OD404

See I like my 318IS (E36). As a cheap and reliable runabout it's been flawless, grated there are faster cars out there, and better handling ones, but it's still reasonably fun to drive and serves as a practical car alongside the RX-7. Speaking of which... Picked up my new bonnet at the weekend!

In typical rotary fashion; a new engine... More specifically, I noticed that one of the water seals in the block was beginning to give up the ghost and while it still had plenty of miles left before it really became an issue, I figured I'd be proactive. So the engine is coming out for a full seal change, the apex seals will be inspected before I decide whether or not to replace those, if they aren't too worn I'll just replace the springs behind them to give compression a boost. The block is also going to be ported to give a little more flow at top end (whilst maintaining low end torque). Gonna clean up the engine bay and fit a new cooling system and intercooler and delete some unwanted bits and pieces. Hopefully the result all this will be about 340bhp (limited by the capacity of the fuel system) but achieved with the turbos running stock boost levels at the very most. I've also got a new bonnet on its way, and intend to give the interior a complete overhaul, but that's taking a back seat until I've got it back on the road again.

Been one hell of a long time since I posted anything regarding my car, but things are changing...

It's not as bad as we make out. Money wise I earn more than enough at my age to have a comfortable living and have all the hobbies I want. However in terms of effort versus pay it's not great. People don't stay in engineering because it's a cash cow (it may be the reason they get into it initially), they stay because they enjoy the work, which I do. A couple of years back I read an article in the Times talking about average wages in different sectors. Engineering came out with the highest average wage and I think that tells a good story. That in some ways this profession is very like to earn you a comfortable standard of living, but the very high paid jobs are extremely rare. Fortunately the lower paid jobs tend to be better earners than those in other professions. As for my job, I'm now the lead structural analyst for our Tier 4 engine program, which is more project management than analysis work, but along side that I'm also now the lead CFD analyst at our tech centre, which stops me getting too bored with Microsoft project

What the hell, if no-one else is going to say it then I will: Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Anything fairly recent, with a reasonable amount of special effects or impressive landscapes will bring out the best in Bluray. So along with the current suggestions, here are a couple more: Lord of the Rings Transformers The Planet Earth series (and similar) Along with those I also recently got Fight Club and Predator, and was amazed at how well the conversions were done. Just about to order the Alien Quadrilogy on Bluray so hoping the conversions are just as good.

Your link to a graph showing oil production levels can be a little misleading as availability of oil and cost of extraction are only a couple of factors which determine amount of oil produced in a year. Global demand, storage and other factors can have an effect and wouldn't necessarily be an indication of an on going or impending 'crisis'. I'm hoping that's not your only source? I manage to sit on both sides of the fence with this. Developing new engines and power generation equipment that use less fuel/oil as well as utilising waste heat to reduce the need for heating mean's that I am helping to reduce our consumpsion of fossil fuel. But on the other hand my car does 17mpg

GT5 uses the PS3 eye to give you this feature

I'm a computational analyst for Cummins diesel engines. I get involved with stress/fatigue analysis, structural dynamics and fluid analysis for various engine components.

Agreed, I'm pretty sure no-one on here can truely say they were actually noticably better off while we had the 15% VAT rate... If anything it was more of a gimmick to get us to spend more under the illusion that we had loads more to spend, whereas the reality was that a few less pence on everything we buy is not going to make a difference. As someone who keeps a good eye on my finanaces I can say without a doubt that it made no difference to my outgoings. The increase to 20% in my view will have the same marginal effect on people's individual lives, but add all those marginal increases together for the whole county and the government will actually receive a decent amount to help the defecit. Besides, fuel prices vary more than the 2.5% VAT increase anyway...

Looking forward to GT5 arriving tomorrow, Black Ops just hasn't impressed me to be honest

Can't say I've been that impressed so far

Another vote here for buying the boots new. I bought my first pair new and then got the board and bindings off ebay. You can find some real bargins out there, I got an unused board and bindings for £170 posted, when the board alone was worth about £300 new. I've since changed all my gear, but only because I'm at a stage where I know what equipment suits me. When you start out, in theory you could learn to ride anything, but the fact remains that poorly fitting boots will hurt. Good luck with learning, having somewhere close you can keep going to will be a huge help!

Wish someone would send me highlights

This man speaketh the truth. You need to sort out what you can afford to buy and run (including how much you can afford for insurance as that's likely to be the biggest outlay at your age), then start looking .

I've been cheated on, we stayed together after I found out due to the circumstances surrounding why she cheated (not going into them), unfortunately the break down in trust was such that the relationship never really stood a chance of continuing and it pretty much imploded. It's a tough choice, personally I think my initial response depends a lot on why behind them cheating, but knowing how the above example went, I think cutting my losses at that point is probably the best option, despite how I might still feel about them (and vice versa).

Structural and Fluid Dynamics analyst.

I agree with this, your teacher should not expect you to go out and buy a CAD package for your course (or download one illegally for that matter). They are generally not cheap, and you would require some tuition to use them (pretty sure your teacher won't be able to teach you every one that available). If there is nothing available at your school, I would try out Google Sketchup as suggested, it's a good and free way to begin 3d modelling, but first and foremost I'd speak to your teacher to find out what he actually meant by his comments.

Username: st_garrett Games: MW2, Need for Speed Shift, Assassin Creed 2

So are you trying to say that having people new to this sport joining the forum is a bad thing?

I imagine it will have one, it would have to be pretty old not to. Whether it can be chipped is another matter really. How old is the van? Again looking at what others have done is all very well, but be clear about what it is you want to change, do you want more power at the top end (which is what the vast majority of "quick" modifications will acheive) or do you want to increase power low down (which is more complicated and costly to acheive properly). I think you should probably go for the 2.5, the extra displacement will give you an increase in torque throughout the rpm range and will produce more low down power (as well as more at the top too).

This pretty much covers what I was going to say, and I agree that almost everything you listed, while it will give you more top end power, it won't give you anything lower down where you claim you have the problem. The exception is the decat. By removing pressure from the exit of the turbo you get two benefits due to the increased mass flow through the turbine. Firstly is an increase in peak power as already mentioned, but secondly you will be able to spool the turbo slightly quicker as the back pressure in the exhaust limits the gas's ability to spool the turbo. The increase in spool then depends on how your wastegate is controlled. If mechanically then the increased spool will be more noticable, if electronically, then the effect of the decat could be masked by the way the wastegate is controlled by the ecu (this is seen when I decatted my rx7, the electronic boost control prevented the turbo from spooling until the set rpm in the ecu). So you may or may not get a benefit. Knock-on effects of the decat include increased noise, increased emissions (possible MOT failure) and you could run into fueling issues if your ecu can't deal with the extra airflow to the engine (granted the increase won't be great, but it all depends on what margin the ecu's fuel tables have, some allow a healthy increase in boost, others like my rx7's don't).

What's the readline set at on your van? The other issue could be that it's making less torque than it should at lower revs which could point to an issue elsewhere. Simply turning up the boost pressure will not solve this problem as you want to shift the power band down the rev range. To get the turbo to spool faster, you need to increase the volume and speed of gas going through it at lower revs to overcome the inertia of the turbo wheel. This would drive you down the route of changing manifolds (exhaust and inlet), changes to the engine's timing and mapping etc etc, simply put it isn't a simple job. You could put a smaller turbo on, that would spool faster and move peak power down the rev range, but it will impact on peak power so you may find it accelerates better in low rpms, but has a loss of power higher up which I personally think would mean you'll struggle even more going up hills. The simplest thing to do is manage your gear changes to keep the revs at peak power and therefore maximising the power you have in the engine as it is.

It's not just the materials and time needed to make a part that needs to be considered, you also need to think about the time taken to design it in the first place. If you pay someone £x's an hour to design you something, then those costs need to be factored into the final cost of the item, as well as any capital costs like purchacing machinery or design software etc. Sure a crappy component might not have had much design effort put into it, which may mean it costs a lot less to buy, but if you want a well designed part that has been properly tested then unfortunately someone has to pay for that effort, and that someone is always the customer.

Stay clear of ProEngineer if you want something light. As recommended, go for ProDesktop, that will do the trick for just giving modelling a go.