brillomaster

aww man i miss a V6 easily the best engine sound one can actually afford, bettered only by a V10 in my opinion!

Boy racer would be putting a 4" fart cannon on a 1 litre corsa... having a loud exhaust on a 3.7 litre V6 is what is should have sounded like from the factory, rather than the shopping trolley exhaust they put on as standard. Trust me, let it settle down a bit and then in a few months time, you'll hear a standard exhaust and just think it sounds crap in comparison

The exhaust will get a little quieter as it soots up inside, but bet it sounds lovely! keep it on for a few months before making a decision on whether to keep it on or not. But have to say, after having a sports exhaust on a zed, going back to a standard exhaust just sounds so tame in comparison. missing the pops and crackles, will have to get cs to put a sports exhaust on my beemer when its next in for a service.

but on the plus side, for the girls to be cold in this heat they must be wearing literally no clothes, right? or tell them to put a jumper on. Or, wear the same shirt for a week without showering and sit next to them, they'll soon cave in and let you turn the air con on!

nice one, always good when a problem is easily rectified

I've just got back from holiday in spain, where 30+ degrees is indeed awesome, because theres no need to wear a shirt, you have access to a pool and theres a nice sea breeze. however, over here sitting in a hot office sweating like a paedophile in a playground, its not awesome! 32.5 degrees now on the official office temperature monitor - expecting 34 by the end of the day...

I can show you some pictures of what it'll look like if you leave it... it isn't pretty. and the other side won't be far behind it! in the end I was lucky to offload my zed without rectifying any of the rust, but it would have been worth a fair bit more if I had!

are the discs still ok? as when mine were scuffing due to rust build up, they were also very worn and as such needed replacement.

its too ruddy warm if you don't have aircon! still, at least we have lots of fans to blow the hot air around. Seriously considering going and working in my car, since that has air con!

And for some reason the planners of our new office have decided to only put air con in half the building, and its the half I'm not in... currently gently roasting in 32.1 degree heat in here Apparently we've got portable air con units arriving tomorrow but I have my doubts on how effective they'll be as the heat has to go somewhere!

driverless cars are fine when you're not in them... imagine how much more smoothly motorways will flow with people keeping to the right lane and merging correctly, rather than the free for all it is at the moment. and think of the A road scenario, each autonomous car following a safe distance behind the one in front, leaving lots of gaps to enable the human controlled car to safely overtake. and then when you do overtake, rather than a numpty flashing you and pulling right up to your bumper, the autonomous car will simply let off the throttle a bit to regain a safe gap. cant wait for autonomous cars, for other people - 90% of people on the road dont want to be driving anyways, so put them in safer autonomous cars.

so out of interest, what does actually wear out in an EV engine? does it have a cooling circuit, water pump, radiator or the like? I suppose it also has no intake or exhaust either... or fuel pump, or injectors, or spark plugs, since theres no combustion...... errmm... does the engine have any fluids in it at all? presume it must have a bearing in it somewhere, but that would be sealed for life rather than needing lubrication?

what about if your options were a noisy, smelly, slow old American V8, or a silent, odourless, fast new European EV? hmmm on second thoughts you'd go for the V8 lol. but my point is, different people value different things, some people like noisy smelly cars, some like quiet refined cars. To be honest dan seeing as you've just bought an old man barge, you were leaning towards the 'softly spoken, but carry a big stick' approach?

that's a fair point, EV dominance is probably going to take a while, and yeah certainly no option for the home mechanic, or even an independent garage. In fact it'll probably get to the point where the people who can afford it, don't repair their cars - they'll just become like tvs, when it stops working, you buy a new one rather than try and repair it. but there are loads of people who buy new cars on finance, then when the deal is up, hand the car back and get a new one. so for them an unrepairable EV car would be fine, run it for 3 years under warranty, then hand it back. but equally, (so I've heard) theres a lot less to go wrong on an electric motor, it can't actually be that difficult to take out the core and replace it, so actually once the network is set up, it might be fine. generally, when a ICE engine goes bang that's it - car is scrap in most cases. but with far less moving parts, I cant really see a problem with an electric engine being maintained up to a million miles without too many problems (speculating here a bit) independent garages for electric vehicles don't exist at the moment simply cos there is no demand for them - if EVs were commonplace, there would be plenty of garages appearing to service them cheaply.

I'm intrigued, what makes you think that a combination of new technology and all the extensive R&D that goes with that will mean that the resulting product will become cheaper in the mid-term? Currently the Leaf is virtually double the price of the Micra, how will ploughing a lot of money into developing an EV that can still only do circa half the range of the comparable ICE bring down the price of said EV? Or do you suppose that the price of the increasingly reduntant ICE car will double as a result of selling in fewer numbers? new tech is always expensive at first, same as buying a new tv - few years back even a small LCD TV was £800, now you can get massive ones for peanuts. As for CRT TVs, they're now dead, replaced by better performing, more efficient alternatives. Same with Cassette decks (unless you drive a 350z ) only reason why EVs aren't mainstream now is the length of time and difficulty in charging, and an electric cars range. Once the battery and the charging technology comes on (which it will do, all batteries are now smaller and hold more charge than previously) then 90% of the cars on the road will be EVs. I mean think about it, if you have a car that has the equivalent of 200bhp, has a genuine 400mile range and is as easy to charge as a petrol car is now, yet it costs a tenth of the price to run, you'd be mad not to. Companies which use fleet cars will be all over it - just need a company to invest a bit in a fast charge system, and it can hugely reduce its company car bill. All it would need is for someone like BMW to put a decent electric engine in a 3 or 5 series and it will sell like hotcakes - at the moment I don't want an EV cos they're all eco wagon family hatchbacks with no power, but put a 150-200 kW engine in a 5 series for example, stuff it full of enough batteries to give it a reasonable range, and sales of 520ds would stop overnight. Similarly put a 300kW EV engine in a 350z and enough batteries for a 250mile range, i'd be all over that - would do a lot more miles as well. have to say, insta-torque from an electric engine is an appealing prospect, throttle response of a decent NA engine, torque hit like a turbo engine with no lag. as I say, only thing stopping me is that the EV car I want (powerful, RWD, looks good, designed to be sporty) doesn't exist yet. the BMW i8 is certainly the closest, looks great (IMO) rwd, powerful enough - just a bit pricey at the moment. the depreciation argument is not a valid one - all new cars are pricey and depreciate like stones - you can pick up a 3 year old M5 now that has lost £40,000 in depreciation already.

its really a no brainer to get the tracking checked, as if you put new tyres on a car with bad tracking, it'll just eat through the inside edge again. I've had front tyres that were fine across 90% of the tread, but the inside 10% was almost down to canvas. most reputable places will check tracking for free, and only charge if an adjustment is actually needed.

i presume you had a wheel alignment after the new tyres were put on? really bad wear on the inside edge of the tyre while the rest of it looks fine is a surefire sign of the tracking being out. Even so, it would have had to have been out for a long time to cause that much damage. Consider yourself very lucky that you had your MOT due, that tyre cannot have been more than a few days away from catastrophic, potentially life threatening failure.

ha that bit did look awesome, I would love to try wing walking!

to be honest neither were particularly brilliant segments... if they'd have filmed an epic cross continent roadtrip or something i'd have wanted that to be aired, but faffing around in clapped out classic cars, then faffing around in very very clapped out old 4x4s, I can probably leave it. Still it is a shame when such a long running show finishes... I remember the final ever episode of friends for example, its end of an era stuff. hopefully the new presenters will retain some of the things that made top gear occasionally great.

last chance saloon, only 11 places left now!

I actually think the majority of top gear recently has been very good, so I don't really want them to change anything... in the last 6 seasons (17 - 22), these are the only features I wouldn't watch again: Creating the climactic car chase for The Sweeney (really really scripted and not at all funny) Build and test off-road mobility scooters in the countryside (just plain dull) Epic race from Wembley to the San Siro stadium in Milan: Shelby Mustang GT500 (concept is getting old now) Jeremy and Richard Design a vehicle for the elderly (again, really really scripted and morbidly unfunny) The India Special (easily the weakest special, obviously scripted, very unfunny) Best taxi motorsport race (concept is getting old now) Best crossovers for caravanners (just dull) Prove that the hot hatchbacks of their youth were better than their modern equivalents (very scripted, not funny) Make a commercial for reducing cycle-related accidents (terrible, terrible terrible) but seeing as that is 9 episodes out of a total of 44 episodes, Top Gear still has an 80% success rate for me. Yes some episodes are proper clangers, but there are a lot of episodes that are very good. I'll certainly continue to watch with CE at the helm.

Our track cars have been happily running on ATE super blue for a few years now, have never experienced fade. And super blue is actually DOT 4. Only thing to consider really are the dry and wet boiling points - DOT5.1 has slightly higher minimum boiling points than DOT4, but they're only minimums - for example ATE super blue is a DOT4, but has higher boiling points than some DOT5.1s. other thing to consider is how susceptible to water absorbsion they are, which will lower the boiling point - although pretty much all brake fluids have service intervals around 2 years (even the racing fluids)

use the aircon only time not having a working window annoyed me was when entering and leaving car parks - trying to reach round the window glass makes you look like a bit of a berk. Oh and occasionally when it was particularly hot the window would drop by itself, and then took some persuasion to go back up again. But I lived with it for the full 3 years I owned the car, had better things to spend £200 on!

Yeah, I feel bad as I was the last person to have him before he was lost. Would love to see the return of Zed-Ted!

yep the german show isn't top gear - the officially branded ones are (were) UK, USA, Australia, France, Korea, Russia. All had exclusively male presenters.