Soop Dogg

Think of the conveyor belt runway thing like this to show that the speed of the conveyor (and hence wheel speed) has absolutely no effect on the take-off speed of the aircraft: If the take-off speed of your plane is 180mph, then make the runway move at a steady 180mph FORWARDS, but hang on to the plane so that it's stationary. This will make the wheels of the plane move in reverse - right? Ok, now wind up the engines so they start to develop thrust. (Then stop hanging on to it so that it can move) Obviously the air around the plane is still stationary. Will the engines have to move the aircraft forwards at 2x180mph for it to take off? (As that's when the wheels will be doing 180mph relative to the conveyor) Of course not - the aircraft will still take off at 180mph relative to the air around it. In fact, in this case, the aircraft will take off when the wheels have just stopped moving. So, you can see that the wheel speed has absolutely no effect on when the aircraft will take off as it can still take off even if the wheels are not moving at all.

Now you know how all those diffs must have felt when you knackered their teeth. Good luck with it - I hate toothache.

Quick one...

HERE it is.

That ad was put together as part of a road safety campaign in N. Ireland. Over recent years they have had lots of young people being killed through driving too fast on the back roads. I don't know if anyone here watched the WRC last year in Ireland, but the roads there are particularly tricky and can catch out even the best of drivers - moreso than anywhere else I've ever been. I posted this advert and another one on here once before, I'll see if I can try to dig out the drink-drive one - I thought it was even harder hitting.

I recently checked the pic of my place on Google Earth and found that Digsy's car was parked on the road outside! I think it was taken sometime last summer.

Clicking the link would have been less effort, Jake.

An oldie but a goodie! (I did a search and couldn't see it anywhere, so I hope it isn't a repost)

Talking of wind-ups, I've got a wind up torch in the car. Only 3 LED's, but it's good enough for occasional use and would be fine to just keep in your pocket for an emergency. And you'll never get a flat battery.

Yeah - about 1000ft-lbs when he's using his 'fuel supplement'! Now that's torque! Tyres might be an issue though....

It'd wind up at a fraction over £45k landed & on the road in the UK. Still - when you look at the pics of the build, this really is a 'money no object' kind of car and even at that price, I doubt I could build an equivalent one for anything like that cheap. Oh - and it's still for sale - the date of the original post, 12/03/2007 is in the US format, so it was put up for sale last month.

LINK Some nice numbers on there...and as for the sound in that video clip - monstrous!

I know someone else who made this mistake a few years back, but I'll not say who it was. We were at the point of taking door cards off when I spotted the button was pressed. I said to 'Mr Nameless', 'Have you tried this?' (His face was a picture at this point!) Pressed it again and - bingo - everything was fine again. But yes, if this is your problem - you deserve a slap!

You didn't need the capital 'O' on 'One' as it was preceded by the word 'AND', so therefore belonged to the same sentence. Come to think of it, perhaps the full stop wasn't needed after 'bulb' as the sentence was continued by the word 'AND'.

I like mine grilled....

When I used to go to the local Aston Martin garage in the Supe for a look around they used to ignore us - you know - just about manage to raise their head from the newspaper on the desk. Then just after getting the Corvette, I gave them another visit. So then I had to spend ten minutes with the salesman sitting in the drivers seat of MY car and wanting to hear it run before I was invited to go sit in any of the Astons and if there was anything he could do for us! (Although I did mention having the Supras and he did admit they're a great motor)

Yep - the Saab 93 is on the Vectra platform, so probably has lots of the same parts.

You're not in sales, are you Jake?

Anyone else seen the offer from Sky TV lately? They're offering 1 month of free movies and sport. (All the movies and sport channels) All you have to do is call them up and take up the offer. Then in a months time you can call them again and cancel it and you pay nothing extra......apparently. HOWEVER, I've just found out that when you get your next bill, they charge you in advance as if you had kept all the chanels on your account. Then in a month they refund you - or so they say. (Last time something like this happened where they took money out of our account that we didn't owe, it took 3 months to get it back) Anyway, the small print on the leaflet making the offer doesn't mention this and they didn't mention it when I took the offer up. I called them tonight to ask if what I had heard was true and they said 'this should have been explained to you when you took up the offer'. Apparently the only way around it once you have accepted the offer is to cancel your direct debit, then call them to cancel the offer at the end of the free month. They'll ask you to pay what you owe when your bill is meant to be paid and they can rebate you the extra payment on the phone at that point. Sounds like a scam to me - they'll be making thousands extra cash in interest over the course of a month from all their customers who take up this 'offer'. Any thoughts?

The Veyron vs Typhoon. The sight of the Typhoon turning around and plummeting back to earth was mega-impressive. The Reliant Robin Space Shuttle was pretty good too!

Just passing the bus station heading towards Regent St. at about 6.40pm. Silver 'N' reg Supra. That's 3 I've seen whilst visiting N. Ireland this week!

Black with 'Supra' lettering on side and a roof spoiler. Reg was DKZ ****. (May have been OKZ - not sure) Anyone?

Any reading you get from a multi meter won't tell you much, if anything, worthwhile about your leads. The main failure with ignition leads isn't the lead going 'open circuit', it's the insulation. You might get a decent reading resistance wise when you pass a few volts from a meter down it, but when you pass thousands of volts down it from the ignition coil, and if the insulation is knackered, it will arc all over the place. (You'll see this happen if you look at the running engine after dark.) That's where your spark will usually be lost.

Here's what I said when this question was asked last time around. Anything with a VAG TDI lump in it. Easier to sell on after your finished with it than a Mondeo too as you're not putting it in the paper amongst the other squillion that will be for sale at the same time! Plus the build quality of the rest of the car is probably better too. The VW/Audi 2.5 TDi will get mid to maybe high 30's per gallon on the motorway and mid to high 20's around town. The 1.9TDi can get high 50's or if you're careful even low 60's per gallon on the motorway and 40ish around town. We've got an Audi A6 1.9TDi getting these sort of economy figures on it - and that's a fairly big car - normally gets about 46MPG over all. Really reliable and now approaching 170,000 miles on it.

To the point that I could have written exactly these comments myself.