(sorry, was an Anchorman quote in case you thought I was being an ass…..)

Yes? Please go on.

I’ve bought a few bits from ‘We Love Haglofs’ which I presume is owned by the same people and there was never any problems at all – prices were pretty good as well.

I’ve just bough a Rab Demand jacket and it’s perfect for mountain biking and walking/climbing. Only 250gms or so and packs up incredibly small but is a full eVent jacket, decent hood and all. It is a ‘smock’ design rather than a jacekt but the zip comes down a long way so easy to throw on. Nice cut as well that won’t billow around in the wind. Price is pretty good too. Definite reccomendation.

Yeovil would be the more likely candidate there

Yeah, the zebra striped one is a Sea King ‘Jungly’ (what the Marines use as assault helicopters) based at Yeovilton. Probably the one thing I miss about living in Yeovil is having so much aircraft activity – Merlins, Lynxes and Apaches from Westlands and Lynx, Sea King and (used to be) Harriers from Yeovilton.

I ride a 3-year old iDrive XCR and yes it is a touch on the tubby side but the iDrive system seems to work well – no noticeable pedal bob even when properly cranking up a climb. Handles well, climbs well, descends well (my balls run out way before the bikes does….although that’s not saying much…..). I’m happy with it!

The jag diesel also has around 500Nm of torque – which is more than an F1 car produces. That is what 3 litres an two turbos gives you (as well as the good mpg).

Torque is generally what you want in a road car, not outright power (only available at full throttle and very high rpms), so in that case the jag engine is a pretty good bit of kit.

I don’t suppose you can tell us which ones?

I could, but then I’d have to kill you……

In all serious, it’s probably best not to just in case…. Some we have ‘evidence’ for and others you can just tell that something is a bit dodgy when you look at all the numbers. I’m sure a slightly less unscrupulous engineer has put them somewhere up on the big wide web!

Go on then, name another diesel race car.

I can think of one, off the top of my head…..

Peugeot 908 (also in LeMans)
Ricardo-Judd engined LMP from a few years ago
Seat Leon (one of the most successful touring cars of modern times)
JCB Dieselmax (not a race car, but has the land speed record for a wheel driven vehicle)

I think there are a few more but those are the main ones!

May I congratulate you on a job well done then, because if the stats are close to the real world they are excellent.

Are certain manufacturers further from the stats than others then?

I’m not going to lie and say they are exactly the same as you have to make compromises to hit the CO2 target in the NEDC test zone – but they are as close as you are probably going to get. Volvo made a big deal about getting real world fuel economy good as in the home market they would get shredded if people replaced their current Volvos and didnt get at least the same or better fuel economy.

The NEDC test is defined around a set of coastdown terms which are notoriously simple to fudge. Some manufacturers fudge them a lot more than others. Unfortunately that is one area we don’t have control over when we calibrate an engine and so have to go with what we are given. The Volvo ones were certainly realistic though – they are easily the most honest company I have worked with.

Ye but savings can be made elsewhere. Underbody aero panels, aero wheels, start/stop engine, high gearing, turbo … kinetic energy recovery… some of these would obviously push the price of the car up significantly

Sorry, yes absolutely, I was talking more of benefits purely from engine calibration. Aero and weight are the biggest ones. Unfortunately these are the easiest ones to ‘fiddle’ for the official emissions test and so gain quite a large chunk of CO2/fuel consumption. Not that any vehicles specifically mentioned on this thread fall foul of that of course…….

I’m interested in the technical aspects if you care to share?

Can’t share a huge amount unfortunately as, although our involvement in the project is public knowledge, the calibration strategy itself is definitely not!

I’ve worked on both the latest Volvo DRIVe vehicles and also the Zafira Ecoflex. Both involved a huge amount of re-calibration of the engine in order to meet client CO2 targets whilst staying within EU emissions limits. I have to say, as a company we also endeavour to greatly improve real-world fuel consumption performance as well and indeed we did a lot of work with the Volvo’s in that respect. Ditto with driveability and noise – they shouldn’t be any different to drive than the other diesels in the range.

Presumably the ‘next gen’ is what, solenoid valves? Variable compression/expansion ratios?

Not really that ‘high-tech’, more just that the current engines being used in eco-models are three or four years old and probably based on blocks older than that. Main benefits in the next few years will come from higher pressure fuel systems and piezo injectors, better combustion chamber design, variable geometry turbos and the use of other aftertreatment such as SCR (which will cut the amount of EGR required). Most of the technology is there, it’s just waiting for manufacturers to design engines with it in!

From working on similar projects, the Bluemotion will be calibrated to within an inch of it’s life for fuel economy during the NEDC cycle (the official cycle EU cars are tested on). Although there might be some gains available for real world economy, again they would be pretty small before you start getting into power loss or severe driveability/noise issues. Pretty much all of the current ‘eco’ versions of diesels out there are at the limit of fuel consumption for what you can get out of the technology they use. To get further increases you will have to wait until the next gen engine models start to be used.

The ‘dynamic’ mode button will more than likely just change the pedal map rather than actually increasing power. A normal pedal map will allow for a smooth increase in fuelling as the pedal is depressed – the sport (or dynamic or whatever) mode will make the pedal travel to fuelling ratio much sharper at the bottom end so that you get more fuelling when you start to depress the throttle pedal.

So in a way it does increase the power at that specific pedal position, but 100% throttle will still be the same fuelling regardless of the mode. If that makes sense?….

Ok, it is mainly aimed at having a VERY easy way for you to buy apps for your Mac so apple have almost a direct tap into your bank account. And yes, there are quite a few crappy apps on there.

But. Some are much better priced than boxed versions. Take Aperture – about £180 in the store and about £50 on the App store. Or Apple’s iWork suite which you can buy individually. Other ‘proper’ apps are the same price or cheaper as you would buy them elsewhere and for those, using the App store just makes it a million times easier in terms of installtion and updating (both automatic). As long as you can filter out the rubbish, there is some great stuff on there you probably wouldn’t discover otherwise.

I use an airport express to a NAD amp just using the 3.5mm socket and the sound quality is very very good, so I can imagine with a DAC it will sound excellent. As long as you have a decently strong signal so you don’t get any dropouts then it’s a winner. Thinking of doing the same as I buy more music online (iTunes etc) than I do CD’s nowadays.

Haha, no worries, I’m a diesel calibration engineer by trade so it’s te sort of thing I could talk about for hours!

SCR systems are reasonably simple really – it’s just like a normal catalyst but needs urea sprayed on it to convert the NOx to NO2. It’s a good technology and will actually mean a lot less reliance on EGR valves as they are so effective – which in turn will mean better mpg (CO2) and lower PM. Downside is the control system is quite expensive at the moment but the SCR cat itself is quite cheap as it’s a non-precious metal cat (uses Iron or Copper rather than Platinum or Rhodium).

Boost won’t affect swirl very much as that is just a function of intake port/cylinder bowl geometry. Combustion wise though, a higher boost simply means more air in the cylinder for a given intake stroke which in a diesel is exactly what you need. It’s one of the key parameters we play with to decrease fuel consumption. It has to be calibrated carefully though as higher boost will draw through more EGR and so you could actually end up with higher CO2 and more PM by raising boost. But overall higher is better!

Not too sure about older Volvos, but having just finished the calibration work for the latest C30, S40, V50, V60, S60, S80 and V70 I can tell you they certainly don’t now! The cals on those cars are very low PM and with CO2 down to 99-119g/km (very low) and with good NOx as well. It took a bloody lot of work to get there mind!

How much does EGR affect fuel consumption though, really? It’s just replacing some of the air in the cylinder with exhaust, but most of that air you don’t need anyway when cruising…?

Speed12 – VW TDIs in the USA have a system for scrubbing NOx – could be similar to SCR.

Adding EGR lowers the AFR in the cylinder quite dramatically – even with a pretty standard EGRate of around 8-10% your AFR can drop down to 17:1 or so which means although diesels generally are “air rich” you have a lot lot less to play with to get all the fuel burnt. Add to that the combustion temperature lowering effect of adding EGR (which in case anyone was wondering, is the point of it – reduced temperature = reduced NOx) and you get much more unstable combustion which in turn means you need to throw in a wee bit more fuel to ensure you get enough torque. Depending on the combustion bowl design, swirl etc will depend on exactly how much extra you need to put in (i.e. how efficient the combustion system is anyway).

Yeah, the VW system would be SCR. US vehicles are starting to introduce it as the NOx requirements are a lot lower than in Europe. Once Euro 6 comes properly into force you will start to see more SCR on passenger cars in Europe. PSA (Peugeot Citroen) have said that all of their diesel fleet will be equipped with SCR in the coming years. You can also use an LNT (Lean NOx Trap) which is more like a gasoline catalyst, but aren’t quite as effective at getting rid of NOx.

A diesel running a DPF tends to increase CO2 emissions; don’t also ignore the environmental / energy cost in maunfacturing the damn things in the first instance

A DPF won’t increase the C02 per se. During regen it will (to a small or greater extent depending on how good the regen calibration is) but during normal running you should see near zero effect. Also, in removing the DPF, unless you have the whole calibration remapped, then you have just removed a massive lump of backpressure in the exhaust which the engine was calibrated with so your potentially going to upset quite a bit of the cal (can actually lose torque etc). A decent calibrated engine will see very very very minimal performance loss from a DPF.

The EGR valve is the main way of bringing NOx down (unless you have an SCR fitted which little to no passenger cars currently do). Blanking off the EGR valve will have a very good effect on CO2 (and therefore fuel consumption) reduction, but the NOx will go through the roof as they are on a very very steep tradeoff curve.

bake off in oven till browned n crispy .

Where are you baking it off to?….

(sorry, this REALLY grates on me. It’s bake, not bake off. It’s fry, not fry off.)

I suppose it had to happen, but im not prepared to lash out £8 per month for a full licence.

This isn’t a total shoot down or anything, but if you use Spotify I presume you listen to a lot of music? £10 a month is essentially one CD album a month. For unlimited music. And if you have an iPhone (or Android I think) then unlimited mobile music as well. It really isn’t much money for what is a great service.

Using “off” after a cooking verb. As in “just fry off the onions”. Where exactly are you frying them off to? Surely you are just frying them. Annoying enough when chefs use it. Infuriating when anyone else does.

As stated above, I’d just go with Aluminium. Cheap(ish), easy to work with, just as light as carbon would be (as you don’t need the strength) and no issues with heat.

I read somewhere (BBC I think) that the water drops and cannons could be to try and get water into the ‘holding pools’ for reactor 4 which was shut down and had the fuel rods in the holding pools which sit above the reactor. These are alledgedly rapidly running out of water (if not already) and the fuel rods could potentially go critical and start a nuclear reaction which would not be good (no explosion clearly, but uncontained reaction = a lot of radiation floating around).

Here is the link actually:
BBC Report – Possibility of stored rods going critical

Osprey Escapist

I had quite a twinge of emotion yesterday reading about their final flight on the BBC yesterday. I grew up just outside Yeovilton and so had SHAR’s flying around most days. It was strange enough when they decomissioned the SHAR, but the thought of not seeing a Harrier in RAF livery is really quite sad. Easily the highlight of most airshows is a GR7/9 coming from a flypast to a complete stop, spinning around on the spot, reversing a bit and then accelerating off into normal flight again.

R.I.P. The Harrier

As above, spend the majority on a decent Gore-Tex (or equivalent – eVent etc) and then build the other layers from fleece, base layers. I’d try and avoid cotton anything if you are going to be exerting any energy as it just soaks up sweat and will chill you when you stop (especially in this weather).

Brands to look for if you want the best technical performance are Rab, Mountain Equipment, Haglofs, and Arc’Teryx as mentioned. North Face stuff is very good (especially their summit series range), but the fit, which is absoluely key to performance, is going to be more relaxed than Rab etc. This may be a good thing so try stuff on and see what fits best. Don’t discount Berghaus either because of their ‘image’, they are back to making some fantastic kit and their high-end shell jackets have some of the best hoods on the market.

Been to Montgenevre (just down the road…well…up the mountain…) for the last two years boarding and as others have said, the snow in the region is generally pretty reliably good. Although I haven’t been boarding for long, I get the feeling that it is a bit more skier-friendly (in terms of runs) than boarders (there are quite a few flat bits) – but Serre Chevalier might be a bit different.

But overall its a great area and generally a bit quieter than the big French resorts so you aren’t constantly dodging people on the piste!

You get a single magazine download free with it, so yes you do get content. You can buy a 4 issue or 8 issue subs for £8/£16 or a si gle back issue for £2.39.

Interface is nice, but text clarity is utterly appalling. As in pretty much unreadable. Until that's fixed I won't be buying any more on it.

Would be nice also if a premier subs could be converted into subs for the app (not sure if that's possible or not…)

This is one of the very annoying features of garages using diagnostic tools; they think that whatever shows up is actually the fault and then go about changing it. The diagnostic tools doesn't show you what isn't working, it shows the systems where errors have occurred – definitely not the same thing!

I have a mate at work who took his M3 in because it was misfiring badly. The garage stuck a diagnostic tool on it which said MAF error and so changed the MAF sensor…which didn't fix it. What it actually turned out to be was a fault with the VANOS system that was causing an error in the MAF system. Luckily he got a refund for the MAF sensor and diagnosis time. So yeah, I reckon you'd be entitled to a refund.

Cheers for the replies. It's of absolutely no real concern as I hardly use them. It's just I've had a complete mental blank as to which way the indicators went before I took the cables off (only a couple of days ago!).

Sounds like it's all normal anyway!

Cheers!

Solidworks seems to be one of the least resource intensive CAD packages (compared to Catia or Pro/E anyway which are awful), so you don't need a crazy powered laptop. I'd say go with a better specced graphics card than processor in the cost balance. Any half decent processor will be able to run SolidWorks, but a good, discrete, graphics card will really pay dividends.

Bought some Oakley Jawbones recently and, without sounding like a moron, it is just like having tinted eyes. Totally forget you have them on after a couple of mins riding and the lens clarity is stunning, which is exactly as it should be. I went for the tranistion lens and you don't notice the lens tint changing, it's always just right for when you need it.

I was always dubious over Oakleys due to the price but am totally won over. I even just added a second pair, some polarised straigh jackets, for general use/driving and they are also superb.

How does that work (askin', not contradictin')? – sounds like tight clothes in hot weather would be torture

The fabric wicks sweat off your body and out towards the air so it can evaporate. You still sweat, but a decent wicking baselayer/compression top means you should never really have any sweat on you. The tighter the better in that respect actually as you want as much fabric to skin contact as possible.

I'm a definite convert as well.

It's not really 'nicking' it as a lot of the other MP's did. He was renting the room and so has not actually made any material gain from the expenses. If he had been renting somewhere else, then no-one would have any problems at all. It's at the other end of the scale completely from the duck-pond castle/moat cleaning/etc.

But also, at the end of the day it was against the rules and so he's got to take the rap and I think did so in a genune and appropriate way.

Huge shame though as he has done brilliant things for the Yeovil constituency, especially with keeping jobs at Westlands when there could have been a LOT of redundancies. Hopefully the Telegraph haven't completely killed his career as an MP just to sell papers.

Personally I think engineers and technicians are two different roles and should be named as such, but neither is in any way more important than the other and being an engineer does not mean you know more by any stretch of the imagination. I get very very annoyed at work when I see young grads trying to put across that they know more than some of our technicians who have been here for years and are incredibly skilled. As a young engineer, I try and learn as much as possible off our technicians as they are infinitely more useful to get knowledge out of than my degree was.

Unfortunately, it is generally engineer's attitudes that are the main reason behing a lot of roles which are clearly technicians roles (and as stated, nothing wrong with that at all) but are called engineers just so that they don't get looked down on by engineers. Which is very sad really.

Speaking as a calibration engineer who's job is to essentially remap engines, there are definite advantages to getting it done, but there definitely isn't a "free lunch". You are constantly trading one parameter off against another to achieve a happy medium for what the customer wants. But OEM ECU's are mapped VERY conservatively and it's amazing at what you can get out of them with a decent calibration.

Not sure on any others, but yes on an iPhone you do have to pay. On O2 it's either £15 or (I think…) £20 for a big chunk of data, but they have also just launched a sort of 'pay-as-you-go' option where you have a £2 a day limit but no monthly contract. Good for if you only use it sporadically. I've just signed up to the latter one and am very impressed with it. Not something I'll use a lot but good to have.

I think the initial novelty of touch screen etc, if you've not had one before, does wear off after a little bit, but that is then replaced with just how easy-to-use/useful it is, which in some ways is a lot better. And that in no way means it becomes boring to use, it just becomes more about what you can do on it rather than how you do it….if that makes sense….

As people have said, new apps keep it 'fresh' and just keep adding use and value to it.

It is a pretty impressive bit of kit really.

Alpkit one is fantastic. Sometime soon I'll get around to getting a spare to keep in the car, much easier for any poking around at night in the rain than a torch. The white LED is superb for close field work and the main beam surprisingly powerful. For £13 you can't go wrong really!

When that comes up there is an A380 in the background (Air France)