What...what new devilry is this? Haha Paul that's a cool joke about Nick Mason.

Not another of his culinary purchases from Amazon surely!

Tesla cut their work force by 10% and then want to reward their saviour by giving him the biggest pay deal in corporate American history, $56bn. LOL.

But... it's not yellow.

It's baffling the amount of completely unrelated topics I've found myself reading about on those nights when sleeping is difficult. Here's one about a dangerous part that is found on a Canadian military vehicle which has a spring loaded arm (so the arm is normally under tension) which holds the spare tire. I've gone down a rabbit hole and others confirm this as well.

"There is a vehicle in the Canadian Army that is notoriously awful in every aspect. It's been around for decades now, and no one knows why they will never replace it.

On top of it being slow, cumbersome, unconformable and just a rolling green box of shit; it carries within its flank a deadly weapon. The engine sounds like a bag of gophers being sodomized by goats.

Spare tires are kind of a pain in the ass for an army. They weigh a ton because they are either large (like LSVW) or weigh so fucking much (Bison, LAV, TAPV, Etc), so the fight for space is always a gamble and game of where and how dangerous.

The LSVW has in its side, that sits between the cab and the rear, a spring-loaded spare tire carrying arm. It is a high tension spring mechanism attached to a really hard metal arm that carried a tire that weighed nearly a hundred pounds.

[In this picture, danger peaks from behind the passenger. ](https://images.app.goo.gl/1TRJWjGHMxugZns46)

I've seen on so many occasions things go wrong with this spring.

The first time was driver training. We were ring-dingdingding-dinging through the trail of CFB Borden, Ontario when the vehicle in front of me had the entire spare tire assembly spring down while going through the woods. The spare tire and arm caught a tree at forty km/hrs, and proceeded to take this vehicle and swing spin it into the forest and plant it balls deep in a snowy, wet muddy ditch.

Another was the first time instructing at a communications school. My colleague was showing a student something about the spare tire assembly when he fucked up and the entire fucking thing sprang down and caught him in the face. He lost three teeth and they had to reattached his nose in the hospital.

I saw a student of mine in a separate incident have a narrow miss as it came crashing down while he was climbing on the roof of the vehicle to install antennae. He had stepped on it while passing overhead and it crashed down, just a few feet from his partner who was putting a grounding rod in. Close call.

Another time she bit back at me, but lo I was quick. Whoever checked the air pressure last had brought the arm down and then put it back up. Something, not sure what, about me hustling the diesel cans stored in the side had set it off. I stepped to the side just out of some strange sixth sense, and when that jerry can slid off the rack, the entire assembly sprang down and narrowly missed me. It had hit the diesel can in my hand and gave me a partial subluxation something something in my shoulder. Not a full dislocation, but the doctor said magic word things and explained my ows.

A menace in true form. If this vehicle had a motto, it would fight with our Cook staff for the very apt phrase of 'Death From Within'

I always told people that if I were to ever die inside that vehicle, please bury the fucking thing with me in it. Just so I can have the satisfaction of knowing that I got to take one of the fucking things with me to the grave.

I hate this truck.".

I remember my family had two different Marinas!

We had the 4 door and the coupe - what an incredible sports car that was ... Lol.

I loved them but didn't have to drive them of course.

You forgot about the Simca, that was even worse than the Alpine 😂

A mate of my brother had a Marina jacked up at the back (leaf springs) and paintwork done like the Starsky and Hutch car. Looked good but boy did you have to watch it on corners as the back end hopped to the side if going too fast, it was like the rear wheels were skipping sideways 😳

This has brought back memories. I learnt to drive when my parents had a Talbot Solara. It was easily the best car we had up till then and I liked to drive it. Somehow I managed to get it written off with a very minor bumper shunt at slow speed - always felt so guilty about it but my parents were very good about it ...