I wish we could still get creosote

It's still available, but not in small quantities over the retail counter. I remember a PITA neighbour of mine complaining about the smell when I creosoted some railway sleepers in the garden. I asked her if she complained to the electricity suppliers when they creosoted the bases of power poles.

http://www.sceneys.com.au/creosote-oil.php

I could not see a 60 or 100watt GLOBES anywhere!

If you mean the old 30 cent incandescent bulbs, they were banned by that genius Malcolm Turnbull years ago. Supermarkets and specialist lighting stores still stock the quartz halogen incandescent bulbs, but I guess they will disappear eventually.

Those CFL's come with a bonus, RFI. Best I have gotten out of them is11,000 hrs lowest 30seconds: Warranty along with ACCC not worth the ink I just used to mention them. I installed a few Rugged Construction globes at the previous house 25 years on they are still there.

The "Electronic Ballast" is an amazing thing. Three second hand eight foot Thorn twin tube fluorescent lights in sheds failed in 56 years. New equivalent one in this shed dead in 4 years, caravan shed 2012 its failing along with one on the house verandah. Even, as mentioned, an emergency exit light done its batteries in no time. Even one of the circuit breakers died. The 40 year old flouro's march on.

No semblance of quality in the new stuff: They should be installed with a power point & lead for an easy swap (did that in a factory, unplug, unhook, put up an exchange one, & what went wrong can be sorted out by the electrical section later.)

Has anyone asked to greenies where they are going to get the cellulose (one you have tried to tell them is from the tree their hugging) to make the paper bags.

Please Explain??? Amongst the garage content from Dad's shed: That ended up at the Mens Shed. where I won the mains stuff to assess, most dodgy & worn out, or would, even with free labour, not be cost effective repair. Was a cable around a foot.

The plug top is 15A and the socket 10A??? I was always of the opinion that you filed down a 15A Plug top to make an illegal cable to fit a 10A socket, not make a 10A socket, when a 10A plug top goes into a 15A socket and still should earth.

I am still not wrapped in the stepdown transformer found (not auto transformer) either. Decent "Ferguson" with bent feet (Anvil job) 240 / 115V 0.87A, I would say continuous. I do not like the idea of a three wire cable (sealed plug) with no earth pin ….Transformer metal body of course)... dodgy. Confiscated that one: Zero tolerance.

The smell of creosote goes away fairly quickly. It's great stuff for keeping white ants out but used motor oil does the same job.

It's a shame that the products that do the best jobs are always hazardous. Creosote, asbestos, DDT, thalidomide, PCBs, etc.

I just posted a new thread called My latest project AWA Big Brother Wooden set and it posted 4 times. I even sent Brad some photos and the email came back as blocked. Is this a issue with the site access?

One of those threads gives a server error, while the others have no content. Looks like you got it working on your 5th attempt.

Brad, did you know that the same guy, Thomas Midgley, invented tetraethyl lead AND chlorinated flurocarbons?

Another issue: there are some empty threads in this forum which cannot be read, thus the forum is still being flagged as having unread posts in it. Maybe the code can be made to check for empty messages before letting them be saved?

Click on these 3 links to clear the "unread" flag.

Thread 1532
Thread 1531
Thread 1530

Interesting that the post time is my local time now, instead of whatever time zone the server is in.

Just use the "Mark all threads as read" link at the top of the list.

I've been meaning to block members from deleting text from new threads as it always leads to this but time is not on my side these days with a change in my employment. It's on the to-do list next time I get some holidays, which will probably be around February or March, 2020.

Okay, it is no longer possible to delete text from new threads. This should stop threads being in the list with no active link. In future, members need to use the edit button in a thread to update a comment rather than delete it. At a later stage I will give myself a delete button so that the thread list can be tidied up but for now it's not a priority. Read my comment above on how to mark all threads as read.

The e-mail service is separate to the website. No e-mail addresses have been blocked and there is no issue with the e-mail provider. If an email is blocked, it is due to an issue elsewhere and not something I have control over. At this time, all pending images/documents have been uploaded.

The search engine has also been repaired.

Thanks for fixing the search 404 problem. This exposes another bug. If there are multiple finds in the one thread, clicking on any of them takes you to the start of the thread. The individual post number is ignored.

I looked at the source of the the thread (Fred Lever's Vogue project), and there's no post numbers to act as anchors anywhere.

The anchors are working for me. One time the anchors have never worked is when the comment your search has landed on is not on the first page of the thread - ie: each page holds 15 comments. I've never managed to work out how to make the search work with the paging function.

I could sort of make it work but it'll take some clever maths to do it.

Midgley was with an other chemist on the TEL It is also they who came up with the "standard engine" for assessing the "Knock" (detonation) of fuel. This happened at the point Kettering ignition was put into a Cadillac & it had detonation issues. Kettering was blamed however, he employed these two (All part of GMH) to sort out what was actually related to free radicals (not the idiots marching down the street chanting "wadawe want no idea ….")

It was already known that increased compression gave more efficiency but it was stopped by the fuel detonating. Eventually they found TEL to require the least amount of parts per million to control what became "Octane" Number. The actual TEL added was a package with other things like Toluene (Methyl Benzine). Fascinating that they used Benzine in "Unleaded" petrol in the full knowledge that it took 3600 times more Benzine to achieve the same result. Ethyl was used as the name to hide the Lead and its methods of construction chemically killed a few.

With changes in fuel and the fact I have old engines, what needs remembering, The higher the octane number, the slower it burns. So my ute with its lower octane head (STD petrol of its day) ran 4 degrees before TDC and the same engine with a high compression head ran 8 degrees before top dead centre.

Trap: Computer systems have a microphone to pick up detonation: It has been found (modifications made) that leaving the centre in the towbar assy can lead to higher fuel consumption. It rattles & the computer thinks it detonation & richens the mixture or alters the timing.

There was some talk about ten years ago that the benzine content of unleaded petrol caused cancer. I haven't heard much about it since then. I can't prove or disprove the theory surrounding towbars. The traditional tongues wouldn't rattle because they are attached with two high tensile bolts with spring washers and nuts. The more modern ones that just hold in with a locking pin could probably rattle a little but the locking pin on mine is a very tight fit. I've never noticed any discernible change in how the engine runs.

I do know one thing though - I pity whoever runs into the back of me. Towbars for the VT-VZ Commodore series are stronger than bullbars and rather than be mounted under the car like most towbars, these replace the original pressed metal rear bumper and mount behind the decorative plastic bumper. Weight - probably about 30kg. In a big impact the car would bend before these towbars but not before seriously shortening the length of the car behind.

Modern petrol bowsers have vapour recovery systems - maybe in response to the cancer issue but not 100% sure. They don't recover all the vapour though.