Recent Cycles.

Orange Dolphin PAYG - Credit Theft and Other Scams.

I had been with Vodafone for several years but their refusal to offer 3g in my area led me to but an Orange sim on PAYG Dolphin.
I bought this on 15th June 2013 and monitored it closely using the online account.

When you top up with £10 you get 1gb of data and 400 texts to use in a month.

Pretty soon things went a bit funny. I had checked my account online in the morning, and sent out some texts in the afternoon. I had £8.51 credit in the morning but not enough credit to send the texts. I checked online to find 11p.

I tried to phone customer services but, of course, didn't have any credit. To cut a long story short it took two weeks of correspondence with the Orangehelpers on twitter to sort it out and get my money back.
It was a 'Technical Glitch'.

READ THIS FROM THE BOTTOM TO THE TOP

I had tried customer services who said they would contact me but never did !

The next time I wanted to top up I saw this great way to do it on my online account. Pay £50 and Orange will automatically top up £10 a month for 6 months, which is £8.33 a month and I get my monthly data and text benfits without any fuss ! Great.

It's the Ready Deal 50 in the box on the right.

All is not what it seems with Orange. After paying the £50 I got a text saying I had topped up £50, had 3gb data and would need to top up next month for free data and texts. In other words it was treated as a normal £50 top up. Over to orangehelpers again.

 They agreed that I had got the deal details correct.

READ THESE FROM THE BOTTOM UP

Basically the offer on my online account page was a trap to get me to spend £50. They said I was not eligible for the offer and that to get it I would have to take a new new phone number and a new account !!!! WTF.

They were quite happy to take my money and have not offered to refund it !

False advertising anyone ?

Oh and I still get this text whenever I top up £10 and get my free data and texts.

TWATS !

Do Orange Steal Your Credit ?

On 15th June I decided to try an Orange PAYG sim in my phone. I went for the Dolphin option as advised by the shop assistant. I topped up with £10 credit there and then which gave me 400 texts and 1GB of data.

I don't make many calls and changing to Orange would give me 3G where I live so I could take advantage of the data :)

I removed my Vodafone sim and started using the Orange one. Everything was lovely. I set up my online account so that I could keep a close eye on my new account.

On Monday 24th June I still had £8.51 credit, everything was going fine. That evening I decided to let some of my friends know I had a new number. I sent five texts and then received a text from Orange informing me that I didn't have enough credit !!

Checking online my credit had gone down to 11p ! I looked at my usage and there were not any charges ?

I had to insert my Vodafone sim to contact Orange customer support as I needed credit to phone them. They said they would check in 24hrs and text me back. In the meantime I topped up another £10 on Orange. No text came from customer support so I contacted @orangehelpers on twitter.
They needed an additional 72 hrs. I contacted them again and they conformed I had not used the credit and elevated my concerns.

Its now July 7th, I have heard nothing but there's been a development. I am no longer able to track my usage. When I log into my account it's grey, I cannot click on anything. I have been locked out !

I wonder how often this happens and whether people just keep topping up regardless ?

More Corrosion Patching

It was decided ( by the MOT Test Centre ) that some more work should be done on the Defender !

First I attacked the outrigger on the drivers side. This was sound at the top so the new one was modified to slot in and then welded in place.

Rip off old one, prep the obligatory hole in chassis where outrigger was.

Cut template and test fit.

Cut new steel to shape.

Weld in place.

Then add the new outrigger and weld in place.

Paint it up then get it really dirty from grinding and it looks like its been there for years !

Oh, we didn't stop there, oh no. The lovely man at the MOT Centre chalked all the nasty bits with yellow crayon ( they are only allowed crayons ) and even numbered some of them. One of my favourites was an innocuous couple of holes near the front radius arm mounting point. We cut it all off and re-fabbed it.

Here it is hammerited ( is that a word ? ) and painted. I like to use silver Hammerite so that I can then over spray black or red or whatever. Having the refabbed/welded sections silver helps me to see them ! There's four different pieces welded together here. Sorry its muddy, I had to move the Defender to get a trailer out.

There are some minor holes in the bulkhead too which are tricky to and will be addressed after this jigsaw of a section on the chassis at the back. I have cut out the bad stuff which included a section where the rear electrics pass through. I used the circumference of a coke can rolled up to protect the wiring.
I only have one piece tacked in place at the moment and need to get magnets to start fitting up the other sections.

All of the above is very time consuming as I do the work in my driveway so need good weather, this doesn't bother me. What bother me is that all this work is for the MOT so I cant drive the Defender until its done :(

In the left of the above picture you can see that the bump stops are missing. I have new ones to go on but since they were only noted on the MOT test and not fails I may put them on after the test, whenever that may be !

Outrigger Part 1

Got started on replacing the outrigger yesterday. Right away I was faced with stiff opposition as the bolt holding the outrigger onto the bodywork was seized. I ended up shattering a 3/4" socket before resorting to cutting the head off with the grinder.

I then went from this:

To this:

The expected hole in the chassis. It's slightly worse than it looks as half of the top part was also corroded. What you can see in above picture is the top part of the old outrigger which I also removed. Sorry no pic as I was getting into the grinding 'zone' and forgot. I made cardboard templates so that I could cut new 2mm plate.

Here is the redone section with some chassis paint on it to guard against immediate corrosion.

As you can see above I have retianed the bottom part of the old outrigger as this was in good shape. I then had to do some more measuring so that the new outrigger would fit snugly into place. This was the most difficult part.

I was left with a wee gap right at the bottom for which I will have to fit up another small piece of steel and weld in place and there's some weld to go along the top of the rail.

As I moved inside and started to weld I realised something was wrong. The weld looked terrible. I found that I had ran out of shielding gas ! Honestly those wee disposable bottles are useless.

I will grind into the weld here to see how porous it is then redo.

I still have to attach the top outer to the stiffener for which I will do a bracket for the top and maybe for underneath too.

A proper big bottle of gas ordered, however I am back to work so Part 2 may be a while.

Now scroll back up to the first picture then down to the bottom picture - see the difference :)

One I forgot

There have been so many !

I also reolaced the track rod ends, PAS drop arm and the swivel housing seals.

TRE's and the drop arm were straight forward after a vice and stilson were used, the swivel seals were a bit more involved and messier.

I removed the half shafts to gain access from the inside.

Oh, did I mention the rear shocks too. A very easy job. You can see the new outrigger in that box too !

The Next Big Job On The Defender: Outrigger

The next big job will be replacing the N/S bulkhead outrigger. It's badly corroded. Initial attempts to 'get at it' revealed this.

You can see it there under what remains of the footwell panel. This panel will be remade and replaced also. The outrigger does have a hole in the bottom from new but is not supposed to have a big hole in the top !!

Special tools are needed for this job, namely a 4.5" grinder and a welding machine. 

This 130 amp Supermig from Sealey should be fine on 2mm mild steel.

Stay tuned for more rock n roll  :)