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  :)

Big Big Job On The Land Rover Defender

Recently I had to get a new spring seat welded on, work I could not do myself. The front left leg on the chassis also needed tidied up, ie plated.

This next job should be do able if time consuming.

I'm renewing the brakes discs, calipers and pads and also doing the wheel bearing while I have the discs off.

Step one:

Remove old caliper.

Mine was pretty grotty !!

There was also what looked like a man made hole in the disc housing !

I then set about removing the hub assembly.

Its best to use a 52mm box spanner for the hub nuts, I bought one for much cheapness.

Oh, I also got myself new mud guards as the old ones were just rusty lumps, can you tell the difference ?

Mud guard fitted, what a difference !

Now gents, do not listen to she who must be obeyed. The kitchen is the perfect place for driving out the hub bearing races and tapping the new ones in.

It's then time to put on the new disc.

and carefully refit all the bits...

I now have to fit the calipers and redo some of the brake piping, more to come.

Defender Work

Mucking about making a video of how difflock works, whilst the Defender was jacked up I noticed something bad.

This is the front LH spring seat which has a definite break along it due mostly to corrosion. The breal is on both sides of this seat. The other three seats on the vehicle are sound.
I put the Defender to a local who knows about this sort of thing but was told that the chassis leg was also corroded where the new seat was to be fitted and would require plating. Fortunately a friend recommended someone who has carried out this work before and he managed the job in less than a day.

New seat in place and chassis repaired and painted.

Of course we had to take it out for a wee test drive :)

I nearly forogt, heres the video I made explaining difflock.
In a nutshell the four wheel drive will drive all four wheels.
Without difflock:
If a wheel is off the ground or on a slippy surface it will simply take the power you are delivering and spin.
With difflock:
The front wheels are locked to the rear so their turning speed is locked together.
If a front wheel is slippy or airborne it will not spin unless one of the back wheels is able to spin.
This can be a great help but you can easily get into situations where both front and rear will spin, but it usually means you are having fun :)

Phase 2 Postponed

Didn't get a chance to start the exercise phase of my plan. Work and vehicle/chainsaw trouble along with other commitments intervened. Heavy rain and lack of sleep will destroy today's plans.

Stay tuned...

ADF Entering Phase 2

Almost 8 weeks into the diet now and things are going well. It's the end of October so soon I will be entering phase 2.
This will be starting serious exercise again. I was going to do it next week but I'm working so will probably leave it until the week after. I also intend to go down to two days a week fasting, Monday and Thursday.

My goal was to reach 67 Kg by Christmas and despite having a week off I am well on the way to achieving this. Here's a wee graph of my progress.

Where Is Your Will Power ?

I have been surprised by the amount of people who I know who would like to lose weight but are literally horrified and generally negative about ADF. 
Although I have now been joined by someone who has seen first and how easy it is is.
 I’m now sure that there is some built in evolutionary protection system that helps you make up any excuse as to why you should not fast ?

Eat, Fast And Live Longer.

Here's a follow up to my last post on diet. I hope you have searched for the video of the documentary I watched and can see the benefits of fasting. It's not just about weight loss, there are other health benefits too.



I can see some of you are sceptical. I have been  met with same scepticism. It's perfectly natural for you to be vary wary of being told that starving yourself is good for you, it's probably a natural evolutionary reaction designed to keep you alive. Your a big boy now and need to use your will power to overcome this natural urge to make excuses as to why this is all wrong, because it isn't.

Now what I've been doing is a 5:3. Thats fasting for 3 days and eating normally for 5. Now when I say fasting, it's not even real fasting. You get to eat 500 calories on your fasting days !  Which for me is Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Easy eh ?

So lets say I'm allowed 2500 cals a day. Thats 17500 a week. On this diet I only consume 500 cals on three of those days so my new weekly intake is 11500. I'm consuming 6000 calories less a week.
It's not rocket science, you can see that I should lose weight. Rightly some of that weight loss will be muscle and I haven't given serious thought to a weight training program, although I have been swimming once during this trial, and I did conduct another test.

I went cycling on a route I have cycled many times but not since July when a went flat out on a segment that is know to Strava called Accurate Balnagown Hill Climb Start-Finish. This time I beat July's time by 10 seconds, indicating that muscle loss may not be such a problem :) A weight / training program is going to happen soon for my eating days. At the moment I just want to see how the weight loss progresses.

Well it's still tough, especially the first week. You start thinking about excuses you can use for not doing it. I started by having two Slim Fast shakes throughout the day but while I'm doing nightshifts I find it easier to just have one 500 calorie meal at dinner time.

I think it's really working. I just found some data I recroded in 2007. Weight 67.2 Kg , distance around navel 84.5cm. Before I started the ADF ( Alternate Day Fasting ) I was 73.8 Kg and 93cm around the belly !

This Saturday I will weigh and measure again and hope to remember to post up my results.

That Old Devil Called Diet

I haven't had the need to bother with diets in the past. That's not to say I haven't been interested and kind of gave the Atkins a go a few years back to see what it was like, but that's just the scientist in me.

Recently I have had a series of knee problems so have cut out a lot of exercise and as a result I have increased my weight and my waistline.

I still got a shock at my works medical when I measured 75Kg without boots !

I weighed myself the next morning more suitably attired or not attired :) And I was 73.8 Kg and my stomach measurement had increased to 93cm.

Now I was always 70 Kg or less when I was exercising regularly and my waistline was a lot smaller so something had to be done. I also just got the news about my knee and more recent shoulder pain, I have Osteoarthritis !!

I was working out whether to seriously follow the Paleo diet which was the one that appealed most to me, when something else happened. I couldn't sleep one night after a few days nightshift so got up to watch the TV. I watched a Horizon programme "Eat, fast And Live Longer" and I had my solution. Do a search on Youtube for it as it's not on iPlayer anymore.

I started on Saturday 8th September 2012. It's now 2nd October and I'm 70 Kg with a waist of 91cm.

More details of what I'm doing to come, in the meantime watch the Documentary, it could save your life :)

This is a typical write up of one of my pest control trips. I don't do wasps and ants, just rabbits, pigeons, crows, rats.

This blog contains pictures of dead rabbits but they are not particularly gory. The rabbits are doing a great deal of damage to the field and dyke and have to be controlled.

Yesterday saw the return of the Sako, after more than two weeks to get the barrel shortened and then refitted as it was in too much and the bolt would not close !!

Anyhow, picked it up and went straight up to the 50m range. She was off to the left but a few rounds later I was putting a mag of five rounds onto the white dot sticker for patching targets, sorted !

Here is the new look.

Sako Finnfire .22lr, barrel shortened from 21" to 16"

Today it was back up to Heartbreak Ridge the field with the ridge of boulders that offers two shooting positions.

Looking towards the Ridge the pirate is at firing point red and good old Frankenstein's monster is at pink :)

I followed the same MO as last time parked up and then moved slowly to the ridge to engage rabbits in the red zone from firing point red. I'm going to have to organise a comfy position here as this time I sat on a rock resting elbow on knee and took this bunny at 48m.
No obvious entry or exit.

I then moved to pink position and went prone, no bipod as I leave that on the HMR now.

Scanning with the LRF showed some movement in a gully at 63m, young ones playing about however another bunny entered from left at 45m and was duly despatched.
The round went right through and I saw it hit the dirt behind !

I sat tight for a few mins the young ones at 63m still not presenting a decent shot, a decent sized doh emerged at 55m and was bowled over with a similar shot to the one I made with the HMR last week face on, doon the throat! The surface damage a lot less with the sub HP .22, but devastating further into the target.

A decent few days, 6 feral pigeon on Sunday with the Ultra, three with the HMR Monday and three today with the Sako  :)