There will be lots of temp sensors but the PCM might be looking at one and getting a bad reading, but it might not know it’s bad. The car doesn’t necessarily know it’s not 40C outside.

From a cold start the temp sensors will almost always have a crosscheck against other sensors and a temperature soak model within the PCM.

If it was an intermittent temp sensor – which I personally think is pretty likely as well – the above ‘plausibility’ check would flag a fault and should be visible with a scan tool.

A potential side effect of this is that it might inhibit the catalyst heating functionality which is what the raised idle for 20-30s you normally see is. This may well explain why you sometimes don’t see the catalyst heating raised idle – although I would say this would be unlikely without lighting the MIL; this makes the fault ’emissions relevant’ which should light the MIL after 3 successive faults are triggered. How often does the non-raised idle occur?

Someone may well correct me, but as far as I’m aware if it has a USB plug on the wall socket end then you can use any USB charger going. Some are more powerful than others but the voltage will be 5V which is key – the device that is being charged will only take the current it needs. So doesn’t matter if it’s a 1W adapter or a 100W adapter, voltage will always be 5V and current just runs to what is needed – if it’s 1A needed then a 1W will run at 1W (5V X 1A) and a 100W adapter will run at 1W as well.

Two-strokes are another level of speed/fun compared to the four-strokes that are usually provided for rental – would definitely recommend having a play with them even if just a one off.

Generally speaking I think karting proper can get pretty expensive pretty quickly – I had mates at University who raced in the british championship and the cost can be right up there with racing cars…. I’m sure there are ways of doing it more cheaply though.

The two main ‘types’ (for two-stroke at least) are TKM and Rotax; TKM being air-cooled and bump started, whilst Rotax are water-cooled and electric start (wo what eddiebaby’s mate bought I assume). There are plenty of different chassis options of different prices that can fit either of the two so if you can’t find a complete chassis + engine combo then you can relatively easily mix and match.

It all needs pretty good maintenance and at least some knowledge of how to set up the kart chassis (toe, camber, caster, and all that jazz), but I’m sure there is plenty of stuff online.

First stop would probably be to find some karting forums and ask around to see what would be a good package.

I’ve only ever done a really small amount of very low-level two-strokes (just some racing at University in the Uni championship in our universities E-team…….) but it’s properly brilliant fun and when you first get to open the throttle up wide in one it’s an incredible feeling.

Hope you find the info you want, and have fun!

That’s the theory, but in practice there are loads of places where you’d be better overtaking a bike on double whites than not.

Why? And when?

If you are driving where it’s ‘better’ to cross the doubles whites than not, then you haven’t given yourself enough room to the car/cyclist/whatever in front. Holding up traffic is not a valid reason. If it feels unsafe to be behind the car/cyclist/whatever in a period of double solids then the correct response is to give even more room to the car/cyclist/whatever in front and wait until there is a safe and legal place to pass.

Completely with the OP and everyone that not overtaking was definitely the right call, however…

but using road craft i cross the doubles for a look up the road

So you illegally crossed double solid lines to check further down the road if you could overtake a cyclist you shouldn’t be overtaking because it’s double solid lines?

The double solid lines are there for a reason – no overtaking as it’s a blind corner or creat or whatever. If the cyclist is doing more than 10mph you cannot overtake them on double solids so why the need to look further down the road to check it’s clear to overtake?

Once you are clear of the double solids, that’s the point you can then start to think about whether it is safe to overtake.

I will fully admit I may have misunderstood this action and in that case I apologise and take it back, but to call this ‘roadcraft’ is very incorrect.

Just finished ’16 Ways to defend a walled city’ by K.J.Parker – really enjoyed it; very easy read and thoroughly entertaining. Written from a first person perspective of the anti-hero main character it’s something a bit different (it’s the same reason the Aaranovitch Rivers of London series is good, this is in a similar vein albeit a totally different setting…).

Pretty sure all these have been covered in this thread…

https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/health/what-fkwitted-opinions-about-coronavirus-are-you-sharing-online-20200305194122

Logitech MX vertical – was starting to get CTS symptoms and changed to a cheapo ‘vertical’ mouse and it completely sorted it. The mouse however failed about 6 months later. The. Bought a similar, cheapo, but rechargeable wireless one. Was great until about 2 months in when the battery didn’t even last the day. Have up and bought the Logitech and it’s superb – comfortable, robust, battery lasts weeks and weeks of daily use, useful connectivity features. Costs quite a bit but well worth it.

We had a puerile email go around the other day about having hand sanitizer on your desk, yeh that’s gonna help when people are coughing and sneezing.

Do you cover your mouth/nose with your hands at all when coughing or sneezing?

If yes, then using alcohol gel after (or obviously just immediately washing your hands) is certainly going to help. Or using a tissue instead – not that that is always convenient.

If not, then, well you’ve probably got bigger issues…

It depends how the engine was calibrated. If it was calibrated with 95RON then sticking 98 in is going to do very little as all your base (i.e. non-knocking) ignition timing maps are based on 95RON so the ignition won’t be able to take advantage of lower knock with 98+.

If, however it was mapped on 98 – which is most common practice – then yes, it will make a small but positive difference to mpg.

Every time your engine is regarding ignition it needs to invest more air to keep the same level of torque. Air = fuel and so more fuel is being used. Going from 98 to 95 with decent fuel quality – any fuel in the UK basically – isn’t going to need to retard too much but, as others have mentioned, with turbocharged engones, and especially downsized highly boosted ones, if you drive at higher loads often then it will make a bigger difference as you are in the knock zone more often. If you generally drive at fairly light loads (motorway cruising, pooling round town) then it won’t make any difference at all in reality.

And anything much more specifically performance you would definitely lose some off the full load line by running 95 instead of 98. Not huge, but usually noticeable.

What light exactly has illuminated? You have a low oil level warning light? How long has this been a thing in cars?

It’s becoming increasingly common for manufacturers to use a level sensor/virtual dipstick now and actually remove the physical dipstick entirely. Which is a stupid idea.

Stop start engines will also have auxiliary systems designed to prevent the additional wear that accompanies constantly starting the engine up. These could include: secondary electric coolant and / or oil pumps, roller cam followers, water jacket cooled turbos.

There’s also the control software which will only engage stop/start when the engine is sufficiently warm, when the battery is above a certain charge status and when high power consumers are not required, such as heated windows, window demisting or cooling of the cabin or power steering assistance. There’s a load of thought gone into it.

Absolutely – the strategy to determine when a vehicle is allowed to stop/start is pretty complex and it’s not allowed if it will impact any systems that reduce emissions (e.g. during catalyst heating phases) or if ambient or engine conditions are outside of certain ranges, etc.

And despite what anyone says, I’m still not sure how turning an engine on and off, particularly at lower temps can be any good for it?

Engines really aren’t that fragile. Some of the robustness tests we do are absolutely brutal and a well designed engine will survive hundreds of continuous hours of this sort of testing. Even the notion of having to ‘break in’ an engine isn’t really a thing any more for a non-high performance car.

I was reporting on results from actually measuring exhaust gas emissions, so I wouldn’t dismiss it as a non-issue. As I said, this was a single sample, so some further research is needed.

My day-job is calibrating car engine ECUs and although this is always a consideration, it almost always is a non-issue. There is always far more trouble with too-cold exhaust gas flowing through a catalyst cooling it down than heat lost from long stop-start periods. Once a catalyst is properly lit off then the thermal inertia is high enough that with no gas flowing through it will stay at temperature. Stop/start systems will generally restart the engine after a couple of minutes and the temperature lost during that time will be a small handful of degrees and then drop much more considerably when the engine is running. As mentioned, this is especially true for diesels where the idle exhaust temperature is very low, whilst a gasoline exhaust gas at idle is generally hot enough to not cool the catalysts too much.

The above isn’t meant as an ‘i’m right, you’re wrong’ – as you say it is just one report and in the report circumstances it may be true, but from experience of doing this as a job, the temp drop during stop/start is not an issue and vastly outweighed by the fact you aren’t producing any emissions at all when the engine is off.

if you drop below 2mph it cuts, even if you’re not actually stopping, which also cuts the power steering

that does seem a bit keen – is that how it’s supposed to work, cut out every time you pause in a maneuvre?

On my car even trying to turn the wheel will restart the engine, though.

Most systems these days will cut out just before a stop if your deceleration gradient is low enough. It does help to save a fraction more CO2 and modern engines start so quickly you usually won’t notice any difference ( although as mentioned above my DSG golf didn’t like it when the transmission was cold…)

Cars with hydraulic power steering will generally restart if the wheel is turned greater than a certain angle, or at a fast rate of turn; this is because the engine is needed to supply the required PAS pressure. It can happen with cars with ePAS as well but generally to a lesser extent unless the battery voltage is low.

There’s some evidence that start/ stop increases pollution. This is because it reduces the temperature of the catalytic convertor, leading to increased NOx emissions. The study I read was only for one car mind, so more research is needed.

That’s generally not true, especially in diesels – the flow of (relatively) cold exhaust gas at idle will transport heat out of a catalyst whereas engine off the thermal inertia in the cat with no gas flow will keep it hot. Some gasolines there is maybe an ounce of truth if the catalyst hasn’t fully lit off, but stop/start will be inhibited during initial catalyst heating anyway so is a non issue.

Stop/start is a very mature feature with plenty of solid engineering around it – no reason to not use it.

The ‘safety’ concerns are just a non-thing: usually stemming from ‘i pull up to a roundabout and it cuts out just as I need to pull out quickly’ – if you NEED to pull out that quickly it’s probably not safe to do so anyway, just be patient or plan further ahead.

I’ve got a Forerunner 245 which does stress measurement and most of the time it seems pretty accurate with how I’m feeling. Remember it is measuring stress in the medically correct sense of the term rather than ‘feeling stressed’ – so will show mid to high levels of stress when doing physical activity for example. It’s pretty good and picking up my introverted tendencies – being at a party for example won’t feel stressful to me at the time but would leave me knackered later; it picks up as higher stress for that.

Not sure about the Vivosmart, but the Forerunner measures stress from heart rate variation rather than resting HR; the more stressed you are the smaller your heart rate variation is.

The only low points the all to convenient “meeting” between Start and Bre at the beginning

Had you seen the end credits bit in Captain Marvel?

(Sort of spoiler…very very very minor)

Spoiler for

If not, or had forgotten, she showed up to Cap & Co at Avengers HQ. Timing of that is pre-Endgame so I assume they told her that he was out there somewhere and she flew around a bit until finding him….or something like that….

As others have suggested, check air pipes for collapsed hoses or a post-turbo air leak (can you hear any whistling?). Lack of air will cause the smoke limitation to kick in which will cut your fuelling and so you feel a loss of power. At cruising loads you wouldn’t see this as even ambient air pressure will feed enough air in, but on accelerations you are suddenly running very rich. Not sure if your particular model has a DPF, but if it doesn’t then do you see black smoke out the back on hard accels (worse than normal)?

Was in Serre last week (just for a day from another resort) – snow was actually pretty good considering how bad it was in our base resort. The fact you can stay up high all day if you want helps. Some lovely long runs and a huge area to play in.

Fat Face for a high street one. My wife is pretty hot on brands being ethical (and very rightly so), and Fat Face are pretty much the top high street band apparently.

Great fish restaurant – Kritikos – in Panorama that is just outside Thessaloniki. Incredible chocolate souffle from ΚΛΕΑ (Klea) just down the road for a drink and dessert after!

Take a walk up to the old walls – great view over the city

White tower is worth a trip up; a lot of interesting history of the city in there and all presented in an engaging manner.

As mentioned, there are generally lots of historic buildings, ruins, etc dotted around so deserves a bit of an aimless wander and see what you find!

I have some of their sunglasses (non-prescription) and they are very very good; lens clarity is far better than any Oakley’s I have ever had. They seem to be able to drop the light level but not tint the colour of anything and make everything look better at the same time….

So it only saves fuel by allowing increased compression ratio and hence improving thermal efficiency?

Essentially, yes. DI by itself in a normal, homegenous engine (i.e. 99% of those in the market) doesn’t really do anything itself – what it does is enable other technologies which can help efficiency. One is higher compression ratio which DI enables by allowing greater scope in injection/ignition timing and also charge cooling through the evaporation of the fuel in the cylinder itself. Another is allowing use of larger amounts of valve overlap to capture EGR and allow a more open throttle (see below…). It also helps with more accurate metering, especially in transient situations where PFI metering gets fairly inaccurate

Why don’t they solve the NOx problem by filling the cylinder with EGR then injecting both air and fuel into a pocket?

EGR is used for this, but for an efficiency benefit rather than NOx reduction. If the engine needs to operate at part load, then to run at Lambda 1 you need to shut the throttle partly to reduce the air load in to the cylinder – this causes pumping losses which reduce efficiency. By using EGR (mainly through valve overlap changes, but can also be an EGR valve like a diesel as well) you can ‘pre-fill’ the cylinder with EGR so that with a fully open throttle you still end up with a reduced air charge in the cylinder – open throttle = lower pumping losses = better fuel efficency.

In a lean burn engine, the whole point is that you run with the cylinder with excess air to allow leaner conditions with the fuelling required for combustion so this reduces your scope for EGR use, however it is still used. The in-cylinder temps in a gasoline engine are significantly higher than a diesel though so it’s much harder to use EGR to lower combustion temperature to reduce NOx, hence the need for aftertreatment.

I thought the idea was the fuel was injected very late (after TDC), so that the lean parts of the cylinder weren’t hot enough to generate NOx?

In a gasoline engine you wouldn’t be able to put the main injection that late and make any torque – the air and fuel needs to mix before it can be ignited around TDC (obviously depending on spark timing). Even with a stratified charge system there is still a good amount of charge mixing, you just keep injecting fuel later and later to put a richer pocket near the top of the cylinder.

In a normal homogenous charge engine, because all excess air is used up in combustion (or should be!) the NOx contribution is tiny over a cycle so there is no real need for directly calibrating for it (as such, clearly we make sure it is as low as possible, but CO and HC emissions are much more significant).

It’s not the same lambda throughout the cylinder. So one end lambda is 1, at the other it’s er.. inifinty.

Given your credentials, can you explain how it actually works then if I am wrong?

You are right that it layers up the Lambda throughout the cylinder, but the reason for this is to give a rich pocket next to the spark plug. The total in-cylinder Lambda is still 1 for normal running in pretty much all petrol engines and so there is no excess air. DI allows you to time a rich pocket next to the spark plug for whenever is best for complete combustion of the entire cylinder charge. It can also then be used for other functions such as running a lean mixture throughout most of the cylinder and then a late main inejction to make a really rich pocket near the plug – this is used for knock control as the lean mixture cannot auto-ignite whereas the rich pocket is ignited by the spark plug. However, the in-cylinder Lambda is still <=1.

Lean burn is where Lambda > 1 and a few manufacturers have engines with it (Mercedes being the main one but I don’t think it’s in production any more). This runs with excess air in the cylinder allowing you to run with the throttle open and reduce pumping losses. This is great for efficiency but is horrific for NOx and as such you need to run with an LNT or SCR in the exahust to mop up the extra NOx created.

Component protection is then where Lambda < 1 for the purpose of cooling the exhaust using excess fuel. Lambda can drop to around 0.7 depending on the temperature drop required. In extreme examples, the DI can be used to inject fuel in the exhaust stroke to cool the exhaust. This allows the combiustion injection to be leaner (around Lambda 0.85) to give more torque, but there is still fuel delivered to cool the exhaust.

Hope that explains a bit – happy to answer anything else if required!

That Wikipedia page isnt quite describing direct injection correctly – it is basically saying DI engines are lean burn which isn’t true. Essentially

Lean Burn EQUALS Stratified DI

Stratified DI DOES NOT ALWAYS EQUAL lean burn

It’s still running Lambda 1 though, there is no excess air in the cylinder.

Lean burn, where there is excess air, is very very different to normal direct injection and requires extra exhaust after treatment to cope with the NOx from the significantly higher cylinder temperatures and excess air.

(Hate to do this, but my day job is calibrating petrol engines for major automotive OEMs so I can assure you this is correct)

That bit didn’t quite ring true (and it’s not a VAG quote, it’s from Reuters). The direct injection engines work on the principle that you can have part of the combustion chamber with a stochiometric mix and part just air, so as the mix burns it pushes down on the air, which pushes on the piston. Which is more efficient than running the engine with less air like a conventional engine. It also avoids NOx because the excess air (where NOx comes from) isn’t heated. When you floor it, it reverts back to normal and just fills the combustion chamber with a stochiometric mix (i.e. it’s richer, but not necessarily over fueled?

That’s not quite right – a petrol engine will always try and run at Lambda 1, ie the correct ratio of fuel to air so that all the fuel burns. If there were excess air it would be above Lambda 1 and temperatures and NOx would skyrocket. When the engine gets hot, especially with turbos, the Lambda is reduced (more fuel) with the excess fuel used to cool the exhaust system down. Typical Lambdas for this can go down to around 0.8, but high power vehicles will see it go down to 0.7ish.

If you dont refill your nox emisions go up and the car will eventualy go into a low power limp home mode untill youve refilled and had the system reset.

As an addition to this, if you still continue to drive for too long after then it will get to a point where the ECU will not allow the engine to start until the tank is filled.

Urea dosing should be calibrated so that a tank fill is a service item – needing to refill it every 6 months seems like incredibly high usage?!

I use a NAD C350 with my 601 S2S and the combo is great. Something Rotel would be a great match as well I reckon.

Hard anodized pans will still have a non-stick coating applied to them; it’s just the base material. I use the Circulon pans as well and they are ace for non-stick pans.

Best bet if you don’t want cast iron is to go for a carbon steel pan; as soon as the seasoning is built up on it then it will be about as non-stick as a teflon pan but you can use it up to mega high temperatures.

Plain stainless pans are great for high temp cooking – if you can find any triple ply ones then even better as the heat distribution will be significantly better than single ply stainless. A lot of people think plain stainless is crap and everything sticks to it, but the trick is to let the pan throroughly heat through before adding any oil. Once a drop of water evaporates instantly, add enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan and let it heat back up. Then add lovely meaty things. Said lovely meaty things will seem like they have stuck but that is exactly what you want so they brown properly (which is why meat doesn’t brown properly in a non-stick pan) – when it has cooked it will release itself and you can just deglaze the pan with some water/wine/stock and jobs a good’un!

ACS would probably be a good shout

ACS Custom Sleepsound

I use ACS for my IEMs and gig/sound engineering plugs and they are ace.

For those asking for plugs for gigs, the Pro series plugs are ace as they cut all frequencies the same rather than the sound ending up all boomy and horrible.

(That all sounds like spam but believe me it’s just from a happy customer!)

If you go for an RX100 (and you should as they are brillaint), then a great add-on to make you love it even more is the stick on front grip from Sony. Not vital by any means, but does certainly make the camera easier to grasp for tricky shots and doesn’t affect compactness at all.

I’d just like to second that they really aren’t very nice to drive. I’ve driven a diesel one (petrol may be better) and the ‘as calibrated’ pedal response is basically non-existent; it’s pretty much foot off or foot on the floor to go anywhere. You can make it a lot better by going in to the sport on the DNA control and the pedal feels ok (not good but ok), but then the steering goes horrifically stiff and feels like there is a massive rubber band which wants to snap the wheel back to the centre all the time. Almost no feel through it. Steering not much better in normal mode.

The above isn’t just when ‘pushing on’ or any of that, this is just normal driving round town. Even the interior isn’t very nice. All in all I’d say maybe go for something else imo…..

Musicisum if you are happy to pay for some great tuition.

If it’s served ice cold (where it becomes a bit more syrupy) then nice stuff is really nice – had some lvoely stuff on a work trip to Russia but can’t remember the name of it (our clients were insistent that we couldn’t leave the table without having polised off the whole bottle…).

What I’ve found with the better stuff, even with mixing, is that it is SO much purer than the cheap stuff you can drink quite a bit and have almost zero hangover. In the above mentioned anecdote I was definitely gone when we left the restaurant (lightweight..) but woke up for an early flight the next day feeling great other than being a bit tired.

I bruised my ribs snowboarding recently and although mine doesn’t sound as bad as yours, I found that just Paracetamol and Ibuprofen taken to their max daily dosage was enough to keep it under control.

Don’t bother going for an X-Ray; there is nothing they could do after an X-ray that they could do without one so probably won’t even give you one so I’d avoid wasting your/their time.

I loved my DS3 THP150 when I had one – would definitely through that in to the mix.

Ignore the fact it’s a Citroen; the DS range is built far better than the normal ones (which are actually very good now anyway).

Engine is the same as in a 1 series BMW as well if that helps (well, few small differences, but it was co-developed between Citroen/Peugeot and BMW)

The carburetor / fuel injection system of your engine does not stop squirting fuel into the cylinders, just because you’ve engaged a lower gear and so increased the number of revolutions your engine turns per minute.

On a carburettor, no. On fuel injection it absolutely does. It’s called (unsurprisingly) fuel cut and is just because there is no need to keep fuelling – with the gears engaged the movement of the vehicle ‘takes over’ spinning the engine and so no combustion is required to do the same. Once the engine speed drops to around idle speed, the fuelling ramps back in and the idle controller takes over. If it’s calibrated well (which it blooming well should be!) you won’t notice it at all.

I think the brakes vs engine braking argument needs to really move away from wear and cost. Brakes are purposely designed to slow a car down. That is their only function. If you are slowing using engine braking, you essentially have 5 or 6 rates of deceleration. This means in most circumstances you will be slowing either too slowly and catching to the car in front, or too quickly and without any brake lights showing. On the brake pedal you have infinite levels of adjustment on how fast/quickly you are slowing, and have orders of magnitude more stopping power. Plus if you are braking lightly and spot a hazard you are already on the pedal and can just press harder.

There is a huge amount to be said for planning ahead so that you don’t have to use the brakes much, and the ‘lift and coast’ talked about above is great for regulating speed over a small amount (cruising basically), but if you are actively slowing it’s brakes all the way.

It’s a properly ace little camera – image quality from RAW is scarily close to my 6D.

I’ve got the mk1 which is excellent, but it seemed to just get better and better with each Mark. Basically pick a new or used one of any Mark based on how much you want to spend (I.e. Want cheaper get a mk1, OK to spend more get a mk4) and you’ll have s brilliant little camera.