joshwaller.co.uk

Engine / Performance: Performance isn't the right word for this car, however, the engine does have a gruff growley sound when pushed, it's just a shame the car doesn't accellerate in the same way as it sounds. When idle the engine has a wobbley character about it that wobbles the car, this is especially noticable when stopped at traffic lights (most likely due to the 3 cylinder engine). The engine is adequate to set off from lights in a nippy enough way, and keeps up with traffic. Handling and Driving: The biggest problem I found when driving this car was the general feeling that I was driving a van - the car seems to tower over similar class cars, and you can't see the front of the car. There seemed to be little feedback from the steering or wheels. The car has a light steering and a light clutch so is easy to drive. Interior and space: Suprisingly spacious - seemed more spacious inside than the MK1 Octavia - makes me wonder why cars are different sizes when the ins

The Intenso 8GB USB Pen Drive has annoying packaging - you need scissors to open it. Nice green colour though. No wrist strap / neck strap / keyring loop is provided with the pen drive. There is a (plastic) loop on the pen drive so you can attach your own strap if you have one, but personally I think this should come with the pen drive, and I suspect this will be too small for a keyring loop, and will probably break if attched to a keyring. The bright red light is ALWAYS on when it's plugged in - and it only switches off when it's flashing when you're reading / writing to the pen drive. However, it does seem quite quick - copying 1gb on to it took about 35 seconds and copying 1gb from it took around 35 seconds. As is the norm with hard drives, pen drives, SD cards etc, you get slightly less space available in Windows - with 7.51gb total space available, and the drive comes pre-formatted as FAT32. However, I'm not sure why you'd buy one of these pen drives when you

So I'm very very slowly bringing the Mini back to it's former glory. So far I've beefed up the sound system with a subwoofer, and front speakers, although I do need to mount these all properly, so this is just at the testing stage at the moment. The head unit is very nice though - a Sony GT420U - with USB and AUX in it supports pen drives, and USB hard drives! I've also been looking at the front of the Mini as there's a lot of surface rust under the bubbling paint. Very little of it has gone through so with some elbow grease and some sanding it should smooth out okay, ready for a respray. I've also decided to respray the rocker cover, as that was suffering from some rust. Here's the before and after shots of the rocker cover, now that it's been painted red. I've sanded the rusty bits with a B+Q Mouse Sander, and covered the rusty bits with Hammerite Kurust from Halfords. Next I should be able to fill any dents, and smooth ready for the primer. M

Potentially good day road trip? from Britains Best Drives - 1 North Yorkshire Moors BBC TV (iplayer, available till 2nd April 09) Starting at Scarborough - up to Scalby - through the Yorkshire moors - via Dalby Forest (£7 toll road), to the A169 to Hole of Horcum, Goathland, Grosmont - to Whitby Westerdale - Google maps says it may take around 1 and a half hours - so that would give you plenty of time to get to the start and plenty of time to get home afterwards with the majority of the driving being done during the middle of the day when light is likely to be at it's best. Sights to be seen: Scarborough: 1950s cafe/ Harbour ice cream bar. Dalby Forest. Hole of Horcum. Place where Heartbeat is filmed (Goathland). Whitby Abbey. Hopefully I've been able to recreate the route in google maps, as shown below: View Larger Map Next episode is in North Wales: BBC iPlayer , Google Maps Route (roughly), Screen grab from the show . Seeing: Caernarfon Castle, Dinorwic slate quarry, the L