Random Thoughts... [Automotive Edition]

Who makes the OEM part? GM Themselves or someone like Delphi? That's a good part to be... good. Land Rover OEM parts are often Delphi but I won't try and argue that the build quality of those isn't shit most of the time. :p

I honestly don't know, but I would hazard a guess it's ZF since the car was made in Germany.

I'm probably not wrong when I'm guessing that my Octavia had ZF front drop links. I owned that car from new and they started clunking at 45000km or thereabouts. Meanwhile, I have 175000km on an Insignia that weighs half a ton more and all the chassis bits are still factory. :p

We sell lots of "ZF Aftermarket" chassis parts, branded Lemförder, and some of them have grinding marks where someone removed a vehicle manufacturers' logo before putting it into the aftermarket packaging. You mostly see it on expensive cast aluminium control arms for European cars.
 
I realize that I have the same problem with cars that I do with most motorcycles. There are a lot of cars that I don't want to own, but I have yet to see a car model that I can't find something redeeming about or appreciate at least driving. There are always those unmaintained rustbuckets that are unsafe to be on the road, I'm not talking about those but rather entire model lines.

Same here, it makes car shopping uh...interesting.
 
BRZ ate another ignition coil.

Apparently Subaru issued a TSB to swap the coils on 2013/14s to the 2015 coil and a new wiring harness.

Since I'm a billion trillion years out of warranty, there ain't no fucking way they'll good will one, especially with what this situation has done to car dealer revenues. The harness is $370 (it's the entire engine harness). Each coil is $115. Ouch.

Scrapyard harnesses to cannibalize the connectors (the updated harnesses are different because assorted other stuff also changed in 2015) are $350

I might look into just sourcing the coil connectors new and swapping them. How Hard Can It Be?™

http://australiancar.reviews/_pdfs/Subaru_BRZ_Z1_Service-Bulletin_07-120-17R_20170922.pdf
 
I realize that I have the same problem with cars that I do with most motorcycles. There are a lot of cars that I don't want to own, but I have yet to see a car model that I can't find something redeeming about or appreciate at least driving. There are always those unmaintained rustbuckets that are unsafe to be on the road, I'm not talking about those but rather entire model lines.
Yeah this was really highlighted for me when keeping the beetle and having the fiat as direct comparison because it is actually possible for me to be driving the fiat and miss the beetle, shockingly. I miss things about most cars my parents owned even.
 
@Blind_Io I would like to challenge you with things like the Seat Arosa or Ford Fiesta Courier.

Want to include the Astramax in that too? They can carry stuff I suppose, so where does that leave the Bedford Rascal? It goes on forever!
 
@Blind_Io I would like to challenge you with things like the Seat Arosa or Ford Fiesta Courier.

Never driven a Seat before, but the Arosa looks like a fairly basic little hatchback. I have a soft spot for those anyway and I would get a kick out of chucking one around a few corners. Are we talking about the Courior panel wagon or the pickup? Both are utility vehicles and would be ideal for light-duty delivery services.

Want to include the Astramax in that too? They can carry stuff I suppose, so where does that leave the Bedford Rascal? It goes on forever!
Same deal with the Astramax, light duty utility vehicles are great for things that don't require a body on frame pickup truck.

As for the Bedford Rascal - that things looks awesome. Super short wheel base, a variety of configurations (truck, panel van, camper, people mover). I dig the forward-of-the-axle seating position, it reminds me of my friend's old Toyota van. I can't think of a better city vehicle if you are trying to maximize space and agility.
 
For some reason I've always liked the Ford P100 in all its guises. This one contains what could be a young James May.

1589159137588.png


These chaps read the invitation to the race meeting incorrectly and turned up to what looks like a Formula 3 race with a go-kart. Nice P100 though.

1589159151551.png


Bit sad that these are our equivalents to Aussie utes with V8s but whatever.
 
Final Gear Brain Trust! I need your assistance explaining a phenomenon that I can't quite wrap my head around.

This Saturday we tried something that has never been done at our racetrack, Roll Racing. This was in conjunction with a local performance shop. He wanted to make sure it worked, so Tuesday, after a test and tune, I switched the sensors on the starting line allow them to pass through and start the timers. He makes his run and... It works, just as i knew it would. But! His trap speed is the same as is if he had started from a stand still, even with a 30-35 mph headstart at the starting line.

This same result was echoed in several other cars at the event on Saturday in the vehicles that competed in both the roll racing and the regular drag racing.

I'll explain trap speed real quick. The way the timing system figures the mph is by calculating from the time it takes for the vehicle to travel the last 66 feet of the track. It gets that info from a set of infrared sensors set at that 66 foot mark.

Now my question is, the event promoter is new and was quite annoyed that he didn't trap faster than his normal runs. I didn't have an answer for him on that, just that the timing system doesn't care how much of a room you get at the speed trap, just that it knows how long it took for you traverse that speed trap and then spits out the MPH. So what's going on?

A quick aside, I looked in a recent Car and Driver and noticed the street start 5-60 mph runs on some high horsepower Detroit cars was a few tenths slower than the 0-60 mph runs.

Oh, the fastest car we had? A fairly stock looking Nissan R35 GT-R that trapped 163+ mph every run.
 
I mean, how much are the cars continuing to accelerate at the end of the run? I would think a lot of them are basically flat out and are accelerating towards the cars limit.

But in any case I think the main thing may be just how much precision your timing system uses. Does it only time to tenths of a second, hundredths, thousandths, ten-thousandths?

See if this makes sense:
chart.png


In the first two rows of time all the matching times are highlighted in the same color. So in the first row if your system only times to tenths of a second the trap time is the same for all of them, so it will be spitting out the same trap speed if they ran any speed in that range. Move to hundredths of a second and you get down to different times in groups of about 6 mph ranges, so anywhere from 164-169 mph would register as the same trap speed. Once you get down to thousandths of a second they all become different (at least in this range), so each trap speed would be different. And so on with more precision...

I would guess your timing system is only timing to tenths or hundredths. If you can change that to make it more precise that should fix your issue.

Additionally/alternately it could be a setting between rounding and truncating the decimals- In the hundredths column above if the system truncated to tenths instead of rounded you would have .3 seconds from 150-153 mph, and .2 seconds from 154-175 mph.
 
Everyone keeps rebadging their competitors’ cars, and this is nothing out of the ordinary, but a Citroën badge on a Mitsubishi is still like a fish on a bicycle.

C1DC49FA-8ACF-4F2C-9B34-E3CF664148BD.jpeg
 
We had a discussion over at Telegram about engine availability tied to model variants. What nice cars do you remember that didn't get the nice engine in the wagon version?

For instance: 405 Mi16 was sedan-only, as was the Taurus SHO...
 
In the US market, basically all the European wagons got the midlevel/base engine and that was it, with the exception of the E39 540i.
 
I mean, how much are the cars continuing to accelerate at the end of the run? I would think a lot of them are basically flat out and are accelerating towards the cars limit.

But in any case I think the main thing may be just how much precision your timing system uses. Does it only time to tenths of a second, hundredths, thousandths, ten-thousandths?

See if this makes sense:
View attachment 3557547

In the first two rows of time all the matching times are highlighted in the same color. So in the first row if your system only times to tenths of a second the trap time is the same for all of them, so it will be spitting out the same trap speed if they ran any speed in that range. Move to hundredths of a second and you get down to different times in groups of about 6 mph ranges, so anywhere from 164-169 mph would register as the same trap speed. Once you get down to thousandths of a second they all become different (at least in this range), so each trap speed would be different. And so on with more precision...

I would guess your timing system is only timing to tenths or hundredths. If you can change that to make it more precise that should fix your issue.

Additionally/alternately it could be a setting between rounding and truncating the decimals- In the hundredths column above if the system truncated to tenths instead of rounded you would have .3 seconds from 150-153 mph, and .2 seconds from 154-175 mph.

The timing system uses a pretty stout MCU and does indeed time to the ten-thousandths (.0001) of a second. It displays mph just to the hundredth, i.e. 154.96. Though it is quite interesting to see the difference required to display that range of mph.

I think your idea on acceleration is more likely to explain the problem. These cars aren't accelerating on a linear curve, as they approach their top speed, acceleration slows and the run up is negated. They would need more than just a 30-35 mph / 200 foot head start to see any differences.
 
Never driven a Seat before, but the Arosa looks like a fairly basic little hatchback.
It's a VW Lupo, essentially, just without the option of being a GTI. The only positive things to say about these is that they're easy to park. But that's not a unique selling point for that particular model...

Are we talking about the Courior panel wagon or the pickup?
The first. And yes, it can haul a whole lot of stuff, but is worse in every way than say, a VW Caddy or it's Seat cousin, the Inca. I know because I had to drive both the Inca and the Courier.

I must admit I cheated a bit. Seen on their own, both vehicles I mentioned can be seen as good for something. But compared to the competition, they're just totally bland vehicles.
Contrast that to, for example, the Seat Terra (probably the worst car I ever had to drive, but at least I got paid to do so). That is just so terrible that it's good again, in a way.
I mean, I even liked the Opel Kadett E for its rather large boot. Everything else about it was terrible, as @Dr_Grip will be sure to confirm...
 
Finally located the damn mouse, lying dead on the ECU unit. Hopefully this is taken care of for now. I was hoping to remove it before it died but at least I found it.

At least this experience has made me more confident I am capable of taking the car apart and putting it together properly, and given me an idea of where certain things are. When I take things apart they actually usually are less damaged then I expected too.

My to do list for the bug is now down to front left wheel bearing replacement and figure out what the fuck is going on with the airbag sensor because my cheap code reader apparently will not read that error. The coolant leak in the fiat does seem to be directly related to if it drops to like freezingtemperatures but it does need an oil change soon and apparently the filter is like. In the middle of the fucking engine bay and you have to remove the intake so THAT will be fun with probably no help when I have been spoiled with lift access.
 
Have an electro-Up! as a courtesy car while the Mercedes is getting a control arm replaced for MOT. Will report back.
 
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