SimonB

Beat me to it! When I remortgaged recently the rate was the same for the offset tracker and the normal tracker, but the offset was £600 more arrangement fee.

No, it means that the interest on your mortgage is calculated daily based on the amount you owe minus whatever you have in your account. So if you had a £110000 mortgage and £1000 in your account you only pay interest on 110000-1000=109000. Your monthly payment stays the same (usually), so you actually repay more of your mortgage each month that you would have without the offset. That in turn means the amount you pay interest on the next month is a bit less. It's as if you get interest on whatever is in your account at whatever the mortgage rate is, tax free, and then use that to overpay your mortgage. The way to get the best out of them is to set things up so you are paid at one end of the month (the 27th say) and all your bills etc come out as far after that as you can (e.g. 24th of the next month say). That way your salary is sitting in ypur account offsetting your mortgage for as long as possible. I think fixed rates are pretty much all you can get at the moment anyway!

Funnily enough there used to be a shop round here that exactly the same thing happened to! That was when the only things you could get on DVD in region 2 were Contact and that crap film about a virus that I can't even remember the name of! Can I ask what area you though was better about it? Were you getting picture breakup with the other cable?

Error correction doesn't mean necessarily involve retransmission. That's only needed where the error rate is high. Yes, if you have a non HDMI compliant cable, or one that's not compliant to the spec you're using (i.e. 1.1 when you're using 1.3) or if you run it in a ridiculously high noise environment then you will get errors, but the encoding used means this would result in obvious picture errors (big sparkles all over the picture) or no signal at all because the clock would degrade. If your cable conforms to the HDMI spec you won't have a problem. From 4.2.5 (physical layer) of the HDMI spec: From 5.2.3 ("data" coding, basically everything that isn't video or a control signal -- audio, content protection, gamut metadata, etc.):

Actually I have an extremely high end home cinema / hifi system. I was one of the very early adopters of DVD before you could actually buy discs in this country. I'm also a software engineer, so believe me I do know what I'm talking about! HDMI does use error correction over the physical layer and the protocol layer. In order to be called a HDMI cable, it must meet the specifications, which ensure the error rate is such that it can be corrected by that error correction. It's the same with networking - you can use any CAT5 cable that meets the specs. You don't get "better" data if you use an expensive one! Let's put it this way, I have yet to see ANY blind test that has resulted in anyone being able to see a difference between HDMI approved cables. Give it a go, get someone else to swap cables randomly so you can't tell which one is being used, repeat the test enough times to remove luck and I guarantee you won't be able to tell the difference.

There only difference is in your head, fact. It's like saying your digital photos on your PC will look better if you change the SATA cable connecting your hard disk up. There are a whole load of total rubbish tweaks in the hifi world that people seem to believe with absolutely no scientific basis. Things like your amp sounding better if you use special isolating rubber feet. Digital cables are a classic example of that. It is true that some ultra cheapo cables struggle to pass full bandwidth 1080P 60fps because they are not HDMI1.3 compliant. However, you either get a perfect signal or it breaks up, there is nothing inbetween. I bought one like that, it would play blurays fine (at 1080P 24fps) but not PS3 full-on 1080P 60fps. This place is where I buy mine from, the premium ones. A 3m cable is under a tenner.

The SVA is irrelevant though - there are lots of things in there that aren't in the MOT. That's why most kit cars are built to satisy the SVA and then immediately put back to "normal" roadworthy condition - they will still pass an MOT but not the SVA. Also the noise limits at work you are talking about are at the ear, it depends where you measure at. E.g. is it a metre from the exhaust at 45 degrees, right by the exhaust directly in line etc. That would make a huge difference. I guess that's why it's a subjective limit.

Lol, judging by some of the odd threads on here lately I'm suprised nobody has asked that yet! Thanks for the recommendation though, I think she got a quote from Oops, good to know they are ok. I was waiting for him to post up a recommendation...

I think I have one in the garage, I bought it off ebay ages ago. I think it was from here: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Toyota-MR2-GT4-o2-Lambda-oxygen-sensor-probe-Adaptor_W0QQitemZ220345427185QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_CarsParts_Vehicles_CarParts_SM?hash=item220345427185&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1301%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318

A friend of mine has some bodywork damage on her RX7 that needs fixing, nothing too big, just some dents/scrapes. Can any of the Bournemouth locals recommend a bodyshop round here? I don't really know anywhere any more.

Nah, they are the ones that ARE made in the full range of sizes. I was going to use them for that reason but they were just too expensive. As it happened the variation in sizes between the ones I needed were so small that standard size bearings produced tolerances that were all in range. So I used ACL in the end. You will probably find the same if you need bearings in the 2-5 sort of size range.

Spot on. That's exactly my spec. Might even finish the thing one day if the parts I'm waiting for ever arrive! New caps require line boring, which is very expensive to do properly, frankly I don't know anyone with the capability to do it that I'd trust, and neither did either of the race machine shops I talked to.

Sounds like you may not have had the thing screwed in fully so it's leaking. Or the rubber O ring on it is dodgy.

Yep, I work for NATS (National Air Traffic Services) who basically provide all the en-route air traffic control in the UK (and half of the Atlantic). That means all aircraft flying in controlled airspace, so pretty much all aircraft thatt take off, land or overfly the UK. There are actually a large number of overflights going to/from Europe and the US. We also control Heathrow, Gatwick and quite a few other airports. NATS have to ensure that aircraft can safely and quickly get where they want to go while using the least amount of fuel, least environmental impact, least noise etc etc. We have to design the airspace with that in mind, plus the military etc. Airspace is a bit like the road network, there are airways and routes laid down. Unlike a road though you must always maintain a certain separation, and you can't stop an aircraft while the one in front moves out the way! As I said, it's just not practical to have a major airport in some places. It would be a bit like building a massive new Ikea in a tiny village with a small access road to a motorway. Only imagine that every car has to be told exactly what to do and where to go at what speed from the moment it leaves until it arrives in another country. It would cause massive congestion. Airspace design is very complicated, things like local transport links are childs play compared with trying to design airspace to get 2.5 million flights per year through without ever being able to compromise safety.

Runways are a long term thing - the current economic climate has nothing much to do with it as we're talking about 5,10 years down the line and beyond. The thing that people forget when talking about where you should put runways is that you can't just put an airport anywhere, you have to consider the airspace and how you get aircraft in and out. The London TMA (terminal manourvering area) has the most complex airspace in the world, but the routes are all defined and the airspace organised to support that number of aircraft. Adding a new runway at Heathrow adds to the number of aircraft movements, but that can be accomodated fairly easily. If you stuck an airport further north you would have to totally reorganise the airspace to get aircraft through to that point. That is very complicated and expensive - it requires a lot of design work to resectorise and simulation work to show it works and the capacity can be met.

I guess it depends where you're going. If it's an airfield day I wouldn't bother, there's nothing to hit except other people and if you drive sensibly you'll never be in a position where you could hit anyone. On a track it's a bit different, depending on the track. I didn't bother at Silverstone as there's masses of runoff, but I did at Castle Combe and was glad of it since I nudged it into the tyre barrier at Quarry! Definitely worth checking the small print too, I think competition car insurance only cover the rolling chassis, so if you destroy your engine they won't cover that.

Competitiion car insurance aka Egger Lawson are the only place that do it really. You choose how much value you want (i.e. the max they will pay out) and the amount of excess. Obviously the less the excess and the more the value the more expensive it gets.

Are you sure it's not getting fuel and that it's not a problem elsewhere - ignition for example. I'd suspect the immobiliser first if you have one. You could always check fuel is getting to the rail by disconnecting the feed from the rail and seeing if fuel is being pumped through.

Most people just leave them - won't do any harm.

Bit hard to see from the photos, but that crank pulley definitely doesn't look right. There should only be one pulley with no grooves, that's the tensioner which is the one on the arm at the top. The one you say doesn't move is the crank pulley - it shouldn't move because it's attached to the crank and drives the others. It should have grooves, it sounds like it's fallen apart. To put a new belt on if the crank pulley was OK you just put the belt on all the pulleys, then put a breaker bar with a socket on the nut on the tensioner pulley and push it to move the tensioner so you can get the belt over it. To change the crank pulley is a bit more of a pain to say the least! Mainly because the bolt that holds it on is done up very tight indeed, you normally need a special tool to lock the pulley and a very large breaker bar or powerful air gun. Some people use the starter to do it. Here's a page from the tech manual with a diagram of the belt and pulleys.

I don't remember my HKS cams having the duration stamped on the end like the first pic, but like the others I'm pretty sure they had HKS stamped on somewhere. I remember they had something scratched on the hex part like Marty's too. You could probably measure them with a vernier or something to get the lobe height. If you measured the narrowest point and widest of a lobe and subtract one from the other that would give you the lift.

A is the tensioner dampener. It's there to smooth out changes to the tension of the belt from rapid changes of engine speed. It's only on manual cars for that reason. I wouldn't want to get rid of it personally.

Nah, it'll be fine. Belts do fail of their own accord when they get old, you may find it's all fine. But the crank pulleys are known to fail so as Scooter says it's worth checking carefully. The belt itself is an absolute piece of piss to change, there should be a few posts on here with the details.

That's what I use, it gives you the closest to standard rolling circumference. I've always used Eagle F1s.