Be Excellent To Each Other

A friend wants to know the delay on those red light cameras. His car was half waya cross the line when the light turned red.

I'd imagine he'll be fine.

He's just remembered he could ask his wife.

I'd imagine he'll be fined.

Loads of times I've seen the cars a fair way behind me go through when I thought I was already taking the piss a bit. They could have got done I guess but I don't often hear of it.

If you're planning to do that, remember also not to cheat on her.

Just done a 37 minute journey from Broseley back to Shrewsbury in just over 27 minutes, on some lovely back roads between the two places. Amazing how much difference a decent set of rubber can make to a car.

On the commute, the K a does 33mpg. What is happening?

The fuel in your fuel tank is being pumped into the cylinder chamber of the engine, and compressed by the piston. The spark plug receives a signal to fire and creates a spark, which ignites the compressed fuel, the resulting explosion forces the piston down, which turns the crank shaft, which is linked to the drive shaft, which turns the wheels and gives you forward motion.

You've forgotten the existence of gears 3 to 5?

Isn't it a diesel?

Yeah, I suspect travelling through Bradford twice a day follwoed by a short blast down the 606 isn't great for fuel. It normally does 42, if memory serves.

Grim - 1.3 petrol, basic spec.

Is it? Weirdly, I have absolutely no idea how diesels work, something about glow plugs. I assume they are powered by smug and regret in modern BMWs.

You're now driving through town? Yeah, that'll do it.

Fuel is injected into a precombustion chamber at around [lots]psi, which heats the air around it and causes combustion. At the same time, more fuel is injected into the piston chamber (connected to the precombustion chamber), and that is ignited by the burning fuel rapidly coming out of the precombustion chamber.

The glow plugs are only there because ignition happens better if the air in the pre-chamber is warm.

[Note: I don't think they all have precombustion chambers, some do it all in the piston chamber. I'm just going by how the ones I've taken to bits work]

Interesting, thanks.

Grim...: indeed, more modern diesels that use common rail high pressure systems have no need of a pre combustion chamber and instead inject fuel directly into the cylinder at [even more] pressure and the heat generated by the compression stroke at [I dunno, 12:1?] is sufficient to ignite it.

Diesels are terrifying because, provided they have a fuel and air supply, there's bugger all you can do to stop them if they decide to run off on their own.

Turbochargers leaking oil into the air intake have been the death or more than one Land Rover.

The best way I know of to stop them is to empty a CO2 fire extinguisher into the air intake - easy if you've got a off-road snorkel, but trying to get the hose off a filter from a car that sounds like it wants to explode is probably not much fun.

[edit]


Have fun getting your spanners near that.

Take this, baddies:



http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/ariel/atom ... police-car

Heh. Good luck trying a PIT maneuver with that thing.

I almost drove over one of those when I was driving a transit. It was tryong to overake as we were exiting a roundabout. Ridiculously low things, shouldn't be allowed, like recumbant cycles.

House purchase related I assume?

Yarp, mortgage company won't lend me any sponds with that finance agreement in place, so it has to go. Pain in the arse.

Oops.

Good show

Nice How much?

A grand. It's got a few bits to fix, but nothing serious.

It's so fucking quiet, it's almost eerie.

Currently wheelless. Anyone got a decent sized car going? 4 door minimum - must be able to comfortably fit a musket! Can spend up to £1,500.

Get a Jag S Type.

Can you actually fit in that? What engine does it have?

It has a 4.0V8, and plenty of room. The Tomcat is already eyeing up the engine.

Sweet ride. I'm still fantasising about an XFR. It was the standout ride for me on the Jag day last year — the perfect blend of astonishing comfort when you want it and blistering pace when you decide to drop the hammer. Perfect Q car

Buy Gaywood's car.

Saw an F-Type on the road today. They're a lot bigger than I thought they would be.

Do we have a prefered online vendor of car parts?

I prefer the one that has the bit I want for cheapest.

M5 has been sold.

For significantly less than I wanted, but just about enough to get me out of the shithole that I'm currently in.

Buyer takes it off my hands tomorrow - which means as of tomorrow I'll only have one car, for the first time in four and a half years.

I thought the same, driving past the Manc dealer.

The 535d's rear wiper has now stopped working, probably the same wiring loom as the still-broken remote locking. Yay! Still bloody brilliant though, even with the DPF being bent again.

It's actually about 5mm shorter than the current gen 911. Go figure

The current 911 is a bubblebutt.

£300 fully comp for the year to insure the Ka. That's with three years no claims. Costs a lot more up here.

It's because you can't be given an awesome bonus for being an awesome chap any more.

Finding a single passenger side wing mirror for the subaru is a right pain. Only seem to be first generation.

You only need one mirror for an MOT.

The 535d is doing fantastic duty as a shit-hauler; currently bits-of-bathroom instead of gardening stuff, 5 (possibly 6) loads in one day. I'm pretty sure at least one of the air lines to the self-levelling suspension is gone though, if I park on the other side of the road it throws a "holy crap get me on a lift" icon next time I turn it on.

Turns out when it was going all "sounding like a massive vacuum and/or exhaust leak" all the time, what it was actually doing was preparing to ramp the EGTs to burn off the DPF crud.

That thing is costing me SO MUCH MONEY - what I had to do to stop it was two laps of the M60. Not one - there's a short stretch of average-speed-camera at Stockport, at which it promptly went to back to booming - but two. And that 50 miles was enough to stop it panicking, not to actually properly clean it. Jesus.

Also now I'm buying too few VPower to earn the third-level rebates (I *was* getting 6p/l of the 8p/l premium back, which kind of evens out with shoving cleaning stuff through periodically because of our shit commute) I've decided to just use regular diesel - and it's immediately started running much more smoothly. So apparently it really doesn't like the slightly lower cetane level. Doh.

Car passed its MOT and I just bought a roof box. Exciting times. It's pretty cool, though. It looks a bit like Spock's coffin. Getting the aircon re-gassed tomorrow.

Wing mirror damaged after the last England game. Not sure if it was a "happy" supporter or just an unlucky car.

Anyway replacement arrive today from ebay but now the adjusting arm was snapped in the post. It'll have to do for now but it annoys me that even with effort I still end up broken parts or hassle. Anyway next task is swapping it round.

Driving through Bradford this morning, I did do a doubletake at someone's decision that a Golf R32 was the best vehicle they could find to use as a minicab.

Got the aircon re-gassed only to discover that the radiator fan doesn't work and so the condenser gets too hot and it cuts out the a/c. £318 to get a new one fitted An OEM part would have been £500. Fucking BMWs.

Have you checked the fuse? It'll likely be a big one, under the bonnet.