Ok Ladies and Gents, lets take a step back and take a breath and calm down for a second.
Now we all know Lockie's a young bloke. Prone to a bit of stupidity, but so were all of you once. I'm willing to bet the vast majority of you can't sit there and honestly say you've never done anything silly with/to a mini at one point in time, myself included.
Lockie has calmed down alot over the last year or so but that has alot to do with the ear bashings he gets from here and other sources. Some of it called for, and other times like with Tony's reply and I quote
Convertible Mini replied and wrote:
Not put together with enough care. You are always doing things in a rush and with deadlines. So your threads say any way ! YOU JUST DON"T DO THAT ON A MINI. When will you learn Lockie ? This must be costing all your earnings. It is supposed to be a hobby.
This reply was obviously made by assuming he knew what Lockie was on about. I know what because we chat via msn alot. This thread is about the van he recently bought. Now everyone knows
any used car especially a british car is a big headache waiting to be discovered. Unless you're lucky. This one came gear selector issues, and a clutch slave cylinder that has just failed. It's got nothing to do with how he drives or his maintenance on this mini. It's a component failure, yeah he could have replaced it before it failed but he didn't have the spare $$, he already knew about it. And since when have minis been strictly a hobby? Stop stirring the pot.
I've had a clutch adjustor wind itself in when I first got NAV and knew nothing about how the the clutch in a mini works, and by the time it was an issue I was in the middle of Sydney (from coffs harbour) on my way to Canberra with no idea how to fix it, not even a service manual. silly yes. but I survived. Did anyone have a go at me when I told everyone on here? nup barely anyone gave it a 2nd thought.
Lockie now owns 4 mini's, 1 was destroyed in a recent accident and the other damaged severely a while ago and may not be salvageable. both within a year. Not his fault. Just wrong place wrong time.
If that was me I would have packed up and sold off everything mini and bought a tank to drive everyday. But no Lockie's passion is mini's, He lives and breathes them. Yeah he can be ham fisted and rush to meet deadlines, but thats because he's so proud to have mini's he wants to share them with everyone. He considered getting another type of car for a daily but he doesn't want to. I have my fairmont only as a family car. thats it. Otherwise NAV would be an everyday car again.
When it comes to general maintenance Lockie can procrastinate with the best of them. He asks constantly questions sometimes 2 or 3 times to make sure he gets it right. double checks things and gets people to look over what he's done. And this part of him is not widely seen/know by ausminier's or MOCQ people because he doesn't want to trouble everyone. So you only tend to see the bad things that happen with him.
Now Lockie drives his minis alot which will push any mini regardless of how well it's built into a higher than average maintenance schedule.
When I was using NAV as an everyday car it felt as though I spent more time under the bonnet/car than actually driving it fixing things that either broke or wore out or I was able to upgrade.
So take another breath, count to 10 and think again before replying to anyones posts. As the right thing said the wrong way can be misinterpreted, and no one wants that.
Those who wish to berate me do so via PM dont do it here.