GreyArea

There are far more qualified people on this board to answer the question, but consider this: Proper supercharger - about £2500. This thing - £60 The power graph they show is very deceptive - all it is showing is the power and torque with the supercharger on. So what did the original curve look like? If there's no comparison, the chart is meaningless. Also, I reckon that when it's not running, it would restrict airflow, therefore reducing your power.

Well I told my wife to put the heater on and that helped. The AA man reckoned the A/C fan would draw air over the rad. Seemed a bit odd to me, as I thought having the A/C would put more load on the engine and make it hotter... However, just found this: Depending on why your car is overheating you might want to turn the air conditioning on. Some cars have electric fans. The fan is turned on by a computer, based on a reading from a temperature sensor. Sometimes this system will fail and not engage the fan. Some of these cars automatically turn the fan on when the air conditioning is turned on, overriding the failed components. So the AA man was right!

Follow-up - not a coolant problem after all, the radiator fan isn't working, apparently. Hope it's not too expensive to get fixed, but the AA man said if it happens again, to turn on the A/C and that will help cool the engine down, which is something I didn't know.

Oh yeah, hadn't thought of that! Oh well, she's called the AA, I'm sure they'll know what to do.

Yeah, she knows about the danger of hot water under pressure. I think she's going to call out the AA, just to check the fan and thermostat are both working.

My Wife's borrowed my car and apparently it's been overheating in London traffic. She had a look at the coolant level and thinks it's low. Is it OK to put water in to top it up, temporarily? The manual says it needs to be special ethylene glycol mix. Would the AA carry that sort of thing?

I'm a currently skint, so I bought one of the cheap kits of eBay for £95. Run with it for two nights and it's like having floodlights fitted to the front of the car! It's a huge difference to the stock headlamp. I went for the 4300K bulbs as I'd rather see where I'm going than posing, and anything over 6000K uses coloured filters on the bulbs, so you're losing light, which seems a bit pointless to me. I was a bit worried about putting HID bulbs in a reflector headlamp not designed for it, but I have a really good beam pattern with a sharp cut off, and no one has flashed me, so I'm obviously not dazzling oncoming traffic either.

I get between 300-320 miles from around 60-62 litres, which works out as around 22mpg. However, that's just driving around town, I've not done any real motorway journeys in it yet. It's coming up on 50,000 miles, so it probably needs new plugs, air filters and an ECU reset! I also have quite a heavy right foot, which probably doesn't help!

This is not necessarily my opinion on the matter, but here's something I read on the matter today http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/st...2010933,00.html My parent's house is worth an awful lot, but they've lived there for 30 years, and when they bought it, it was a falling down heap. Should government take 40% of that worth, just because house prices have gone up? I don't think so, as my father has paid enough in income tax already! Still, if there's any truth in the article, he should be able to find ways to avoid me paying it!

That's all I need to know! I'll just go for a standard HID upgrade kit in that case and hope that I don't dazzle too many oncoming drivers! Simon

I've been reading a lot about upgrading to HIDs, and was wondering if it was possible to fit a stock xenon headlamp from a 2003 IS200, to my 2001 car? The only reason would be to ensure the proper beam pattern - (I'm aware self levellers wouldn't work) as there seems to be some debate about retrofitting HIDs to halogen reflectors.

You can install OSX on pretty much any AMD or Intel PC, but it's not supported by Apple. You need to download a DVD image from BitTorrent. Check out www.osx86project.org And I don't think it's unrealistic to expect Leopard to run on the PC. Apple has changed its name from Apple Computer to Apple Inc, replaced the hardware with the PC, and is now saying none of its software is Vista compatible and people should avoid upgrading to Vista. Why? Well, if leopard runs on a PC, then Apple would hope that people would switch to OSX. It would be cheaper than Vista and you wouldn't need to buy new hardware...

PC magazine editor. Which means I had to buy second hand, not new!

Wouldn't you be better with an electric motor and a cam? It would be much simpler to setup, easy to switch between forward and reverse for raise and lower and probably be cheaper too!

A mobile phone might use radio waves, but it's actually transmitting sound waves, so it's never going to work. Car remotes use either IR or RF, neither of which can be transmitted by a speaker and microphone! However, the mobile phone *may* act as a signal booster, if the remote is touching it. You can do this with your own head - walk away from your car, until you are just out of the remote's operating range. Now press the remote against your chin and try it - you'll quite often find your car suddenly unlocks! All that's happening is your body is helping to amplify the signal slightly. Simon

I've been looking in to this as I also only have one set of keys. Lexus quoted me £2000. However, a mobile locksmith said he could do the job for £500, plus the cost of new keys, which I'd have to supply myself. The reason it is so expensive is you either need a new ECU, or if the locksmith is able to, you can have the ECU reprogrammed. It's worth looking around for a mobile locksmith that has the ability to do the ECU reprogramming and key cutting, as it will be cheaper than going to Lexus. You may also be able to claim for it on your insurance, although as you said, it will probably cause your premiums to rocket.

I've noticed an occasional clonk sound coming from the rear of the car and it sounds like it's probably coming from the prop shaft. It sometimes happens when I put the car in gear, or change from 1st to 2nd. Sometimes pulling away in 1st, there is a bit of judder as well. Is this likely to be the universal joint wearing, or could it be clutch wear? The car's only done 47K. If it is the U joint, is this easy to change and what's the likely cost? If it's the clutch, I presume it's more complicated and expensive. Simon

Acer is a good brand, generally reliable and value for money and usually get good reviews in the PC Magazine I edit :) If you want real value, but at the expense of customer service, you could buy Dell. Please do me a favour though and don't buy anything from PC World! Once company I recommend is Evesham as it's privately owned and the Customer service is excellent - their PCs have won many awards. However, the cheapest one is slightly above your budget (link) I've not heard of the company you linked to, but the system seems decent enough and if PC Advisor has given them good reviews, that counts for something. One thing to bear in mind is that at this price, something has to give, however, on paper I can't see much wrong with the one you've picked, although I'd want to know how many USB ports it has in total. Simon

Wow - they do seem bright! But then again, they are not cheap either! Still, as I want to be seen, it's probably worth it. Thanks Simon

As far as I'm aware, it's only failed since I put the higher wattage bulbs in. However, only one has failed and it's not melted, so it could be coincidence and as you say, it may not have been checked. However, he does warn about heat on his site, but not knowing more about it, don't want to accuse him of supplying faulty goods. Only some of the LEDs have failed on the unit that is flashing. As you appear to be the LED guru on LOC, can you recommend or supply some 501 LEDs? I'm after something that's pretty bright as the standard bulbs are rubbish. I drive with my sidelights on as a matter of course, due to the enhanced visibility it affords you to other drivers. Have you got any more details on these? Thanks Simon

Damn - just got home and as I was turning my lights of, noticed one of my sidelights was flashing. Looks like the heat got to those LEDs after all. Had to swap back to the standard glass bulbs :-( Think I need to email the guy at ultraleds to see if there are any LED sidelights that aren't affected by the heat.

There's a good breakers yard in Bristol that probably have a headlamp. If you want the details, I can PM them to you

That's good to know Thanks Simon

It will, but it's far better to download a specific tool from the hard drive manufacturer. This will look at the SMART data and give an analysis of the drive, plus you can scan the entire surface of the disc. When I get a failure like this, I like to set the drive back to factory settings (overwrite entire disc with zeros) as data is remarkably persistent and I've had new Windows installs pick up old Windows data and cause problems. It is also better at marking out bad sectors than the Windows tool, and will give you a better idea of the health of the drive. Some can be run from Windows (Western Digital), others need to be run from a bootable CD, or a floppy disc. The Western Digital one will work on other drives, to a limited extent, probably best not used for repairing, and can be downloaded from here