My RingGo Ordeal (by alaric)

Many months ago, I happened to park my red van in a car park in Swindon, that had a facility to pay by card over the phone. Which was great, because I didn't have enough cash for the ticket. All was well.

But then today, I parked my new orange van in a car park in Stroud, that has the same facility provided by the same operator. So when I ring the number, it recognises me, and says "To park your red Ford Transit, registration censored, in location some number, please press 1; to park elsewhere, press 2".

So I press 2. And it asks me the number of my location (a number printed on the sign). And it asks me for payment details. Then it says "Thanks! You now have a parking ticket! If you want to contact us, check out our web site on www.myringgo.com!" And hangs up.

I note that it hasn't asked me my vehicle registration; in other words, it's assumed I'm still in the same vehicle since I rang from the same number, and gave me no option to do otherwise. It didn't even actually confirm what I was paying for; it said what the parking would cost, but otherwise just asked me questions, and never said "Ok, are you sure you want to pay amount on this card to park registration in location for three days?" - so I continued through the process, expecting to be asked if it was the same vehicle or if I had a new one, and then suddenly found myself hung up and having paid to park the wrong van.

Anyway, my train is then arriving, so I jump on it, open my laptop, and connect to the wonders of the Mobile Internet: 25% packet loss and an average ping round trip time of 15,000ms (yes, fifteen seconds) but sometimes 80,000ms (yes, a minute and twenty seconds). I go to said URL, and it's reasonably usable; but once I've had my PIN sent to my mobile and logged in, it switches to SSL.

SSL, it seems, is highly latency sensitive, since it then proceeds to take five to ten minutes to load each page, as I excruciatingly navigate their menus. I find a list of vehicles, and lo, there's my red van listed - and marked as "locked" since it's currently got an active parking session, so it can't be edited. But it suggests that you can use the Contact Us form to ask them to edit a locked vehicle for you. There's no number to ring apart from the number to talk to the automated booking system that assumes I'm still in a red van; so I go to the form, and have to jump through all the hoops of the automated systems that try and stop people from actually talking to a human, confirming I've read the FAQs and all that (thankfully, the FAQs are on plain HTTP, so quite usable), and of course having to choose my type of query from a list (where most of the options try and direct you to a FAQ or another part of the site).

There's an option for Incorrect Vehicle! So I go for that. And lo, it takes me to the page to edit my vehicles, telling me I can't edit my red van because it's currently parked. So I had to go back through the system to try and find a generic problem type that will get me to a human, then submit a query. I submit the form, and it says they'll get back to me.

If they've clamped or towed my van when I get back, or try and fine me, I'll be ANGRY...

UPDATES: See the comments for the ONGOING STORY!

Getting Lost With Dad (by sarah)

Today me, dad and Jean went out to find an oil filler cap for his car and do other sundry errands. We got abit lost around the village of Staverton and Dad was panicking abit so I took over the navagation and between the two of us we found our way.

Dad hates getting lost and was actually panicking but then we found this lovely church and we stopped to take photos and look and the map and suddenly it turned into a lovely outing.

The sun was shining and there was lovely blossoms on the trees and lots of flowers - orange tipped butterflies and the like. We did our chores and then decided to head to Gloucester docks for an actual outing.

Jean loves the boats and spent an age just walking around looking at them all - dad carrying my lavander sparkly tote bag which caused lots of hilarity in the shop were I bought him and Jean an ice-cream (I'm still too sick for things like ice-cream). We sat watching the ducks whilst they ate the ice creams with Jean changing her mind every few minutes as to which seat we should be sitting on!

Jean got a bit upset that the ducks would 'full over' the stuff in the water - this was the litter that people had dropped in the water - she was most indignant about this 🙂

We watched one of the narrow boats in a lock that was filling very very slowely - the men looked grumpy and didn't wave at JEan though she was proclaiming she wanted to live on a boat!

We then went into the antiques place where Jean decided she only wanted to look at the Dr Who stuff! Though we found a 'pretty light' in a room full of stuff that looked like I'd been let loose with ceramics! Jean loves all the old furniture and was more interested in going in and looking at the 'pretties' which were all chest and things than looking at the dinky toys or the ty toys with dad which was a suprise.

And then I made a mistake - I wanted a cup of tea and JEan asked for something to eat and selected a packet of quavers - sure if we share them I said and we did and Jeans mood changed to one of complete horrible small whirling dervish! I was so embarressed as she shouted she wasn't stupid and stuff and ran off.

We left - Jean in disgrace and me vowing to check out exactly what is in quavers and feeling slightly guilty that I didn't check the ingredients when I know that one of the red food colourings is bad for her behaviour etc...

On the way out though we saw a youth-dude hanging upside down from the ancient crain - so I tried to take a pick but he moved as I was getting the camera out!

I was a sad that Jean's behaviour had deteriated so much we were going home as punishment when we had been going to go to a country park for her to run around and stuff - never mind though it was a nice day over all.

From Snowed-in In London…. (by sarah)

We are under snow here and with the van at least the roads are impassable so we are stuck!

I will probably take quadzillions of photos whilst this lot lasts so you have been warned. Turned out Barbara managed to crash her car (not badly) whilst we were away which isn't good 🙁 And we have had to cancel scouts which is sad too. The school is also apparently closed.

Getting home last night was not fun - we almost couldn't get the van down into the valley - the road across the common ways inch thick compacted ice with snow on top and trecherous.

It off course started snowing on our way home - we had waited to see if we would be ok going home.

Conditions rapidly deteriated.

Once it got really bad I couldn't take pics as the light levels were simply too low.

Sump plug woes (by alaric)

It's time I changed the oil (and the oil filter) in the van, since it's been over a year now.

So I bought myself some new oil, and a new oil filter, and prepared to do the deed according to the instructions in my Haynes manual.

The first step is removing the plug in the bottom of the oil sump, that lets the oil out. It looks like this:

Naturally, when you remove it, lots of hot oil comes running out (you do this with the engine warm so the oil flows well). So you do it with a bucket underneath!

However, I've not gotten as far as that step yet, because the head of the sump plug (which is hexagonal, like a bolt) is rounded. You can see in the pictures how the corners of the hexagon have all come off. They're shiny where I've been trying to grab them with a spanner, which just rotates when I apply enough force... and it doesn't take very much force.

So I went out and bought a special thing for undoing damaged nuts and bolts. It'll make a mess of the sump plug, so I bought a new sump plug, too. The magical nut remover looks like this:

The spiral grooves inside are rifled so that when you put it onto a nut and turn it (such as with the big adjustable spanner in the background), the points grip into the metal of the nut, and the spiral pulls the socket onto the nut as it twists it out, so that it can't push the socket off. Most stripped nuts and bolt heads are rounded towards the top, so tend to push spanners and sockets off as they are twisted; this thing pulls itself onto the nut with the spiral shape, thus counteracting this.

However, my sump plug bolt head is already far enough gone that the special socket rotates on it (shaving off little curls of shiny metal as it goes) when I turn it, again with surprisingly little force - but the next size of socket down doesn't fit onto it...

Perhaps the sump plug was made out of lead or aluminium or something?!?

I guess the next thing to try would be getting under there with a file and shrinking the head down to the next size by putting new flats on it.

But, since it's freezing outside and I've nowhere inside to work on the van, and we need the van ready to do a long drive in a couple of days (which I'd rather not do with the current black oil in, in this punishing weather), I think I'm going to take it to a garage and ask them to sort it out for me... I can give them the oil, the oil filter and the replacement sump plug I've already bought and just ask them to do the hard part!

The van is fixed! (by alaric)

After the van's sad demise, it went off to Sarah's excellent uncle David to be fixed.

Anyway, he sorted it out, and I picked it up last weekend, but I've only had a moment to write about it now!

Basically, the front right wishbone had broken. It's a big triangular metal thing that attaches to the chassis on two hinges, and then attaches to the wheel at the other end, with the shock absorber coming down into the middle. As the van rides over bumps, it pivots on the hinges, regulated by the shock absorber. So it plays an important part in supporting the weight of the van.

However, knowing I'd be interested, after replacing it with a new one, David put the broken one in the van for me to take a look at!

I'd have expected something like this to be a solid casting - but no, it's two pressed sheet steel shapes welded together, making a hollow body. It looks like thick steel, 3mm or so, but near where it's cracked apart, it's more like 1mm. I presume that's due to corrosion over the years.

Here's the new one - in situ, under the van. It's the shinier, blacker, cleaner looking part, although it's already picked up quite a bit of mud.

The old one is now in the little garage, awaiting cutting apart to investigate its construction and exact reason for failure, then WELDING PRACTICE!