Mike_B

Yeah, saw that a few days ago. Dozy woman... Note: Early versions of the story stated that the driver was a woman; it was edited a few hours after it went up to remove the reference. Probably being PC about it. The original version had something like this in it: "it is believed the driver, a woman, had selected drive rather than reverse".

Just a touch imaginative - unless you have a compressor and evaporator, they won't have any cooling effect at all. The gas used in refrigeration systems is irrelevant, so long as it can change from gas to liquid at reasonable pressures and isn't too reactive. No-one seems to have mentioned Boyle's Law yet, which is the applicable law of physics here. Boyle’s law states that at constant temperature, the absolute pressure and the volume of gas are inversely proportional. Therefore, since the volume inside the tyres is fixed, as the temperature goes up, so does the pressure. This isn't going to change by having the presence or absence of 20% oxygen in the tyre alongside the nitrogen, and in the everyday sorts of temps and pressures we are talking about in a car wheel, Boyle's Law is going to apply more or less perfectly. If there was any liquid water inside the tyres though, then when that gets hot and evaporates (highly likely on a racetrack, my bike tyres go up to about 80C on track, and F1 tyres go beyond 100C) the pressure will increase by more than Boyle's law would predict, leading to a sharply increased pressure inside the tyre. Using pure nitrogen, it is unlikely that any water would be present leading to a more consistent temp/pressure gradient. See Link for F1 references.

Helium would be a terrible gas for inflating tyres - the atoms are so small they find their way out of the tiniest gaps; and would have no problem going through the side of the tyres. This is why diving watches have helium escape valves, underwater and under high pressure, helium dissolved in the seawater just waltzes straight through the seals that keep the water out, then when you come up the helium pressure inside the watch can be high enough to blow it apart...

I think mine said Pioneer on it as well. Is the 'other make' folks are talking about Nakamichi?

Take it out and have a look - it's not that difficult. From what I remember when I fitted my car kit (phone), you have to pull the ashtray so it comes out, and pull the vents in the centre console - both these are just press fit, though they have wires attached for lighting and the clock so remember that when pulling them out! The rest of the stereo/climate control is held in by very obvious bolts and nice easy plugs for all the connections.

Dammit - didn't realise it was this weekend. Went about 3 years ago, had a great day out. Enjoy!

Just a thought, why not take a couple of days off work and drive here to pick it up? Whereabouts in Britain is the item? If you took a Friday and Monday off, you'd have 4 days so could take your time and go the scenic route and avoid spending whole days on the motorway.

Yes, timing belt and cambelt are the same thing. Definitely agree with the non-franchised dealer route too, I used ABM in Sydenham, SE London for my 70k service and it was hundreds cheaper than either Croydon or Guildford wanted for a minor service. When I get nervous about my own cambelt, it'll probably be going there for that too.

Most of France is closed on a Sunday, except motorway service stations. Good time to go exploring though as no-one else is about. Serious point - DON'T rely on being able to buy petrol on a Sunday (away from the motorways). Fill up the tank on Saturday and don't go so far on Sunday as to run it too low to get back to Dover. They have automatic fuel pumps but 99% don't accept UK-issued chip'n'pin cards.

The outer ones are indeed the main dipped lights, as you would normally use at night. There are two bulbs in the inner lamp, as you have seen. The small 5W bulbs are what we in England know as side-lights; these are the ones that light up when you turn the lights on just one click. The larger bulbs, also in the inner lamp, are the high-beam which come on when you push the stalk back towards the dash. Not sure why the high-beam bulbs come on when you remove the 5W sidelights though - doesn't sound quite right to me as these bulbs are pretty powerful and are not dipped downwards, you will dazzle anyone coming towards you if these are on all the time. Welcome to the club, by the way... :-)

Well, there is the small problem - I seem to remember reading somewhere that to make enough vegetable oil to run the UKs vehicle fleet, you would require a field 20% bigger than the whole of the UK. Aren't global food prices high enough already? That said, compulsory recycling of used vegetable oil into motor fuel would seem a sensible if very small step. Diesel engines still do run on oil, that's why the V5 of a diesel car will state 'heavy oil' in the box for 'fuel type'...

Is that right? Blimey, I'll have to be a bit more careful!

Whilst I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment, if you don't vote then you can't moan...

My sis passed up using my GS in favour of another mate's Audi. It was brand new and it was a convertible, but even so!! :tsktsk: Worse, the other car was a flippin' Kia!!! :tsktsk::tsktsk::tsktsk:

Yeah, it was. We only got V8 powered GS models when they upgraded to the 430 engine.

There is one massive problem with electric cars - they take ages to charge up. I filled up my GS with an enormous quantity of energy yesterday, in the form of petrol. It took about 3 minutes at the pump, and enough energy was fed into the car to propel the 1.8 ton behemoth for 300ish miles with unseemly haste. That amount of energy fits into a small space somewhere under the back seat. If I should not happen to use the car for a couple of months, it will start right back up with exactly the same amount of fuel in the tank as when I left it. Batteries just can't do that. Batteries just don't have the energy density and take too long to charge. Half the boot on the GS450h is given over to batteries and they can barely propel it for a mile or so. The only way to make electrically driven cars work properly is to use fuel cells rather than batteries - but hydrogen is incredibly difficult to store and transport, not to mention expensive to make and explosive if it leaks. If batteries could be made so much better, why aren't we seeing them in laptops and phones, where they would be genuinely useful and no threat to tax revenue? I really don't buy the conspiracy theory argument. Government are notoriously incompetent in most aspects of their work, yet people will willingly believe they can accurately and consistently bury information about alien invasions, World Trade Centre controlled demolitions, and 'powering cars using only water' etc. Sorry, it'd be nice if it was true, but it just isn't. Besides which, the revenues from licensing and manufacturing such technology would lead to far greater tax revenues in countries such as Japan or Korea where they have no natural resources beyond the ingenuity of their inhabitants. One could readily understand why oil-rich countries, even first world ones not totally dependent on oil revenue (such as the UK or Finland), might wish to suppress such technology, but this doesn't explain why countries who would gain from it haven't managed to achieve it either. One quick question though - how would you make the electricity needed to charge the cars, and why would that not lead to income stream to replace that of oil taxes?

Bit of an unfair comparison, the US economy is MASSIVE compared to the UK's economy, and they have a different approach to taxation, partly because they don't have a welfare state to support. You try living in the US without health insurance, and have a medical problem, and watch how you get treated! It's swings and roundabouts - the cost of fuel is only a single measure of quality of life. A much fairer comparison would be with countries in Western Europe, such as France and Germany. It's all relative, fuel prices have gone up in US too, so obviously they are going to be hurting (from their perspective). The US population are much more pro-active, and lobbying is part of the political culture. Don't have to sit and take it - what are YOU doing to CHANGE the situation? There is always the alternative of Venezuela, they have the cheapest petrol in the world (as do most nations that don't need to import oil for car usage) , just 0.7pence per litre @Jan 2008. Exactly. The people who go to work in this country do so so that those who don't want to work don't have to and get everything for free - from dole to health care. And what do you suggest I do about it? Launch my own 1-man political protest? The only things one can do about it is to do exactly what the government want - either do nothing in which case you're still paying lots in petrol, or downsizing which helps their green strategy. You refer to "free riders". However, there are many GENUINE people in this country who benefit from the welfare state. Just look at social services, mental health units and all the ancillary facilities that are available to those in need. What happens if you have a disabled child and you just can't care for the child 24 hours a day? The welfare state will step in and help out. Yes, why not launch a 1 man political protest? Protests have to start somewhere. Why not write a letter to your MP? Why not get everyone you know to write a letter to your MP? There are many ways of airing your voice, be it via conventional channels or starting a riot. An apathetic population will continue to be taken advantage of by any government, both here and abroad. Protests have changed things in the past, and it starts from the ground up. I'm sure if the fuel price continues to rise, there may be more protests by hauliers and/or private motorists. If you don't feel like starting your own, I'm sure you can tag on to another group's protest. The point I'm making is whinging will get us nowhere as a nation if we TRULY want change here. We are going to require action, and that has to start at the grassroots level, in the community. Hear hear - well said that man. With regard to writing to your MP, I do. Regularly. And I always get a reply - even if it's not what I want to hear, he's made the effort to read it and respond and if enough people do it on a specific issue, the message 'we want change on this matter' starts to get home. Depending what it is, he'll write onwards to the cabinet minister responsible, and get an answer from him/her and pass it on to me.

I think it means it's an interference engine. Most likely, the engine will be ruined if the belt breaks... Same as mine! :( I intend to get mine changed when I get up to about 90k, just to give myself a bit of a safety margin. Can't afford to sell it anyway, big cars are rapidly becoming worthless so will just hang onto it for a long time yet. Cambelts and petrol are much cheaper than losing thousands in depreciation by selling at a bad time! Besides, I love my big old bus and I'm hardly doing any mileage at the moment.

It's a lot more than 3x - see this graph here: Linky It goes back a bit further than we need for this thread, but the period 2001 - date shows a 7x increase in price, though demand certainly hasn't gone up that much. Oil has gone up 40% since the start of this year!

Probably the US, given the spelling of 'tires'. Most likely it's an offer when you buy a new one?

Sadly bills won't reduce, because producing electricity from wind is blimmin expensive compared to gas. Not to mention very unreliable (needs constant wind, too much or too little and they don't work properly). Something conveniently forgotten when the greenies go on about how renewables can save us all. Virtually all renewable energy (not sure why they call it that, wind isn't renewable, it just 'is') is unsuitable for providing a steady base load, and even less suited for providing peaks and troughs supply. Tidal drops to zero twice a day, for example; waves require wind; solar requires sun. All drop out to zero for reasons beyond the control of the operators of the power station. Nuclear is where it's got to be at, really. The gas and oil is running out, coal is getting more expensive and is filthy (not to mention radioactive itself - 100 times more so, on average, than an actual nuclear plant (1) ) which only leaves nuclear as a viable, known option. Build the waste burial sites and get on with it, before the rolling blackouts start. (1) Extract from a University of Wollongong, Australia, document: ...it was found by the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP), that for 1982 the total release of radioactivity from 154 typical coal plants in the United States was approximately 97,318,510 megabecquerels, the equivalent of the radioactivity in 3200 household smoke detectors. They also found that the radiation exposure from an average 1000 MW power plant comes to 4.9 person-sieverts a year for coal-fired power plants and 0.048 person-sieverts a year for nuclear-fired power plants. This factor of 100 just looks at the nuclear fired power plant by itself. It doesn't include the complete nuclear fuel cycle, which starts with ore mining, goes to fuel processing and operation of the reactor, and finishes with waste disposal. In that case, the radiation dose from a nuclear-fired power plant increases to 1.36 person-sieverts a year. Source here: Link

No, that's why it's so expensive in the first place, not why it's going up a penny a day. Oil is $140 a barrel, take a look at this chart: Linkety-Link That's why it's been shooting up lately...

We had this discussion a while ago now, but off the top of my head I can't remember what the conclusions were. I think it was that the 4 litre engines are non-interference, but the 4.3 engines were. As for chains vs belts, belts are lighter, much quieter, do not require lubrication and are cheaper. Chains do not have an infinite life, and slowly stretch as they wear which changes the timing of the valves. They are also much more expensive to replace. I guess the manufacturers have decided belts provide a better cost of ownership, even if you do have to change them. And let's be honest, most cars will only ever require 2 cambelts in their lives, so the benefits of belts come at a cost of a single, if expensive, replacement operation at something like 60-100,000 miles.

My bike's indicators aren't E marked, but the tester didn't even mention them. They work fine, they look fine (but nicer than standard) and I don't think testers care that much beyond that, E-marks or not.

I don't think anyone here has. However, ethanol is the fundamental component in 'biofuel', such as E85 which is available in a few places. Have you got a cheap source of it, though? I don't think it's any cheaper, unlike LPG. Methanol is a deeply unpleasant chemical, extremely poisonous, and as anyone who's been to the drag races will testify, the exhaust fumes are pretty unpleasant too!!