Supercar sunday

About a month ago we were in the UK on holiday and on the sunday we were driving to Portsmouth for a day out. It's not unusual to see supercars every now and then - I've spotted the odd Ferrari and Lambo here and there. But we had a hell of a shock on that day. First, we passed a Pagani Zonda. Then we spotted a Lamborghini Reventon. Now there's only 25 of these in existence (I think). Then we were passed by a second Pagani Zonda. 10 minutes later, we were buzzed by a Porsche GT3RS and a Lamborghini Aventador. We figured something was up at that point and had our suspicions confirmed by a Ferrari Enzo and a Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera orbiting a roundabout in front of us. It was only later in the day that we discovered it had been Supercar Sunday at Goodwood. That would explain it. Although think of this : you'd expect supercars to be shown at that sort of event if they were trucked in by the manufacturers, but in this case these were 'everyday' owners. I can only conclude one thing from this experience - there isn't a recession in the southeast of England. I've only ever seen one of those cars before outside the pages of a magazine or TV show. To see so many that close together, out in the wild, was amazing.

Ferrari 599 vs taxi = bad for everyone

I enjoy spirited driving. I admit I speed - show me someone who tells you they don't speed and I'll show you a liar. But even I draw the line at speeding in built-up areas. Sadly, this isn't the case for some of the bottom-feeders of this world. On May 12th, there was a horrendous accident in Singapore when a guy driving a Ferrari 599 GTO at 180km/h blew through a red light with the inevitable result. It was caught on a dashcam by another driver. Sadly, the passenger and driver in the taxi that the Ferrari hit were killed. The Ferrari driver was also killed, but that's no biggie - he got everything he deserved. Bizarrely, his passenger and the motorcyclist he also hit both survived. When you see the video and photos, you'll understand why I use the word 'bizarrely'.
Look - I can understand buying a supercar. I would if I had the money. I can understand wanting to show off to the women - I'm a bloke - we're hard-wired to do stupid things like that. And I can understand wanting to drive fast. What I can't grasp is the logic that this guy applied where he thought all three of the above would be just fine and dandy in a busy city street. I've driven at 180km/h (faster, actually). It's quick. Bloody quick, even on a dead straight, wide open county road with no intersections and miles of visibility. I can't imagine how mental that must be in a city environment. Well - I can now thanks to the video.
It's not particularly graphic but it is shocking if you've never seen a traffic accident (for real or on video) before. You've been warned.

The right gear will save your life

When I see the helmet and seatbelt campaigns I always wonder how there are still people who don't see the benefits of safety gear. There's plenty of them though. I'm a career motorcyclist - I've been riding since I was 16 so I've always worn helmets for motorsports, and if the vehicle in question has a racing harness or seatbelt, so much the better. Case in point, last week I flipped a Razr 800 off-road buggy. Not sure how - we think the left front tyre came off the rim in a corner, but it went end-over-end and barrel rolled. I came out of it with an arm fractured in two places. I was harnessed in and wearing a helmet. After some on-site triage by some friends, we drove back to civilisation and I checked in to the ER. The doc said he knew I'd been wearing a helmet because the people he sees who've done the same sort of thing without a helmet typically arrive by air ambulance. There's nothing particularly gruesome here but if you want to see the outcome, here's some pics. Razr crash. Wear the appropriate gear. It will massively reduce the seriousness when something stupid happens.

Auto stop start

I recently rented a car that had one of those auto stop-start systems on it for fuel efficiency. The idea is that when you're stopped, the engine turns off and then as you get ready to move off, the engine starts again. The car I was driving was a manual so the system keyed off the clutch pedal. When I was stopped, if the car was in neutral and I took my foot off the clutch, the engine stopped. The first time this happened I panicked and put my foot on the clutch and turned the key to re-start the engine as I assumed it had stalled. Of course as soon as I pushed the clutch down, the engine started itself so by the time I turned the key, I got that awful "you're killing your engine" noise you get when the starter tries to engage with a running engine. That noise made me take my foot off the clutch again so then the engine stopped again. It took me one complete green cycle of the traffic lights, parked with the hazard lights on, trying to figure out just what the hell was going on. In the end I found the "off" button to turn the stupid function off completely but in this particular car it reset to "on" every time the car was parked. If you're a regular reader you'll know I despise in-car gadgets like this and auto stop-start has shot right into the top three of my most hated functions now, right next to auto lights and auto wipers. It's a pointless system that wastes more petrol than it saves (according to Auto Express and Motor Trend at least), and certainly induces far more stress on the engine's starter than it needs to. The additional complexity in wiring, sensors and ECU coding seems illogical and unnecessary too and it strikes me that on cars fitted with this system, we can probably guess with 100% accuracy what the first thing will be to fail. Either the stop start function, or the starter motor itself. Fortunately this particular car was a VW Golf and because of the ready availability of products like the VAGCOM (which I already own for my Tiguan) it would be child's play to turn this function off for good.

Going way back

Ever heard of the internet time machine? It's a project that archives websites pretty much forever. Long before I had the carbibles domain name, the earliest versions of this site were hosted at Geocities. I've used the internet time machine on a couple of occasions to defend my copyright - people who claim they wrote articles that were mine - and I can always pre-date them using this service. For example one of the earliest versions of the engine oil bible is here : internet time machine
Before the site was on geocities, I had it piggybacked off the server of a company I used to work for and those pages go back to 1994. I'm still trying to dig out a copy of those. I always find it interesting to go back that far in time and see how the site has evolved, how opinions have changed and how the various articles have matured and been refined by more up to date information and input from people with more knowledge than me. But one thing is clear - there will always be motorheads and car nuts, bikers of all sorts, greasemonkeys and people for whom their vehicle is simply a way of getting from A to B. I try to make my site enjoyable for everyone - hope you still like it.

Do your 12v electrical work properly.

If you've ever dabbled in 12v electrics in your car, you've probably come across one of the enemies of electrical systems - the spiteful little piece of metal and plastic known as the scotchlock connector.

These things are marketed as the saviour of wiring for people who like to do their own modifications. The idea is simple. If you want to splice two wires together, and one of them is an existing wire (like a +12v line, you can use one of these connectors. One side snaps over the existing wire, and the new wire goes into the other side. When you crimp the metal piece it pierces the insulation on both wires and makes an electrical connection. Clip the plastic snap closed and you're done, right? Well - for now. But later on, that connection will fail in all manner of creative ways and you'll be left with nothing but trouble which, for the most part, will be very hard to track down. Scotchlock connectors need to burn in hell.
If you're going to do your own electrical work in your car, do it properly. Use bullet connectors or crimp connectors if you're cutting and splicing wiring. They're just as easy to use as scotchlocks but they're a thousand times more reliable. You need to invest in a crimp tool - looks like a pair of pliers with notches in the jaws - because pliers won't crimp the electrical connection properly. But the end result is secure wiring that won't vibrate or pull apart and won't create electrical problems further down the line. Everything from engines that won't start, to flickering lights, to fried engine management computers to non-working instruments. I've seen all these things caused by sketchy wiring from people trying to scotchlock a new radio into their car.

The attraction of Scotchlock connectors is that you don't need to cut the vehicle's original wiring to splice lines together to make a Y-connection. In reality you are cutting the wiring though, because of the metal blade inside the connector. So given that, just cut the wiring and do it properly. Take one end of the cut wiring and the new wire, and crimp them together into one end of the bullet connector, and take the other end of the cut wiring and crimp it into the other connector. Simple - that's a Y-connection. Clip the two connectors together and you're done. For connections that don't need to be taken apart again, you can use an even simpler crimp connector and just stuff two wires in one end and one in the other.

It goes without saying that any work you do on the electrical system is best done with the battery disconnected. Although if you're the type that uses scotchlock connectors, chances are you never figured out to disconnect the battery in the first place.