gjm

I was thinking the same thing...! Before I enter a second round of negotiations with Mrs M, is there something I should know?

I've used the one in Takanini a few times. They're pretty good.

That sounds quite reasonable. Hmm... I may have to try some nocturnal persuasion on Mrs M.

Cheeky! Looks like Qualitat do a suitable oil filter for about $12. That's a very good start.

Thanks Dan. I've heard a lot of bad things about VAG, but good things too. The Polo should be simple enough to hopefully not suffer so much. I'll give Shane a call in the morning.

I bought oil filters for the 320d cheaper from Cookes BMW in Hamilton than I could from Repco or SCA. I'm looking for service parts for Mrs M's VW Polo... $45-60 for an oil filter, and over $100 for an air filter from <ahem> high street chain consortium - I can buy oil filters from the UK and have them shipped here for half that, air filters are (the equivalent of) $15 in the UK. Not as convenient, of course... So, anyone have any suggestions for where to get VeeDub parts at a reasonable price?

Trust me - I've been thinking about it! So... What is the economy like on a 318iS manual...?

Mrs M doesn't drive stick because she can't. Physically cannot. It's not a capability thing - she has a back injury. She knows how, but doing it could see her in hospital to get her back sorted. Does this mean that some people shouldn't drive nice-coloured cars? OK - a 318iS isn't the ideal candidate for an auto box, and my earlier comment was more tongue-in-cheek than anything else. But we're trying very hard to drag ourselves out of a financial quagmire, and still have fun. With cars and driving, sometimes that fun comes from a smile on your face when you see the car, sometimes it is from driving it. This 318iS falls more into the first category, but the M-Sport kit should make it fun to drive at legal speeds, too. It's a good, fun car. As it is.

Presumably it would be sacrilegious to ask about converting from manual to slush box...?

My wife would love it! Needs an auto box for her, though.

Interesting. Could be useful, too. Of course, it is hoped none of us will ever have cause to find out whether an older airbag would work or not. I've never experienced it, but people I know who have had the misfortune of having an explosively inflated bag stop their face hitting the steering wheel (a good idea - no doubt about that) described it as a fairly horrific experience in itself, akin to being smashed in the face by a boxing glove covered in sandpaper. While injured, prsumably they were less so than had they not had an airbag. I have some stats somewhere showing that the difference between surviving an accident (i.e., no fatality) with or without an airbag is quite small, yet the difference between being unscathed without an airbag, but injured when one is deployed, is quite high. Raw figures from most airbag-related studies focus on lives saved or lost, with or without airbags, and the differences between those numbers tend to be almost statistically insignificant. Non-life threatening injuries are much higher with the airbag-equipped vehicles. (You may have heard of airbag 'burn', for example.)

Some time (years) ago I wrote this for a Porsche 928 forum: "The first airbag fitted to a customer-sold, production line vehicle was in a 1980 S-class Mercedes. It took Merc 13 years to develop technology suitable for public use. Development of airbags for use in cars began at Mercedes back in 1967. Deployment of an airbag in an appropriate time - less than 30 milliseconds - meant development of several new technologies, not least the fabric used for the bag. Explosive inflation ripped or tore most fabrics and those fabrics originally used will have deteriorated in the last 25 years - take a piece of canvas, fold it tightly in an enclosed space, and see how long it lasts! Early airbags used a powder, similar to talcum, to stop the folds of the bag sticking to each other. Over time, damp plays a part in reducing the powder's effectiveness, causing a reduction in effectiveness of the airbag deployment system. Volvo increased the replacement interval for their airbags from 10 to 15 years as recently as 2005, but still require the system to be checked after 10 years." So... Aside from what Dave has already said, there's a little more to this than just "will it work?" And there's an elephant in the room - airbags aren't required to be checked for any inspections. The WoF just needs the system to show that they would work if required.

The Telecom 'help' is rubbish. Eventually, you can get through to someone in NZ, but it takes a lo-o-ong time. The call centres are all performance-managed which means that escalating anything is a demerit, having a call hang around too long is a demerit, and ultimately, even recognising a previous enquiry was not adequately resolved is a demerit. When we 'landed', we had SIMs for 2 degrees. Not bad, but not great. After a few months putting up with missed calls and so on - phone sitting beside me, beeps to say I have a voicemail but hasn't actually rung - we thought we'd take the offer Telecom mobile made. Received SIMs, changed numbers (eventually), and... Service was worse. Much, much worse. Absolutely no coverage at home. We went through the whole gamut of the call centre and every excuse under the sun as to why it didn't work, including blaming our phones. After the first few calls, I found that I was quite literally cut off after a few minutes. Some excuse about speaking to someone else, then a long pause, then the phone connection dropped. This happened several times. (I know why - I have built call centres and off-shored them. The stats will show my call was 'resolved' after a few minutes.) There was no discussion around our problem, only that their map showed we had coverage, and were we sure it wasn't working? Every single time we were asked for our names, addresses, phone numbers, phone models, to restart our phones... No ticket reference to cut through all the crap. (Tickets require completion and resolution, of course.) Eventually I was put through to a NOC in NZ and spoke to someone there. The first thing he did was apologise for the poor performance of the Telecom call centre ("we do get a lot of complaints about that"), and then the Telecom network. He checked he could actually 'see' my phone while I was at work, then offered to call me at home. Which he did... On our landline because my mobile had 'disappeared'. He discussed our location and potential solutions, but admitted he was reluctant to suggest it but that we would be better on Vodafone. The Telecom network, in his words, is still under development and they are using income from promotions to build the network. Never did get anything by way of apology fro the Indian call centre, or a refund for the payment to receive the SIM cards. When we move, I'll obviously check first, but will avoid Telecom if at all possible. Cutting off nose to spite face perhaps, but it does leave a bad taste.

This post has been bubbling away for a while, following the thread around the 4km/h tolerance of the posted speed limit. Before we go any further, I want to say that I do not condone driving at excessive speed in any circumstance. People who drive at 100km/h in busy traffic on a multi-lane highway, diving back and forth across the lanes and even using the hard shoulder, are idiots. This is dangerous, and should be addressed by the police by banning the person responsible and fining them to the point where they wonder if they can afford Watties beans this week, or should they buy budget brand ones instead. And don't blame the policeman who pulls you over. He's doing a job, following rules that have been handed to him. Many traffic cops become traffic cops because they enjoy driving, and not simply because they want to see you miserable, or spoil your fun. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Why do we obey speed limits? "Because it’s the law?” is regularly given as a supposedly credible argument, and ultimately, that is the reason many of us drive at 100km/h on SH1 (or wherever). Not because it is unsafe to travel at 105km/h, but because we are more concerned at that time with not getting a fine or endorsements than we are with making safe progress. So, are speed limit laws right? Sometimes, yes. And sometimes, obviously not. They are merely legal. Which means, it is not necessarily wrong to disobey them. And it may be very wrong indeed to adhere to them. To start with, speed limits are a “one size fits all” imposition, and created in order to cater for the lowest common denominator. People do differ significantly in their abilities, including their ability to safely operate a car at higher (or lower) speeds. A better-than-average driver who has had some training in high-speed vehicle handling and vehicle control is probably as or more “safe” (i.e., less likely to lose control of his or her vehicle) operating at say 120km/h on a road with a 100km/h posted limit as a worse-than-average driver with poor eyesight and reflexes and no vehicle control training on the same road at 80km/h. (SH4 southbound heading for Wanganui comes immediately to mind - following someone who crawled around corners at 20km/h less than the posted guide speed, yet accelerated like a demon on any straight stretches is incredibly frustrating for anyone who enjoys driving.) Why should there be a one-size-fits-all standard? Why should better-than-average drivers be constrained – and punished – not for any harm they've caused but because they didn’t voluntarily accept being dumbed-down to the level mandated for the worse-than-average drivers? How fast is “too fast”? The only objective measure of driving “too fast” is an accident caused by loss of control due to driving too fast. Many people are being indoctrinated into believing that driving at x km/h increases the chances this loss of control will occur, but this is entirely hypothetical and by no means logically or empirically established. If it were axiomatic that the faster you go, the higher the odds of loss of control, then it ought to be “safer” (statistically and otherwise) to fly in a single engine Cessna at 120 MPH rather than a 757 at 400 MPH, and manned space flight would never have happened. OK, different laws of physics apply, and there are very different training requirements. But cars are also very differently capable - grandad's old rust bucket may be able to reach 100km/h, but it wouldn't be safe almost regardless of who was behind the wheel. A shiny new M5 will easily double that, and (reaction times aside) be safer doing it. In practice, "too fast" is simply faster than the dumbed-down and often arbitrary standard (speed limit). There is widespread belief, propagated by idiots in positions of credibility, that if they’re not comfortable driving faster than a certain speed, then anyone who drives at that speed – or faster – is driving “too fast.” It is exactly like insisting that everyone walk at the pace of the slowest person on the sidewalk. And that anyone who jogs or runs is “reckless.” Unlike the difference between airspeeds, this is a comparable situation - is someone jogging in Auckland CBD at 6.30am stupid, reckless, or endangering anyone? (Let's leave aside the discussion around the sanity of anyone who jogs in the city at any time!) The same activity 2 hours later would be ridiculous - pavements and roads will be full of oeople heading for work. Back on the ground, there is also no evidence to show faster drivers are involved in more accidents. In the US, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration claims that 30 percent of all fatal accidents are “speed related.” 30%. So it is a minority regardless, but even this is misleading. It means that in less than 1/3 of cases, one of the drivers involved in the accident was assumed to be exceeding a reasonable speed for the conditions. It does not mean that speeding caused the accident. Research conducted by the Florida Department of Transportation showed that the percentage of accidents directly caused by speeding is very low, 2.2 percent. The Transport Research Laboratory in the UK has come to very similar conclusions, scarily even quoting very similar figures from entirely independent research. Note also that in these situations, it is excessive speed for the conditions that applies, not actual illegally exceeding the posted speed limit. Stats in action, again. Pick your information, but don't offer everything that is relevant. Further, “Federal and state studies [in the US] have consistently shown that the drivers most likely to get into accidents in traffic are those traveling significantly below the average speed.” Speed will be, or has been, a contributory factor in some accidents. However, inattention and incompetence are far more typically the reason, but there are no roadsigns forbidding these. And punishment is rarely meted out to offenders because while traffic police are watching for poor driving, they are more focused on speed. Good drivers continuously adjust their speed to their skill level, conditions and so on – not mindlessly obeying an almost arbitrary number stuck on a post on the side of the road. And that’s how it ought to be. Posting signs suggesting speeds for given roads (and conditions, such as curves) as advisories can be helpful to drivers not familiar with a given road. NZ does this on many corners - this is an excellent idea, and not one I had seen before coming here. But insisting on absolute adherence to a generic number as the “right” number for all drivers, at all times is both silly and unfair as well as counterproductive in that it encourages passive (and therefore mediocre/poor) driving while punishing (and thus discouraging) active, attentive (aka, better) driving. But try telling that to the government f**kw!t who was recently quoted in the press saying tighter enforcement of highway speeds would lead to significant improvements in road safety.

Love reading. Books. Real ones. I've never had a kindle or similar and don't feel inclined to get one... If it is techy stuff I want, I can read and photocopy or print anything relevant that I need. Novels are another thing - it's the tanglible aspect of going to a bookcase, pulling a book and flipping pages which is part of the reading experience (for me). I tried reading from a friends eBook thingy while on holiday once but found my imagination didn't seem to work as well as with the paper-based item.

Stats 101 in action. 2/3s? Nope. Less than that, and then only if you add those who want it full-time to those who want it part-time. You could word that survey in a different way, and get a different result. In town, in 30km/h (and possibly 50kmh) limits, a 4km/h tolerance has a place. On the highway, it doesn't. Edit: Here's an alternative. Increase the multi-carriageway limit to 110km/h.

ROFL ! Well, 'tis the season to be gullible!

I'd not heard of Kariotahi before! Sounds interesting... The racing was in Wanganui - http://www.cemeterycircuit.co.nz. There was also some V8 boat racing in the area - Steve Murch was represented by a pair of turbos on one of the boats (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcWzfidMO5s) but I missed it. I also missed the hot rod gathering in Waiuku earlier this year. Saw pics online - looked impressive. Waiuku is on the list of places to go, people to see... Some friends have a block north of Waiuku, south of Pollock, on the west coast. As for my idea of a DW... It'd go so much better if I could find somewhere that sells nickel anti-seize in decent sized containers at a reasonable price. 100ml for $30+ is a rip-off! Any recommendations for where I can get a 500ml tub?

Just a seasonal visit to friends, which happily coincided with some racing. Sadly we missed the jet boats. Errmm... "DW at Castaways"? Sorry - that means nothing to me!

I think there were more than that, but I didn't pay much attention. Just goes to show that expensive cars don't necessarily come with road manners. Still, great fun, eh?

Actually, I should check when I need to prepay again...

Give Cooke Howlison in Dunedin a call. Price for a genuine gasket isn't silly (I bought one for my M47 diesel - less than $60), and they'll ship it to you. I'm sure they are available from the US, but shipping may be expensive, and it'll take days. Alternatives are the usual Kiwi-based BMW parts suppliers.

I even forgot to get my passport stamped! We had a great time. Stood in the cemetery, watched people crash... Blue-540i, on 29 Dec 2013 - 9:24 PM, said: Good thing you're not letting that car get cold over the Xmas break though............... Heavens, no. There are trips to Waiuku, Cathedral Cove, possibly Taupo, and maybe even a return to Waitomo on the 'to do' list in the next two weeks. Throw in a bit of work, and I'll cover another 5000km before the end of January. Time for an oil change, too.

Clocked up another 1000km over the weekend (a whole tank of fuel!) Down to Wanganui to stay with friends, saw some racing, great food, wine beer, company... Didn't see Blue-540i as far as I know, but another time, maybe. A flawless trip, but one that gave me the opportunity to demonstrate the noises the turbo makes to Mrs M. Really must sort the rear brakes ASAP.