Thomas Varghese

Dear Angela @Foxtrot Oscar, My car is out of workshop and is ready to ride the dunes. Me & my car is ready for the dance inside the desert behind you. Lets dance on Saturday afternoon.

I'm at the garage only since day before yesterday night. The metal pipe got fused with the connection in the engine block and was in no mood to budge. Finally we had to use a torch and melt the whole block housing away to release it. Now waiting for the new housing to arrive tonight and get it fixed. Thank God we noticed the small leak in that pipe or it would have grounded me perhaps in the middle of the desert and could have blown out the engine. That leak may have caused the loss in water pressure circulation and made the engine run hotter during stress which I was experiencing since 2 months during drives.

Unfortunately I couldn't join all of you for fun as I ended up with a broken radiator metal hose and the horrible pain repairing it. The car is still in workshop waiting for the part. Stucks or pop outs we can solve but this is really painful repairing a mechanical fault like this.

The min speed which could be set is then 30sec and I hope that will be enough. Anyways I have bulb mode in the camera but hasn't experimented with it yet. Any canon users can upload a firmware called magic lantern which I have tried in my cameras and have found to be safe. This software firmware upgrade enhances the usability of most canon cameras than stock. The link to magic lantern is posted below. The authors claim no responsibility for any crashes but I have been using them since 4 or 5 years and they are safe for me whether its the nightly build or the stable build. This is a very useful software for canon users who still cling to the older models as it brings out the power hidden in the sensor. Sort of like ECU remapping for our cars. Magic Lantern | Home

@Frederic are we going to use the shutter speeds preset in the camera or going into bulb mode for astrophotography? If bulb mode then the photographer needs a remote shutter release also.

my car is still in workshop. It can come out only day after tomorrow.

@Lorenzo Candelpergher kindly confirm if I can RSVP for the drive tonight. My car is in workshop for a broken radiator hose and I had to forfeit a drive with @Ale Vallecchi today and I would like to join if the car comes out of workshop tonight.

@Ale Vallecchi looks like I can't join the drive. My radiator metal hose is broken and car is in garage. If it comes out before 2 i will join

You have veteran @GauravSoni ahead of you in his Pajero and me right behind you. Just follow Gaurav's path and you will do fine. Gaurav is one driver I always love to follow. Don't worry about me following you or getting closer. I can manage well while following. I think @Batuhan Kulac will be fine to follow me as I always tend to climb higher when doing a side slope and he being having a heavier car will do better if he climbs higher. Same when ridge riding too. I tend to keep the car on the ridge with both side wheels on both sides of the ridge.

Good to know I'm a veteran now.

Dear Angela @Foxtrot Oscar thanks for the advice. Yes I had only 1 stuck and 2 refusals. By the time I was trying to self recover from the refusal the car was already bogged down and @GauravSoni & @Yousef Alimadadi were already beside me and had started to give instructions and told me to stay back in the car. I had opened the door to come out and asses the situation when they already instructed to stay back in the car and follow their instructions in recovery. Anyways I hope you remember I had some overheating issues some time before in a drive of yours and I had to exit. I had tried flushing the cooling system, subjected the car to innumerable computer diagnosis but was not able to eliminate the problem even though controlled it to some extent. The engine always used to cut the power when the RPM rises above a certain limit which resulted in some stucks before. I had to adjust my driving style and somehow managed all the drives till now. No mechanic was able to understand the phenomenon. They all even advised me to change the knock sensor and sort like that, even the engine mountings. Yesterday night I pin pointed the problem. All this started after I changed the spark plugs sometime before. Every time I tell the mechanics the same and they ignored it. I took out the spark plugs yesterday night and viola the culprit lay bare in front of me. 1 of the spark plugs installed was different from the rest. The spark plug number is same but spark plug is different. While 5 were platinum tipped and had blue markings. 1 was ordinary and had green markings but same number marked on it. This spark plug's heat range was different and was misfiring resulting in the engine laboring a lot under stress which made the engine overheat which led to loss of power and momentum. Its sometimes strange we can't even leave the car in a garage trusting the mechanic will take care of it as well as we do. The moment I replaced the different spark plug with a new one, the engine started to run smoother, the overall heat fell down drastically and the acceleration is linear. Hopefully I can drive smoothly during your next Saturday drive.

kindly add me to the waitlist. 2nd drive.