On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 11:35:00 +0000, Glenn Richards
wrote:

Stewart Pinkerton wrote:

Why give money to the government in tax if you don't have to?
If you have to ask, then you're not a driver............

The 1.9 TDI is a great engine for everyday use. Bags of low-end torque,
masses of acceleration. Sure, it doesn't go as fast as a petrol engine,
but it does a lot more MPG. And it's got far more low end grunt than an
equivalent petrol engine.

As Clarkson himself said on Top Gear when comparing the 1.4 petrol and
diesel Lupo... sure, the petrol goes 0-60 faster, but the diesel goes
60-100 [1] faster. And in the real world, who (apart from a few boy
racers) does 0-60 on a regular basis?

Everybody, but not necessarily trying to set a record.

[1] Can't remember the exact figures he mentioned (I'm not that anal!)
but you get the point.

The point is that it's not usually true - petrols do everything faster
if you use the revs, diesels are just about that big slug of thrust
from 2-4000.

To use Clarkson's comments on a comparison of VW Lupos as an argument,
rather makes the point.....

Now, if you were to talk about the BMW 535 or Audi A4 3.0 diesels, or
even the VW Touareg 5.0 V-10, that might be different.

There again, Wooton-under-Edge is hardly the hard-driving capital of
the world, more like lazy picnics with lots of cider, moi luvver. :-)

Wouldn't know, never heard of it. Wotton-Under-Edge (correctly spelt)
though is one of those places where you're probably related to everyone
either through blood or marriage.

I never said I could type.....

Having said that... I've lived in Wotton on and off all my life, but my
parents weren't from around here. So no danger of inbreeding round these
parts!

Now, on the other hand... leave the town to the north-east on the B4058,
right onto the A4135, left again back onto the B4058, nice fast twisty
roads... then take a left on a sharp bend on an unclassified road that
links the B4058 and B4066... and if you're any good you should be able
to hit the ton in a couple of places down there. Probably one of my
favourite bits of road to drive.

Group 18. My insurance is coming up for renewal, best so far is my
existing Esure renewal offer of £293. It's good to be old!

Ick. I paid £900 this year for the A4. That was the cheapest quote I got
(from Admiral). Age counts against me it would appear...

Yup, that was indeed a cheap shot. I remember walking into my
insurance brokers, at age 24, and telling him I'd just bought a
Reliant Scimitar Coupe 3.0. He literally laughed in my face. It cost
me £110 to insure, which was about 10% of my salary in 1972......

OTOH, this car insurance stuff is all supposed to be terribly
scientific and based on careful actuarial calculations, but if I go to
Confused.com and get thirty-odd quotes, there's a near 3:1 ratio from
cheapest to dearest. What's that about?

Cos they all specialise in different types of driver, it would appear.

I remember getting a quote from Ensleigh a while back (different car,
lower group) on their web site which came out £300 more than the
cheapest quote (MoreThan, £600-ish). Some woman from Ensleigh then
called me back and spent 20 minutes trying to convince me why their
policy was the best, even though it was half as much again as the
cheapest quote.

I've never bothered getting a quote from Ensleigh since, as they insist
on calling you back and are very persistent.

I've never understood why people like that are so braindead that they
really believe they can persuade you to pay 50% over the odds for
something which is a commodity item.

[RS4]
Gotta have one - may have to sell the wife!

Good idea. The RS4 won't let you down. Can't say the same about the wife
(not yours personally of course, just women in general... DON'T get me
started! I seem to have a history of attracting psychopaths...)

Really? Quelle surprise...... :-)

--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

Stewart Pinkerton wrote:

On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 11:21:02 +0000, Glenn Richards
wrote:

I repeat:

The needle was about 15 degrees off the end of the scale, with the
sat-nav reading over 175mph.

To be fair, that was downhill (just north of the M4/M5 interchange
heading down a steep hill to J14), and it only hit that speed for a few
seconds.


With a following hurricane? :-)

I seriously doubt that the rev limiter would have allowed the
possibility of the required 6800 rpm. And since satnav readouts are
digital, why would you say *over* 175mph? Surely a specific number
would have stuck in the mind?

I believe Glenn. As he seems to have stated the date, place and speed,
I wonder if the boys in blue will when they get round to reading ukra?
The Sunday Torygraph today reports the conviction of a group of Welsh thugs
who documented their crimes on a website, after it was spotted by police!

What is the rev-limit on an Audi 3.2?

--
Eiron

There's something scary about stupidity made coherent - Tom Stoppard.

In article ,
Stewart Pinkerton wrote:
Of course, you do have to be careful to turn the key just one click,
otherwise you lock the steering...........

Don't be silly. All the cars I've ever owned don't lock the steering until
you remove the key.

--
*Born free - taxed to death *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Stewart Pinkerton wrote:

I seriously doubt that the rev limiter would have allowed the
possibility of the required 6800 rpm. And since satnav readouts are
digital, why would you say *over* 175mph? Surely a specific number
would have stuck in the mind?

17-something. I didn't want to take my eyes off the road for long enough
to parse the last digit. At those kind of speeds, eyes off the road for
the half second required to clock all 3 digits on the sat-nav could be a
disaster. You're travelling at, well, I can't be bothered to do the
maths, but... "some" feet per second.

BTW, for anyone who happens to be in IT and fancies a good chuckle,
trot over to Squirrel Solutions and check out the 'server room'.

Anyone who fancies a good view on how to recycle old kit into servers
you mean? Got a classic Pentium 200 running as the Samba PDC, PIII-450
running the mail server, Athlon 550 running the intranet web server,
another classic P200 running backup DNS, and (not shown in the photo) an
Athlon XP2800 with just under half a terabyte of storage running as the
media server. (I work from home... if it looks like an attic, that's cos
it is!)

We're moving to new premises in the next couple of months, so will
update that page as and when.

Web sites I'm hosting don't go on those boxes though, I've got a 1U
rackmount server sitting up in Manchester... AMD XP2800+ with 2GB RAM
and 250GB RAID disks. Which is, to put it mildly, b*****d quick. The
Athlon 550 box runs the intranet site and development stuff.

--
Glenn Richards Tel: (01453) 845735
Squirrel Solutions http://www.squirrelsolutions.co.uk/

IT consultancy, hardware and software support, broadband installation

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

If I brake with my left foot the ECU kills the engine revs. Apparently
it's a safety feature in case the throttle sticks open - just hit the
brakes.
You must have a weird car.

No, it's an Audi A4 Quattro.

Apparently it was a feature that VAG introduced after a rigged test on
60 Minutes in the US where the Audi 5000 (sold in Europe as the Audi
100) suffered from "sudden acceleration" - what was actually happening
was that US drivers, not used to the close placement of brake/throttle
pedals, were hitting the gas as well as the brake.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_100

So now if you can't tell the difference between middle and right pedals
(or left/right if you're driving a toy with a slushbox) you won't have
that problem.

Bloody Americans...

--
Glenn Richards Tel: (01453) 845735
Squirrel Solutions http://www.squirrelsolutions.co.uk/

IT consultancy, hardware and software support, broadband installation

On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 20:14:40 +0000, Glenn Richards
wrote:

Stewart Pinkerton wrote:

I seriously doubt that the rev limiter would have allowed the
possibility of the required 6800 rpm. And since satnav readouts are
digital, why would you say *over* 175mph? Surely a specific number
would have stuck in the mind?

17-something. I didn't want to take my eyes off the road for long enough
to parse the last digit. At those kind of speeds, eyes off the road for
the half second required to clock all 3 digits on the sat-nav could be a
disaster. You're travelling at, well, I can't be bothered to do the
maths, but... "some" feet per second.

A bit more than 250 fps, clearly not a problem to read the first two
digits and IME you take a 'snapshot' of a three-digit number in a
quick glance, you don't pick up the individual digits except by
deliberate concentration. Of course, there's a definite possibility
that your brain is of non-standard construction.....

BTW, for anyone who happens to be in IT and fancies a good chuckle,
trot over to Squirrel Solutions and check out the 'server room'.

Anyone who fancies a good view on how to recycle old kit into servers
you mean? Got a classic Pentium 200 running as the Samba PDC, PIII-450
running the mail server, Athlon 550 running the intranet web server,
another classic P200 running backup DNS, and (not shown in the photo) an
Athlon XP2800 with just under half a terabyte of storage running as the
media server. (I work from home... if it looks like an attic, that's cos
it is!)

Very impressive, one can see why major corporations beat a path to
your door! :-)

We're moving to new premises in the next couple of months, so will
update that page as and when.

Web sites I'm hosting don't go on those boxes though, I've got a 1U
rackmount server sitting up in Manchester... AMD XP2800+ with 2GB RAM
and 250GB RAID disks. Which is, to put it mildly, b*****d quick. The
Athlon 550 box runs the intranet site and development stuff.

Do you have anything which isn't really just a PC?
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 17:24:34 +0000, Eiron wrote:

Stewart Pinkerton wrote:

On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 11:21:02 +0000, Glenn Richards
wrote:

I repeat:

The needle was about 15 degrees off the end of the scale, with the
sat-nav reading over 175mph.

To be fair, that was downhill (just north of the M4/M5 interchange
heading down a steep hill to J14), and it only hit that speed for a few
seconds.


With a following hurricane? :-)

I seriously doubt that the rev limiter would have allowed the
possibility of the required 6800 rpm. And since satnav readouts are
digital, why would you say *over* 175mph? Surely a specific number
would have stuck in the mind?

I believe Glenn. As he seems to have stated the date, place and speed,
I wonder if the boys in blue will when they get round to reading ukra?
The Sunday Torygraph today reports the conviction of a group of Welsh thugs
who documented their crimes on a website, after it was spotted by police!

What is the rev-limit on an Audi 3.2?

On mine, the rev limiter kicks in around 6500-6600. 175mph true, as he
claims from a satnav readout, would require 6800.

--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 17:31:52 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

In article ,
Stewart Pinkerton wrote:
Of course, you do have to be careful to turn the key just one click,
otherwise you lock the steering...........

Don't be silly. All the cars I've ever owned don't lock the steering until
you remove the key.

Never tried it, but I will today. I'm going out now, I may be some
time........

--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 20:20:56 +0000, Glenn Richards
wrote:

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

If I brake with my left foot the ECU kills the engine revs. Apparently
it's a safety feature in case the throttle sticks open - just hit the
brakes.
You must have a weird car.

No, it's an Audi A4 Quattro.

Apparently it was a feature that VAG introduced after a rigged test on
60 Minutes in the US where the Audi 5000 (sold in Europe as the Audi
100) suffered from "sudden acceleration" - what was actually happening
was that US drivers, not used to the close placement of brake/throttle
pedals, were hitting the gas as well as the brake.

Additionally, some cars containing kids and/or dogs had problems where
the owner left the car with the engine running, and the kid/dog
managed to move the gearshift from P or N into R or D.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_100

So now if you can't tell the difference between middle and right pedals
(or left/right if you're driving a toy with a slushbox) you won't have
that problem.

Bloody Americans...

Indeed, and theother result of that (for which I'll never forgive
them) was the introduction of a bloody irritating interlock, so that
to get the gearshift out of P or N, you have to hit the footbrake as
well as pushing in the button on the shift lever.

--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

Thus spake Jim Lesurf:
Snipped
The comparions I'm aware of tended to show that with music and
speech, much higher levels of distortion/nonlinearity were required
to be reliably audible. However for the reasons indicated above, this
is often complicated by the user of speakers that themselves have
levels of nonlinearity well above 0.1 percent.

I can remember recording a test tone onto a cassette tape & being alarmed by
the audible harmonics - couldn't hear them with music. Maybe not the best
example but I suspect that those tones had 1% THD (a bit like valve amps
)