SiliconBog.com

Month: December 2016

  • And I will try-y-y-y to fix you…

    The Bongo has been repaired.  It was as simple as paying an extortionate amount of money for a second-hand fuel pump, having it shipped over to Ireland to a mechanic, then paying them an only-slightly-less upsetting wodge of cash to rip out the old and install the new.  So far, so good…

    We went to visit the house yesterday evening to check on the renovation progress.  I was warned by someone I’ve been working with that you can’t trust Irish builders, but the roofs have both been replaced, and work has really moved on in general.  I would reference the second (and easily worst IMHO) episode of Fawlty Towers at this point, but don’t want to tempt fate as they’ve got an internal wall to knock down and a doorway to seal up yet.

    Anyway, overall I’m very impressed, and they even put up some tinsel on the scaffolding 🙂

  • “New” kitchen arrival

    “New” kitchen arrival

    Earlier in the week we looked at a kitchen that someone was selling via DoneDeal (it’s a classified advert website that’s very popular in Ireland).

    The sellers were a really nice couple from Gdansk and it was very informative talking to them about their experience over here as fellow immigrants (or immigrant-elect in my case).

    The main gripe was the weather, which is fair enough for many, but in their home town it hits -20 in the winter so they probably can’t complain too much.

    The other issue they had was with those claiming benefits and not wanting to work. There’s been plenty of bad press about people from other countries being dole scroungers, but it’s well worth remembering that the vast majority of people motivated enough to leave their own countries to seek a better life do expect to put in the hours to achieve that – they just want the opportunity.  The native population perhaps less so at times – very similar to the UK in that respect.

    They ended up delivering the kitchen to us, as getting a van was impossible.  So the place we’re renting now has a kitchen in one of the sitting rooms.  I think it’ll freak out the landlord if he comes in at any point!

  • The Bongo is sick

    The Bongo is sick

    Following a week of it not wanting to set off first thing in the morning (I’d assumed it was in sympathy with me, or down to the cold weather), the Bongo became progressively more ill.  I’m no mechanic, so I took it to one.  They tried it out for a couple of days but couldn’t find anything wrong, so I went to pick it up.

    Seconds after I’d started it to go home, the juddering commenced, followed by coughing, shivering, then a funereal silence.  Feeling perversely pleased that I’d demonstrated that I wasn’t making it up, I left the Bongo with them to be further examined.

    The next day I got a call saying that the reason it’d been misbehaving was that the fuel pump had a big leak.  Apparently this causes issues with fuel not getting into the engine, which seems perfectly logical.  The mechanic slightly scared me when he said that it’d been squirting cold diesel onto the outside of the hot engine for some time.  I got confirmation that it would be dangerous to drive it, so it’s stranded now.

    At least the diagnosis tallies with the increased smell of diesel I’d noticed a while ago.  On reflection, my purchase of one of those “magic tree” car air fresheners probably wasn’t the best response to that warning sign.

    Now to source a working fuel pump for a 20 year old Japanese import vehicle, and then coax the mechanic into having a go at fitting it…