Barry

Ford have filed a patent for this windscreen design

https://www.autoweek.com/news/future-cars/a30360986/ford-shows-a-wild-massive-mustang-windshield-in-patent-drawings/

🤮

Some positive news

https://matadornetwork.com/read/zero-children-killed-traffic-accidents-norway/

I’ve watched a few episodes of this. I think it’s a prime example of just because you can doesn’t mean you should. 

What car things have you done that you never want to do again?

For me it has to be buying rusty cars. The worst part about restoring a car is patching rust. It never looks bad but once you start poking at it, you end up replacing so many panels that it isnt even the original car any more. Far easier to just start with a good base. 

Same as last year. Just try to avoid getting crashed into. 

Does free count? I got a Mk2 Vauxhall Cavalier for free once. The boot and some doors were welded on to stop them from falling off. Had some fun with it until it put a piston through the side of the block. 

Also got a free Vauxhall Chevette 

Got a free Renault Laguna too

Had a few other free cars. The cheapest one I paid for was a Lada Riva for £20 (100 dhs). 

Bought loads of cars for under £100 (500 dhs). There are plenty of cheap cars out there that people have given up on that you can get working again in a few hours with some tools and a bit of know how 

Yes exactly. Big dreams and aspirations but where will all the charging points be installed? How will the government cater for 4,000 people living in a stacked block of apartments? It’s a nice concept but it hasn’t been fully thought through. 

36 minutes ago, treks said:

@Barry, one can expect anything from the Yanks. They once accidentally dropped a couple of nuclear bombs over Italy, and while they paid for the massive cleanup, they still have not compensated the local tomato farmers for the loss of thousands of acres of tomato vines.

If the mountain behind your house does turn out to be contaminated,they will probably either deny that its their fault,  or they will bury the mountain and village and then make guys you pay for it. Either way, the Yanks will weasel out of their responsibilities.   

To date, there are 11 lost American nukes out there somewhere unaccounted for. That’s only the ones they have admitted to losing. 11 nukes are enough to contaminate most of the habited world. Who knows what else they have abandoned and ran away from? 
 

Ireland is 3,000 KM from Ukraine. When the Chernobyl power plant exploded in 1986, a lot of the fallout was carried on the easterly winds and a lot of it landed on the highest mountains in the north of Ireland. It’s only in the past few years that meat from animals in certain areas has been declared safe to eat. Before that, sheep used to light up Geiger counters. 
 

Some of the stuff going on in the world is insane and if you dare to bring it up, you’re dismissed as a crazy conspiracy theorist. 

If it’s a modified car, just be careful you’re not pulling on a stick on JDM y0 towing eye

https://www.thejournal.ie/ban-fossil-fuel-cars-4952912-Jan2020/

Ireland is planning to ban the registration new of petrol and diesel cars by 2030. The legislation has been drafted. No big deal, it’s just progress.

But....

“The draft legislation aims to stop the granting of NCTs from 2045 for fossil fuel cars.”

NCT is the annual safety inspection test, more or less what you call “passing” in UAE. This could mean the death of the classic car scene, leaving only the option of having trailer queens to take to shows. This will also mean the death of rallying, which is held on closed public roads, where all cars are required to be road legal. For any normal person that likes to enjoy their petrol or diesel car on a daily basis, this effectively turns their car into a piece of scrap metal to be sold off according to weight.

There is an old dismantled army base on top of the mountain behind my house. We used to race old cars round it when we were kids because it’s quiet, nobody ever goes up there unless to make mischief.

I always had an interest in the place. The yanks built it in the late 60s as a communications post to coordinate their subs in the Atlantic during the Cold War. It was dismantled in the early 80s so I never got to see it operational. 
 

The story locally was that the yanks built an underground bunker in the event that the Russians would nuke the place. I did find an entrance one day but it was filled in and appeared to be flooded, so that theory is particularly confirmed. 
 

The other story is that when the yanks left, they didn’t take any of their equipment with them. It was all buried underground. Communications, electrical, even jeeps. 
 

It’s now emerging in the media after the release of military documents that an entire storage complex was built in the mountain which is solid granite. The complex was originally built to hide conventional weapons but was modified to hold chemical and nuclear weapons. The government are now worried that when the yanks left, they left behind nukes and chemical weapons inside the mountain. There is a high possibility. Forms of rare cancers and other diseases have been high in the surrounding area. Why would they bury vehicles and equipment instead of taking it with them? Unless it was contaminated? It stands to reason they left everything else in a hurry and ran away. 
 

22 minutes ago, desertdude said:

It gets real boring real fast. Specially when you have 50c heat and feels like the sun is just a meter above your head and breathing down your neck

 

Oh yes indeed. Been in hot garages with no AC for the last 4 years where it’s like being in an oven.  Give me icy weather any day. At least if you’re cold you can put more clothes on. If you’re too hot there’s nothing you can do but lie down and pray for winter. 
 

@Emmanuel I used to keep Charolais bulls for breeding. Thank you for your service sir

Obligatory baby today meme

I had the pickup version of this. It’s scary sitting so close the windscreen knowing if you have an accident, you ARE the crumple zone. Ended up selling it to a loony who put a hayabusa engine in it. 

@Per A that's crazy. In the summer in my place it doesn't get dark until 10PM.

2 minutes ago, Gaurav said:

So that in the name of privacy they can charge for 5 days work when the car was sitting idle for 4 days.

It's difficult to do that in a dealership because everything is supposed to be done in the time frame according to the service manual, next thing you know you have a compliance manager breathing down your neck. It's more to do with protecting processes before they have been released to the general public. That's the official answer. The unofficial answer is that the mechanic went for McDonalds breakfast menu when he was test driving your car.

On 12/28/2019 at 5:31 PM, Emmanuel said:

I'll take Mariah over Celine Dion any day

The donks are pretty crazy. I don't get it each to his own.

I've driven a few of the original Fastracs when I worked in a JCB dealer. Doing 60 MPH in a tractor is pretty unsettling, I can't imagine what 150 would feel like.

The original high speed test for the Fastrac 2 was done by TV star and IOM TT racer Guy Martin. He has recently been in a lot of trouble in the UK for license issues. Apparently he got a fake driving license in Ireland, then got it transferred to a genuine UK license. Whole big hoo has about it at the minute. 

There used to be a loophole with these in the UK. To drive a lorry and low loader trailer you have to be 21 but you can drive a tractor and trailer at 16 without doing a test. So there was 16 year old redneck farmers legally driving round pulling 20-30 tonnes with essentially no license. I think the loophole has been closed now but it was a pretty crazy thing.

I like the idea of recording all the time in case someone hits you in the parking lot.

One thing to be aware of is some mechanics will disconnect the camera when the car is in the shop. When I was in a dealership it was company policy to disconnect them for privacy purposes.

I don't know what GM Onstar is like now but when I first saw it on the Vectra Cs it was unreliable.

This is a good idea and a bad idea at the same time. It's a good idea if you're upside down bleeding to death ad can't call for help. it's a bad idea if the system is faulty and keeps calling the cops to your house or calls an ambulance if you clip a wall in the parking lot.

How long before the system is used to track your every movement? Or automatically issue fines for traffic violations?

Country - Ireland

Town - Glenullin

I live outside the village, totally different lifestyle from Dubai. Peace and quiet, hunting, fishing, hiking in the mountains. Still have the house and farm there. Been thinking about going back but once you see some of the world and realize there's a lot more to explore, it makes it difficult.

3 minutes ago, Gaurav said:

And for performance builds, which brand you prefer?

Depends on the engine and and intended application. But for your pajero, it’s not worth spending loads of money unless you’re planning on doing something crazy like forced induction later on. Standard rings and valves are more than good enough. 
 

I read something a while ago that there is a stroker kit that will take the 3.5 to a 3.8 without a cylinder rebore. I don’t remember who makes it though. Combine that with a rebore and you could have a 4.0+ litre engine using the original engine block and mounts. Totally undetectable from the outside. Will be probably cost prohibitive but something nice to dream about. 

3 minutes ago, treks said:

It was worth a try, though.

 

If you need to ask you don’t need to know and I could get murdered in my bed for telling you this but....

Off roaders with carnity start out as newbie. Once they have a few drives under their belt they graduate to fewbie. Then intermediate then expert. 

For standard non performance rebuilds I use Mahle almost exclusively if I can’t get OEM stuff. Never had a single problem. Federal Mogul is decent stuff too.