General: Spode on the Road

Yesterday I handed in my seven year old green provisional license and was told to expect a new pink license to be on its way to my address. I passed with only 4 minors, which I was very pleased with - especially considering how minor the minors were. Two were speed related (approaching a traffic light and junction too fast - subjective), one was frankly questionable involving a pedestrian crossing and the other was a minor over steer that I wholly admit.

I now have a 1999 Peugeot 306 that should do me fine, especially for the £150 a paid for it, including half a tank of petrol and tax and MOT until February. I still have no real need to drive, being only 4 minutes walk from Tonbridge train station and my most frequent journey being into London. I'm hardly going to bother driving to London, am I. The only reason I've bothered learning is so that I can help drive the thinkbikes.com Van. So the car is just for practicing in ready for the summer onslaught of demonstrations, which I imagine will be even more this year once we've been on Britain's Got Talent.

Does it scare anyone to think I'll be charging that thing around?

Anyway, I'd like to give a plug to Peter @ Mirror Image School of Driving. He was a fantastic teacher, a great guy to be around and had a nice car to learn in (a rather forgiving 1.6l diesel). So if you're in the Sevenoaks, Tonbridge, Hildenborough or Tunbridge Wells area - I'd definitely drop him a line!

Well done Spode, it's about time you had a full licence. A very valuable and useful thing to own. You will probably find driving that van is easier than a car

Congrats Spode!

You need a "Powered by Spode" sticker.

I was a late earner of my driving licence too - but it's definitely worth having, even when you live in the city and spend most of your commuting time on public transport...

Nope. I have a shiny green bicycle and a train/tram/bus ticket and despite Melbourne's awful/shocking public transport I wouldn't drive.

Spode - I'm not fitting a stereo head unit in my 4x4 - just an amp, speakers, and a jack for an MP3 player - I don't want anyone breaking in to steal the radio, and since the vehicle will spend most of it's life sitting around waiting to go mud plugging, it doesn't make much sense to fit a head unit that's only going to encourage the local chavs to break in to the vehicle...

Hmmm, you mean as a pre-amp/volume control? That sounds like a good idea - but what kind of sound quality is likely to result?

Or do you mean as the amp itself?

Sorry to anyone who just got an e-mail to this thread - I think the new E-mail notification plugin I installed is going haywire!

That's what I was thinking. However - you'd still need to regulate the 12V before going into the amp.

Just saw a 300w 12v amp on ebay made for cars and bikes as an mp3 amp, for a tenner and a fiver delivery. Makes me wonder if hacking up PC speakers is worthwhile...

Does your car have speakers already?

I just ordered one of those amps. It's 300W PMPO, so probably 30-40 real watts - but that should be more than enough to fill a tiny jeep.

I'll let you know how it sounds once I know myself!

-A

i am getting a new car from our partner offered to me get free one

Just fitted my free radio - it's quite a snazzy Pioneer. Just no line-in

I've got one that we used to use on the Think Bikes van. I'll have to hunt it out - but I was never that impressed by the quality.

It's odd there are phono jacks on the back and if I plug something in and play it, it works. But there is no "source" setting for AUX. It plays while a CD is playing. I can pause the CD and it works, but it's also not taking fade into account as it sounds like it's all coming out of the rear speakers. ODD.