dirtydoogle

You don't know his situation, he may have had diarrhea, and needed to find the nearest latrine quickly, before getting to site to use standover tactics on his apprentice to reinforce toxic masculinity 

Jus' sayin

2 hours ago, tawa said:

 

Brand new ranger at work, still felt like it was years behind my e70... Sales pitch must be like, 'is ute, is ford, sold'

I think it's: "What else can you buy for $70k that will explode a gearbox this fast" 

I found trial fitting the baby capsule to a dual cab Ranger was a no-go and the standard rear facing seat was a tight fit. Not a roomy or practical family wagon. Funny enough the passenger seat in our "average size" Lexus GS is in line with the driver seat with that exact same baby seat. Although neither offer quite as much room as my Austin 10

W212 wagons are currently my flavour of the month for next family car upgrade, in diesel and a light colour so it looks less like a Volvo V60 at the front. Was going to be an LS600h...but that's hard to justify 

For the most part, many utes do offer reasonably low cost of ownership (minimal depreciation) and most are fairly trouble free for most users for the first 300km or so, if you do decent milage. And quite a few of the current crop return pretty good economy. The majority of them are now a nicer place to sit than an e53. Not sure if that's impressive or not 

Most e36 and e46 will be due for a second,  or 3rd cooling system now. I would put zero confidence in the plastics at that age. 

They're also a bit harsher on brakes and suspension than a generic Japanese car. And window regulators, and...everything else. 

Unless you don't mind DIY, avoid it  

1 hour ago, balancerider said:

@Eagle Nissan Tiida (Versa in the US) is a strong contender for least safe car on sale. They are absolutely the shittiest car I have ever had the misfortune of driving. Even an E110 / E120 Corolla would be far preferable. Jazz / Fit is a good shout.

The spare tyre cover also falls through when you put a toolbox in the boot to do remote servicing on a rally. Quite poor. 

29 minutes ago, E30 325i Rag-Top said:

Depends which generation of X3, the first was not great, the F25 was pretty bloody good, the G01 is awesome. Saw an X3 M40i out drag a modded Skyline from the lights on the South Eastern last night, the Nissan nearly crashed trying to keep up.

1st gen, they must quite easily be the worst built bmw I've ever had the misfortune of driving/fixing. 

Would rather drive a spoon up my *rse than drive another of those 

4 hours ago, gjm said:

Reviewing online data, I should get better than 5.9L/100km in the X3 (equates to 1100km per tank). The job and role I have, and the purpose for the vehicle, mean an X3 is better-suited than a saloon or similar.

 

That lovely nissan you're driving would have a much nicer interior and ride than an x3 though 😬 they are absolutely ghastly

3 hours ago, balancerider said:

Non SUV BMW 2.0d will comfortably do 5.5L/100k in mixed driving and probably <5 if all open road so shifts the equation favourably. No doubt in my mind a small capacity diesel is more economical than a petrol in the same vehicle (if you’re doing open road km), especially with any use of the throttle.

But with our super cool and unfair ruc system, 5.5L/100km on a diesel works out to be around $4k/yr, which is the equivalent of my cheap and garbage hybrid doing 6.5/100km 

The RUC thing is garbage, unfortunately 

I'm glad I got my mundane hybrid for 3k now. 

I'm not too worried personally because my toy vehicles are either very economical, or they probably will be finished anyway. 

Are you sure you did the fuel cap up correctly? Thats more likely to throw an EVAP code that self clears. 

Maybe try bash some 95 in it again

On 3/2/2022 at 10:12 PM, Vass said:

sh*t. That makes me think twice now. Although not really keen to shell out $600 on just springs alone.

Would you look at aftermarket springs instead of OEM?

All depends on what you are wanting to do with it. If you plan to give it the bash, I would be a little hesitant to use stock springs. 

New orm springs will be okay for a stock rev range on a stock cam 

OEM springs and retainers are pretty mediocre on most BMW motors. If they're willing to check a few valve seat pressures you will get a good idea of condition 

Chances are the old springs will be at 45-50Lb of seat pressure. Fine for tootling around, not particularly good for giving the bash 

A fast road m5x requires 85lb at a minimum for 7000rpm and a moderate cam

All that sealant gives me reflux man

2 minutes ago, wrs said:

Keep in mind anything adjustable or not provable as OE equivalent will likely require certification so factor in an additional $750+

If doing a manual conversion, most kits come with with a brake pedal / clutch pedal combo. The minute you touch the brake pedal you now need certification (if detected by the person doing a warrant) - additional cost.

Manual conversion may also require driveshaft hoops depending on the certifier. Because of where I live and the rather limited certification options I was forced to do 2 hoops...

Oh so you went to see old mate Ricard down Gordon rd? He's a blithering idiot. If there is a next time,call Danny at Autocerts in Ashurst, he's up here a heap. Absolute top bloke, has done a few cars for us. Charges less than Premier Autos too 

What are you planning on doing with the car? 

Koni yellow and H&R springs will outperform BC golds or BC reds on the road 

XYZ adjustable set up are cost effective and great starting point for track work, speed factor in Tauranga sell them. 

Manual conversion is getting pricey now but is a great way to make the car more fun, typically a getrag kit is well upwards of 2.5k, plus it's foolish to not replace clutch/flywheel/master and slave at the same time, add another $1k to bring good quality gear in from overseas. 

42 minutes ago, Young Thrash Driver said:

The Minister responsible for energy spoke of building 4.5 wind farms per year, this has proven to be all talk. Plans to upgrade the distribution network must be a state secret, because so little is talked about it. And still we aren't allowed to say the "n" word.

4.5 a year is probably a smidgen over estimated when it took 11 years to gain consent and begin building Turitea windfarm, which isn't finished yet. 

Was plenty of talk about infrastructure projects (current and planned) at the EEA2021 conference when we were there, I guess its just not particularly sexy for news these days 

1 hour ago, gjm said:

 

If I do go for a Japanese import I may give it a chance in it's native language before getting involved in changing stuff.
Would be nice to sort bluetooth music - many of the slightly older cars have bluetooth phone calling, but won't play music.

You're welcome to try ours out. Pretty similar functionality to the IS

There's very very little real world use of the touch screen system in a GS, push one button and adjust the fan speed on screen. Push another to see how bad the fuel economy is. Stereo and calling is separate. I'll find what brand bluetooth adapter Katie fitted to ours, it's got canbus support, so all works like OEM

We have a drive-pro unit

The system UI is very easy to use in Japanese. But you can get it converted to English, was around $600 when I looked for our GS and I never got around to it. 

Even in Japanese it's better than early iDrive 😁

If the bolts look okay then re-use them. They're not under much stress and they're not tight enough to stretch them. 

Yup those rings are yuck 🤮 

8 hours ago, Vass said:

Pistons are out yeah, will take some pics tomorrow

Yeah I read about the bearing coloring. What's with the whole plastigauge though? Is that absolutely necessary or enough to just order the same color as the current ones?

Always check clearances. Plastigauge is easy enough and cheap enough 

Oil control rings, pull a piston, I dare ya 

Its buggered. Throw it out 

Check for colored marks on the backside of the bearings before ordering, measure the clearance of the old bearings (plastigauge or micrometer, either is fine for this application) 

There are 3 colour codes, off the top of my head it goes Yellow, Green, White in order of largest to smallest clearances. Hopefully there is a spec for the colour coding easily available 

Replace the rod bolts, too. Use the old bolts when clearance checking the journals 

And oil pump will be fine with lock wire. If budget allows, replace chain and gears. Otherwise just check em carefully

2 hours ago, polley said:

What ever happened to cng and lpg cars?

Cheap to own Jap imports and Big Oil conspiracy i guess

3 hours ago, Olaf said:

we seem to manage that very well with LPG, and we used to with CNG as well.  We just need to solve the problem.  Perhaps the issue is that this govt will have racked up so much debt bankrolling hermitville lockdowns and wrecking the economy, investing a little in a distribution network will be viewed as "too costly".  And they laid their bet on electric cars (pssst - do we have a distribution network to support the additional load?!, or the generation capacity?).

Given it will take approximately 25-30 years to theoretically change the fleet over, we can probably manage the extra 2 megawatts of load that we can almost already manage anyway

And we will all be far to impoverished to own a car by then, anyway. And I'll probably die of boredom or a messy self flagulation related death in a Leaf 

1 hour ago, polley said:

I dont think the hydrogen will be used in ICE engines. More intended for fuel cell use to run electric motors ? 

I would expect so. The technology has a very long way to go currently to be as efficient as a BEV, but I love the idea