOT without any advisories), plus it’s somehow narrower than the Karoq which is a major asset for someone who resents the gravitational pull of ever larger cars.

Obviously the fuel costs will be a lot higher than a home-charged EV, but the upfront saving will make a massive difference to our lives in the short to medium-term. Plus the insurance group is significant lower than most of the EVs we were considering. So I’m suddenly looking at cars through new eyes: why on earth have I spent the last 15 years wilfully ignoring the banger option? Obviously some older cars warrant the moniker, but I have radically underpriced the risk/reward of that end of the market. Not anymore!

First time since the inaugural event for me and I wasn’t prepared for how much it had grown. The organisation was flawless and the support impressively vociferous. Well done everyone 👏

I think the final chapter is unparalleled in English literature as a piece of climactic anti-climax. I just know I’m going to be wondering about Smiley for the next week and whether it was worth it. Just incredible writing.

I wonder what this means for the conversion of the Gatehouse?

We’re doing our due diligence on a semi-detached house we’re looking to buy. Our homebuyers survey identified a horizontal split in one of the purlins in the roof space and advised we commission a structural engineer to inspect it. There was a picture below showing the split, albeit pretty small and not very hi-res. So we pay a good wedge for a structural engineer to go and take a look last week and he reports back that there was no split, just a wire that had been attached to a roof beam! And it doesn’t even look like a split based on the engineer’s picture - it’s clearly lifted above the beam in places and you can see the staples holding it in place. He said he spent a while inspecting the whole roof trying to the find a split and it was only when he checked the original report that he realised the surveyor had mistaken the wire for a split. My guess is the surveyor just took a few pictures and pumped them into a chatbot to help write the report, which has misidentified the wire as a split.

Suffice to say we’re not best pleased. We’ve flagged it with the surveying firm and are waiting for their response, but we’re asking them to reimburse the full cost of the structural engineer report. Has anyone else had a similar experience and had any success getting anything back from the surveyor?