June 2011
1997 Volvo S40, 2 litre petrol, 105K miles. Good general condition.
Intermittent engine start-up problem. Ignition lights come on, but turning key produces no result. Problem mysteriously vanishes after several starting attempts or after a protacted period of non-use. Happens when doors unlocked or after doors are locked and alarmed. Engine warm or cold. With either of the keys. ... Read more
Aviva Plc has sold the RAC to Carlyle Group (global asset managers!) for one billion pounds.
I wonder what that will do to our subscriptions? The RAC business model already had me worried as a customer as they are working to a NCD insurance model with no real chance of significant liabilities. The worst expense they can incur is a call out wheras a real insurer could pay out millions in public liability for one incident.... Read more
I use First call, freephone or use their uk national number, 32 quid this year with 40 call out charge if within 1 mile of home, so if i don't use them i'm saving. nice polite people, colchester based. 2 years ago called them out in the freeze, car would not start, 40 minutes, taken straight to dealer. 4th year with them now, so have saved lots compared to 108 each year, and not filling some investment groups trousers. Even so there are other excellent choices online. House insurance renewal was 160, got elsewhere for less, same for car insurance. must say, had an accident in europe 15 years ago and green flag sorted it all, flew me home and transported car back to my garage. well done!
HI,
I started to look at Bmw 335's and noticed that there are a large number of them for sale, and looking at honest john auction seem to be going through the auctions quite low.... Read more
I've driven a 320D and, 95% of the time, I couldn't have used any more power. The 335/335D are aspirational cars and these are not aspirational times.
Hi All,
Hope someone can help a bit with this one.... Read more
Very interesting observation.
IAT works is essentialy a temperature sensitive resistor. High temperatures=low resistence, low temperatures high resistence. If you get a short in the circuit, the resistence is low so the ECU thinks the intake temperature is very hot. If you get a broken circuit, the ECU thinks the temperature is very cold. I reckon you had a short. The ECU thinks the engine was taking in air at over 100C and pulled the timing which killed the power. Temperature sensitive spark retard is much more sensitive at low RPM when detonation poses its greatest threat....
There's a decent demographic of folks on here so I thought I would seek opinions:
Does anyone have any recommendations for a decent camera?... Read more
Just as a little follow up - thanks for the suggestions. I have just bought a little red Nikon Coolpix S2550 for my holidays next week! Looks good; 12MPix, 4x optical zoom, wide-angle lens (well, as wide-angle as you can get on a small digital camera!). The only thing is, they just don't provide SD cards anymore (I noticed how Sony have given up on their weird long stick ones and gone to SD).
Bit subjective this, but I feel I must say that the most beautiful British Car ever isn't a modern Aston or footballer-german- Bentley. No. It's the 1963 Alvis TD21 Soft Top. I'm not techy and the kids won't help but I'm trying to insert a picture, or at least a link to one. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Alvis.td21.arp.750pix.jpg Read more
You can see echoes of a Porsche 993 in the lovely white Elite in that article. Robbers!!
When started from cold in the morning this vehicle starts first turn of key for the first 6 or 7 minutes of driving vehicle emittes a lot of black smoke and appears to hold back. Once
it reaches running tempature smoke clears and vehicle drives100% all day long, No mil light on and no fault codes Anyone encountered this problem before Regards Mickeybo Read more
A friend of mine has an Audi 2.5 V6 and he is very proud of the fact that it is silky smooth unlike a 'rough 4 cylinder'. The trouble is, apart from brief excursions of hard acceleration, it is impossible to run the engine at any appreciable load accept at very low RPM. Clearly having an engine spinning away at low load is inefficient and wastes fuel.
This started a debate. For a given output in horsepower, which has the lowest NVH-a 6 cylinder at X RPM or a 4 cylinder at 1.5X RPM. To make things fair, the bore, stroke piston mass, conrod length, compression ratio and engine load were set to the same level.... Read more
Yes-but a single balance shaft running at crankspeed is mechanically straight forward-and virtually universally applied. The I4 requires twin contra rotating balance shafts running at twice crank speed-and are often not used because the implementation is problematic.
The point I didn't emphasise-and I should have done, is that the imbalance is what makes the I4 so unusually smooth in its mid range. The inertial forces are out of phase with the torque flux from successive compression and expansion strokes so the resulting torque output is smoothened....
Really lovely dawn chorus yesterday morning. Should've got me binocs and a flask of coffee and gone out there. But it was 3.45 so I had a *ee and went back to bed. Hope you enjoy this. http://youtu.be/9-FVyQ0byUw Read more
I've got an unwelcome dawn chorus from a pair of cooing pigeons-right outside my window. At first I thought I thought one had fallen down the chimney and I felt sad. Then I realised that it wasn't-and now wish it was!
Someone sent me a link to this video: www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=61028
If anyone knows what this was for, let me know (i.e. who built the vehicle, was it a land speed record or anything). I just find the way he looks at the broken bit v. funny. Read more
That's brilliant! It should become a new form of motoGP-separate two entangled bikes-at wide open throttle!
Browse
He hasn;t posted since that one time in June 2011 sop i doubt that we'll hear from him now.
One ossible reason why no-one answered his post is that he didn't say whether the starter turns the engine or nothing happens at all. There's an implication ("no result") that it's the latter, which might suggest a poor electrical connection in the ignition system.