cliveshep

Need to get an older saloon resprayed as the sun has destroyed it's paintwork. Don't want to pay 3X what the car is worth, just want a back street spray booth guy who can sand it down and prime/paint/lacquer to a reasonable standard. Can someone please advise?

Minburi Market, as you enter and collect parking card about 100 metres down on the left just before a small side road where the bikes park is a bakery shop selling all manner of implements and tins, flour and yeast etc, everything for making bread and cakes. Down the end on the left in the fridges grated cheese, and salted or unsalted Alloway butter for 250 baht/kg. You pass shelves with all manner of bulk cereals, herbs and spices. Bread flour is 38 baht/kg only - half Big C's price, if you buy a box of 10 bags 300 baht, 30 baht/kg Shoppee sell it for 1010 baht per 5kg. Also another fine shop is Chuanchom bakery in 75. 1 Thanon Rom Klao, Minburi. They sell pretty much the same lines but more utensils and machines - a bigger store. Easy parking to rear, side and front.

Looking for advice on likely prices - and recommendations for where to go here. We got a 2007 Vios, colour black, that unfortunately has to live outside. The sun has baked it's paint to the boot, bonnet and roof (yes, I'm English, not trunk, hood and roof!) flat and in places starting to lift. We live just North East of Minburi between that and Lamlukka. We would like to paint the car in a dark grey pearlescent but if too expensaive just a dark grey metallic. My wife says it would cost 15000 to respray it black, but 45,000 - 50,000 in any other colour. This she says is because they would need to blank the door openings in masking sheets and also mask the insides of the doors in order to paint the frames and door edges. I say this extra masking cannot possibly cost 30,000 to 35,000 - that's insane but those married to a Thai know the futility of arguing. I say the outside has to be masked and primed in the 15,000 already so are they insisting they only respray for 15000 in the same colour because thay don't repair blistering, and sand the flat areas and prime - just do a cowboy job of "blowing it in"? I got spray equipment and a compressor - I could do that for the price of some paint and thinners but for 15,000 I would expect some sort of professional job exceeding my feeble efforts. So please - can anyone advise likely costs in my area, and recommend a body shop place who can respray it fairly cheaply. There have to be places because we see many former taxis which as we all know come in a variety of colours offered for sale all beautifully resprayed in white or other colours. I don't mind spending 20,000 on a paint job, the little car is not high mileage and is in good mechanical order having cost a fortune in remdial work when she chose it so worth doing in my mind. Thanks guys!

Thanks for that but the English ones are the mini-trucks 1.3 litre, not my 1-tonne dropside Carry in Thailand. I did get one from the Rhino site but again it bears little or no resemblance to my own. My head hurts lol. Got a feeling I'll have to take it into a garage in the New Year and get them to identify the stored codes and if not sorted already just clear them. Need some front bushes replaced anyway - not sure I want to tackle that myself at my age. It's a <deleted> not being able to find a scan-tool to connect to my lap top so I can scan and check what's going on nalthough with no voltage on pin 16 it might not work anyway! I need to hibernate!

Right, got out this morning and in spite of chronic arthritis managed to unhook the socket behind the dash. I cannot get it back so I'll have to zip-tie it somewhere. Anyway, good ground on pins 4 & 5, but nothing on pin 16 with ignition or engine on or off. Configuration is in fact as someone else suggested as OBD1 and not Suzuki's SDL arrangement. So - now need to find (a) where the hell pin 16 goes to and why it has no voltage or can I jumper it from another 12v under the dash somewhere? And (b) I need a suitable OBD1 interface and software unless the reason my TOAD doesn't see it is because of that missing 12volt on pin 16? Anyone know? Picture and modified image attached show what I actually have.

Possible correction to my post as I have not as yet verified the pin connections (it's dark and mosquitoes are out in force and we avoid those biting buggers because of the real risk of dengue fever or malaria so stay indoors at night with screens firmly closed!) I am reliably informed that Suzuki are in a world of their own with older models and use their own SDL system of OBD connections. I have sourced a UK company who claim to sell a (out of stock until Dec. 15) 16 pin to USB tool that uses the SDL system of Suzuki. Company is called Rhino Power, (www.rhinopower.org) and I have written to them via email. They say the SDL connection is as this image:

Thanks Seedy but sadly it is of little help. I do have the TOAD scan tool but of course it is OBD2. The article you linked talks about using a scanner or a paper clip to check the flashes, but does not say which in places to put the paper clip to start things off. My car has the same connector as the 16 pin OBD 2, but only 3 pins are used, ground on 4 and 5, 7 to the computer I assume and 16 permanently live. It is mosquito alley and dark here now and only an idiot risks going outside so I won't be checking anything now until Monday. Picture below is what I was sent, if you know what pins to link I'd be happy to hear, I'm not going to link random two out of the4 3 incase I melt something vital.

Update on mis-fire etc engine problems - changed the coils and leads on a "sh%t or bust" basis and problem cured - runs like a (noisy rattling) top. Seriously, sounds like ball-bearings rattling in a can. Really must sort that valve lash issue as the tappets are off in a in a world on their own! Still, thanks for that advice Seedy. BUT the OBD codes are a real problem. This truck has a 1.6 fuel injected 16 valve engine and runs under an OBD1 system. It actually does have a 16-way OBD socket under the dash in front of the gear lever position - thanks for that heads up "In the Jungle" but only 3 pins are connected, ground pin 5, pin 7 and always live Pin 16. I have yet to check if pin 5 is actually grounded or if pin 16 actually has 12 volts on it but my 16 pin OBD2 scan tool does not recognise anything plugged in to the socket of course. Anyone got a working hack to read the codes on one of these trucks please?

Mine is fuel Injected Seedy, and it is OBD1 for the 2007 model for some reason In the jungle. Suzuki were very slow to install OBD2 into the Carry models.

Has anybody in Thailand owning an older Carry managed to access the OBD1 codes? I understand you put a fuse in the left-hand empty spot in the fuse panel and count the flashes on the instrument cluster - so 5 flashes followed by a 1 second pause and 4 more, then a 3 second pause before the next series would indicate code 54. Downloaded a list from a web-site but have not as yet tried it. Shame the car never had OBD2 as I have a OBD2 scanner. I have had a check engine light on for the last 3 years - the original owner told me it came on when he added the LPG system and it made sense. Got rid of the LPG when the tank etc needed expensive replacement - the code remains. Would have cleared it by removing the negative battery connection for 3 minutes as according to Google that clears all stored codes but now got some nasty running problems so need to read the codes. The car misfires badly once it warms up, one cylinder drops out completely it seems when accelerating, coming back in if I reduce throttle, thereafter top end revs don't hesitate and the truck goes as fast as it ever did - not saying a lot I know as fast is never a word to apply to the geared-down Carry which is pretty nippy up to max engine-howling 90km/hr. So it has a nisfire and mega-flat spot. My thoughts - it has over 325k km on the clock so the likelihood of all sorts of failures are on the cards. On the Suzuki Forum the suggestion was fuel pump - low fuel pressure which I cannot check anyway, My own thoughts ran to failure of ignition coils. I've given it an oil and filter change, new iridium spark plugs and a replacement Chinese airfilter that is an exact mirror of the original so didn't fit (warning - don't buy after-market air filters from Lazada.) I wound up heating the plastic filter housing box to just under melting point and forcing in the new filter to make the air-filter box shape conform - I'm a tight-wad! It works anyway! Anyone done the codes on one of these lovely little trucks or got any ideas on the problems with mine? It has been a good little truck, all I've done is change the stupid low-profile wheels and tyres - instant ride improvement - fitted a new radiator cap (thank you for that diagnosis lads as it no longer over-heats), new brake pads, new battery, and plugs and filters. Not bad for a well-worked cheap truck I'd say. That's in 3 years! My UK- owned BMW and Jaguar couldn't go 3 months without issues!

Friend has arrived a couple of weeks ago on a 90 day visa intending to retire here. He has his 800,000 in the bank already and will put in his extension application over the next few weeks. He thinks he has to do a 90 day report when the 90 days of his visa are up but I think that particular clock starts ticking 90 days into his annual extension. Am I right in my assumption - first report due 90 days after extension granted? Thanks guys.

I got a workshop full of tools - power tools, hand tools, sundry ropes 1" diam down,, old heavy-duty ratchet straps, newish inverter welder, 1" submersible electric pump (no hose, Thailand's climate saw that off!), biscuit jointer, sander/polisher, genie-lift hand crank variety, bread maker, Travis Perkins builder's wheel-barrow with pneumatic tyre, various shovels etc, Big heavy-duty roof rack for Pajero, Innova or other largish car, depth-finder/fish-finder with transom-mount transducer (my wife dropped the dash unit and broke the glass otherwise was working, there were two of them, air-tools - 2 impact wrenches, spray guns, sand-blasting gun, engine wash gun, 38mm concrete compacting poker, medium duty rotary demolition hammer, rotary laser level (the receiver has no beep but receives visually and the rechargeable batteries need replacing with new or with normal batteries) comes with staff and tripod. Another tripod and a Hilger and Watts optical surveyor's level, this is a WW1 or maybe 2 antique I am told it would be used to establish levels for front line artillery - who knows? But I had it verified) in perfect working order - it inverts the image so needs practice, probably good for Ukraine? Accuracy alleged to be + or - 3mm in 3000 metres! USB overhead projector, unused mostly, 2 projector screens ex school room (hanging type and so on. Loads of rubbish and some good pieces which at 77 I will no longer use. Also got a 0-1" micrometer, a 1" - 2" micrometer, and a 2" - 3" micrometer for budding engineers. That's what comes to mind right now. Nothing apart from a coup-le of machines is newish. Question is, reading all that lot, my wife wants to simply throw it all away - admittedly she is in a period-induced strop but she insists that we cannot hold a sort of front of house garage-type jumble sale..I don't want to open a shop lol and advertising this stuff bit by bit would take forever, best to sell it at knock-down prices.? "What do the Team" think" to coin a phrase from a well-known UK quiz show?

I got a lovely loving wife half my age who spoiled me rotten for ten years now, we got a lovely air-con fitted 5 bedroomed house (too big but the family were supposed to join us - didn't want to surrender their independence in the end) got 4 dogs, 2 old cars, well, one is a truck actually, and an older motorcycle. We got my pension, and that's it! All of us live on that, frugally I might add. We got internet, I got my computer and an all-in-one printer. Every 90 days I got a scanned form on the computer on which I add only the date, print along with address labels, sign, put in an envelope with a stamped addressed envelope, scanned prints of passport, expiring 90 day receipt, and post for 30 baht tracked and signed. It usually comes back after a month to 6 weeks, this month it was as usual posted 15 days before expiry, came back 5 days after expiry - some sort of record for them. Once a year I print off all the papers saved over previous years, scans of passport plus the last page scan added each year, scan copy of marriage certificate and legalised translation etc, print off the same old picture poses but new pictures, We of course wear different clothes each year, otherwise we stand outside the house by the house number, in the garden, in the lounge, sitting on the bed - same locations and poses every year.; The IO asks "are these new pics?" Yes, same places of course - house doesn't change, dogs around our feet the same, furniture the same, different bed spreads, what do you expect? We turn up, get our queue tickets at Chang Wattana, get the papers checked, having popped downstairs to get yet another set of pics and a letter from the bank plus a print of the bank-book after taking out the Immigration fee and go get a snack, visit toilets, get a drink, whatever while we wait our turn. Once seen we come back after 4 - 5 weeks, get yet another photo-copy of the bank book showing balance, usually getting out with stamp an hour later and that's it for another 11 months. Getting papers together is pretty easy, we do have to go to the local amphur to get e kor bor ror or whatever that particular pointless document is called, and of course the latest set of pics of me showing bigger belly, smaller hair, few more wrinkles, and the bank thing but the most arduous thing really apart from boredom waiting for our number is the drive there, usually rush hour and tedious in the extreme lasting nearly 2 hours. Stupidly it's under 45 minutes going home. Would i live anywhere else - no way. I may not we particularly wanted here but I am treated fairly here and tolerated whereas my wife would have been deported from the UK once I retired unless she did the infamous "Life in the UK" test. Well dear readers, do YOU know how many golf courses there are in Scotland? (One of the questions!) According to the wizened witch of Maidenhead who was Home Secretary at the time (Theresa May, still alive and proof that some prayers are slow to be answered) one needed £18,600 a year to keep a foreign wife, while the Pensions Service or Income Support reckoned for an English wife £7600 was more than ample. As my pension was nowhere near £18,600 pa we sold the house, car, caravan, bought a shipping container, welded bars all around it's walls to tie stuff too and spent a year loading it with everything, boats, trailer, outboard motors, tools and machines, kitchen white goods, pots & pans etc. The dining room suite was the only item of furniture packed apart from 3 tall display units, figuring beds etc were cheap here. We flew out the day after the container got loaded, we never went back and have no intention of ever going back. Compared to the ultra-snooping UK with it's obsession with CCTV and road cameras Thailand is heaven. Sure we don't go boating - draconian laws on Captain and Engineer's licence requirements for even an outboard dinghy made it not worth the hassle, but driving is a dream really even if many Thais have a death wish, it gets too hot and we hate snakes, for the first we got air-con, for the 2nd we got caution and a wary eye. Had one monocled cobra (we killed that), one king cobra and several rat snake visitors which don't stay, but that's in 7 years and over the back wall is a disused farm rice field turning into a jungle so to be expected. We like it here, the paperwork seems stupidly repetitive to be sure, but they haven't really got non top of computerised record-keeping yet, more of a mind-set than capability in the main I think, they love paper, suits their self-important psyche, but it is mostly same-o same o so an all-in-one and a laptop mean most of it is a case of simply printing off yet another set. Nothing to get excited about and for those of us retired gives one something to do!

You mean Mr Teflon (nothing sticks) Chan Ocha who is never accountable or to blame for anything. Naaa - never gonna happen pal! Always someone else's fault. Like children in school - "it wasn't me sir, it was him/her/them!"

You don't understand, it is not "ok?" it is Ok as part of the name - Tawan Ok. Not being rude or abrupt at all, you asked for my location, Khlong Sam Wa Tawan Ok is the location, find it on Google maps.

I'm NOT a random Joe, I'm a random Clive and as far as I know Putin's computer death squads stick their poisonous worms on other peoples web-sites to insinuate themselves into who ever visits, not just specific targets but all and sundry. This is the 2nd time, first time was Wanna Cry, but backing up saves the day except this time the back-up hdd failed disastrously.

Khlong Sam Wa Tawan Ok

All working good now after a reload, then delete Windows old file, then another reload and delete. It's only time not cost and along the struggle to download missing minor software I picked up a ransomware virus but nothing was lost and I simply reloaded letting Windows isolate everything for me to delete later - which I have. A bit drastic but everything is now working perfectly again. Plus I threw away all my old software and purchased a new copy of Office Pro Plus 21 to go with a new copy of Windows 10. So it's "yarbles" (yah balls!) to Mr Vladimir Putin's ransom-ware hackers and sundry rootkit providers, may your camels be infertile and your wife strangle you in your sleep! But seriously, thanks for all the advice, in the end the only thing that guaranteed a clean machine was a double reload. If anyone has a USB boot and format utility they can email me to create my own bootable USB format tool for future use which would have saved so much heartbreak I'd be so blessed to receive it. PM me for an email address. Thanks again everyone for all your help.

I'll add - tonight's forecast is for severe heavy thunderstorms and torrential rain, 90% chance of rain. Thunderstorms are forecast every day for the next 10 days - as usual pretty much all this year!

I've been just NNE of Bangkok for the last 7 years. For some reason when it rains it often misses us. Yesterday under 1/2 km from our home soi at 7-Eleven I was sat on motorbike it tee-shirt and shorts waiting for beloved who was buying bags of ice - our new freezer has no automatic icemaker just cube trays never enough. From nowhere a few drops of rain, and then a sudden howling gale, horizontal water and I was soaked and cold in seconds. We set off home and 100 yards down the road rain eased although behind us was still smashing down. At 200 yards our soi was dry. This happens a lot. Nevertheless, almost every day since October last year the weather.com forecast has given high percentages for rain and thunder storms and to be fair we get them at least every other day late afternoon evening or overnight so it seems the rainy season never left us.

Ok, called Singapore, lovely lady sorted it all out in a short efficient phone call, another new password and now everything is fine on all devices. Stayed with me until I was able to log on properly again bless her.

My computer got infected with ransomware and I had to format it. All my essentials were backed up onto an external HDD in a caddy so I thought hey, a pain but I'll reload clean and it'll get rid of the rubbish too. So I did. All nice and clean plus I bought Office Pro Plus 21 (don't bother folks, Office 10 and 16 are better) to treat myself. Running Windows 10 as it's an older Dell Latitude but then I'm old too. I've got Wise on that machine again, but I also have it on another all-in-one machine my wife uses, plus my smart-phone. Here's the point - I cannot log in. I couldn't log in on my old email, because at the time of ransomware I didn't have my email details on my wife's machine I decided to change to a g-mail address. Wise dutifully demanded proof of identity via my telephone number and identity via a photo of me clutching my passport emailed to them. Sigh but hey - TIT. So I sent it to them. That was Monday 20th, now still waiting for a response and I still cannot log in. Got an email confirming my details - that's it. So I emailed them Tuesday asking them to sort it out and including a screen shot plus my photo again Think I'll bite the bullet and phone them up and see if they do actually have customer service or not. Does anyone know if I can sign up again afresh and ignore the old account or will my details, email address and phone number still be on file and prevent it. It really is a pain as normally they are spot-on efficient at transfers, taking seconds only.

I see the thread has wandered off course, wondering what comes next in it's digressions - someone spills mango rice on their keyboard leading to a discussion of sticky rice versus normal and what type of mango is best? Currently bored, awaiting last of saved files being copied before formatting you lot into oblivion!

Can I suggest using a flat finish over your primer follwed by a couple of coats of gloss? Assuming you can buy flat finishes. But Thai gloss paints are vastly different to something you would find in the UK requiring the use of highly volatile AAA solvents where most UK paints thin or clean with parrafin or white spirit, aka "turps" or at a pinch petrol in the case of Hammerite when you don't have the proper thinners. And they do build up solidly very quickly. None of the paints are much cop against the 100% UV sunlight here of course or the heat. My beloved painted doors etc in exterior emulsion to my horror but actually the white stayed white and still looks good whereas n adjacent door in white primer and white gloss is a delicate shade of cream now. The emulsion painted door also wipes clean - something no interior emulsions here tolerate as they simply wipe off! Thailand certainly forces rethinks in many areas!

Right - update. Loaded Avast and let it do a full scan, it ran tghe whole night and was still chugging away this morning. When it finished it announced it had found a rootkit and would quarantine it and I must restart computer. Great I thought, told it to restart whereupon it started a full pre-boot scan. After another tedious hour it seemed to have frozen so I cancelled it and let the beast boot. Had to open Avast again and behold - no quarantine with the rootkit. Ran various including full scans during the day, in between I managed to transfer money via Wise (3 seconds!) from the UK, on the basis that this rootkit is unable to escape to the outside world as Avast continously blocks it very noisily so it cannot corrupt my bank. During the day it constantly tries to connect and Avast blocks it instantly with a full-volume gonging noise! Also I have piggy-backed a spare HDD via a caddy and a slow 2.0 USB connection to my laptop and am transferring across my pictures, home videos, folders etc and fresh app downloads. Once everything is solidly backed up I will format the machine and as suggested do a complete clean install. As also suggested it will get rid of all the junk and clutter, the only downside is having to run in circles to get all my banking details reinstalled.