While it is above my pay range, A friend scored on a great deal by knowing a car dealer. An exective of a large company would trade in cars every 2 or 3 years. Usually a top of the line Mercury. Almost no milage. This was his wifes car and she did not work. He told her that due to the status of their living their cars should not be over 3 years old even if it did not have over 10,000 miles on it. Those cars were ran through a car wash atleast every 2 weeks and serviced regulary, needed or not.
My friend bought 3 of her cars that way over a period of about 10 years.
I do keep the white goods untuil they break. My refrig and dishwasher are about 15 years old. When we bought this house that long ago, we got a new stove, refrig, dish washer. Kept our old washer and dryer, but they quit about 8 years ago so got new ones.
avoiding the purchase in the first place. Nobody needs a $25,000 car.
It is not about the need,but the wanting.
Look at the people that collect things. Remindes me of the time I was at an older friends house. His wife was showing my wife an old (less than 100 years old ) plate like people used to eat off, a very common item. She mentioned that the going value of them on the collector market was around $ 300. That plate is only for looking at now, not to use. My friend said that was the kind of plate he ate off of while growing up and his parents threw out most of a set of them to get better plates that all matched.
Yesterdays junk is now collectable.
He sort of said how dumb it was to pay $ 300 for a plate as he put himslef through college to get a job where he could get away from all that old junk and now his wife is buying it back way above what it cost
70 years before.
Look at the paintings from the old artists. People with big money pay over a million bucks for one of them mainly just to say they have one.
Lots of the people in the US like to drive nice looking cars just to show off. I would think some other countries are the same way.
It makes no sense to have collision insurance on a car that you buy for less than $ 2000.
I usually have cars worth more than 10 K so do have it. I did have an old beater truck I paid about $ 800 for and did not get the extra insurance on it. When one car I bought new became old enough the value was under 5,000 I dropped all but what is required where I live. That car was suppose to have a timing belt changed, but as that would cost me as much as the car was worth, I let it go for around another 15,000 miles. Then sold it to someone that wanted the car. I did tell him the belt needed changing as it was that many miles over. He bought it and replaced the belt as he knew how to work on cars.
Every question on the insurance application is fraudulently answered by the "dullest knife in the drawer" , so I'd say YES,they DO have a problem with insurance fraud over there.
Your buddy Barney Frank had the economy bottomed out from the subprime mortgage crisis he and other dems created. Since everyone was "too big to fail", the republican taxpayers bailed them all out.
I can get a few hundred free channels with an antenna. About the same as a dish. Both will give me more if I subscribe to things. There seems to be no answer as to whether we should be using satellites or radio waves on the ground for TV just now, so they're using both. 90% of channels are transmitted both ways, some only on one or the other.
I don'tknow. The state I live in requires it. On the older cars that do not have the computer interface, it is often a ripoff. I had a car that was in good shape and took it to an independant garage. One time it was raining and the man had a car in his shop he was working on. He told me to go and scrape the old sticker off and put on the new one as he did not want to get out in the rain.
I had an old truck that I doubt would pass the inspection as the front end bushings were about worn out. Same place passed it without even looking at it.
Some places do the inspection right, and some go way over and can find something wrong even it isn't just to do a repair to make money.
Often the newer cars will get the computer plugged in and if it says the car is ok, then it passes even if the tires are bald.
You are mixing up the emission test and the safety,
Only the emission, or SMOG test can be done by the computer.
The safety inspections are a total farce. Up here in Ontario they are only required for ownership transfer, or sometimes on an older vehicle, by the insurance company.
The DOT test for vehicle transfer is often abused, as you say, in either direction. (and really has no "teeth")
When working as a mechanic, if acar came in for a safety inspection andit was REALLY unsafe, I could not refuse to let the owner drive it away. I could not "pull the plates". I could, however, call the cops and tell them "the red '85 mustang, license# LYC123 will be between here and 500 main street and is operating withno brakes, bad shocks, and no brake lights as well as a rusted out subframe and 8 inch rear shackles" and thecop could go and chargethe driver with operating an unsafe vehicle, the wrong plates on the car, and no insurance - impound the car and give him a $3000 fine - - - -
Not really confusing the two. It is just part of the inspection in the state where I live.
Sort of a 2 part inspection for the newer cars. The mechanic is supose to look over the mechanical parts of the car such as wipers, tires, lights, breaks. He also plugs in the computer and I don't know what all it reads, but it can fail the car inspection on certain things. I do know the tire pressure sensor will not fail the inspection as my truck has that light on but passed. I just refuse to pay about $ 70 for one of those sensors to be installed.
Up here in Casnada (and I know from previous discussions on this group ) and some places in the USA an "edison circuit" is used to provide a "split" receptacle -2 15 amp circuits on a duplex outlet using a single 3 wire conductor. This used to be a REQUIREMENT under Canadian code for kitchen countertop outlets.
So yes, you COULD theoretically get 240 to a FEW outlets without re-wiring totally.
Also, the insulation on all CSA approved premise wiring in Canada is rated for a minimum 300 volts - so you COULD put 240 volt 15 amp to every outlet and device in the house - BUT the switches and devices would alkl need tobe changed - and to use the British style outlets all the boxes in the wall would need to be changed because they are not big enough to handle the brit shit.
Much simpler to do what much of the rest of the 240 volt world has done, and adopt the north american style of wiring, adapting it to
240.
The big thing is it would be HELLISHLY EXPENSIVE to do it, and you would have ALL KINDS of troubles with incompatabilities - and all for what benefit???????
The main distribution panel would have to be changed in EVERY house. Every breaker would need to be changed. .The light switches may or may not require changing (some are rated for 277 volts as used for lighting in some industrial/commercial 3 phase environments)
Virtually NO benefit. Your power cords for light duty appliances and lamps are not going to be smaller than awg18 (about 5.5 or 6mm diameter jacket for 3 wire (grounded) cords)
In industrial/commercial use where advantages exist, higher voltage is already used for "fixed assetts".
Not to mention there are WAY MORE variations of 240 volt plugs used world wide than 120.
How many different plug adaptors do you need to connect a device to the mains just within the EEC??? At LEAST 5.
Word wide there are AT LEAST 20 incompatible versions of the 240 volt power plug rated at under 17 amps.
EVERY 15 amp 120 volt outlet whether in North America, Japan, or wherever, is FULLY COMPATIBLE, and will even fit into a 20amp outlet!!
The transmission losses will not change appreciably as the distribution voltage would not change.
There is just NO CASE TO BE MADE for converting to 240 volts - particularly with the power consumption of virtually EVERYTHING going down instead of up.
Instead of 100 watt lamps, we are now getting as much or more light from 17 watts. Solid state flat screen video displays and TVs are using 1/4 (or less) the power the older versions used.
The ONLY things not taking less power are resistance heating devices (which are often being replaced with more power efficient devices such as microwave ovens and induction stove-tops which consume significantly less power) - and if they are of any size (ovens, ranges, driers, or central heating devices) they are ALREADY using 240 volts.
The computer does not check ANY safety related items. All it tests is the engine control system as it relates to emissions. It tests the output of all the sensors thatcontrol fuel mixture and engine timing in response to load, driver input, and atmospheric and operating conditions as well as the evaporative controls for the sealed fuel system.
That is ALL the On Board Diagnostics computer can monitor.
The mechanic is responsible for checking tires, brakes, steering, suspension, passenger retention and protection, lighting and signalling, as well as body and chassis integrrety and glazing/visability according to the standards of the highway traffic act and local ordinances.
I did safety inspections in Ontario for about 2 decades. The smog tests here have gone from dyno testing to straight OBD computer scans on all vehicles newer than 1997, and 2 speed idle sniffer tests on older vehicles, the frequency has dropped, and there is no longer a charge for an initial test if the vehicle passes.
Florida decided decades ago that those inspections were an unnecessary boondoggle and did away with them entirely. A cop can pull you over for obvious problems and give you a "fix it" ticket that will trigger some kind of action by a mechanic but beyond that we only have emission checks in a few big cities to make the feds happy.
I do wish we'd all just say right and left wing. The US has republican and democrat, and the UK has Conservative and Labour. I can never remember which of yours is which. I presume Americans can't remember which of ours is which either.
That is not exactly true these days. The computer also controls the brakes these days and will report errors there. I am not sure what else they inspect but the computer looks at lots of stuff now.
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