JetSet

I agree about the 10 year re-tests - but don't see any connection between age and ability. Of course the fact that I'm 58 has some bearing on this, but there's plenty on here who are heading up in the age stakes, but not necessarily diminishing in driving skills. There's plenty of young idiots as well as old fools - and plenty of very young people who have considerable skill. The age element is less important than the skill . . . Testing every 10 years would require in the region of 3.5 million tests every year which is probably impractical, however I'd go with a retest at 70. The thing is though that the tests have changed so much over the years. When I passed my motor bike test in 1967 there was no written part to the test, you just drove around the block and the examiner just observed from various places. After passing my test this entitled me (and still does) to drive any motor bike, no limit whatsoever. Same with the car test which I passed first time in 1969, no written test, just a few questions on the highway code and a few set maneuvers, easy peasy. Also entitled me to drive some classes of vehicles that you would need to pass a further test these days. Pete

Welcome, you obviously have good taste as me and the wife also have a silver and a grey Zed Pete

My son in law delivered them until quite recently, he used to run them down to one of the ports, for shipping abroad (Harwich ?) on the back of a car transporter. Pete

That one looks to have just one SATA connector and no IDE connectors at all. Edit, my bad I can see it has 2 SATA and 1 IDE. Pete

That's a standard ATX PSU, 180 watts, you can replace that with any standard PSU. 180w is pretty puny but Compaq/HP build their computers so they're difficult to upgrade, They used to fit 60 watt micro PSU's that were a different size and had different connectors. I know this because somebody gave me a load of old and redundant Compaq PC's removed from a school and about to go to landfill. Not much I could do with them. Pete

Welcome along Pete

Compaq's use a non standard PSU (or at least they used to) so you can't just pop down to PCWorld and fit another one. I've had many, many PSU's fail on me. They usually go really smelly before they give up the ghost. If it's not that then take a look at the capicitors on the mother board, if they're swollen then the board is toast. Pete

10 of my favourite covers Pete

One of my neighbours appears to have just got one of these. I saw it barrelling along one of the lanes where I live at a ludicrous speed a couple of days ago and today it was parked on his drive. Considering he is our second closest neighbour and has lived in that house for 35 years, the same length I've lived in mine I don't really know him that well, I've only spoken to him maybe 6 times in all. I do know that he is around my age, probably a couple of years older, around 67 and works for Iceland in a very senior position. I'm guessing he's recently retired and come into a nice lump sum. Pete

You missed Def Leppard I missed a lot of bands/artists but yes unforgivable to miss Def Leppard . Pete

My main genre would be hard rock. (Van Halen, Whitesnake, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, etc) but I'm also into Progressive Rock, (Yes, Genesis, Hawkwind, Floyd), melodic rock (Toto, Journey, Reo Speedwagon, Boston,Styx, Foreigner) and what I call Obscure Rock (Chilliwack, Streetheart, Triumph, New England). I'm also into acts that range from The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac to Gordon Lightfoot, Tangerine Dream Tom Petty, The Moody Blues........... I have a rather massive record collection (all on vinyl) . Pete

Yosemite is certainly an amazing place, I've been twice, 20 years apart. While the park is open all year just keep in mind that much of the park is 7,000 feet above sea level and the mountain passes that lead into it from Death Valley are around 10,000 feet and don't normally open until well into June and close again early to mid October. The first time I actually got into the park was in April and there was still a considerable amount of snow on the ground in parts of the park.. The second time I went was in August and it was pushing 35 degrees , Pete We are still trying to work out the best time of year to go. We are flying into lax then from there to Sam Diego, Vegas, Death Valley, Yosemite, San Francisco, drive down pacific highway back to la to do disney for a few days and then fly home. 3 weeks we are going for. Want to pick a time where the weather is nice and the flights are cheap! May and June can be a bit gloomy along the coast I have heard. Well, you've picked the obvious route, you can get into Yosemite several ways but the Las Vegas, Death Valley then Tioga Pass into Yosemite is the best way. Obviously July-September is best for the "nice weather" but keep in mind that Death Valley is seriously hot in July and August, 50C is not uncommon and rental companies usually exclude travel in Death Valley during those months. For cheap flights June and September are going to be considerably cheaper than the peak months. We've been many times to The South West and have found that June is the best month. First off, daylight hours are much longer, secondly, it's fairly easy to find a motel as the kids are still in school and for Americans the driving season doesn't start until after July 4th. The weather has always been great in June, usually in the high 20's to mid 30's. September is also pretty good, shorter days, temperatures a bit lower though but still very pleasant and the sometimes violent storms that you get in the South West in July/August have all but finished. As far as the coast goes I drove down from San Fransisco to San Diego in April (1984) and while the weather was decidedly nippy in San Fransisco it warmed up by the time we reached Santa Barbara. The entire coastline though is subject to mist and fog all year round due to the cold ocean Humbolt current just offshore, for example when I was in San Fransisco it was around 15C but just inland at San Jose it was more like 26C. Pete

Well, some copied CD's work fine on mine and some don't. Maybe some CD's are copy protected?? It's a long time since I've done it but I converted some of my albums to MP3 and copied them onto CD's and they play fine on my Bose. Pete

Boo, Hiss . Actually, I'm in a similar predicament myself, 2 350Zeds and a 4 year old granddaughter that we'd like to take to some of the fine beaches in Wales, Chester Zoo, etc. With Caroline coming up to retirement too our needs will change quite drastically so expect at least one of them to come up for sale at some stage . Pete

Yosemite is certainly an amazing place, I've been twice, 20 years apart. While the park is open all year just keep in mind that much of the park is 7,000 feet above sea level and the mountain passes that lead into it from Death Valley are around 10,000 feet and don't normally open until well into June and close again early to mid October. The first time I actually got into the park was in April and there was still a considerable amount of snow on the ground in parts of the park.. The second time I went was in August and it was pushing 35 degrees , Pete

Looks good, thanks Mike Pete

+1 Pete

Yeah, she's a bengal kitten, 6 months old now. Pete

Pete

Welcome along Pete

I don't know if this is true or not, but I suspect it is. I'm hearing that at no stage did Bianchi's helmet come into contact with the tractor or anything else. His brain injury was caused purely by G-Force. The tractor that he hit literally stopped his car dead. Had he hit the barrier some of the energy would have been absorbed by the barrier and by the car itself. There's no doubt that it would have been a serious crash as he would have hit the barriers almost head on. The FIA have so far been unable to determine the speed of the accident accurately, they do have a GPS figure but are unwilling to release it until they've checked the cars telemetry. Pete

Welcome along Pete

I have some tuner nuts and a key on my Zed, the standard ones wouldn't fit my Penta Axis wheels and I think they cost a tenner. Caroline doesn't have any locking nuts on her Zed, just the nuts that came with the Rohana wheels. Pete

For Massa's incident, possibly..no probably, for Bianchi's he was travelling at such a speed that it wouldn't make any difference it would just have been smashed off. For Senna's crash, hard to say really. One of the problems would be heat, getting out of the car in a hurry, remember that LMP cars have doors. Pete

Interesting, I used to work with a guy whose daughter was Miss U.K back in the late 90's and she was going out with a well known British Touring Car Championship driver and I have it on good authority that Honda were paying him £300k per annum. Pete