Barry

Watch this little machine go! Hillman Imp hillclimb racer running a 1040cc Yamaha EXUP bike engine confirmed and I'm almost certain it's a spaceframe Maguire chassis and fibreglass panels. If you don't know anything about the Maguire cars you should read up on them, they built some crazy machines. I know a guy back in Ireland who bought up all the blueprints and fibreglass moulds from the Maguire workshop if anyone was ever interested in building one I could put you in touch.

@parkarnoor Why did you have to visit the dealer? What went wrong with your car?

Haha very true! I once bought an old seized engine from an Alfasud because I wanted the carbs and linkages to modify for a Beetle project. When I went to pick it up, the engine still had the mounts on it and two little pieces of tin hanging off each side. I asked the guy what that was all about and he told me that was all that was left of the car.

I had an Ascona once. Had loads of fun on damp roundabouts with it but I think it came with factory fitted rust.

When the Toyota MR2 was released in France they renamed it the MRS. When you say MR2 in French it is M R Deux, which sounds exactly like merde, the French word for shit. The Mitsubishi Starion was originally supposed to be named the Mitsubishi Stallion. When you say Stallion in a Japanese accent, it sounds like Starion. Someone in Mitusbishi heard the car being called the Starion, wrote it down wrong and the name stuck. The Mitsubish Pajero had to be renamed as the Shogun for the Spanish speaking market. When Pajero is translated from Spanish, it literally means wanker. The Vauxhall/Opel Nova was rebranded as the Corsa for the Spanish speaking market. Nova translated means not going, as in always broken. The Mazda LaPuta was not released in the Spanish speaking market. Translated, it means the whore. The Nissan Moco was also not released in the Spanish speaking market. Translated, Moco means booger. See a pattern developing here? Then there’s also the Opel Ascona. Translated from Spanish, Ascona means female genitalia. You’ll never see a Honda Fitta in Sweden. In Swedish, Fitta is a word for female genitalia. The Ford Pinto was marketed in Brazil but failed to sell in any numbers. Pinto is the Brazilian word for penis. People weren’t exactly keen to buy one and say hey, come and look at my new penis. And finally the Mazda Light Dump and Titan Dump. I think they speak for themselves.

@amid You're 100% right. There's too much politics in clubs sometimes, with any make of car. It's all about power and control. People join clubs, have 'small penis syndrome' and start their own groups just so they can be in control. Before you know it you end up with 10's of dissident splinter groups with everyone fighting for control. Whatever happened to community spirit?

It's a fine looking automobile. Just a shame it doesn't have a manual gearbox option.

Running without a thermostat will help the engine to run cooler initially but it's not something I would recommend as a long term solution. It's a last resort technique used when the thermostat fails and you need to keep the car running while you're waiting for one to be ordered in or you're having another overheating problem which you're waiting to get sorted. Without a thermostat, it will take the engine longer to warm up which means you're using more fuel, a bit like driving round all the time with the choke on (if you're old enough to remember chokes). Because you're using more fuel, it can cause the spark plugs to foul up which will affect running. The oil will take longer to reach operating temperature which means it's not doing it's job properly and may cause premature engine wear, bearing failure, piston ring failure etc. If you have an overheating problem, the only real solution is to find the root cause and fix it. Removing the thermostat is just burying your head in the sand.

Just to lighten things up a bit 391595

Here's a guy using it on a car to strip paint. I'd love to see the actual finish up close though. When I worked in restoration, we used media blasting to clean the shells prior to starting work and sometimes it would leave the metal distorted which could be a real pain to sort. Personally, what I find funny in this video is the guy wearing sunglasses. If a 1000 Watt laser was to touch the glass and bounce back, it would melt his eyeballs, sunglasses or no sunglasses. I find laser technology fascinating, stuff like the space elevator blows my mind and how long before someone designs a laser engine which can be used in cars?

This looks like one bad ass machine. It uses a 1000 Watt laser to strip oxides, paint, oil and grease to prepare metal surfaces for work. Apparently it can be used for nuclear decontamination too Much cleaner alternative to media blasting. Best get saving though, I've heard they're around $500k.

@amitaj I think the reason second hand Toyotas are more expensive than other brands is because people know they are reliable and will spend a bit extra for that reliability. When you look at the old old cars around here (before 2000), 3 out of 4 will be Toyotas. Most other cars at that age end up on a scrap heap in Sharjah.

It IS possible to read DTCs on some Japanese cars without a scanner too. For example, Subaru, there is a sequence you can follow by using the headlight switch and trip reset button which will cause a red light on the dash to flash in long and short pulses, a bit like a Morse code. These can then be interpreted to the DTC if you have the workshop manual or there should be lists on the internet somewhere. Toyota has a similar system where you can count the flashes of the check engine light but to enable it, you need to jump the terminals in the diagnostics box under the bonnet. Same with Honda, you can jump 2 pins on the OBD port and count the flashes on the dashboard. I’m pretty sure similar methods work with other Japanese cars but you just need to look up what is specific to your car.

@robert Limavady, NI

What's wrong with Sunnys? I present to you the Nissan Sunny/Pulsar GTi-R. 2.0 turbo intercooled, 230 BHP, 280 Nm torque, 5 speed gearbox coupled with a 4WD system and 0-100 KPH in just over 5 seconds. Japanese pocket rocket.

Rotarys are one of those engines that you either love or hate. I think they're great in theory, you can get crazy amounts of horsepower from something the size of a large shoebox. I looked at RX-8s as a cheap track car a while back, you can pick them up for as little as 1000 DHS in the UK but it didn't take me long to figure out why the cheap ones were all cheap! In the UK, we had a couple of rotary engined bikes in the late 80s early 90s. The Norton Classic which was air cooled then later the Norton Commander which was liquid cooled. The police ran the Commanders for a while. Cool old bikes but you don't see them on the road anymore, maybe only very rarely at a show.

@husain1 Why does anyone bother doing anything? It's because they are passionate about it and what they enjoy doing. Personally, I prefer shows like this rather new car shows where it's all bigwigs scratching each others bums and talking about how much money they made last year. Shows like this give you the chance to show off the work you done to your car, how you made it much more special than a car somebody just took from a showroom, it gives you the chance to meet like minded people and discuss new ideas and generally see what's going on in the modified car scene. It's always fun to watch the diff/drift at shows and even take part if you have the right car. When was the last time you went to a new car show and saw someone smoking off a pair of tyres just for the fun of it?

Koeningsegg/ValveFree are European companies but I think the reason you don't see it on mainstream road cars like VW, Audi etc. is that because the technology is still relatively new and therefore expensive, it would make it cost prohibitive to start fitting it to ordinary road cars although, I can see it becoming more commonplace in the next 10-15 years. A lot of people diss the Chinese but they forget that they're one of the fastest developing nations in the world and I don't doubt their ability to take this technology to the next level. I don't know why there aren't more Chinese cars on the road here. I see a few Great Wall pickups and Geely cars and they all seem perfectly fine to me. I think people don't trust stuff sometimes because it is 'Chinese', good old fashioned racism, but these days everything is made in China. Even my iPhone says Assembled in China on the back.

Chinese car maker Qoros have unveiled their Qamfree concept car at the Beijing motor show. This camless system has been developed by the Swedish company FreeValve AB who are part of the Koeningsegg group. Rather than using a camshaft and follower system to open and close the engine valves, it uses pneumatic hydraulic electric actuator technology (PHEA). This is a fantastic design, especially for tuners because rather than having to change mechanical parts to change valve lift, timing and duration, you will simply have to adjust a few parameters in the vehicles ECU. In theory, it's possible to have a button on the dashboard to push that can turn a vehicle from an economical town car to a full on race car in under a second rather than spends days or weeks rebuilding the engine. FreeValve are also claiming a 12-17% reduction in fuel consumption under laboratory conditions compared to the latest 2.0 litre direct injection engine with variable camshaft timing. They aren't the first company to have such an idea though, BMW, Fiat and Lotus have experimented with camless technology in the past but rather than PHEA, they used electromagnetic solenoids which can be heavy and slow. FreeValve are the first company to take such technology and make it viable.

In my opinion, injector cleaner is snake oil, something for people to sell and make commission. The only way to really clean injectors is to remove them and use ultrasonic cleaning and even then, it's something that rarely needs done. The colour of old oil can be an indicator of needing to change it. Sometimes you might buy a car without service history or maybe you just plain forgot the last time you had it changed. The simplest way to tell is rub some between your finger and thumb. The oil, even if black, should have a reddish/brownness to it and it should be 'slippy', after all, oil is a lubricant. If it's black/black and sticky it's definitely time to change it. Changing oil early won't do any harm but leaving it too late certainly might. I've seen people on an American truck forum saying that the engine oil has to be changed every 3000 miles. That's a bit severe in my eyes, especially in these days of synthetic oils where the service intervals are becoming further and further apart, there are some VW oils where they say the oil will last for 20k miles before it needs changed but personally, I would never leave it that long on my own cars.

I thought y'all might like a glimpse of the classic car scene from my home country. I haven't seen any of these models of car since I've been in UAE.