kwhelan

Don't go VW turbo, absolute pain in the A** always stupid air vacuum leaks and CEL lights for something. Even a low ks one put me off Audi's for life that bloody motor

funny different for everyone, I thought Matt was excellent after the first season nerves and especially in the last season, his dry humour worked well with Chris and Rory, which for an american was quite unusual. I thought he had the potential to be better than clarkson less ranty and just the dry humour. His absolute joy in doing the stuff showed through better than clarksons as well. His pieces about some combine harvester /tank or whatever were brilliant the bit where he and harris were testing those battery moto-x bikes and the all terrain thing when they were hunting bigfoot was great and showed the potential those two had. Sorry to see he bailed.

Season 3 just started, nice montage of what's ahead. man they get some great scenic shots of locations camera work is outstanding as usual. first episode is a set in detroit and about american muscle cars, 1000hp with a 2.9 qtr supercharger and is complete madness as usual. very sad about detroit tho. From the richest city in USA to the poorest. worth it just to watch the McLaren senna a car I have never heard of break all lap records by seconds,

our local school fair always runs a random donated motor till destruction as a kids betting fundraiser every year, they go full revs for a bloody long time before bang

craggy is great good choice, you can see the Te Mata peak as you go past, the restaurant is under it, if you have time blast out to ocean beach for a nosey,

the road from opotiki thru to Gisborne is great, not the coast but the direct route following the river. A real drivers road scenic but great bends and flows, really satisfying

Sit tight until we can start selling water at the same price as oil, it will happen then countries will be knocking begging

https://www.msn.com/en-nz/motoring/video/porsche-cayenne-breaks-airplane-towing-record/vi-BBAE11Z at least the rear doors didn't pop open like happened to uncles Vauxhall victor

before worrying about EV increases needing a bigger power grid they have to explain what happens when they shut down Taranaki oil. Before the gas runs out, we will need to replace 1200mw of gas fired electricity generation. That's equivalent to Benmore and Manapouri combined. A few idiot windmills and solar panels aren't going to do it, so where is the power coming from Minister?

https://www.suzuki.co.nz/100-hour-sale

bit harsh, as long as you get the checks done and those injectors replaced you end up with a great car, owning BMWs is an expensive hobby that is hard to justify mostly to those uninitiated ,alfas are worse

wow that's all kinds of wrong and not something I'd ever considered before, 3 things really , lucky you took insurance, lucky the insurance wasn't fussy about the historic codes, bloody worthless pre-inspection should be named and shamed so no-one on here gets in the same state

copied and pasted so take with a grain of salt Good news, E-cars used less CO2 than diesel cars…but only after 585,000km! Quote: The German ADAC association, the equivalent of America’s AAA, carried a CO2 comparison for a variety e-autos and combustion engine cars. The results were very surprising, says German magazine Autobild here. Today electric cars are being pushed as a clean and environmentally friendly alternative, while diesel and gasoline burning engines are being villainized as polluters and climate killers. In their comparison, however, the ADAC came up with some unexpected results. CO2 cars indeed have huge CO2 footprints. The ADAC reminds that energy does not only get used while driving the vehicle, but also for their manufacture and later for their recycling and supply of fuel. According to the ADAC, the manufacture of the electric car’s battery requires a considerable amount of energy, which has a considerable impact on its overall CO2 budget over its lifetime. The ADAC compared cars from three different segments to find out if electric cars are really more climate friendly: The overall result: General conclusions are not possible. But: electric cars in Germany today are already in many cases a good environmentally friendly choice. However, they could have a much better CO2 balance if they used exclusively renewable electricity.” So far Germany’s power grid still relies heavily on fossil fuels. ADAC looked at diesel, gasoline, natural gas, hybrids, e-cars and others over the range from compact to large sizes cars from a wide variety of manufacturers. It compared the cars after 150,000 km using the German power supply mix of 2013, which had a renewable energy share of 23%. (Today renewable energies have a share of 33%, which would improve the result of the e-cars somewhat). The ADAC found that only compact electric cars had the best CO2 budget at 22.5 tonnes of CO2, while gasoline powered cars yielded 30 tonnes. For the next bigger class of cars, called small cars, electric cars still came out ahead, “but only when using the optimistic 150,000 total travel distance.” Less than that, however, they were in fact dirtier. Note that electric cars traveling 150,000 km are rare, if they exist at all. Renewing the batteries would also mean a further CO2 budget setback. The ADAC calls the results of their comparison “surprising”. Autobild reports: “The reality, however, is that small e-cars are often used as a second car or a car for the city. At 50,000 km of driving an e-car cannot compensate the high CO2 emissions for manufacturing, recycling and power provision.” Upper midsize: e-car worthwhile only after 585,000 km In other words, with Germany’s current electric power supply mix, even small e-cars still have a greater CO2 budget than diesel powered ones of the same class for longer lifetime distances. German “Autobild” magazine adds: Surprising results in the upper mid-class cars: Here diesel produces the best result with 33 tonnes of CO2 over 150,000 km! Because the e-car produces so much CO2 (41 tonnes CO2) for the manufacture of the batteries and recycling, they would first be worthwhile only after 580,000 km compared to diesel engine cars.” So what’s the take home message? If you’re concerned about CO2 warming the planet, then purchase a diesel engine car. End quote. I wonder what the Gunts are going to say about this not unsurprising result. I’ve always said these virtue-signalling wankers in e-cars drive around emitting vast clouds of smug are ignoring the mining and manufacturing processes that go into their smug driven vehicles. That’s another myth busted.

just read about the new long range EV version of this in the motoring supplement. 445 kg of battery ( to be fair was only 260 odd kw heavier than an engine but still thats a family of 4 people extra) and $70k which they said was nearly double the dearest engine model, hell that's a lot of petrol to recoup then, let alone they suggested you had 4.5kw plug installed in your house which adds more costs and then there's the ongoing increase in your electricity bill. just doesn't add up unless your a member of the greens/Gunts party

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBn57BCj0L8

discovered this for myself when my son after months of visits etc locally was referred to starship. Upon getting there I had to explain the whole thing again, was just gobsmacked, I asked them to please get his records sent and to their credit they did, but wow, the public need to be told of these glaringly stupid systems my old man retired early from his sole optometry practise because he just couldn't afford all the fancy gear they were expecting them to buy with like 10 yrs left of him working.which is why they all work together now in shared practises to share costs, like dentists people moan about the costs but if you had any idea on how much those machines are costing and they go out of phase at the drop of a hat with any new feature, and with how much they have to spend on continuing their training with conferences all over the world , again single practise you have to shut the doors or pay a locum. you'd start to have some sympathy

part of it is just technology, back in 2008 they may have spent $x on a mri scanner for example and used it for x things, now they all have and people expect immediate access to ever more expensive equipment with ever more retraining of staff and they test and look at at far more things so the usage is way higher, Friend was recently scanned at 9pm on a sunday where they used to be all booked 8-5 mon to fri same with all the new expensive drugs for cancer, etc there are far more treatments/cures available which also eat into the running costs, not saying its fair or right but the ability to actually fix so many more ills does cost a lot more what gets me is how screwed pharmac is when buying our drugs, saw doco on a drug that cost 60k here was $1 in India purely because they would synthesis their own copy so they just sold it to them cheap as any money was better than none. The drug had payed its development costs back 3fold already and they were still reaming us down under

If you wanted a cheaper reversible option you could get your parts vinyl wrapped if done properly most would never spot it

those stereos have aux in, you can connect a bluetooth receiver and stream audio in thru the amp and speakers, have to be controlled by the iPod tho.

agreed doubt you could hold that pace for a second or third lap and it would be a big off when you erred, look at how hard his helmet is bouncing down that last straight, damn impressive driving

interesting as I'm 6,4 and I drove my wifes cruze 25kms once and didn't notice anything until I got out, Shoulders were wrecked for days, can't get in it now without a jersey or pillow stuffed in lower back. can't say Ive ever had a car seat do that so dramatically before in 40 odd years and yes Iv'e repeated it foolishly, there was something very wrong in the seat back which apart from being flat didn't look any different to any other. Sitting in it at car yard you would even say this feels comfortable but it was hell after 30 mins,

agree completely on looks, very nissan juke kinda weird just to be different, latest Hondas are weird too if they took off the plastic sides and removed that oversized lower outer headlight the actual silouette looks ok be interesting to see it photoshopped actually

exactly they used to rabbit on that lexus was the most trusted brand and had the least amount of breakdowns Big Deal be a long day before boys have posters of Hyundais/Kias on their bedroom walls

uses 2 playstation cameras Here's part of the software stack Up top is a monitor showing the camera's views of the cubes. Jared's software allows you to draw polygons on the screen, and assign them to different faces of the cube. The pixels inside each polygon are averaged and compared to some thresholds to determine the color of each face. We found that distinguishing the red faces from the orange ones was finicky, thanks to the low-quality of the cameras, so we sharpied the orange faces black. Apparently that's allowed though. Once the faces are identified, the solve sequence is computed using the min2phase algorithm. This returns a solution which we've observed to be 19-23 moves for a well-scrambled cube. The fastest solve we've done was actually a 21-move solve, so just getting a little lucky could easily shave off another ~30ms from the time. apparantly all cubes are solvable in 20 moves regardless of their randomness, they call it the god number

http://build-its-inprogress.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-rubiks-contraption.html