Frederic

Used to have bikes (+/- 300cc) in Belgium, which i used for both leisure drives in the weekend as daily commute. I never went on highways and stayed on secondary roads because it felt safer. I loved every part of it and still miss it every day.

* Proper helmet and Safety gear WILL help you save your life or reduce the damage, that is a FACT.

* Replace the helmet every 4-5 year. The shell weakens and will be less stronger every year. When you have an accident and there is visual damage on the helmet, replace it immediately.

The amount of reckless drivers i face every day currently keeps me from buying a bike. It feels like people lose all sense of logic and decent manners when they go on the road in the Middle East. They can't keep in lane, they can't keep distance, they swerve without indicators. If i have to recall the many close calls i had already with my car, then i am sure i would have been driven off the road already on my bike. 

Just be careful if you come across an American model. Some were made 2WD only  

The Lancia Delta Integrale was/is indeed a monster. I had a regular '99 Delta HPE with lovely Recaro seats for a while and loved the revving engine and nimble precision steering.

For some reason the Batmobile doesn't want to start. So Robin checks the car and tells Batman that the BATTERY has died, on which Batman replies: "What the hell is a TERY ??"

Well done Barry ! 

1 hour ago, Gaurav said:

So true, this seems like an old news as I got one orange sticker on my Pajero when I was traveling for 3 weeks sometime last year.

This Dubai municipality sticker for not cleaning the car has worlds strongest glue and world's toughest paper, that I couldn't remove it, then cleaner failed and then took the car to window tinting guy and he took 30 minutes to remove that sticker. He used all the tricks and tools, from the blade, water, alcohol spray and even burning it. Damn, better clean your car guys rather wasting a couple of hours getting it out.

Hahaha, you could have asked them to completely cover your car with these stickers, it would never come off and would protect your nice paint  

Looks great, I’ll probably join as I’ve been waiting a while for a relaxed drive and the opportunity to meet the lovely chaps on Carnity 😉

Radio 2 is indeed not too bad, the rest is just horrible to me. I just plugin my phone or USB stick and happily switch over to some:

* Wilco, Johnny Cash, The Triffids, Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, Bruce Springsteen, etc.. for a proper Route 66 feeling.

* Air, Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Sigur Ros, for ambient, electronica, late night driving.

* Eighties Pop Classics to sing out loud and wake up in the morning

ow yeah.. and Radiohead.... non stop

The iconic Trabant 601 which was the real commie-car from back in the days. 600cc two-stroke engine. An icon in Eastern-Europe. Not sure if well-known outside of Europe.

1 hour ago, sertac said:

1955 Lincoln Futura

I happened to watched this new carshow on Netflix a few days back "Rust to Riches", where the team from Gotham Garage buys a replica from the original body and restores this one. Imho the detailwork with especially the glass cockpit was a bit shoddy but kudos for these guys to have the guts to take on this iconic car.

Creating a basic EV in your garage is indeed not so difficult. But the generation of electric vehicles that are popping up now have stuff on board like energy recovering brake systems, and a ton of software to keep all those things working properly, thousands of sensors, data cabling, etc etc... i’d love to get my hands on a scrapped Tesla to rip it apart and learn, but without access to the CPU it’s a black box with trial and error. 

5 minutes ago, knightjp said:

@Frederic Nuyttens  / @desertdude You should look into this youtube channel, Rich Rebuilds

This guy proves the while there is quite a lot about Tesla that is brand new kind of tech, it isn't extremely new and pretty much anyone with a good grasp of engineering and electrics should be able to handle the whole thing with ease.
There are people in various parts of the world building EVs using tesla batteries...
https://youtu.be/fXsQGWWz3Is

Look up the White Zombie on youtube.

Previously electricians used to handly those large television tubes with relative ease. My dad told me that if you don't handle it probably, an old TV tube could kill you.
This is just Tesla being the Apple of the car world.

Pretty much anyone with a good grasp of engineering and electrics.... YES, i can include myself into that. But most independent workshops that i've encountered only have basic electronics experience, and i don't say that to bash them, but merely pointing to the fact that their training is currently still more mechanically inclined. And a guy that is just able to connect an OBD reader to the car is NOT an electronics engineer...

9 hours ago, desertdude said:

One thing I do is , its a bad idea to buy a Tesla, not because its a bad car but because of the company and CEO treats their customers like shit. First you couldn't even buy a single screw and install it yourself, Only Tesla sells tesla parts and no one else ( hence the big market in salvage Teslas to be used as parts ) and all work to be carried out only by tesla approved shops and last I heard now they are saying all body work will only be done at the Tesla factory. 

So if you ding your car, you have to send the car to the Tesla factory in california to get it repaired, not to mention when in 3-5 years you need to replace your entire battery, thats going to cost you your left arm and right testicle. 

Too expensive and too much of a hassle to be driving. 

I partly agree with your statement, but have the following things in mind:

Tesla technology is beyond anything what's currently on the market, which begs the questions:

* Who is even remotely skilled to service these cars ? The battery packs are a potential bomb if not handled properly.

* Every time something happens with a Tesla, be it in auto-drive or serious failures, we read about it in the news. Imagine the potential risks of a freelance company servicing these cars and fiddling with the software and settings. Serious deadly accidents could happen and it would again reflect badly towards Tesla itself.

I think that in the future Tesla might create franchised workshops with trained people and might slowly open up a bit to the market. Especially now all the big players are coming onto the market with Electric vehicles. That brings me back to the same question: imagine we buy an electric BMW or Mercedes, to which independent workshop can we take it now to get it serviced/repaired ?? Nobody wants to burn their fingers on technology that is so advanced. (just thinking about the I8 now)...

15 hours ago, Barry said:

It was the same in uk. Diesel was half the price of petrol so everyone invested in Diesel engines. More torque, more miles per tank, what’s not to like?

Now all this emissions stuff is happening, the people who invested in diesel are getting penalised hard with fuel tax, road tax. MPG still makes it worth it (kind of) but the introduction of euro specs with DPF and Adblue can make it expensive if something goes wrong.

I don’t know how it is everywhere else but back home we have 2 grades of diesel. Normal road diesel and agricultural diesel. Agricultural diesel is the same as road diesel with a red or green diesel (depending which part of Ireland you live in). But the thing about agricultural diesel is that it’s a quarter of the price of road diesel so naturally many people put it in their cars. Sometimes you will come across a her majesty’s custom and excise checkpoint where they will dip random cars to check the fuel but the savings far outweigh the fine. Many people also run illegal diesel “laundering plants” where they pass the agricultural diesel through fullers earth aka kitty litter, which removes the dye and makes it “legal” again. Massive profit to be made at such operations. 

Diesel cars can be fun contrary to popular belief. I was looking for something reliable and cheap to drive to work, it was a 2 hour drive, so I bought a cheap Mk 1 Renault Clio for a couple of hundred pounds to go to work  and back. To my surprise the engine from the scrap Volvo 440 TD in my yard, same as the Laguna bolted straight onto the mounts so me and a friend did it one weekend for a bit of fun. The car was a real POS but nobody knew it was a TD and I beat many Nova and Corsa SRIs at the lights. I should have thrown a few pink slips down 😂

Same in Belgium. We have the red Diesel for heating up your house and agricultural purposes, and the regular one which is heavily taxed. And yes in many industrial zones throughout the country the traffic department was checking vehicles. The fines for being caught using red diesel in your car were however  very very hefty, so most people did not risk it.
I have the impression that most European car manufacturers used all possible tricks out of the book to make people buy diesel, and the technology was pretty advanced, much more than petrol cars where no new things were coming onto the market. The common rule was if you do less than 20,000km per year, then a petrol car would be the cheaper option. Above that, the Diesel becomes more interesting, even taking into account the yearly taxes were higher and maintenance cost was also a bit higher.  

21 hours ago, sertac said:

In Turkey people love 1.6 TDI VW engines and 1.7 Opel engines these are amazing machines.

 

Hahaha these are definitely not stock DTi's. I had an Astra 1.7DTI and it had 75HP stock

I'm hailing from a diesel country where it was practically subsidized in the past.. until they came to know that the fine dust particles really was an issue (remember the VW claims). Since then everybody is now shifting back to petrol cars.

The diesel technology was imho superior in a way that the performance of turbo-powered diesel engines was very impressive, and at the same time wouldn't cost you a fortune at the gas-station. On the other hand i experienced more issues with EGR valves clogging up and other stuff especially on diesel cars that didn't make enough miles on the road. Without a turbo the cars were horribly slow yet super reliable and could go on for years.

I still have good memories when my friend first came up with his Golf MK3 TDI that had magnificent torque and drove like a hot hatch. The cold 'knock-knock' however made it sound like a tractor sometimes

Quote

While having a stroll through Sharjah today, i found an abandoned XJ gathering dust in a parking lot. I was particularly interested because it was a 2-door version which i haven't seen that much around here. The license plates were gone so probably abandoned due to leaving country / debt / other ?

Is there any way these vehicles can be bought by tracking the Chassis number through RTA or something ? Or do these cars end up in a municipality yard for a few years before being auctioned off ?

Shame to see these vehicles being left behind.. With some TLC they clearly make good offroad toys.

As i am often going for short and small trips in the desert alone (not ideal, i know, but i stay near to the road), i've spent some time looking at the self recovery possibilities for desert sand. Our Aussie friends seem to have extensive equipment and tools to deal with getting stuck in the sand.

I'd love to hear your inputs and feedback on the available equipment such as:

* Maxtrax recovery board. The original or alternatives, or selfmade.

* Hi-lift Jack.

* Deadman anchor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxnwAkMh9U8 

.....or other anchor such as your spare wheel.

* Winch on your vehicle

* Others...

Would love to hear what works best in our Middle-East environment without breaking the bank. I always carry 2 recovery boards made from scaffolding platform that helped me out a few times already. 

2 minutes ago, Rahimdad said:

Thanks@Gaurav. I have tried and tested many maps for off road use on android but none of them come any close to Motion X. Unfortunately this app does not exist on Android and is for IOS only. Finally the other day I stumbled on ViewRanger and this allowed me to save the track you send me in KMZ format. I was able to change it as route and it allowed me to follow the track while on the drive. I still am not sure how to read the terrain on ViewRanger and my other thing is the screen keeps timing out. Other then that it's been a relief to have a half good app as it can only develop for the better. Hope this helps.

If you have Google Maps on your Android phone, you might try the suggestion i posted to get the KMZ track in your phone.

3 minutes ago, Gaurav said:

If you have Motion X then you don't need anything else, just import the track in motion X, go to the place and it will constantly show you that track and also it can record your track if record track is switched on.

Motion X is one the BESTEST application I have tried for offline GPS that supports the topography maps to show you the dunes formation even. That's how I first drove in this area in 2017, by avoiding the small technical dunes and going over the medium and big dunes. Of course, you need mobile internet for constant topography update, but in UAE Etisalat coverage is awesome unless you are deep inside Liwa.

Btw, @Rahimdad has recently used one of the Motion X track by intelligently importing in some Android App, so will wait to hear from him and see how he did it and how good was that.

Superb. Which map type do you recommend in Motion X to have the topography ? 

OK guys, seems i was a bit too soon to worry, i found the proper way to get them into Google Maps (IOS):

Do this part with a desktop computer, not phone:

1) Download the files on a desktop computer.

2) Google "My Maps" and select "Create a new map"

3) Click on the blue "import" on the upper left hand corner, and drag and drop the KMZ file in there.

4) Give a name to your map. It will be saved automatically.

This part involves using your phone:

5) Now restart your Google Maps application in your phone. Open the menu with the three lines.

6) Click on "Your places" and select "Maps". You should now find that new map you made in there.

it goes without saying that both your desktop computer as your phone should be logged into the same google account.

@Gaurav I tried to use both your files to see if they can be used in Google Maps and Google Earth for driving that same route (so to use the complete track as reference and do the exact same drive). 

Google Maps apparently doesn't support the import of both these files, but Google Earth does. After installing Google Earth on my phone i was able to open the KMZ file, but it seems that Google Earth does not constantly update my live location. So if i would try to use Google Earth as navigation device to do the same route, i'd have to push the "show location" button every few seconds.

I found a workaround by emailing both files to my phone and opening then in Motion X, but still need to try if that works and updates my precise location permanently.

I googled around and many people same to face these issues. The older versions of Google Earth seemed to work and update the live location constantly. No idea why they stopped doing that.
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/maps/mMKBSrLU6u4

My first one was the 1989 Peugeot 205 XS which had all the typical "french" issues, but was such a fun car to drive. If i ever come across an affordable 205 GTI in mint condition i might break open my wallet for it. But they go good money nowadays. 

It had a 1.4, 80HP engine that loved to rev and it was pretty light and nimble. 

Installed quite a lot of sound-systems in those days and the car rattled as hell once the sub came alive. Where are all these good days  

56 minutes ago, Barry said:

I read an article a few weeks ago about a guy in America who was buying up crashed/damaged/insurance write off Tesla’s and using the parts to repair other damaged cars. Can’t find the article now. 

Heard good things from iserviceanycar and Powertech. I go to Max garage and they are ok too.