Leaderboard

Like others, I see the main environmental challenge to Hydrogen in its production, not its distribution and consumption, but the private car market is massive so I'm sure it's prudent for technology to develop on the other aspects of the problem. Also worth noting, just because it is Hydrogen, and electric motors, doesn't mean it's all about the environment. Hydrogen power density is huge, as are electric drivetrains, batteries let down the system. 100kg gets you 250kW out of the fuel cell, add another 150kg of motors and drives gets you a good megawatt of power to the road, another 100 for supercaps and battery buffer to hit the motor peak power, 50kg for a hydrogen storage tank and you probably got 1000km of range. 1:1:1 kw to kg to km-range? Pretty sure there's a market for that despite hydrogen being the fuel, hell, if you had to juice dolphins for the tank I'd expect there'd still be a market... Is it any more of a disaster than other ship fires? I get that lithium fires are pretty hard to put out, but do they release more harmful gases etc than anything else?

thing of beauty she is

I've had better results using the color and drive touch up kits compared to the others. None of them are perfect as a respray, but if it is actually a chip and not a scratch i would say go with colour and drive . plus the postage is free and it shows up within a week. it includes a 'levelling agent' that makes the paint just fill the whole. it also includes the brushes, etc

Wee progress update. The engine is now fully dismantled and dropped off at the machine shop to get some love from people that actually know what they're doing. Decided to go with Car Aid. Not the cheapest shop in town but have heard good things about them both from some mates as well as Eurocare recommending them. They've got a bit of a backlog so will only get to it in a few weeks, which is fine as I've got plenty of other bits needing tinkering to keep me occupied. From what I could see, all components seemed in fine nick and perfectly serviceable. Besides the heavy carbon buildup on the exhaust valves, all seemed straight and no visible scoring. After looking into the topic, I decided that valves were something I will leave to the professionals to refurb, test and seat properly. Apparently, it's best not to lap valves on these engines as that would increase the contact surface beyond what would be optimal. They come with 3 surfaces cut at different angles from factory so the shop will re-cut those if need be. Dropped off a new set of stem seals along with everything and will have them do a full valve job. Tested the clearances on a couple of journals taking off the crank, all fell at the 0.05mm mark, which is within tolerance (0.020-0.058mm). The journals seemed in decent shape overall, no visible scoring on any of them so was pretty happy with that. Left it at the machine shop just for looking over and a wee polish. Rod bearings look a bit worn so I'm definitely replacing those. The main bearings looked less bad but I thought I might as well replace those too, at just about $150 a set it seemed reasonable to do but interestingly, the shop guys said they'd just need a wee going over with a scotch brite and they'd be good to live on. Instead they recommended I spend the money on new valve springs, which was an interesting take. Naturally, brand new springs would have more compressive strength than ones with 160k km on them but I hadn't come across any info of that being a troublesome component on these engines. I considered it, but at $17 (USD) a piece, I'm not sure what the ROI should be to justify that. Think I'm going to stick with the current ones. Another thing of note whilst pulling it all apart, I kept on finding this black rubbery goo all over the place, likely RTV from somewhere. One bit was even stuck right inside one of the oil squirters, which couldn't have done much good. Doesn't pay going overboard on that sh*t, folks. But yeah, this is where it's currently at. Along with the block and head, I also dropped off the oil pan, rear main seal and timing chain cover to go for a nice acid bath to have everything equally fresh and shiny for when the time comes to put everything back together again. In the meantime, I'm ripping into redoing the subframe bushes and compiling a list of parts to order. Received a first small batch including the head and lower gasket sets, along with a few other bits earlier this week. First time ordering from RockAuto and must say, I'm mightily impressed. I usually swear by FCPEuro and whilst their inventory is more extensive, I found the prices for some of the identical OE items on RockAuto to be 1/2 - 2/3 of those on FCP. Having put the order in on Friday, the package was already at my door by Tuesday morning. Rapid.

AMMO NYC is good watching, I finally got a response from DrColor who are having international shipping issues and have been pretty good at keeping me updated and providing a partial refund to offset the late delivery. So it could take another 6 weeks for the product to arrive from the US. I'm happy to wait now that I know what is going on.

Haha, fingers crossed it won't happen - we would still have plenty of sun / privacy / greenery on the important North and West sides at least.

Oops sorry @Sammo, raw nerve. Have to wait and see. I am surrounded by houses here on my back section and mostly it is okay

I'm a good boy, actually applying for an exemption right now to plonk a home office 1 metre from the boundary.

You mean " before the knobs got electric scooters" . They used to have to walk!

$17500 117ks black on black tidy https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/474257397559125

🤣

Unplug horn, test at plug with multimeter while someone activates horn and make sure you're getting voltage there ?

That’s funny—- I know they’re rare and all but they do look aftermarket slash cheap, no?

I bought three of the "Dr. ColorChip Squirt 'n Squeegee Kit" in Artic Silver, Titan Silver and Bronzit Beige over the years through Pelican Parts (was $65USD). I was never really that impressed with them but that could also have been operator error. The colour always seemed to be slightly off. I had far better luck with AMMO NYC's method of using a paint dropper/pen and the touch up paint from SuperCheap.

Got the new shocks and springs etc in - ST 50mm/40mm springs, AP Sport shocks, Meyle mounts front and rear and new BMW (I trimmed them) bump stops and 10mm spring pads No drama's at all on the install but I am a slow wrencher! Car drives much better than with the Dobi's and tired Koni shocks that were in it - a little firmer but well damped now and overall firmer, but more comfortable. I've not had a chance to spank it on a back road but while this isn't an out and out performance combo, it feels like a good street setup with my 22mm/16mm swaybars. Ride height is now a bit low at the front but should look better when/if I go for 16's. Reversing into my driveway now is an exercise in caution. One of the front perches was missing the lower spring shim, but I can't imagine new front spring shims would make too much difference in height? maybe 3-4mm? The yuppie-mobile in its natural habitat:

Awesome place, Allan the service guy did an excellent job, perfect alignment settings, straight steering wheel and drives superbly. Only took about 45 mins No doubt it helped having new bushes and such on the car but they did the job anyone that cares about their car would appreciate.

Neighbours just sold their shitty house on a 1000m2 + section next door - bit concerned thats precisely what will happen next door!

Can’t you build three x 3 storey townhouses now?