HauptmannUK

Clearly you don't understand the physics of vehicle suspension. Many suspension components are strong in only one plane or axis. A wishbone is designed to be strong and stiff in the lateral plane of the wishbone. To take axial loads during cornering and to restrain the bottom of the suspension upright during braking and acceleration. If you place a jack under a wishbone and lift the vehicle you are trying to bend the wishbone. There are plenty of vehicles with thin pressed wishbones that are easily damaged. Similarly you don't jack cars under ARBs, drop links etc etc In the UK if you are responsible for a workshop and VOSA or HSE pay a visit and see vehicles lifted on suspension components then you'll have trouble.

Some very dangerous advice above! Never support a vehicle by suspension components... (1) they obviously can move, and therefore the vehicle is not stable, and (2) they are not designed to take the weight of the vehicle and may be deformed by the pressure exerted by the end of the bottle jack ram. The Triton, and similar vehicles with body-on-chassis construction, should be lifted on the chassis frame or (at the rear) on the axle casing. In the case of the Triton you'll find lifting points on the front chassis outriggers where they meet the main frame. At the rear you can lift under the axle - the nose of the bottle jack has a groove in it which the seam on the axle casting should align with (turn the jack ram so it lines up). If you couldn't get a fully inflated front wheel to clear the ground then, (1) the jack was in the wrong place, (2) the jack was not fully extending or not the one supplied with the vehicle, (3) the wheel/tyre combo was a larger diameter than standard.

Absolute twaddle...

This is nonsense. A visitor visa to UK costs £100 (฿4000) and is valid for 6 months. It is multiple-entry. For Thai applicants the overwhelming majority are granted (I think its 90%+). About 5 Thai people I used to work with have taken holidays in the UK. Last year a friend of my wife resigned her job in Bangkok (worked in an advertising agency) and came to the UK for a six month holiday. No sponsorship involved. As it happens she then worked illegally (in the offices of a large UK manufacturing company who made no checks - she is very smart and fluent in English). She met a British guy there and overstayed about three weeks (no penalty or stamp in passport). They married in Thailand in February. Already has spouse visa and flight to UK booked for next month... For a 'racist' country the UK is remarkably welcoming to non-Westerners. Legal immigration to the UK is around 700,000 in the last year - the great majority non-white.

I read a lot....

Around 8 years ago I had to visit Hat Yai on business. In the evening, after dinner, I decided to take a stroll around town. It was dark and the street near my hotel was quiet with very little street lighting. As I was walking I noticed a darker patch of pavement in front of me. I stopped just before stepping onto it when I realised it was a large hole - a missing manhole cover - opening into a void that must have been at least 2m deep.

Previous permission to stay stamp is irrelevant. His visa is no longer valid after 12th May. And he wasn't expelled, he was denied entry. I would have asked for a visa waiver entry. Yes I agree.

I think you are wrong and the immigration official is correct. After 12th May you cannot enter the country with that visa. Looks like it was valid for 60 day stays and use within 6 months.

When were you last in the UK? 1964? There are no 'old ladies' hanging around parks any more. Its done on line. Adultwork, Vivastreet etc. Most of the providers (of which there are now HUGE numbers) are young East Europeans along with a surprising number of Thai girls who manage to get a 6 month tourist visa and move from town to town. They can easily go home with ฿1-2M...

I hope this initiative is shortlived. Never had a problem with any of the girls on Beach Road. Over the years my wife and I have taken girls for threesomes (after a 'vetting'). STDs and the possibility of theft are a problem with any girl you take back to the room - you need to take precautions. A few of the girls we've taken multiple times and we stop and have a chat with them if we're out for an evening stroll. If anyone should be banned from BR its the groups of Indians who encircle the girls and the boozed-up broken-down Westerners who congregate at various locations.

On all Hondas made within about the last 25 years the windscreen is bonded into the body aperture using a hybrid polymer adhesive. The windscreen is therefore structural and stiffens the bodyshell. The rubber 'seals' are just trim. To do a proper job the windscreen should be cut out with a cheese wire cutter, cleaned up, resealed and new trims fitted. ฿3000 would be a very reasonable price. On the other hand if they just intend pulling out the old trim and replacing with new then its a bit pricey. As others have said, best to go to a screen replacement specialist for a second opinion.

I spent most of my life in the motor industry - both in our family dealership (established by my grandfather back in 1921) and also as a professional engineer working for various automotive companies and as a consultant. Fitted my first tyre at about 12 years old. Have repaired many tyres. Was a VOSA MoT tester (UK roadworthiness test) until 2018. Believe me that most advice from tyre companies is sound. They are not just trying to scare you into buying a new tyre. Tyres deteriorate with age. The rubber oxidises, UV breaks down bonds in the rubber and the rubber hardens. Less grip, more noise and greater chance of a blowout. An 8 year old tyre is pretty much at end of life no matter how much tread is left. Unfortunately dealing with the general public is very difficult when it comes to cars maintenance. Most want cheapest and think you are trying to rip them off. Its amazing how many customers will come in with a fault - they don't know what the fault is but they 'know its not going to cost much to fix'. Sometimes in the retail motor industry you just have to refuse to deal with some customers, they are not worth the bother - 'you can't fix stupid' - send them somewhere else. In my early years in the motor industry a colleague was killed testing a car. He was driving at high speed and the tyre burst. The car flipped and he was killed. He was a young guy, not long married with a baby. Because it was an accident at work the Health and Safety Executive investigated. It turned out the tyre was virtually unworn but was 'new old stock'. It had come from Dunlop in Birmingham but had been in store for 10 years. No one had checked the date code. Your car stays on the road thanks to four areas of rubber about the size of your hand. Its really not something to compromise on.

Mostly they can be changed by the customer themselves - usually under the passenger side of the glovebox. On one or two cars it may be more involved - e.g. Ford Focus are a pig - have to loosen fusebox assembly.. If you drive with A/C on Recirc they don't get too dirty - change every couple of years. If you are switched to outside air intake then change every year/10k km. Put the new filter in the correct way around (air flow direction will be marked on the side of the filter).

The sky won't fall in, but that doesn't negate the fact that tyre string repairs are not a safe long term repair for road vehicles. People assume that because the tyre holds air the repair is satisfactory. String repairs are still widely used on plant and machinery and other off-road vehicles. They are also great for emergency repairs when in remote locations. Just recently some Chinese companies have started selling (through the usual online channels) rubber-coated steel screws to screw into puncture holes. Absolutely lethal.

From that invoice it looks like they did a basic service plus fuel filter, plugs and PCV valve. You might well find its fixed it.

Plug repairs are quite acceptable so long as the puncture is in the centre 3/4 portion of the tread area and NOT on the shoulder or sidewall - that would be VERY dangerous. Maximum hole diameter 6mm. Tyres with a speed rating of V or higher should only have one repair in their lifetime. Some tyre shops in Thailand do 'string repairs' ('string' inserted from outside of tyre) - these are dangerous and illegal in most Western countries.

Disconnecting the battery for more than about 10 minutes will cause the ECU to forget some of its learned values (fuel trims, idle air valve calibration, transmission shift point calibration). None of these would be particularly detrimental to performance and new values would be learned after 10-20 miles of driving. From the symptoms you described I would think an intermittent problem with the MAF sensor is a possibility. These are a common problem on various Mazdas, resulting in poor acceleration and lack of power. Scan the car for stored fault codes.

This news is not quite as exciting as it first appears. Toyota fully took over Daihatsu a few years back (2017 I think). The new Yaris/Veloz DNGA platform is a Toyota/Daihatsu joint project and Daihatsu engineers did most of the crash test approval work. At some point whilst preparing test cars a Daihatsu engineer scored a groove into the rear surface of the door inner plastic trim - the idea being to produce a stress concentration and cause this location to preferentially fracture during side impact, avoiding the potential for creation of any sharp edges. For whatever reason, this alteration didn't appear in the production moulding. However, the production vehicles do in fact meet the ECE UN R95 regulation (which includes 50km/h side impact). Subsequent internal testing of production vehicles confirms compliance as does independent testing with external oversight from the Belgian crash test authority. The suspension of deliveries in Thailand is because Thai government representatives want to witness new tests. Clearly something went wrong with Toyota's internal procedures - potentially it was fraud. But it appears that cars meet the required standard even without the modification that was made.

Chinese are buying everywhere they are permitted to. Cities like London and Manchester have huge amounts of property now in Chinese hands. Even in small provincial English towns they are buying houses and flats to rent out.

I think you are worrying too much. Three months is nothing. My wife owns several condos and houses. Frequently unoccupied for 3+ months. One condo was locked up for about two years during Covid and no problems at all when we opened it up. I was amazed how little deterioration. Gave it a clean and good as new.

Water off, electricity off. Fridge open. Electricity PEA paid by Direct Debit from Bangkok Bank. Water debt is paid on return. I put one-way flap valves in our drains to stop drain smells. Never had mildew even after 6+ months away.

Only MBA? Most of the ThaiFriendly girls that I meet are PhDs....

Definitely no return tickets needed. Last year one of my wife's friends visited us in UK. Single lady. Got a visitor's visa on the basis of money in the bank and good job (advertising agency in Bangkok). She booked a single ticket on one of the last Scoot flights to UK. We had to sort her out with return flight whilst she was in the UK.

Apart from in battery technology (CATL Lithium Ion) the Chinese do not yet have the domestic expertise and IPR to produce cars which would be competitive on the international market. EVERY Chinese-branded vehicle sold outside China is predominantly using European, American and Japanese technology. SAIC (who inherited rights to the MG brand name when they bought Nanjing Auto) is in effect 'GM China'. SAIC petrol engines are GM engines, the SGE and MGE engines, developed around 15 years ago by GM-Opel in Germany. These same engines are built in Flint, Michigan, and Korea, using the same equipment as in China (from Hirata, Japan). They're the same engines used in small GM cars such as the Cruze and the now-defunct GM Europe products such as the Opel Corsa/Astra/Insignia etc. They suffer the same problems (weak timing chains and coil pack failures). If a turbo it fitted then its a Mitsubishi. The MG transmissions are a GM manual box, a DCT auto (supplied in kit form by BorgWarner in Dalian and assembled by SAICs 'Gearworks' - 'SAGW'). These are BW DualTronic three-shaft wet clutch 'boxes, designed in Germany. Fundamentally these are the same core units as supplied to VW/Audi Group ('DSG' branded) but with a simpler and cheaper mechatronic control unit. The CVTs are Bosch, made under licence by SAGW. Apparently the Bosch units have been problematic so currently Aisin (Toyota) CVT units are being used. MG platforms are GM platforms. Specifically the GEM ('Global Emerging Market') and the so-called 'PATAC-K' platform which is a cost-reduced Chevrolet D2 chassis with and also used in cars like the Buick Excelle, Chevrolet Cavalier - amongst numerous others. MG BEV's use GM BEV platforms with power electronics designed by DriveTec of Switzerland (now owned by BW). If you want to go out and buy a Haval (GWM) - well, their petrol engines (with code 4G) are Mitsubishi units built under licence. Engines with code GW are based on fairly ancient Toyota blocks with new heads developed by GWM/Toyota to meet modern emissions requirements. The blocks are R4 and R5 last used by Toyota in the 1980s. The Haval Diesel is an Isuzu unit built under licence. In fact most Diesel engines made in China are some version or other of an Isuzu unit. Havel electric drives are designed and supplied by BorgWarner. DCT transmissions are basically the same BW units supplied to SAIC. Havel TC-epicyclic autoboxes are ZF (Friedrichshafen, Germany) 8HP units built in China. Anyway, to all of you driving 'MG's, you're actually driving a 'GM'. MG, Haval, Maxus etc are all 'challenger brands' designed to capture market share through pricing. You can probably guess that I've 'been there and got the T-shirt' on this stuff. In fact you might be able to guess which supplier I did some work for....

Yes, noticed this too. Its very odd. You get a driver accepting and then 10 seconds later cancels. Same again and again (about 6 times) - this was for an evening pick up in central Pattaya. Not sure if its a software problem. We're not dependent on taxis/Bolt because we have a car - but it is/was convenient to use a Bolt if going into town for the evening, rather than the bother of driving and parking. Based on my last few experiences the service is deteriorating.