Digsy

No, I already checked that. It re-iterates that the rods are forged but doesn't mention the crankshaft material.

I'd be very surprised it it was cast steel. I believe steel castings are quite expensive, and are more the domain of high performance turbine housings, exhaust manifolds and direct injection fuel rails. Plus you wouldn't get the so-called "fibre" flow in a steel casting. I just checked a couple of recent papers and as you say grey cast iron cranks are being pushed out by forged steel as the downsizing trend continues, cylinder pressures go up and bearing sizes come down in an effort to reduce friction. Even GM's new SGE 3-pot cooking engine has a forged steel crank. The 2JZ crank seems pretty well proportioned and I'm guessing that since it was designed back in the early 90's, cylinder pressures wouldn't have been that high. But given the amount of abuse it seems to be able to take, and the fact that its a long twisty I6 probably means it is a forged crank.

Given the stick that you goddam boy racers have given that poor crank over the years there's a good bet that it was machined out of the heavy end of Thor's hammer

The emissions test has become a load of rubbish. But only because engines have become so optimised to be efficient in the "emissions zone", which only covers about 25% of the total engine operating speed/load map. That's the only area the OEM will be tested in, the only area they will be financially penalised for exceeding emissions limits in, so it stands to reason that all the R&D has gone into making engines clean in that area and (mostly) that area alone. The drive cycles used around the world don''t and never did represent "normal driving", but now the difference in terms of emissions and fuel economy (the latter of which is more noticeable by the man in the street) is becoming large enough to call the whole thing into question - cheating or no cheating. End-users are starting to ask why their 60mpg car doesn't do 60mpg in real life. Optimising an engine to be clean on the drive cycle isn't cheating. Programming the ECU to recognise it is doing an emissions certification test and switch to a totally different operating mode altogether (which is what VW allegedly did) is cheating. And tests with "production spec vehicles" is already done for conformity of production, thing is the production spec vehicle also has the "defeat device" code, and will be tested under the same conditions, and so will still go into "cheat mode". IMHO this might accelerate the move to "off cycle testing", in which there is no specific drive cycle and the whole of the engine operating range is up for grabs. Problem is that it then becomes a very uneven playing field and finding a way to compare all cars driven in all styles and on all road surfaces in all environments will be a big challenge. There are new "more representative" drive cycles already close to being introduced, but they are still cycles, and so could be recognised by the ECU.

Not sure how you figure that. All the waterless coolant FAQs I have read state that systems typically run hotter after conversion, which stands to reason because pure water has a higher specific heat capacity than pure glycol or a water-glycol mix. The claimed advantage of waterless coolant seems to be that they don't enter into a film boiling regime in the hottest parts of the engine. The fact that waterless coolants can run at nearly 200degC is a bit pointless because by the time your coolant gets that hot, your engine will have detted itself to pieces anyway. I can see what that are getting at. There's a lot of technical blurb on the Evans website. However I think you would have a tough time proving the benefits without doing a whole load of very carefully instrumented tests. And it won't cure a leak.

I didn't read the whole thread, but: An evap system (purge system) is there to prevent light hydrocarbons from venting direct to atmosphere. Certain countries require a SHED test in which the evaporative emissions of a non-running car are measured over a period of time in a sealed environment. SHED tests are more strict in the US than elsewhere, and the diagnostic requirements for the purge system are more strict. Fuel vapour which evaporates naturally from the liquid in the tank is routed through the charcoal cannister, which is connected to the atmosphere. The carbon pellets inside the canister absorb the fuel vapour and store it. The size of the canister and the working volume of carbon is calculated from the size of the fuel tank, the rate of vapour generation (from experiment) and additional factors in case the system has onboard fueling vapour recovery (where vapour pushed out of the tank by refueling is collected in the purge canister). Sometimes there is a pressure check valve which does not allow the tank to vent atmospehere until it is above a certain pressure. This pressure inside the tank reduces the amount of vapour that evaporates off and so in turn drives a smaller evap canister than would be required by a system that always vents above atmospheric pressure. Such vehicles tend to emit a puff from the fuel tank when the filler cap is removed. I once did a bench marking study of 19 vehicles all of which exhibited some kind of "puff" from the tank and found that 70% of them were from Japanese manufacturers, and all had evap canisters that were smaller than the sizing formula would suggest. Federal vehicles have an electric shut off valve on the line to atmosphere which enables the system to be closed off for diagnostic testing. The valve is closed, the purge valve is opened and the system is drawn down to below atmospheric pressure by the engine. A pressure sensor in the system checks for leaks. The fuel vapour stored in the canister is periodically purged by opening the valve connecting the canister to the intake manifold (for purging off boost) or sometimes to further up the intake system (for purging on boost). During purging, fresh air is drawn into the canister through the carbon pellets via the line to atmosphere. The ECU knows when it is purging and how much additional air / vapour is entering the plenum and so fueling issues are avoided.

Using build 40.0.3 at the moment. Has anyone else noticed that the Lloyds online banking site makes Firefox hang for a few minutes when returning to the "your accounts" page? Seems to be some kind of script error. I'm running NoScript but it was OK up until a few weeks ago.

Another one with a Netgear 102 here. I use it for my everyday files plus as a media server. I also use the built in web server to run my home security system. I also have a much older ReadyNAS Duo which I use as a backup drive (the backup are automatically handled by the 102). I think the Netgear stuff is very capable and keenly priced, but the Synology stuff does come very highly rated.

I think the title of the section she writes in sums up its importance in the grand scheme of things: "Opinion".

Looks like the CAA have already spoken. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34044383 Glad I went to see the Vulcan this year when I had the chance. No loops, but the pilot threw it around a fair bit.

I really want this to be a success as I loved the original series. I think the casting is spot on but I found the humour in the trailer was just appallingly bad, in my opinion. Please let the final film be better than this!

I know there are several media centre solutions out there that knock WMC into a cocked hat but as far as I can see many of them require endless jiggery-buggery to get the best from them. What I liked about WMC was that, against all my expectations, the damn thing just worked straight out of the box. In fact I only intended to use it as a stop gap until I went over to XMBC or something similar, but in the end I found I didn't need to. Maybe I'll have another look at alternatives again to see if its worth upgrading.

No Windows Media Centre in W10, so I'll be staying with 7. Shame, as I just recently ordered a new phone and could have had W10 on both devices.

This is funny as hell when it happened to iPhone users, but not so now that it has happened to me, J Since upgrading from WP 8.0 to 8.1 the alarm clock feature seems to have gone a bit wonky: 1) The live tile often displays the incorrect “next alarm” time unless you go into alarm settings and toggle the next alarm on and off (thus forcing it to refresh itself). While annoying, the alarm still usually goes off at the correct time 2) This morning, and once before, not one of the three alarms I had set went off (don’t ask me why I set three alarms). This was even after doing the “refresh” as described above, so the alarms were correctly set and the live tile was displaying the correct time. This was especially annoying as Monday’s alarms are set at a different time to the rest of the week as I have to be up earlier. Anyone else noticed this?

I read an article on this kind of thing a while back. I basically said that there is no point in scammers putting a load of effort into making a scam look more convincing as the return on investment woudl quickly make it not worth the bother. Apparently they get a sufficient return off these lame scams to make it worthwhile keeping them running, even if 99% of the recipients immediately delete it.

I saw the Lancaster make a random flight over Norfolk a few weeks back. It passed by within a mile of where I was standing. I feel very lucky to have seen it now that I know its grounded!

My postman used to "helpfully" sign recorded parcels on my behalf. I honestly think he believed he was doing me a favour as he used to sign with is own name. I dobbed him in to the local post office and he doesn't do it anymore. Can you as for a copy of the signature on the parcel and compare it to yours? That would help prove you never received it.

When I looked into this a good while back there was a ton of small print that said more about what they would not inspect than what they would. I got the impression that it would be dead easy fo the dealer to rig it so that the AA / RAC guy didn't have proper access to the car for a decent inspection. Also, I don't believe you have any comeback on them if it turns out to be a lemon. Personally I'd save my money.

I think it won't be a real world problem for those engines Chris. Whatever the real power figure is, they probably wont ever do it for long enough to cause a problem, cooling wise. 50% of brake power to coolant is my usual benchmark for rad sizing.

"This will be the new tech showcase for the VW brand - featuring cylinder deactivation, electric-actuated turbocharging and direct injection" ...ironically all of which have been available on bog-stock VAG products for years. Unless then mean a proper eBooster, which will also be available on the new Q-series well before this comes out. Mind you it will be interesting to see how they package a DI system on that W engine cylinder head.

Happy birthday dude!

OK, do a Google for "Freemake Video Converter". I struggled for ages with VLC because everyone seems to rate it so highly for conversion. I can never get the damn thing got work so now I use Freemake instead and its happily munched through anything I've given it. I think the free version has some ads in it but nothing that has ever caused me any bother. If MOD is a proprietary format then you might be screwed, but its hopefully just a wrapper for something else.

According to this rather long-winded explanation its just MPEG2 format with a different file extension. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/convert-mod-camcorder-video-format-mpg-instantly/ Try changing the extension from .mod to .mpg and see if it will play then. Doesn't seem to work for everyone, especially if you run a modern OS or use widescreen video.

The gas strut moves through quite a large angle as the tailgate opens. You would have to push on your stick at the same angle as the gas struts when the hatch is closed and again at the angle when the hatch is open to see which gives the greater figure (probably when the hatch is closed).

Have you watched Flight?