Just interested really as what you folk do as your day job?

I work as a dedicated Jaguar/LandRover technician, you may have seen a new silver LandRover Discovery 4 on your journey out on the road, there are 50 of us nationwide

The **** week started with hitting a pothole in my Audi and cracking the Alloy :mad:

Next, the horrendous sound starts getting louder from beneath my MR2, no idea if it was a wheel bearing, drive shaft or what and its MOT was due today:cursing:

However.... I manage to get the Audi Alloy welded and back on the car for a cool £35

Then, I discover on my MR2, the wheel bearings are fine and there are no leaks or anything on the driveshafts.. so.. must be something I was missing.. To my utter joy I realise that a 4mm difference in the coilover ride height is causing stress on the custom droplink.. I adjust the 5mm and hey presto.. NO NOISE iscoStu:

Then i head of for my dred, the MR2 and it's MOT :ohmy:

Again, to my joy, my MOT consisted of this....

[COLOR="Red"]MOT Tester.
"oooohhh...nice... looks sweet..how the effing eck am i going to get that on the ramps ? Tell you what, lets go for a drive"[/COLOR]

20 mins and a few miles later, we return, I get a nice cup of coffee. My car is driven over a pit, checked underneath, all my lights are switched on and checked. he smiles and says, "lovely"
I then recieve my new MOT, tottally hassle free and not a question on my private reg, leds, altered arches etc etc.. nothing !

I pay for the MOT, give the man a drink:wink: and drive home...

Oh, and the bonus.. I may well have got the latest "Carbon" addition for my BOOSST

I want to edit one of my posts..how do i do this? maybe im being stupid, but i cant find an edit option anywhere:blink:

Hi im joe, i drive a ek civic atm but really want a black is200, i been looking on this site and there seems to be the best forum for modded lexus'. I may post up some pics of my honda if anyones intrested in seeing them lol.

Im 19 coming up 20, is anyone on here around my age with a is200? And what is your insurance like?

Cheers
Joe

Happy Birthday, have a great day

I have seen many European/US conversations claiming that one petrol/gas is better than another or higher rated. This may not be the case as different rating systems are used in different countries and so not all numbers mean the same thing. You must be careful to also quote the measurement system used

To see why there are different numbers let us take a trip back in time to World War I. Aviators had a problem, many engines would suddenly self destruct through detonation, which is bad news when you're up in the air. An engine might run fine on one batch of fuel but blow holes in the pistons on the next batch. The fuels seemed the same, weighed the same and may have even come from the same factory.

The fuel companies tried to analysis and standardise the petrol, but were unable to weed out the bad batches. Therefore a standard test engine with a variable compression facility was built and the fuel to be tested run through it. This heavy duty, single cylinder engine would be warmed to a standard temperature and at a set rpm the compression increased until engine knock occurred. this would give its Highest Usable Compression Ratio (HUCR).

But with time it was discovered that different labs gave different results. So in an attempt to produce an unvarying standard, two reference fuels were chosen. The high reference was 2-2-4 trimethylpentane (iso-octane), while the low reference was normal heptane (n-heptane). Once the HUCR was determined a mix of these to fuels was made up that exactly produced the same results as the HUCR test. The result is quoted as the percentage of iso-octane. Hence a petrol that detonated the same as a mix of 90% iso-octane and 10% n-heptane is called a 90 octane fuel.

Since that time a number of tests have come into being to simulate a variety of engine conditions. Motor Spirit is usually rated using the Research or Motor test methods. Both use the same old engine but under different conditions

Motor Octane Test (MON) Research Octane Test (RON)
Inlet air temperature 148.9 C 65.6 C
Engine jacket temp 100 C 100 C
Engine RPM 900 600


As you can see the Motor Octane Test employs a higher temperature and RPM and hence is probably a better indicator for today's engines. Of course the Research octane test gives a higher number and that's why the European manufacturers quote it (RON)

The spread between the two numbers is know as the fuels sensitivity, and it is very important. Because of the variety of engines it is possible for a petrol manufacturer to come up with a fuel that has a high RON, but a lower than expected MON. Hence although it looks normal on the pump it may perform badly. However on another day the same company may make its fuel out of a different blend to get the same RON but a different MON. This is done for profit reasons and is why you occasionally get bad fuel even though it is legally rated the same. In the past with high leaded fuels nobody noticed but nowadays high performance cars do notice - as most of us can attest to!!

In America the service stations use the Pump Octane Number or PON rather than RON. this is the average of RON and MON and gives a much better grade, and is also why the American gas always seems not as good as our when in fact it is is the same (and has better quality control). But even this system can be abused by adding octane boosters to poor fuel. The Japanese cars luckily for members of this club use good old RON!!

Below is an approximate comparison chart, these numbers can vary by as much as 2 grades.

RON MON PON
90 83 86.6
92 85 88.5
95 87 91
96 88 92
98 90 94
100 91.5 95.8
105 95 100
110 99 104.5


So whether you use "Super" or "Normal" now you know where these numbers come from. Remember if your car is tuned on "Super" USE IT, if its a normal car chances are using "Super" is a little wasteful of your hard earned $. (Sorry this keyboard doesn't have a pound symbol!!!)

Higher Octain = harder to detonate, ideal for turbo and supercharged applications.

Just bought some OEM wheels from Rabs, but I've not got my original wheel nuts to fit them.

I know they are M12 x 1.5, but whenever I try to find some normal 'flat' nuts and not the acorn style 'tuner' nuts I turn up no results

I'm hesitant to just go and buy some 'bolts' as they might not have the right tensile strength, material. flange...etc to work properly.

Ideas boys?

need to send a parcel out and got his address but no name and he isn't online

Hi guys just saying hello as I'm new on here.

Right im after buying Jim's coilovers but need Jim has requested some assistance to remove them.

However at 5 hours each way its a bit far for me so is anyone closer who can assist him with swapping them over?

thanks
Stav