Cold Ale - The Blokes' Thread!

[Paulclem]

Yup. The Peer of the realm gets away with spying for the enemy. It was a good programme that, though I doubt if the entire Far East debacle was entirely down to him - as it tried to make out .

No doubt you're right.

There was some scandal about Edward who married Mrs Simpson conniving with the Nazis too. Reward - Carribean Island life.

Lord Lucan, that marvellous evader of justice who single handedly escaped to South Afrca comes to mind too. I'm surprised the inventor of Where's Wally didn't merge the two characters together in the 90's to produce his darker alter ego books- Where's Lucan?

[Sancho]

Oddly enough, I just started reading John LeCarre's, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Rereading actually, but the first time I was a teenager and was just looking for a thriller. Now I'm able to recognize the depth.

[Sancho]

I just thought of a great Blokes-type topic:

Suck, Squeeze, Bang, and Blow

The four-stroke internal combustion engine:



And you can still take a small-block Chevy apart with a screwdriver and a 9/16 wrench (Spanner if you’re working under the bonnet, box-end wrench if you’re working under the hood), but you’ll probably need a torque wrench to put it back together again.

[MarkBastable]

Is that Duchamp?

[prendrelemick]

We've lost that in Europe. The Grey Fergie tractors used to come with a tool kit that had one spanner in it.

The Daughter number two's car was occasionally miss-fireing so I got my tackle looked under the bonnet - there was nothing I could adjust or tinker with, I could hardly even see the engine. Worse still, they took it to a garage and they said they couldn't investigate which sensor or micro-chip was acting up without specialist Ford software. So they took it to a Ford Garage who said they'd look at it, but they had recently upgraded their diagnostic equipment and the old Mondeo might not be compatable. ( The car was 10 years old.)


To be fair, modern cars hardly ever go wrong, but I liked tinkering with the old Minis and Escorts.

[Sancho]

Is that Duchamp?

Nope, not a Duchamp, it’s a Chevrolet. Wait, hmm, were you talking to me?

Anyway, I know what you mean, Mick. Nowadays, I think, tinkering with automobile engines is strictly for hobbyists. I had a similar experience with my wife’s Honda. I lifted the hood (bonnet) and noticed the engine had a huge don’t-even-think-about-touching-me plastic shield over it. Ah well, I don’t miss adjusting the points every few hundred miles (kilometers).

You know, it was you British who gave us our standards for weights and measures, and then abandoned us for the metric system. Which king was it who had a 12 inch foot?

[ClaesGefvenberg]

To be fair, modern cars hardly ever go wrong, but I liked tinkering with the old Minis and Escorts.

I can't say that I miss the tinkering, as I used to work on an assembly line for Wheel Loaders when I was younger. I want a car to transport my bottom from A to B in a comfortable and safe way, and that's about it.

/Claes

[MarkBastable]

Nope, not a Duchamp, it’s a Chevrolet. Wait, hmm, were you talking to me?

Oh, okay. I'm not that well-versed in the French Dadaists, so I don't know Chevrolet. I just thought it might be the follow-up to these:

You know, it was you British who gave us our standards for weights and measures, and then abandoned us for the metric system. Which king was it who had a 12 inch foot?

By tradition, one of the Tudor Henrys. Unlikely though. We had that measure way before them.

Wiki: The Roman foot was introduced to Britain in the 1st century AD. The length of the Roman foot has been estimated at 296 mm or 11.65 inches. In the 5th century, the Anglo-Saxons introduced the North German foot of 335 mm (13.2 inches). The new foot was used for land measurement, while the Roman foot continued to be used in the construction crafts. Some time between 1266 and 1303 the weights and measures of England were radically revised by a law known as the Composition of Yards and Perches (Compositio ulnarum et perticarum)[38] often known as the Compositio for short. This law, attributed to either Henry III or his successor Edward I, instituted a new foot that was exactly 10/11 the length of the old foot, with corresponding reductions in the size of the yard, ell, inch, and barleycorn. Furlongs and rods, however, remained the same. The furlong remained an eighth of a mile, but changed from 600 old feet to 660 new feet. The rod remained the same length, but changed from 15 old feet to 16 1/2 new feet.

[Sancho]

Haha! Me neither. I looked at that 1st picture and thought, cool truing stand, and speaking of whom, wasn’t Peugeot was a Dadaist as well? I had a bike made by him with British tubing (Reynolds 531) all around, and Italian components (Campy). It was a sweet ride. I broke the bottom bracket on it about ten years ago, which was a tragedy; If I’d’a had a pistol, I’d’a shot it right there on the side of the road and taken it out of its misery.

They don’t make many steel bikes anymore, so I bought one of these:



It’s a sweet ride too. It was made by a company in Ohio (Airborne) from reclaimed aircraft titanium. This one has Japanese components (Shimano). The front fork and pedals are French (Look). The saddle is British (I doubt I’ll ever be able to ride on anything but a Brooks Saddle). And there’s got to be something on there that’s Italian…Oh yes, the handlebar tape is cork, by Cinelli.

And, unlike a car, you can still tinker with a bike. You can still tinker with one of these too:



Little airplane engines haven’t much changed since the 30s. It’s more cost than it’s worth to certify new innovation through the FAA. I like the simplicity of an airplane engine. Note the split crankcase, the bolt-on cylinders, upper and lower spark plugs - each set with their own magneto.

Thanks for the run-down on weights and measures, Mark. My intuition told me it was probably a Tudor – I was banking on Henry VIII, gout and all. We also like an archaic temperature scale over here, but I think Mr. Fahrenheit was Dutch.

[prendrelemick]

[QUOTE=Sancho;1143845]
You know, it was you British who gave us our standards for weights and measures, and then abandoned us for the metric system. [QUOTE]


Only after you'd bowdlerized the good olde gallon.

[Sancho]

Imperial Gallons still show up around here from time to time, but only about as often as nautical miles show up on our highway signs. The question I have is: why didn’t we coordinate with each other on which side of the road we were planning to drive on. I mean it seems like it’d’ve been an easy thing to do. A phone call between our two Transportation Secretaries would’ve solved the dilemma:

“Hey Nigel, what side of the road yous planning to drive on over there?”
“Well, Ted, our boys prefer the left side.”
“Uh-huh, well we want to drive on the right.”
“Bloody good then, what say we flip a coin.”
“I call heads.”

Problem solved.

I did all right driving in England, and it only took me a couple of laps around the round-a-bout to figure it out. But the mistake I kept making was a simple one. At a standard four-way intersection, when I wanted to turn right, and there was a car waiting at the Stop Sign there, I kept trying to make a space for myself between that car and the curb.

I had the same problem in Japan.

[prendrelemick]

Ha! A recent visitor to our shores (a fellow litnetter) said she kept doing double takes at all the moving cars with no one in the driving seat.

[Paulclem]

I've never tinkered with an engine, and I have driven a car five times with five lessons. I maintain my bike rather than tinker. At the moment I have a disintegrated pedal that I can't change myself because I can't get the old pedals off my oldest bike because they are inset with a nut and don't have a long socket to get in and undo it. That's because I don't tinker and have never had a car. Oh well...

[prendrelemick]

Then you won't understand this. I've just bought a Halfords Professional tool kit. It's a thing I've long admired and was on very special offer. The spanners have a satisfying heaviness to them, they are tactile and smooth I like to just run my fingers over them. The ratchets of the socket set have a smooth competent chatter. The whole set is a thing of beauty (to me) Best of all is the ring the spanners make when you tap them together, a test I always use when buying tools, the pure bright note sings of quality.

[MarkBastable]

What's a ratchet?