• (disco) in reply to kupfernigk

    It may be unique to the UK, but the 911 does have a whiff of 'mid-life crisis' about it

  • (disco) in reply to PleegWat
    PleegWat:
    You go to a comedy show for car advice?

    Better than watching the ads and reading the stickers.

    RaceProUK:
    It may be unique to the UK, but the 911 does have a whiff of 'mid-life crisis' about it

    Really? Looking around where I live the current mid life crisis vehicles are Harleys and black Range Rovers. The previous generation was Audi TTs. When I had my mid-life crisis I was too busy working to worry about cars. So long as somebody else was servicing, taxing and insuring it, and I could expect to get back in one piece from Germany or Switzerland, fine.

  • (disco) in reply to RaceProUK
    RaceProUK:
    It may be unique to the UK, but the 911 does have a whiff of 'mid-life crisis' about it

    It does in the US, too, though I think Corvettes are the more typical choice.

  • (disco) in reply to kupfernigk
    kupfernigk:
    I've seen that done as a demo, to show both the softening and the poor thermal conductivity of iron. Heat in the middle with propane torch, hold ends and bend by hand while the middle is still cherry red. Then quench and invite anyone who thinks they are strong enough to straighten it out again.

    Yeah -- the best part is that propane burns cooler than jet fuel/kerosene. Anyone care to do this demo with a drum o' heating kerosene for the flame instead of the torch, btw? (That should tell the "truthers" to STFU.)

  • (disco) in reply to tarunik
    tarunik:
    (That should tell the "truthers" to STFU.)

    Stop trying to bring facts to an examination of the “truth”; the “truth” has never been constrained by mere factual reality!

  • (disco) in reply to dkf

    https://youtu.be/KF6SNxNIV08

  • (disco) in reply to tarunik
    tarunik:
    That should tell the "truthers" to STFU.

    You expect 'em to listen? These are people who made up their mind after seeing the guy who proved 9/11 was a hoax by setting up a campfire with chicken wire supporting a brick, and Rosie saying "fire can't melt steel".

  • (disco) in reply to FrostCat
    FrostCat:
    Clearly they're not out of touch with a less urban way of life, though, if they know about blacksmiths and the like.

    I draw your attention to the fact that until at least the 1950s urban blacksmiths were common. My great-grandfather was a blacksmith in a London street. I remember as a child seeing the drayhorses pulling the beer wagon round London pubs, and I'm only in my 60s. And in the US, we had an accountant in the 1990s who was passing the business to his daughter so he could become a full time blacksmith. In a Chicago suburb.

  • (disco) in reply to kupfernigk
    kupfernigk:
    I draw your attention to the fact that until at least the 1950s urban blacksmiths were common.

    Don't draw my attention to it. I'm not the one who doesn't know about this shit.

    Hell, I live in a city and I know a farrier. He might even be a blacksmith in his own right but I'm not sure.

  • (disco) in reply to tarunik
    tarunik:
    I wouldn't be surprised if you could get rebar (for instance) to a workable temperature with nothing but a propane torch hooked up to a gas grill tank

    You can certainly do it with nothing but charcoal (and a bellows, if you want to speed it up a bit).

  • (disco) in reply to kupfernigk
    kupfernigk:
    I'm only in my 60s.

    Even I need to get off your lawn. :)

  • (disco) in reply to HardwareGeek
    HardwareGeek:
    Even I need to get off your lawn.

    You do, as either the dog or the Robomow might get you.

  • (disco) in reply to kupfernigk
    kupfernigk:
    Robomow

    I seriously want one of those, but man, they're expensive.

  • (disco) in reply to HardwareGeek
    HardwareGeek:
    I seriously want one of those, but man, they're expensive.

    Depends how much spare time you have. When I bought ours I was pretty busy, and the Robomow was cheaper than a gardener. I reckon it paid for itself in 3 years. Maintenance takes about an hour a year and I do it myself (blades are snap out snap in.) It's six years old this August, and it's chugging away right now.

  • (disco) in reply to RaceProUK
    RaceProUK:
    The stupid thing about that is the Cayenne is a better off-road car than the Panda; on Top Gear, they basically rallied a Cayenne down a two mile rally stage in two minutes. On road tyres.

    Didn't they also find that a Ford Fiesta out-performed a navy landing craft? People still sneer when I say I drive one.

    (I like that car. I don't care if it isn't fast or cool.)

  • (disco) in reply to CarrieVS
    CarrieVS:
    People still sneer when I say I drive one.
    People sneer when you say you drive one of the best superminis currently available?
  • (disco) in reply to CarrieVS
    CarrieVS:
    a Ford Fiesta out-performed a navy landing craft?

    and that there is why i have trouble with people who take top gear as gospel.

    is fun show and that's cool, but they are not a fair or balanced review show. they are in the market for getting views and they will do anything to get those views. :stuck_out_tongue:

    that being said :wtf: is wrong with the fiesta? is an amazing car! oh. wait i know what the problem is. it's not a truck and 'murica wants trucks and you can't be a real 'murican without a truck and a gun rack. :facepalm:

  • (disco) in reply to accalia
    accalia:
    oh. wait i know what the problem is. it's not a truck and 'murica wants trucks and you can't be a real 'murican without a truck and a gun rack.
    That doesn't quite work for the United Kingdom of Englandland :stuck_out_tongue:
  • (disco) in reply to RaceProUK

    i thought @CarrieVS was on my side of the pond.....

    well i guess it's true what they say about assuming things without the facts to back them up.

    :embarassed:

  • (disco) in reply to accalia
    accalia:
    i thought @CarrieVS was on my side of the pond.....

    ...

    Well I did once think you were on mine, but you said you do that on purpose, IIRC. I've always said I'm a Brit.

    That said, I think it's largely Americans who sneer at my car - it's generally on the internet, like most of my social interactions.

  • (disco) in reply to CarrieVS
    CarrieVS:
    but you said you do that on purpose

    i do have a fair few British mannerisms that's true,

    CarrieVS:
    I've always said I'm a Brit.

    ah. then my brain has failed me again! curse you brain! eat fist!

    thunk

    o-owww! that was not a well thought out plan....

    CarrieVS:
    That said, I think it's largely Americans who sneer at my car - it's generally on the internet, like most of my social interactions.
    yeah. apparently the culture in 'murica says that if you get >9mpg (or >3.8kpl) you don't have a "real" car and you are shaming yourself, your family, and your country.

    as far as i'm concerned they can positively go take a long walk of short pier. I get almost 6x better gas mileage than they do and am quite happy about that thanks!

  • (disco) in reply to accalia
    accalia:
    the culture in 'murica says that if you get >9mpg (or >3.8kpl) you don't have a "real" car and you are shaming yourself, your family, and your country.

    That's all very well when petrol is (I'm told) only slightly more than 1/3 the price it is over here. Over here it's more likely to be shameful to drive a gas-guzzler.

  • (disco) in reply to CarrieVS

    Well, duh. It's an European Ford. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkur

  • (disco) in reply to accalia
    accalia:
    >3.8kpl

    :wtf: The common unit for gas usage in relation to travelled distance is commonly litres/100km ... You guys have it completely bass-ackwards.

  • (disco) in reply to CarrieVS

    hmm. that i can see.

    http://www.statista.com/statistics/221368/gas-prices-around-the-world/

    of course the source of that statistic are hidden behind a login wall and bugmenot does not have a working login for that site... so i can't independantly verify the statistics

  • (disco) in reply to aliceif
    aliceif:
    gas usage in relation to travelled distance is commonly litres/100km

    yes, but i didn't know of the top of my head how to ask google for the conversion.

  • (disco) in reply to accalia

    I was basing it on a conversation with an American friend last night. He quoted a price that translated to 46p a litre; it was something like £1.12 here, at the cheapest place around, last time I filled up. I shall find out tonight if it's wildly changed. Edit: £1.16 now. Ew.

    aliceif:
    The common unit for gas usage in relation to travelled distance is commonly litres/100km ...You guys have it completely bass-ackwards.

    I have never heard anything other than mpg. Except when people were joking about cars so bad they were measured in gpm.

  • (disco) in reply to accalia
    accalia:
    yeah. apparently the culture in 'murica says that if you get >9mpg (or >3.8kpl) you don't have a "real" car and you are shaming yourself, your family, and your country.
    Which is ironic, given the idea of a 'real car' in the US isn't legally a car, but a small truck :wtf:
    CarrieVS:
    I have never heard anything other than mpg. Except when people were joking about cars so bad they were measured in gpm.
    l/100km is the norm in Yurop ;)
  • (disco) in reply to CarrieVS
    CarrieVS:
    I have never heard anything other than mpg. Except when people were joking about cars so bad they were measured in gpm.

    l/100km is quite a common measure in Mainland Europe AIUI. It actually makes more sense when comparing fuel consumption than mpg does, but people raised with one measure don't understand the other. As it is, I spend more time than I care to admit working out how many gallons the number of litres I put in equates to every time I fill up

  • (disco) in reply to Jaloopa
    Jaloopa:
    It actually makes more sense

    I disagree. "Miles per gallon" indicates how far you can drive between fill-ups. "Liters per 100km" indicates how much petrol you need to buy in order to go a certain distance. For people who drive a regular amount every day, given that there's a maximum amount of fuel that can be held in the tank at once, it makes perfect sense to consider how often you need to buy fuel rather than how much fuel you need to buy. After all, if you're trying to minimize trips to the station, you probably fill your tank each time.

  • (disco) in reply to Yamikuronue

    The important part of that was

    Jaloopa:
    when comparing fuel consumption

    If you want a realistic assessment of how much less fuel you use/how much further you'll go on a tank by using a more efficient engine, l/100km is easier to understand

    http://www.skepticblog.org/2012/05/24/mpg-vs-l100km/

  • (disco) in reply to Jaloopa
    Jaloopa:
    l/100km is easier to understand
    Really? MPG is easy enough to understand: bigger numbers are better
  • (disco) in reply to Jaloopa
    Jaloopa:
    If you want a realistic assessment of how much less fuel you use/how much further you'll go

    But what I want to know when evaluating a car is always, "How will buying this car impact my lifestyle differently than buying that car?". In which case, "time between fillups" is the number I want. To get there from MPG, I can figure out how many miles I drive in a day, multiply gallons by tank size, and get to "days per tank" easily. How do I evaluate that with l/100km?

  • (disco) in reply to RaceProUK

    Jesus christ, man, my clarification is right above your post. When comparing efficiency.

  • (disco) in reply to Jaloopa

    Right, and a car with higher MPG is more efficient :stuck_out_tongue:

  • (disco) in reply to RaceProUK

    You have a 14MPG truck and a 33MPG car. You have the option of trading in one or the other for a more efficient model. Do you switch your truck for a 17MPG one, or the car for a 50MPG one, for maximum gains?

    Assume you do a similar amount of miles in each, to forestall pedantry

    filed under: it's all explained if you'd RTFL

  • (disco) in reply to Jaloopa
    Jaloopa:
    When comparing efficiency.

    How many efficients is it between my job and my house?

    I get the argument, tho, when you're calculating stuff like x% "better" etc... efficiency is more correct, but... practically I when I drive I use "miles".

  • (disco) in reply to Jaloopa
    Jaloopa:
    Assume you do a similar amount of miles in each, to forestall pedantry
    If I want pedantry, I'd point out I wouldn't have both a truck and a car; since the car does 33MPG, I'd do as much as possible in that, and hire a truck when I need one. Which then means I'd trade it for the 50MPG car.

    However, to address your example directly, I get the feeling you've picked figures that give exactly the same gains in efficiency.

  • (disco) in reply to RaceProUK
    RaceProUK:
    I get the feeling you've picked figures that give exactly the same gains in efficiency.

    I didn't choose them, the linked article did. But, yes. The point is that a 3MPG gain can be as good as a 17MPG gain in absolute terms, depending on your baseline. In that respect, l/100km (or any volume/distance measurement) is a linear scale and easier to compare

  • (disco) in reply to RaceProUK
    RaceProUK:
    MPG is easy enough to understand

    I buy my fuel in litres (and my tank size is in litres) and I don't know how many of them are in a gallon. (Yes, I can figure out a rough ballpark estimate... a gallon is 8 pints, a pint is a bit more than half a litre => somewhat over four litres, but I couldn't tell you whether it's around 4 1/2 or over 5.) Also I know that pints are a different size on the other side of the pond, so I presume gallons are too, so yoursome people's mpg is not the same umber as my mpg.

    On the other hand I drive in miles, and although I know a reasonable approximation for that conversion (5 miles ~ 8km) it's a pain to have to compute.

    I think I can cope just as well with distance/volume or volume/distance, but I'd like it in bastard hybrid units suitable for use in a country that uses a bastard hybrid collection of units depending on whether metric or imperial is more convenient/familiar in that particular situation.

    If this ends up a double post it's Discourse's fault not mine. I'd posted it and seen it and then 10 minutes later the draft popped up on another thread along with a message that an error had occurred.

    Edit: forgot who I was replying to

  • (disco) in reply to Jaloopa
    Jaloopa:
    I didn't choose them, the linked article did. But, yes. The point is that a 3MPG gain can be as good as a 17MPG gain in absolute terms, depending on your baseline. In that respect, l/100km (or any volume/distance measurement) is a linear scale and easier to compare

    It depends on what you're measuring: how far you can go on a fixed quantity of fuel, or how much fuel it takes to go a fixed distance. Both are sensible things to talk about, though in different situations.

    The two measures are reciprocals of each other (plus some relatively unimportant constant factors).

  • (disco) in reply to accalia

    https://www.google.com/search?q=9+mpg+to+l/100km

  • (disco) in reply to RaceProUK
    RaceProUK:
    best superminis

    Is that like the best polished turd?

  • (disco) in reply to boomzilla
    boomzilla:
    polished turd
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiJ9fy1qSFI
  • (disco) in reply to Jaloopa
    Jaloopa:
    If you want a realistic assessment of how much less fuel you use/how much further you'll go on a tank by using a more efficient engine, l/100km is easier to understand

    That's a nightmare, because now I have to think about units that make no sense in context. :trolleybus:

  • (disco) in reply to boomzilla

    Fine, gallons per 100 miles. Same unit, just a different constant multiplier

  • (disco) in reply to accalia
    accalia:
    apparently the culture in 'murica says that if you get >9mpg (or >3.8kpl) you don't have a "real" car and you are shaming yourself, your family, and your country.

    I just wish that whatever's jacking up diesel prices (relative to petrol) in the US would go away -- I want a small diesel truck that gets >30mpg -- but that's not economically feasible (despite being probably possible with current diesel engine tech) because diesel prices are messed up atm.

    RaceProUK:
    If I want pedantry, I'd point out I wouldn't have both a truck and a car; since the car does 33MPG, I'd do as much as possible in that, and hire a truck when I need one. Which then means I'd trade it for the 50MPG car.
    Yeah, I'm glad that big box stores and such here have started offering "rent-a-truck" services -- borrowing a friend or relative's truck is also an option, of course.
  • (disco) in reply to tarunik
    tarunik:
    jacking up diesel prices (relative to petrol)

    How big is the difference? Over here, they're practically the same price these days. It's a long time since I've seen a difference between petrol and diesel of more than 4 or 5 p a litre, and I have seen one place with the same price recently

  • (disco) in reply to tarunik
    tarunik:
    Yeah, I'm glad that big box stores and such here have started offering "rent-a-truck" services -- borrowing a friend or relative's truck is also an option, of course.

    Those are pretty sweet. We had a couple recently, and they come with audible overloaded, and I think, out-of-balance warnings...

    Filed under: searching for a better idiot...

  • (disco) in reply to accalia
    accalia:
    apparently the culture in 'murica says that if you get >9mpg (or >3.8kpl) you don't have a "real" car and you are shaming yourself, your family, and your country.

    That's a weird parody of other parts of the country you have in your head.

    Outside of the cities you see a lot of people driving trucks because they're useful. Yes, a lot of people drive SUVs for no real good reason.

    I drive a minivan for convenience (children) but am going to get a smaller car next time 'round.

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