Month: June 2025

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Tesla air filters

I noticed that my air con didn’t seem to be quite as effective as I thought it should. It could just have been my imagining things as the UK was bloody hot at the time, well, you know, by UK standards. It was either get the air con system re-gassed or put some new air filters in as they may have become blocked. A bit of googling and it seems the air filters should be changed every two years. The car is now five years old and I can almost guarantee they’ve never been done – so that was the first stop.

Order new air filters

Watch youTube video about how to replace air filters

Rip car apart and change filters

It wasn’t a particularly tricky job, but laying on your back across the door frame looking up underneath the steering wheel to remove some air vent ducting was a trifle uncomfortable.

Air filters replaced. No real noticeable difference in the air con but the UK has cooled down a bit now so no rush. I’ll probably start investigating re-gassing the system soon. Maybe it can wait until Spring – we’ll see

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After-party party prep

Oli has finally finished high school and will soon be making his way to college to study some yet-to-be-determined-which A-Levels. Before all that nonsense they had, as is the tradition in the UK these days, a prom to to attend. After the meal in the pub prom celebrations the class decided they wanted to have a proper party with beer and drugs and dancing girls and what have you.

OK, just beer.

In an overly optimistic moment Oli decided to put up some tents where everyone could sleep. Josh came along and helped by putting his tent up. Which is currently still in my garage.

The night arrived, pretty much the whole class came back to my house. I went to bed. My hard work had been done organising the garage just in case it rained.

I came downstairs at about 6am and opened the kitchen blinds. There were still a bunch of boys partying and I think it’s the first time I ever saw my little boy drunk. Apparently the last girl left at 5am so a pretty good party all in all.

I made them all a bunch of sausage butties and a plate of beans on toast with cheese and egg on top for Ayman.

Then I started the clear up. I swear to god – these kids must have just been opening a beer, taking a sip and then wandering off before coming back and opening another beer. The quantity of beer and cider I had to pour away before recycling the cans was simply heartbreaking. Flippin’ youf!

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Tesla woes

We’ve been having a minor issue with the Tesla. If you hit a bump in the road with sufficient force then the whole car goes haywire and the cruise control stops working, the regenerative braking stops working, ABS stops working – all sorts of crazy stuff. As soon as you stop the car, get out and lock it then the whole thing resets and it’s back to the normal “drive with just the accelerator” mode. So it’s not anything too worrying – just massively annoying. Massively, massively annoying. Especially annoying given the absolutely atrocious condition that British roads are in.

After combing the UK Tesla owners group posts several people were suggesting it was either a dodgy ABS sensor or a loose earth connection on the 12v battery. I checked the battery – no problem there. So I decided to jack the car up and re-seat the sensors.

This is me mid unplugging and replugging the sensors

After unplugging and re-plugging the sensors I took it for a test drive. Before the work you had to hit something with quite some force to send the car mental. After the work you had to just glance in the direction of a pothole and the car would have a meltdown. I’d made it worse. Oddly though this actually encouraged me. It made me think I was messing about in the right area.

I bought a couple of new ABS sensors on eBay for £30 and then me and the boy decided to jack up the car and do the drivers side first. After doing the drivers side sensor I took it for a test drive. First bump in the road….nothing. The place where it usually goes on the drive to the high school….nothing. Speed bumps which would always trigger it…..nothing.

Pretty god damned proud of myself.

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Chilli update

I’m well pleased with the way my chilli plants have grown. I probably should have topped them when they reached about 30cm but I was kind of curious to see how big they would get. Pretty damned big is the answer. I reckon the biggest is just less than 1m tall. However, the most excellent news and the reason for this post is I now have a pile of chillis growing.

I’m going to leave them on the plant until they ripen and go red. Then I have to decide something to cook with them. I’m thinking tofu.

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New Sofa

The old sofa was falling apart. It had been sat on for over a decade, flipped over to turn into a mini fort for the kids on many many occasions, had gallons of tea/wine/lager spilled on it – but I still love it and it’s taken up residence in my office for lunchtime snoozes.

It’s been replaced by this bad boy

When it first arrived my initial thought was “it’s too big”. After having had it for a while I’m now thinking “it’s too big”. We have to get rid of the purple sofa, get rid of the tripod lamp and then maybe, just maybe we’ll be able to move around in our living room.

I can however confirm it’s very good for snoozing on. Many naps already completed and we’ve barely got the labels off it.

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Bathroom Shelves

We’ve always had this space in our bathroom that was just crying out for some shelves. I just happened to have an Oak beam left over from my Workshop build which would turn into some rather lovely shelves.

So I popped around to Dan’s house and we machined the beam into some usable planks

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This is how they looked after I chopped them to size and Danish oiled them.

The next step was to fashion some supports and break out the digital spirit level that I borrowed off Jason Howarth.

Finally the oiled shelves were put in place.

Quite happy with the way it all turned out.