Kickstart

For many it is something they find very difficult to understand themselves. It is rather against most thought patterns that have been instilled through life (let alone the perceived threat of or actual bullying that goes with it), and to add to that there are the guilt issues from finally outing themselves and thinking they will hurt those they care about. Given many come out in their 40s that is a lot of history and experience to overcome. All the best K

Hi Seems they hope to have the painted preproduction examples in time for Warley. All the best K

Hi At Telford today Dapol had a few initial bits of the 08 on show. All the best K

Not all. My MX5 has a rotary switch on the indicator stalk for the fog lights. One switch for both front and rear lights so you cannot control them independently. Useless things really. Since the late 1980s when I first got on the I have probably averaged about once a decade where they are useful. All the best K

Hi Having seen one of the LBSC ones today in the flesh, the colour is darker than it appears in the photos I have seen. As an aside, be VERY careful taking it out of the packaging. The lamp iron on the coal bunker is easy to break off. All the best K

Yep, and with a carefully presented survey (ie, you send it only to people who are likely to agree, and hide a tiny note in a local paper so nobody else has an excuse to claim they weren't consulted) they can claim it was wanted. Then they just have to stonewall the thousand signature petitions that are presented to get rid of the darn things. All the best K

Hi Just noticed that on the Tower Models web site in the photos of the 2 improved engine green models the coupling rods have different orientations (ie, the join compared to the middle wheel). http://www.tower-models.com/towermodels/ogauge/Dapol/dapolloco/index.htm All the best K

There are a couple of standards. Think for Europe they use DIN (so a crank figure). The USA switched to an SAE standard system around 50 years ago when things go silly with tricks to claim a bit more power (pulling a wire to the alternator would have been quite a minor fudge for them then). Especially for automatics. Conventional automatic is pretty inefficient (CVT and DSG boxes are better but heavy), but under the tests with an automatic the gear change points are controlled by the car (so easily programmed to perform well in the tightly defined test), while with a manual the gear change points are defined by the test. Hence despite being less efficient the automatic cars can often have lower official CO2 figures (and hence VED, or whatever they are calling it now). Depending on the vehicle the direction of the load could make a difference, and disconnecting the drive can possibly result in not all the transmission being disconnected. For example, pull the clutch on a motorcycle and the primary drive is still connected. But the fudge factor is very much there with motorcycles for Dynojet dynos (which are pretty much the standard). All the best K

The hp measurement method has been standardised (although there are quite a few standards) for many decades. For EU legislation they specify things as net power output, which is pretty much the crank figure. Then people stick their car on a rolling road which adds a random fudge factor to the measured figure to guess at a crank figure . This is where it gets interesting when they came out with the (now obsolete) power limit for newly qualified motorcyclists and people could restrict their bikes to that level - when it was pretty much impossible to accurately measure the power to the required standard. All the best K

Do you mean the actual CO2 generated or that given by the tests:mosking: 100gm/km is 65mpg from a petrol car or 76mpg from a diesel car. Very few are going to get close to that as a normal average. Not quite true. The speedo must over read but the amount varies with the class of vehicle. They can be up to 10% +8kmh over, and are only tested at a couple of speeds. All the best K

I would just go for filling 1% of the airbags with shrapnel. Which 1% being a closely guarded secret. As to ABS, there are situations it makes things worse (fresh snow for example). Modern lights are a pain, especially if you are in a fair low car, with the modern beam cut offs being very sudden and the dipped beam being very dazzling when it is aimed at you (and some of the daytime running lights are ludicrously bright - if they need to turn them down so you can see the indicator as many do automatically then maybe they should just make them less bright in the first place). All the best K

Hi There is a Reliant Kitten around here was a Saab turbo engine in it (forgotten the exact spec). Quite quick All the best K

Hi Spoke to Richard Webster today and asked about the Terrier. His comment was the delay was caused by possible interference issues. The solution (which is probably why it is taking a while) is switching from a 3 pole motor to a 5 pole motor. All the best K

Belgian motorcycles still use yellow plates? All the best K

Quite. Japanese engineering (although the engine, gearbox and front suspension was Alfa) didn't give a good car. If the build quality had been OK then it might have been salvaged (like the normal Cherry), but Alfa build quality (including lousy quality steel) was woefully short of managing to do that Heard a story a 20 odd years ago of a long standing Alfa dealer. When the Arna first came out he sold one of the first to a long time customer who liked 'suds. Said customer tried to take a roundabout in it like a 'sud and landed on the roof. He gave up trying to sell the Arna after that! Alfa built by Nissan would have been good, but not the other way round. Although to be fair the Arna workshop manual is better than the other Alfa workshop manuals of the time. All the best K

Being fair the Italian engineering wasn't the problem. It was the Japanese engineering on them that as lousy beyond being cheap. Unfortunately unlike the Nissan built cars the Italian build quality couldn't rescue it All the best K

Hi A few more pics from today:- http://www.alfa-pages.co.uk/TempPicture/Terrier1.jpg http://www.alfa-pages.co.uk/TempPicture/Terrier2.jpg http://www.alfa-pages.co.uk/TempPicture/Terrier3.jpg http://www.alfa-pages.co.uk/TempPicture/Terrier4.jpg I really like them. Richard confirmed these are the factory paintwork All the best Keith

Do you, Karen, take David the Optometrist to be your lawfully wedded husband, for better or worse? Better... or worse? Better... or worse?

The alternative to the movies:-

I had no major issues with the Sprint electrics wise. Wiper motor packed up and heated rear window never worked but that was pretty much it. Switchgear was physically cracked when I bought it but still worked, and easily enough replaced. Replaced it with a 33 S2 Sportwagon, which I replaced with a 75 TS, and replaced that with a 33 P4 that I still have (along with a S3 1.3 lhd 33 - a series 3 car with no power steering and running on carbs, and until recently I had a crashed Irish import S3 1.3 for spares which had power steering and but still ran carbs). All the best Keith

I bought my first car in 1991 as well, and it was a Sprint as well. Although mine was a plastic bumper 1.3 model (early plastic bumper one so still had inboard front disks). Still pretty mch my favourie car (and still have a few spares floating around). One would do me nicely. Only real down side is the cost / hassle of doing the cam belt every 36k or so. Driven 164s a few times. Lovely car, but a bit big for me. The 3L was a pretty limited edition, and not a general production car. Basically a homologation special (like the 5L V8 engined Sierra XR8). While the normal 2.5 used injection the 3L used carbs (like the early Alfa 6) All the best Keith

Remember hearing a story from the early 1980s of brand new SM engines being pushed from the upstairs of the warehouse into a skip (downstairs), with the only requirement being that they were wrecked. Whether it was to kill off the SM, or just a way to right them off against tax I don't know All the best Keith

Hi We had an X Type. While they are based on the Mondeo platform there are not that many shared parts (even the engines have some fairly major differences from their Ford equivalents. And there was no 4wd Mondeo that used that platform. We bought ours with about 44k on the clocks and sold it with about 128k. It was pretty reliable and the build quality wasn't bad (put it this was, it was replaced with a BMW E46 3 series and the Jaguar seems far better made than the BMW). Problems we had were a failed lambda probe, 2 rear suspension links (cheap and easy), brake light played up (caused by wear in the pedal box and the brake light flashes on when you use the clutch - fixed with a thin shim of plasticard on the brake light switch), central locking played up (caused by the little flap on the ignition key hole sticking - easily fixed with a little lube) and the drivers door handle deciding not to work (wear on the link inside the door). Starter motor played up at about 120k, but very easy to get to and once cleaned up it was OK. Reason to get rid of it was that rust was taking hold (bottom of the A posts), and rust on the brake pipes (mobile mechanic we use for some jobs commented that with the routing of the pipes he didn't want the money enough to do the job!) It did use a bit of oil, but not that much, while changing the spark plugs on the rear bank of cylinders was a bit of a pain. Ate headlight bulbs (drivers side one is a pain to change) Big problem with the X Type is the 4wd transfer box. These are sealed for life (or possibly sealed for death). While there is an oil filler hole it is below the oil level. They can use a little oil from here which lands up wrecking the transfer box. Reconditioned box is close to a thousand pounds. Officially to top it up you remove the transfer box, although you can get away with jacking the car up high (about 2 feet) on one side to fill up the transfer box. Boot is big, front seats are comfortable. It managed 28mpg in general use, although occasionally I could get it up to 40mpg on a long motorway journey (both figures on the trip computer, which when checked seemed to read about 2mpg high). It drank petrol on short journies around town (my better half filled up one monday and then used the car round town for the week - 12mpg was the result). On the other hand, it was not a fun car to drive. It is a big, heavy and slow steering car prone to understeering. The 4wd is great in snow (handles beautifully in snow) but doesn't do anything for handling the rest of the time. The 2.5 V6 is an engine that needs to be revved hard to have any reasonable amount of go, but the gear change is fairly lazy which doesn't match the engine while it feels like half the weight of the car is in the flywheel which makes it rev slowly; again not matching the engine. If you want something for cruising down motorways then it is great. If you want something that is fun to drive then avoid it. All the best Keith

Hi There was a spoof script done for Star Trek meets Red Dwarf. Worth a google. All the best Keith

Hi Many years ago I was riding a bike down the M1 (little Aprilia AF1 125) and came across a 2CV which was sitting at about 80 following a car. The 2CV got bored and pulled out to overtake and instantly lost 10mph and no way to overtake. All the best Keith