What do you want to vent about today?

[Blade]

The kids been moaning at you again for mess eating Monty

[Monty]

The kids been moaning at you again for mess eating Monty

Quite the reverse! Anyway they are 700 miles away

[Blade]

Make the most of the peace buddy

Shame the weather is not better as would have met you for a ride. Just come over woodhead and snow on the tops and Snake Pass is closed due to snow.

[Monty]

Would have been a long ride and a ferry dude, I'm in Spain!

Weather is good though if you fancy it

[Blade]

If I sat off now I could be there for the morning

[kiwikrasher]

Grounded helicopters... 4 days before demob. We use the same type that just crashed in Norway.

Though I'd rather be stuck here than be one of that 13 man crew. Poor buggers.

[Itchy]

So today I spent an hour and a half putting together our new barbecue.

It was an upgrade from our last one, having a lid and a temperature gauge,and a retractable shelf, and enough size to give it a 30 burger capacity, apparently.

Took it outside, it was spitting.

"Never mind, we've got a lid" says I...

So I load it up with charcoal and light it...










The instructions said to give the first 15 mins with the lid down to burn off any residue.

Which I did.




And as I looked out of the window I saw the paint on the lid bubbling away like a waking volcano!


Apparently, according to the instructions it has a limit of 2.5kgs of charcoal.

Given that I loaded a full 6kg bag in there, I am no longer wondering what is going on, I am just more aware that I am a daft twat!

[Kwacky]

Spaz

[Rossgo]

Hahaha...is men don't do instructions...until it all goes wrong!

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

[kiwikrasher]

I love the way the highly trained military Instructor reads the 'instructions' after he's destroyed it!

[Itchy]

In my defence, I stuck to the instructions vehemently, then I saw this page...

After the first 9 cautions I became blind to them!

[kiwikrasher]

In your defence I probably would've done exactly the same thing

[Kwacky]

Everyone knows the instructions are only there for when you fook things up

[StMarks]

Everyone knows the instructions are only there for when you fook things up

Fwiw I disagree.
When I was a little kid I started to enjoy making Airfix models.
It was easy, & I could see how to put them together without "wasting time reading the instructions"..
My first motorbike was a BSA, and had no manual, so I took that same "figuring it out approach" to working on that.
Everything was difficult, and my inexperience & lack of knowledge continuously cost me time & savings.
A close neighbour got given an old C50 that had expired . It came with a Haynes manual.
He asked me if I could get it working for him (as he knew I spent most of my time messing about with my motorbike engine).
I read the manual, repaired the bike (easily iirc) & gained a whole different perspective in the process.

I now always read instructions where available. Admittedly 90% of them is unnecessary. But IMHO the 10% is effectively gaining the benefit of learning from others mistakes, or being advised by people who have the very best knowledge & expertise in that particular product. Believing that you don't need to bother always smacks to me of self deceiving vanity.

I didn't make many Airfix models, after my addiction to mechanical tinkering started. But the few I did make ( thereafter with assistance from the instructions) were better than their predecessors.


Am I going to be banned now.?

[D41]

I hope not, as you obviously have some modicum of good taste.....Airfix were WAAAY better than those shite Matchbox kits with 2 colors or whatever.....I used to spend all my pocket money on those things, and still get the hankering to build them from time to time....but 2 hours to hang a gunstrap, drill the tank barrels so they actually have a hole, etc......it can be VERY time consuming...which I guess is the point, just not for me at the moment.

[Deegee]

Instructions are a bit of a grey area for me, a lot of the time I can't be bothered as there are more disclaimers and warnings than actual info in them, on the rare occaisions I do find some useful info it's usually after somethings gone wrong or doesn't work first time round.

Haynes manuals are - like StM, part of my youth, however they are probably part of the reason my attitude to instructions is so cavalier, the "remove the clutch basket retaining nut" type of sentence got me so incensed at its impossibility in my Dads poorly equipped garage and the utter failure of Haynes to provide a sensible alternative that didn't involve expensive special tools put me off them forever.
However, what it did do was to teach me how to think laterally and how to improvise, sadly that was not their original purpose and was not why I spent money on them, but I suppose as a tuition fee for what I now do for a living I may have gotten value for money.

[Blade]

I remember working on upside forks for the first time and the Haynes manual saying now just put back together. It was impossible without special tools as Maxton explained to me after hours of swearing and cursing. That wasn't the 1st time Haynes had given me duff information but it was the last.

[D41]

I'm pretty sure that a lot of the Haynes stuff comes from contributions sent in by regular folk...some mechanic said something to that effect a while back.....all Haynes does is correlate all the information into a book.....which makes sense, as I can't see Haynes having a whole slew of mechanics on standby to tear a car apart down to every component piece....that would be sommit a tweaker would do.

[Perkles]

the haynes museum is well worth a visit if you are ever down that way,according to them they use in house experts to write the books.Every car in the museum is driven at least once per year on their private test track

[D41]

The museum at The Imperial in LV is a good shout too....can't remember the name of the one car that blew my mind....some Bizzarini or Iso Grifo...or maybe both. Most, if not all of the cars there are for sale.

Dunno about some of those high-end cars..... some are fast as feck (the Ferrari was insane!)....but sometimes they're just better when they're driven slowly....you can't really admire the craftsmanship (or lack thereof, in some cases) when you're blitzing down the road....or laugh at the guy in the Porsche yelling at his girlfriend to stop looking, feckin' loser!