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I love those true original classic mini cooper S with exposed hinges. I test drove a 1275 S long ago. It is very spartan and raw. It certainly drove like a go cart - without suspension and the tyres are the suspension. Of course it was out of my reach at the time. I love white cars, but not all cars look good in white. I had a black BMW once and after that I say never would I want a dark colour car.
BTW, there is a history with racing colours adopted by the countries, if you are those who care about history.
No photo's from yesterday? It was warm and sunny, how odd.
Mini got a well deserved rest. Took the Porsche out a number of times and gave my neighbour Tony a ride and I promised him not to kill him. He was very impressed.
Tony wants a Jaguar XKR and I am waiting with optimism he will indeed go thru with it. He is the one I am helping with the Isuzu Trooper analog gauge set.
It often is better not to rush to judgement when grading photos. I took quite a number of shots with the Broadway Bridge and Union Station as the backdrop. The one that I first selected bothers me. The front wheel looks out of proportion. Here is another shot at slightly different angle and has better definition in the dark wheel wells.
I like this shot better
the front wheel looks out of proportion and as if it has a flat tyre because of a depression on the surface
NAM dumb censor algorithm won't let me write the closer Deutsch of "fat" which happens to be the same as an English common name, so I have to settle for the closest word that is Fett. That is the problem with geo-cultural specific decency censorship.
Recently I have been paying more attention to my impression newer cars getting larger and heavier with each passing years. We understand that fuel efficiency, emission, safety, and performance are few of the contribute factors, ignoring the fact that people are getting larger and heavier, and lazier.
When I first brought the Porsche home I was very surprised to find out its wheelbase is nearly identical to the Mini's.
I have always been under the impression that even Porsche has grown a bit obese. The old air cooled look so much smaller than all the water cooled Porsches. I set out to collect some facts and the results surprised me. I picked three cars for comparison. Two are what I have. For the air cooled Porsche I pick 993 911S as it is the last of the air cooled and amongst the most refined.
I didn't spend a lot of time collecting this numbers. It should be noted that you can't take the numbers at face value for many reasons. They are however, good for rough comparison to get some perspective. There are some blanks as I couldn't find the specs or there are not apple/apple due to many reasons.
The takeaway is the new Porsches are not obese at all. They are mostly longer for drag coefficient reasons. Air is also a lousy medium for thermal transportation. The classic Porsches look small and lighter because of the styling.
And BTW, I know US R53 is heavier and ride more like a Cadillac than the ROW because of **** DOT.
image credit Wikipedia
I revised some errors in the table and added Porsche GT3 and Mustang GT350. Don't think you can buy a GT350 for $56,745 listed. The dealers want closer to $90,000 for one.
Last edited by pnwR53S; 02-08-2018 at 06:26 PM.
Reason: edited table specifically removed WHP; added two more cars
He has been driving his beige car Subaru Legacy as he need to go back and forth to the coast via 2-lane highway. I told him I would not drive the Trooper as there are way too many head-on collisions and the Subaru is a much safer car.
My money is on the bimetal switch contacts of the thermal compensator that is a part of the fuel gauge but also services the coolant temperature gauge.
my neighbour's dream car and I told him he is soft ; image credit Wikipedia
I don't suppose you have fitted your innovate afr kit yet? Why I ask is I have just burnt through my second sensor.. Am pretty ****&d about it, those sensors are not cheap! Has even lasted 3 months and the car hasn't even done big mileage as I am away so often. Wonder why bytetronik chooses to use innovate when the Zeitronix kit is far more reliable! I have had the same Zeitronix setup in my other car running for over 2 years now. So now it's off to buy another sensor, 3rd one within 5 months! Just to continue with the data logging tuning process with Mynes.
I don't suppose you have fitted your innovate afr kit yet? Why I ask is I have just burnt through my second sensor.. Am pretty ****&d about it, those sensors are not cheap! Has even lasted 3 months and the car hasn't even done big mileage as I am away so often. Wonder why bytetronik chooses to use innovate when the Zeitronix kit is far more reliable! I have had the same Zeitronix setup in my other car running for over 2 years now. So now it's off to buy another sensor, 3rd one within 5 months! Just to continue with the data logging tuning process with Mynes.
Thanks for sharing your experience, good or bad, and I appreciate it. So often some are unwilling to disclose the product they invested do not live up to expectation. It is interesting that you think Innovate tends to kill the WB sensor and yet Zeitronix does not. I just check their products and it seems they use the same Bosch LSU-4.9 WB sensor. If the Innovate tends to kill the sensor, with the installation being equal, the only thing that can explain it is the heater management. The integral heater in the WB sensor is to maintain it in proper operation temperature. This does not make sense to be the cause.
I have not install mine as it is rainy season here and I am a shade tree home mechanic.
There seems to be tribal knowledge suggestion that this WB senor does not like being exposed to the main flow stream of the exhaust gas, but I cannot find any clear articulation of the issue and reasons.
Can you please share what A/F ratio you are seeing. Could it be too rich that is killing the sensor rather than high temperature?
Well you hitting the nail on the head talking about the heater management of the WB sensor. When I spoke to my zeitronix installer/distributor here, the first thing he said it was because of the crap#py innovative system the way it operates the sensor, and hence he doesn't touch their stuff.
Regarding my AFR I see the usual 14.7 highway cruise no boost then under boost pedal to the metal Mynes/Bytetronik had my afr at about 11.0 - 10.8 at upper Rev range... I am running their Mynes V2 exhaust header as well which they installed the bung for exactly in the right location I guess that it is needed at, as it is their products after all... I wish other guys would write their sh1tty experiences to with products.
I wish other guys would write their sh1tty experiences to with products.
That is my exact sentiment, with some posters. They are more interested in showing other how much they know, and just tease you with one cryptic incomplete sentence drive by post.
Very interesting with the installer's remark on Innovate heater management. May be indeed there is something there.
The other subtle thing about O2 sensors in general, I read that it relies on the wire insulator to breath outside air, which is a necessary design for the sensor to function.
Nice car, if she is thinking of selling and you aren't buying let me know. Looks like the house needs a bit of tending to as well, some paint perhaps!.
Nice car, if she is thinking of selling and you aren't buying let me know. Looks like the house needs a bit of tending to as well, some paint perhaps!.
The good part about the car is, it didn't suffer from the typical bad ":upgrades" and bad mods. It is very much original. The same cannot be said of the house. We call it Swiss Chalet. It was a mid century modern with old grown narrow vertical CVG rough sawn sidings that cost a fortune to replace nowadays. They are long gone. The house suffered from insensitive remuddling without any respect for the 60s modern architecture. There is nothing left of the original architecture integrity.
There is another house owned by a realtor. He painted it with colors that is inappropriate for the period and design, and we call it the Burger King , as the color schemes is exactly like that of the burger chain.
Finally I had a chance to witness the intermittent failure of the two gauges on my neighbour’s Trooper. It has just over 200,000 miles and still runs great.
In my second iteration of prescription I added 2 more test wires. I wanted to eliminate the possibility of a series inductor that supplies power to the bi-metal temperature compensator. I marked them L+ and L-. If both are 12V when the gauges stop working, I know the inductor has nothing to do with it. Then is down to either the contact points or a resistance weld that connects one end of the heating element to the bi-metal arm.
It was a mild day at about 50. We started the car and the fuel gauge immediately slowly rises - it is a dead giveaway of the gauge being bi-metal. It was working, as one might think. I proceeded to check the voltages on the test wires with a freebie Harbor Freight DMM. All are what I expected for when the gauges are working.
While I was monitoring the voltage of the temperature compensator output I notice rather than toggling at a few Hz it would drop down to zero for a couple of seconds. I glanced up to look at the fuel gauge and it was falling back down slowly. This is consistent of how they function. Then the falling needle rose again to indicate the right fuel level. So if one were not observant one would think that the gauge is functioning, but in fact, it is failing a small percentage of the time.
the bi-metal contact of the temp compensator
Clearly this observation is enough to make the call to the likely cause of the failure. We narrowed down to two possibilities - the contact points or the resistance weld of the heating element that I could not visually inspect. I put the former being the much more likely cause. With 200,000 miles the contact points must have open and closed 10s of millions of times. I feel confident to tell him to carefully and gently sand the surfaces of the contact points with a fine wet sand paper. I cautioned him be very careful not to disturb the bi-metal arm as doing so will ruin the factory calibration.
To do this, he would have to disassemble the aux gauge cluster. It is house in a plastic enclosure that acts as a incubation chamber as well as protect the gauges from dust contamination.
There are subtle things that are wrong with the facade. The white brick veneer to embellishment between the front door and garage door, bottom to top extra height of the frosted glass light are among them.
The good is they don't have raised panel front and garage doors.
I was out driving yesterday late afternoon. I went to the train station hoping to get some good photos. The station was surprisingly quiet for a Saturday afternoon. It turns out closer is not always better for a landmark backdrop for photo. Here is one that immediately reminds me of the Goodfellas of the narration of Ray Liotta obsession that the helicopter had been following him all afternoon.
this helicopter has been tailing me all afternoon
On the way back home in dusk I spotted this gorgeous Alpine white BMW with a big tail spoiler merging onto the highway in front. I sped up to see what it is, and it is a BMW M4. I gave the driver a thumb up and he acknowledged. He deliberately dropped back and followed me for a good distance with respect. Neither of us are mature enough to know public road is no place to show off our cars. I would have like to follow such a beautiful and capable car while cruising. Unbeknown to me at the time it is rare M4 GTS, which I would realize googling at home later. To me that car looks the best in Alpine white, and same with most BMW M cars.
I have been in the quest in photographing Desire with Oregon's quirky landmarks. This morning I risk my life taking these with traffic flying by in excess of 50 MPH.
The sun was at a difficult angle and I was most concerned with possible lens flare. I used google street view to do location scout beforehand. There are some landmarks that are just don't lend themselves to automotive photography.
I am enslaved to my vehicles. I am diagnosing a speed dependent driveline vibration on the Westfalia Vanagon Camper. I have been suspecting the motor mounts might be the cause but I was unconvinced until now. There are four and unfortunately you cannot inspect them. I decided to order a set so I have the parts on hand when I go to the trouble to inspect them. I suspect the bond between the rubber block and the steel plate has delaminated.
the whole set cost just slightly over $40; I also bought a speedometer cable to rid the annoying bouncing speedometer needle
02-05-2018, 01:36 PM
Of course it was out of my reach at the time. I love white cars, but not all cars look good in white. I had a black BMW once and after that I say never would I want a dark colour car.
Took the Porsche out a number of times and gave my neighbour Tony a ride and I promised him not to kill him. He was very impressed.
That is the problem with geo-cultural specific decency censorship. 
