Barry

All around I see cars abandoned. I mean obviously, totally abandoned, like they have been there for 6 months or more and are covered in dust. What happens to these cars? I assume they don't just get left there or the city would run out of parking spaces. Do these cars become available for sale anywhere or just get taken to a yard and left there?

Spotted these suitcases in mall of the Emirates and thought they were pretty cool. Expensive though at 950 Dirhams. Would be hard to make either. 

Got me thinking, I used to make table lamps like the one below out of old camshafts. Clean the oil off, bit of black spray paint on it, stick a bulb holder on and I got £100 (500 AED) for them. I also made a few animals out of old crankshafts for people as gifts. 

What other cool stuff have you seen made from old car parts?

An engine is only designed to hold oil in the sump. If you turn an engine full of oil upside down, the oil will find its way out anywhere it can. Dipstick tube, breather pipes, filler cap etc. 

Technically speaking, when an engine has been upside down, you should remove the spark plugs and clear the cylinders because sometimes oil can find its way into the cylinder resulting in hydrolocking when you try to start it. I was lucky enough that it started without any problems. 

There are plenty of documented accidents involving autonomous cars, the latest fatal Tesla crash being one of the most famous,

http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/30/12072408/tesla-autopilot-car-crash-death-autonomous-model-s

I would never trust a computer to drive a car for me. The computerised Dubai train system is a fantastic thing but it's on rails, it has nothing to crash into. The open road is a whole other story. There are just too many variables and unknowns. The Tesla didn't see a 40 foot truck? What else is it not going to see? What happens if the road becomes covered in sand and the car can't see it anymore? What if the white line is obscured? What if there is a break in the roadside barrier?

Check this out, an autonomous car almost swerving into another car which is only saved by the drivers quick reactions,

There are plenty of other videos showing near misses which were only avoided by the driver taking action.

One question I would like to raise is, how many of these people promoting autonomous vehicles would be prepared to give up their own vehicles and travel exclusively autonomously for the rest of their life? I don't think there would be very many.

I was going to suggest checking the engine and gearbox mounts. The only solution to the problem is to change them. Labour wise, it's not a massive job. It just involves putting a jack under the engine/gearbox, unbolting the old ones and bolting the new ones in. The price of the parts may be a different story. Phone around and get quotes.

It's pretty easy to test AC systems for leaks. It involves putting a dye into the system, charging it with gas then looking at all the pipes, connectors etc. through special glasses. The dye will come out through the hole and when you are wearing the glasses, you will see it kind of glowing and see exactly where the leak is.

I agree with the above though, it's probably one of the Schrader valves. If it's not that, it's likely to be an O-ring. One thing you can do is to pour soapy water onto the valves and you might be able to see bubbles coming which would indicate that's the problem.

I'll start you off with one of mine, my Toyota Corolled. I was coming around a corner 'enthusiastically' with the back end out. The back wheel touched a manhole and I flipped onto my roof. Had to walk 6 miles home that night in the rain with no shoes on. I was really bummed about it because it was probably the most reliable car I ever owned. All I ever had to do was put petrol in it. It was so reliable that I went back the next morning with a tractor, flipped it back onto it's wheels, put oil in it and a battery and managed to drive it home.

The tilt on the wheels is called camber. Stance is how a car sits and includes camber, ride height, tyre and wheel width etc. 

It's called camber. You can adjust it to control how much of the surface of your tyre touches the road. Very useful if you have a race car. But now the kids do it because it 'looks cool'. 

Diesels don't have spark plugs, they have glow plugs which are a different thing altogether. Glow plugs are used to help start cold engines. They warm up the fuel that is injected into the cylinder to make it easier to ignite by compression. When you try to start a cold Diesel engine, a lot of the heat generated by the compression is absorbed by the cold engine block/liners, therefore the fuel is colder and harder to ignite. Diesels run better when they're hot. 

Why does Sheikh Mo have 2 aerials?

I also love the idea of shutting off their AC. Would be a good idea to also pull the fuse out of the electric windows. 

How do you get 100 Pikachus on a bus?

You POKEMON!

But seriously, it's getting crazy now. I've read reports of people walking along train tracks in England and people walking through minefields, I think that was in Bosnia. Maybe we should just let these people get on with it and let natural selection take its course. How are humans ever supposed to evolve it we keep saving the stupid ones to let them breed and add to the gene pool. 

ADCB metro station for example, Karama ADCB would have been a much better name. That way it's still named after the area it's in but the big companies still get their advertising. 

I always hear people talking about US spec versus GCC spec but I'm relatively new here so I don't really understand it. It's just a different cooling system right? So what's the problem with buying a US spec car and fitting a better water pump and thicker radiator? 

Banger racing. Get a cheap car from the scrap man for £200, take out the interior, lights, glass and all unnecessary parts. Fit a bucket seat, harness, rollcage and you're ready to go racing. If you're smart enough, you can sell all the parts you took off your car and end up with your racer for free. I used to have a lot of fun doing this in the UK. It's a pity you guys don't do it here in the UAE because it's a cheap way to have a bit of fun and stay out of trouble. It's full contact racing too so if someone gets in your way, just push them out of it. Just like the touring car championship lol 

Everyone likes to watch crashes

Theres lots of different classes too, you can more or less race anything you can get your hands on, buses, caravans, even hearse racing  

Ross Tech website is the best source of information for VAG related codes. They are the guys behind the VCDS software.

http://wiki.ross-tech.com/wiki/index.php/16985/P0601/001537

Before spending money on an ECU, check the simple stuff first. Battery condition, charging system operation, ECU supply voltage. Could be something as simple as a corroded terminal. Changing entire wiring looms is overkill, far better to isolate the problem and fix it. If it turns out to be a problem with the ECU itself, you might be be able to update the software rather than replace the entire unit. 

I didn't realise the R/T could be picked up so cheap! If I buy one it would definitely be a manual. I spent a week working on an auto box in a Charger and it kind of put me off them. I'm not too bothered about maintenance costs. It's really just parts i would be paying for, I get free labour 😂

Fined? They should be prosecuted, electrocuted, hung, drawn, quartered, stabbed and shot. 

Oil also brings with it another set of social and economic problems aside from the environmental issues. Anyone remember the American invasion of Iraq? The real reason Saddam Hussein was removed from power was that certain people were scared that he had control of a very large supply of oil and could cut it off at any time. I dread to think what people will do to each other to gain control of the small amount of oil (money) left in a few years time. If we don't get organised and prepare for the future now, the future could look like a scene from a Mad Max movie. 

Electric cars aren't particularly environmentally friendly anyway when you consider this is the result of mining lithium to manufacture the batteries,

Farting cows, that's another good source of energy. There's a monestary not too far from my home place and the monks have built a plant to harness the power of methane. As far as I'm aware, they use it to generate all their own electricity and also heating. I also seen a couple of plants in Germany where biogas is produced from waste corn husks and stalks and this biogas is then used to produce electricity for small villages. 

Below is a video showing a demonstration of how much fuel is injected into one cylinder of a top fuel dragster at idle. After 15 seconds, RPM increases to 8,000 and 2 additional nozzles open to supply a total of 8 gallons per minute. Multiply that by 8 cylinders and you have an engine consuming 64 gallons per minute. Also bear in mind that this is old technology and the latest systems can supply 100 gallons per minute. Most of these beasts use around 45 litres of fuel to complete each quarter mile run  

What was that you said about the environment?

Also to add, the original engine built by Rudolf Diesel was designed to run on vegetable oil. 

Who would have thought a few dragsters could have caused such a fuss? 😬

I think hydrogen is the way forward. It's probably the cleanest fuel we currently know, the only byproduct of combustion is pure H2O. However, the problem with hydrogen is that it takes a lot of electricity to produce and most our current electrical production is coming from fossil fuels so if you're burning dirty oil to produce clean hydrogen, you're just robbing Peter to pay Paul. This can be combatted by using more sustainable electricity generation methods such as wind, solar, water. I don't know why Dubai isn't using more solar power, there's no shortage of sun and no shortage of space in the desert to put solar panels. I was in Germany last year and they had fields full of the things. Tidal turbines are another trick were missing out on here, especially being right beside the sea.