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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Tremble

Dude sounds like a knock-off Rampant Rabbit

Likewise. 58pts and yet his team still losing has got to hurt…

That sounds entirely reasonable to me… I’d hope there’s still enough of that era hardware out there that a tower unit could be picked up pretty cheap and they’ve not become collectors items yet

It might well have been the PC1512, both the mouse and the look and feel of the OS are ringing some very distant bells...

Yes that's a good point on Windows 3.1 vs 95, "obsolete" was very much my game-obsessed child's view on it as 95 had DirectX and pretty quickly games migrated away from DOS to needing Win 95 or above. That said I took copies of the six Win 3.1 floppies on the last machine I had that came with a floppy drive and now have an installation running on DosBOX for when the urge to play Sim Tower or Dr Drago's Madcap Chase strikes...

My dad had various strange old computers stowed away in the loft, a spectrum where the connection to a tape drive had broken so you could only boot it into basic, and a circuit board thing based around a 6502 chip with what looked like a calculator in the corner that you had to programme in hexadecimal. Apparently he spent a day with it once and got it to sum two single digit numbers and that was that.

The earliest machine I remember using was an Amstrad, can't remember the model name but it had two 5.5in floppy drives and no hard disk. There was a very early graphical OS that you could boot from a floppy (maybe the first version of Windows?) and we played various games that came with magazines like Jason Jr and Spongs. When I was 7 we got a 486 (the Pentium had just come out but had the floating point issue so Dad decided to stick with something proven), with Windows 3.1 and 8mb RAM and that was when my interest really started. Never really got into coding but became the authority on using it and wrote various boot discs allowing increased memory allocations for playing games like Desert Strike and Worms. With Win 95 coming along shortly after we bought it, the machine was obsolete pretty much immediately but we kept it until near the turn of the millenium.

I have an i4 (silly M50 version) with a stated range of 315 miles, did a 260mile round trip in the summer with 10% of the battery remaining so it was probably giving about 285-290 miles range total. That was sat on cruise at 70 most of the time and on Eco Pro mode. I wouldn’t touch the first gen E-Tron 50 given what’s available nowadays, I had one as a company car previously and in ideal conditions it might just about manage 160 miles, but indicated more like 110 in the winter.

Thank you! I feel as though yours is objectively an actual classic whereas at the moment mine is a silly man spending unnecessary amounts on an old car, but as mentioned above it does everything I want it to and in a rather fun way too.

Sorting out the passenger side wing mirror indicator was another fun job that took many times longer than it should have done. The issue was easy enough, in that whoever last had it off (I imagine the body shop when it was resprayed) hadn't plugged the wires back in to it. Unfortunately as with everything else on the car it had evidently been bodged around with multiple times and of the four mounts that attach the mirror cover to the mechanism, only one was still present, and that snapped when I unscrewed the torx bolt from it. Cue plastic welding it back into place, waiting a day for it to set, and very carefully reinstalling everything.

I also realised the reason the bolt that holds the whole assembly to the car had been replaced with one with a big button head was because that jammed it still to stop it shaking. As it stripped on the way out I replaced it with a standard sized one and the mirror cover now has a slight wobble. I'll try and sort it with some tape short term and then add new mirror covers to the shopping list...

Being off work at the moment I strapped on my big boy pants and had another go at the alarm horn. Got the car up high enough for an axle stand and put a brick under the rear wheel and then went to work. Of course, the 13mm nut that holds the alarm siren in place had completely corroded in place and nothing was moving it. I ended up having to take the wing off to get at the cage the horn sits in and then Dremel out the offending nut and bolt . What should have been a 45 minute job ended up taking 2 and a half hours, but it's done now and the alarm is once again functional. Noticed one of the wing mirror indicators has died so next job will be attacking that....

Sorry I missed this response initially. My current stands are minimum height of 280mm, there look to be some on amazon around the 240mm range which might be enough. I do have wheel chocs, the drive has a very slight downwards slope (probably no more than 2-3 degrees) so I wasn't sure if it was safe to just wedge something under there.

I thought I'd managed to get away with doing this job having turned the wheels all the way to the right and peeled back the arch liner, only to find that the bolt that holds the siren in place has corroded in place. I now need to take the wing off so I have access to remove the whole unit and then work out how to get the bolt off. These jobs always seem so simple until you start doing them...

The great thing about the switch to disc brakes from a second hand perspective is there are some huge bargains out there, particularly for TT bikes which are relatively niche. Position is very person specific but I'd experiment with putting the extensions in the 'standard' way round and see what works better for you. I know high hands were all the rage a few years back but I found I stuck my head up to see over them and was quicker in a more traditional position where I could keep my head low and still see where I was going.

If you're on Zwift the 8 week TT programme on there worked well for me the last time I tried to get back to fitness, at least for the first 5 weeks. The top end sessions they then put in for the last few weeks were beyond me, probably because I'm a diesel and repeated Z6 efforts were never a strong suit, but it might be worth looking at for this sort of course.

There’s a lot of ex-GB rowers in the Ineos crew. Huge units with huge engines who would previously have been limited from moving to top level cycling due to w/kg but who are perfect for the grinder jobs. Having trained in the same building as some guys on the GB squad pathway many years ago and realised they were putting out literally double my watts on the rowing machine I can well see them pushing 500w plus for those durations.

I've been lazy with updates again here. I got the respray done and the wheels refurbished and am happy with the results. It wasn't a full bare metal job and you can tell in places, but the key things I wanted to address with the bonnet looking hideous, overspray all over every seal, and bobbling have been dealt with. As the fuel cap had been sanded over when the previous owner did their awful job we went body coloured with it and with the front end being a bit of a mishmash of black and grey out of the factory, the shop recommended going for grey with the fog light grilles and I like how they came out.

Of course, sods law being what it is, I'd had it back for about a month when entering a car park I've used many times without issue, I managed to scrape the skirts and kerb the rear wheel... I'm hoping I can get away with a smart repair on the skirt, just very irritated I did it now and not any other point since I bought the car.

Otherwise it's been great mechanically, I've done a few long round trips with work and a stag do and it hasn't missed a beat.

The alarm horn has gone, which is par for the course with VAG cars of this age as they have an internal battery that leaks over time. I tried to replace it this morning (requires removing a front wheel for access), but found that with the low ride height of the car if I jack it up high enough to get a jack stand under it also lifts the rear wheel on the same side off the ground, which feels hilariously unsafe. Any recommendations for low-rise axle stands would be appreciated...

I inherited a few grand from a grandparent in 2010 and being young and stupid put it all into a Mk2 MR2. I knew nothing about cars and sold it two years later having run out of money and/or the capability to keep it on the road. I sold it to someone who’s dad ran one of the owners clubs for £400 after an MOT failure and it was still on the road until 2021, so evidently just needed someone with rather more capability to look after it than me…

I think there were five revisions of the SW20, mine being the third. The first was very prone to snap oversteer and then something on the suspension was changed from rev 2 from memory, I found it was perfectly comfortable to drive and visibility for things like parking was surprisingly good too.

I don’t know if it’s typical of them but I had endless problems with the brakes binding on mine, and I think went through replacing all four calipers in the 18 months I owned it. When they were found to be binding again alongside some emissions issues was when I got rid of it, something I have lived to regret when I see what they sell for now…

It’s relatively minor compared to what some folks have gone through with the IT outage, but we had a bit of a nightmare with TUI outbound on a package to Gran Canaria last summer. Flying out of Gatwick when there were storms around and nothing was taking off, the plane was an old charter airbus a320 which had a fault meaning the aircon didn’t work until the engines were turned on. We boarded and sat there for an hour, mostly family with kids, as the cabin temperature rose to 40 degrees and no water was made available. As we were still attached to the jetway a small mutiny ensued and people started disembarking themselves, leading to the whole flight being disembarked and we were then effectively kettled for an hour at the gate whilst they decided what to do with us. Eventually we were ushered back through passports and with my wife being pregnant we managed to persuade them to let us book at the Gatwick premier inn rather than be bused to Croydon as happened to most of the flight and we eventually flew off on a day shorter holiday the next day. Whilst we were reimbursed for the lost day, we got no compensation for the flight issues as ‘passengers chose to disembark’, casually ignoring that they chose to due to the alternative being slow roasted…

That said, all the stuff hugo7 said applied once we got there, comfortably the best holiday I’ve had since my daughter was born for all the reasons they pointed out.

Just went and cast my votes in Reading. Tory PCC guy had stuck some blurb through our letterbox with no reference to him being a Tory except for the small tree logo at the bottom on the back. Did at least have the good grace to have a blue background as opposed to some of the more egregious ones obviously trying to pass themselves off as Labour. Either way, it seems they're fully aware the brand is toxic.

I worked there from 2015 to 2017 and was involved in the bottom level of democracy. The council has no executive power over day-to-day decisions. They hold a vote of confidence in the Chairperson every year and other than that they’re little more than a talking shop. I don’t remember enough about the constitution to say whether they would have a vote on something like a part sell off. Culturally it had reached a place where it was strictly hierarchical and speaking up was looked down in, in many ways it felt closest to the civil service which is where I started my career. From the various places I’ve worked, I’d say the franchised model has been best for promoting the healthy tension between top level ‘we need to go this way’ and operational ‘that won’t work because of xyz’.

As for the mayor of Birmingham, it was him and Mark Price who set the partnership up for a fall with their footprint expansions during and after the financial crisis whilst never sorting the back end processes out. The rumour was they didn’t get on and that was evidenced in how they built completely parallel organisations. I was in IT for Waitrose and had a counterpart in John Lewis and another in ‘Group’. There was only really enough work for one of us. IT overall had something like 1200 heads supporting a 500 store footprint across JL and Waitrose which was absurd. Six months after I left they brought the outsourcers in and everyone I used to work with was TUPE’d or made redundant.

As often happens, Street went off to to politics, Price was made Cameron’s business Tsar and the new leadership carried the can for the consequences of their decisions.

They were good, Lawrence caught Covid the week the car was due to go in so we had to push things back but that wasn't a problem. Once he had the car he kept me regularly up to date, didn't deviate from the quoted price and sorted out the mess I'd made trying to glue the parcel shelf bracket in place for free too. He spent plenty of time both via email and in person when I was dropping it off confirming the design and going over thread colours so we could make sure the seats matched the paintwork.

He was going to strip some of the internal trim and get it hydro-dipped, but the company we were planning to use weren't answering their emails and then when they finally got in touch quoted a month's turnaround so we knocked that on the head and I've since vinyl wrapped some of the bits myself, which has come out OK.

Thanks! To start with I did a load of mental gymnastics trying to justify what I was doing and then decided to just let the madness take hold. Much like my bike builds really...

That pretty much brings us up to date. I am really enjoying the car - it's great fun to drive but also surprisingly practical. I can haul my five year old around as needed and with the back seats down it's surprisingly spacious, so I can get my five-piece drum kit in for travel to band practices and gigs. What I've spent on it doesn't make much sense from a pure financial standpoint, but I think it will give me a lot of happy years of use to come. I could have spent quite a bit more initially on one in 'good condition' and still found similar underbody issues hiding away so I at least know that this one has had that dealt with and to a standard that I trust.

I'm not quite finished yet though, future jobs are:

1. Replace rear ARB and droplinks, likely with Whiteline 24mm. The rear ARB on these isn't the best out of the factory, and the only advisory on January's MOT was for the rear drop link bushings, so that feels like a good excuse to do both at once
   
2. Respray. The paint job that is currently on the car is evidently a rattle can job, and an awful one at that. I'll get the alloys reconditioned at the same time
   
3. Other exterior cosmetic stuff. I'm umming and aahing about going gloss black on the front grille, rear diffuser and wing mirrors. I'll likely see how they look offset against a nicer paint job before making a final decision here
   
4. The remaining front bushings that weren't replaced when the back end of the car got dealt with
   
   

After that I might just leave it alone and drive it. There's always the temptation to stick an aftermarket exhaust on and go Stage 2 though...

Now onto the interior. As mentioned upthread the seats had seen better days. As may be becoming apparent, I have a habit of allowing scope to creep somewhat, so having initially been looking at just doing a like for like seat replacement, I ended up getting hold of a set of the Recaro Wingbacks from an old RS4. These have inflatable bolsters around the back and legs along with lumbar support, but most importantly of all, look cool.

I had to retrofit a power feed to support these functions as the previous seats were purely mechanical. I didn't get any pictures of this but it was relatively straightforward following an online guide. I also found that irritatingly despite the RS4 and TT seat wiring having identical pin positions, they used a different plug and pin type, so I spent a fun day de-pinning the connectors on the Recaros, crimping new ends on and pinning them into TT plugs.

Mine were showing their age, and also didn't match the rest of the interior, so I got in touch with Lawrence at LG Trimming in Camberley to get them refreshed and retrimmed and also got the door cards and rear seat inner panels done at the same time to pull everything together. I'm pretty happy with the end result:

I had the car booked in to R-Tech in Nuneaton who do a bundle deal on intake cleaning, injector servicing and a remap. They're generally known as the place to go for the EA113 engine, and do a bespoke map for every car based on what it can handle rather than just slapping a generic one on.

Having wondered off to kill some time in Nuneaton I got a call with some interesting info, and thankfully a dodged bullet. Apparently three of the inlet flaps had broken. Very luckily, they were clean breaks and matching them up to their mounts confirmed no smaller bits had broken off and got into the engine to start circulating, so a very lucky escape. Two of the injectors were stuffed which probably meant the other two were not far behind, and also explained why I was never getting great fuel economy as they were apparently just firing fuel out all over the place. Surprisingly I hadn't had any error codes for the engine so can only presume any misfires they were causing were below a threshold of tripping a code.

This meant the trip got rather more expensive than planned as I had four new injectors installed, but it was 100% worth it. Apparently they've only seen these symptoms with bad maps, and an initial dyno run confirmed the car did have a map on it and was producing around 293bhp and 298 ft/lb, however this was after the injectors and inlet had been repaired so no doubt was quite a bit down on it when I was driving it. I've either got lucky with the stock clutch or it's been upgraded at some point as they were able to tune the engine up to peaks of 327.5bhp and 332 ft/lb without any slipping.

I now understand how a TTS is supposed to feel! I've never had a high performance turbocharged car before - I had a Civic Type R and a Mk2 MR2 back in the mists of time, and then more recently company cars were a BMW 330e and an Audi E-Tron, so a hybrid and a full electric. When I got the TTS I did feel that the throttle response was very poor low down and then the power came on all at once when it hit boost, and now see that was a characteristic of the old map. The new one has a wonderfully progressive throttle response which picks up early and doesn't let off when you're foot's on the floor, but is also really easy to drive sensibly. I have gained about 5mpg on long runs too, which feels like it will more than pay for having to run it on V-Power.

Before and after graphs are as below:

I do, and have done many more silly things to it that make little financial or logical sense, but they make me happy. Your prompt has motivated me to do a big old update.

First up, the underbody rust. Thankfully the garage extensively covered it in their own blog, so I shall link to that rather than re-write here. In short, it was a mess but has been saved and is now considerably better than it came out of the factory: https://balancemotorworks.co.uk/2023/09/29/audi-tts-restoration-can-a-2010-car-really-be-this-rusty/

Having since posted about this on various enthusiast forums the general view is that the steel rear end of the Mk2 TT is a time bomb if not treated and driven in wet/salty conditions. The body shell is painted on the rear of the car so quite why Audi decided not to bother getting the robot to finish off covering the bottom we don't really know, but it's going to cost a lot of people a lot of money as these get older.

The upshot is that all rear end suspension components along with the front control arms were replaced, and in for a penny in for a pound we put Bilstein B12 coilovers on to replace the stock shocks and springs.

I was still getting some vibrations at motorway cruising speeds, so swapped the tyres for a new set of Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 6 and they have dealt with about 80% of the problem. There is still a slight vibration which now comes in at around 85mph (so not a speed I'm seeing regularly but rather more of a problem if I choose to track it). I think I'm going to need to find a shop with a Hunter Road Force balancer to take a look at the wheels to dial the last bits of this out.

Next up, the engine...

You're welcome! It's a funny old world when the focus and investment has shifted from operations (how quickly and accurately can you turn orders around), to IT and Digital. In part this is because a lot of our restaurants were pretty much at capacity in terms of the number of people per hour you could get through the eat-in and drive-thru channels, so delivery and mobile orders were the only way for them to grow. The downside being the experience aggi describes above.

People's loyalty to delivery platforms is another funny one, rolling out delivery we found that every time you added another provider, you got pretty much pure additive custom. If someone was a Deliveroo person rather than an Uber person they just wouldn't bother ordering from us until we partnered with Deliveroo and even if Deliveroo ran an offer on our food, Uber people would stick with Uber.

Unfortunately human nature is such that when we don’t feel like we’ll be judged by the person taking our order and can do it on a screen we order more, to the tune of 15-20%. As such the fast food companies have purposely reduced or removed staffed tills over time to chase those gains.

The delivery thing is a pain, a lot of the chains are redesigning restaurants with separate courier entrances, spinning up dark kitchens etc but those redesigns always take a few years to roll through all the restaurants.

Signed, an ex-fast food company IT drone

Finally cracked and ordered a load of cold water swimming stuff yesterday (not that I've swum in open water at all in 2 years but it might be useful...). I had a dispatch confirmation this evening.