Greetings

This is absolutely amazing. So inspiring!

Winter came and it's gone now. Had a lot of fun though, we were out from 9pm to around 4am. Covered about 150 miles, 40 of which were on "special stages" in the woods. Too much snow unfortunately and we did find a lot of obstacles on our way. We had most of our fun coming back because the roads were completely empty (on a 60 mile journey we passed 3 cars a lorry and a police car going the opposite direction) and covered in a nice thin layer of snow which gave sufficient grip to have fun. Sadly after coming back I came to the conclusion that I'm a shitty driver. Anyone can go fast on a dry surface, quite a few can do the same on a wet surface but I think ice and snow separate average drivers from the very good ones. Perhaps it's the short wheelbase of the car but I don't feel at all confident. I noticed that to fully utilize a 4x4 drive train you need to drive a lot quicker than you would in a FWD/RWD otherwise the car behaves like a FWD which is absolutely awful. Plus my steering rack is really slow and I frequently lose control of the front wheels, not knowing which direction they are pointing. Some pics: Also came across this epic video of a very talented racing driver playing around in an Evo:

As is the case everywhere else. But you don't get people building walls around fields on which they grow moss and grass. edit: only other reason I can think of is that some fields in the UK could be littered with stones and building walls out of them is the best way of getting them out of the way?

I know this is beautiful and so on but this pic also sums up why I don't like most UK country roads. You're constantly surrounded by walls made of rocks or vegetation, there's no sense of freedom. I very rarely drive onto and through a field just for the sake of it but I want to be given the opportunity to do so without having to be in a tank.

Epic car time After a lengthy engine rebuild and lots of other work it's ready Turns out most of the valves in the engine were bent and the gasket was no more. So it should have close to 90bhp now which in connection with 750kg of weight and 4 wheel drive is going to be absolutely epic in the snow and on ice. It's also had 540i springs installed so it should behave better when it gets airborne. Conditions aren't yet perfect but we're going out tonight anyway. Need to get some rally lights for this, does anyone know if there's a way of calculating whether the alternator will cope with an extra 140W of power?

It's a Fideltronik, local produce as far as I'm aware. I would have thought 300W is enough too. I tested it on a 240W+60W lamp. I'm aware it's supposed to give me just enough time to switch the PC off and in current condition it's ok for that. However, it'll do it once and then need a few hours to recharge. Our generator takes about 15s to start and during bad weather it might start/switch off a few times each hour. This means the UPS needs to keep my PC running for at least 1-2 minutes per hour. According to manufacturer specs, it's a 700VA 420W and it should keep the PC running for 110min at 100VA, down to 6min at 700VA. Apparently using a car battery is ok but I think I'll try to get replacement gel batteries and see if that helps. According to some info I found, the batteries should supply a minimum of 13.5V. In my case the voltage very quickly drops to about 11 per battery and the UPS fails. Would such quick discharge not indicate bad batteries?

Do you even know what a UPS is?

Got a problem with my UPS. It's got two dry 12V 7.2Ah batteries connected in series so it's working on a 24V system. Recently I've noticed it won't hold my PC during a power cut for more than about 30 seconds. I assumed this was something to do with the batteries. So I replaced one of the batteries with a 85Ah 12V car battery. This didn't help at all (why?). I then checked the charge and all the batteries - both 12V 7.2Ah which I assumed were dead and the 85Ah are showing over 12V charge. Despite this, the UPS is shutting down. This would suggest to me that the problem is elsewhere? Does anyone on here know how a UPS works and what component might be broken? Or perhaps both batteries need to be replaced? edit: further troubleshooting: - Charging at 26V - Will cope with 300W power use for a few seconds - During those few seconds charge drops quickly from around 24V to 21-22V and the power supply switches off. Would 21-22V be insufficient to power any appliance connected to the power supply? If so, how is one supposed to use the full charge of the battery if a 10% drop in voltage already deems the whole thing useless?

Stuck in a rut again.

~5.6mpg is my best (worst), got it while drifting. Rallysprint returns better mpg. That said, JD could probably top us on a track. Here's an old recording I did of a 0-160 run, the display at the bottom shows the fuel consumption. Values of 0-30 are in fact 100-130 since the display is a double digit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFyNAqdyV-Y Actually I'd be quite interested to know what the 4.4 E39 shows on that test on the OBC.

Nice induction noise...

This doesn't surprise me at all. You need a proper vice to unscrew sprockets.

That guy must be sooo gutted... This suggests to me that there's a lot to be made on Bitcoins in the longer run. If the currency is becoming popular in China it's value will skyrocket.

Can you sell Bitcoins quickly enough to make speculation worthwhile? I once looked into this purely out of interest and figured it's not easy to buy them. If they cannot be sold instantly you risk losing lots of money if the value starts plummeting.

I've only driven a few diesels in my life, all with the same 3L BMW diesel engine and I can't say the engine is fun. The power delivery is different to a petrol engine which makes it interesting but not enjoyable. One of the said cars was a 330d with about 250bhp. When the boost came on it was really quick but it had turbo lag as did all the other cars - they struggled below 1500rpm. And any time you lifted and went back on the throttle it would hesitate for a while before the boost came in. Give me a diesel which will pull hard from 800rpm in any gear and I'll live with it, otherwise it's big petrol engines + CNG/LPG for me any time.

Joking aside, I really like that bike/frame.

Like above, looking at things I've built from various angles. Standing in places of the house where I never stood before (corners, tight places). Curling up in bed under lots of blankets in a cold room.

It's a 1969 GT with a different cam, apparently 130bhp roughly. Can't wait to drive it, dad seems to think it's a really nice car. Not a huge fan of how it looks though. It looks a bit like a Fiat Siena would if it was designed in the 70s'.

Yeah that's what I think too. Tis a bit strange

Well my dad has just bought this: He'll be collecting it in over a month. He specifically wanted this model because this is the one he drove in the British Rally and many others (including internationals) back in the days when he was competing. Now it's going to be his daily driver for the winter when his MGA needs to stay clear from the salt. So it's a bit like if I were to buy an E36 M3 in 2050. Very romantic.

This is amazing.

Wheel room filling up Can't wait for the day when I look at the weather forecast, go in there and take out 2-3 sets of wheels perfect for all conditions one might encounter. Still a long way to go though, probably half way there The epic thing about this grotty room is that it's pretty much perfect for tyre storage - warm, very moist and dark. Needless to say due to those conditions it's useless for anything else which is why it was standing empty for the last few decades.

One of my fellow riders who's now ranked ~7 in the world started a fundraiser to help him take part in the upcoming season. What is bloody annoying is that all my friends seem to be sharing this on Facebook asking to donate yet none of them have donated themselves. What a f**king annoying attitude - pretending to be helping without actually doing anything.

Remember the thread regarding a chap who's angry letter about trials riders got published in a local paper? Somehow Ben was involved in this and openly replied to that letter in a rather brilliant fashion. Can't find the thread, any update on this?

Speculation is the easiest way of making money and also the easiest way to lose money. If I were to invest in something it'd be property. I remember that our house in Wimbledon sold in '95 for 180k, a few years later it sold for over 1m. My parents were pretty gutted With the economic recession around it's highly probable that there are areas which you can invest in with a big return although the best time to do that was early 2009. Still worth looking around.