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#1 RonPohl

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Posted 30 December 2012 - 17:11

One of my favorite race cars is the lotus 25.Monocoque construction seemed so advanced at the time, but really it was WWII (or earlier ) aircraft technology . Any theories about why it took so long get to race cars? After all,there were lots of aviation people around racing. Carbon fiber construction seems to have come very quickly from the aerospace industry.

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#2 David McKinney

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Posted 30 December 2012 - 19:45

This question has been discussed several times

Try the "search" function

#3 R.W. Mackenzie

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Posted 30 December 2012 - 19:52

There were a number of people playing around with monocoque construction in the pre and post war years but let's face it, spaceframe construction only preceded monocoque in racing by a few years. In the fifties and early sixties ladder frames and multitubular frames were still the norm. It wasn't until people like Chapman and Broadley perfected the spaceframe that it became common. Then Chapman showed that that the monocoque was the next step forward.

Two other things favoured the spaceframe versus the monocoque. First was that all you need was an oxy-acetylene torch set and the smarts to know what you were doing to fab a spaceframe. But you needed fixtures and specialty tools and skills to build a monocoque.

The other thing was that the stress analysis of a spaceframe was similar to that used in bridge construction whereas monocoque required aircraft stressing knowledge and skills.

Well this is my take on the situation for what it's worth.

Bob Mackenzie

#4 arttidesco

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Posted 30 December 2012 - 20:10

Louis Chevrolet qualified an under powered Cornelian with monocoque construction at Indy in 1915, it was followed by the 1923 Voisin monocoque racer, also under powered I believe which achieved little by way of success.

Tom Killeen took out a patent on the monocoque design in 1952 after designing the Killeen K1 ten years before the Lotus 25 was built. A good idea on it's own though is worth nowt without all the other more conventional ingredients in place which is where the Lotus 25 came good.

Not sure how long it took carbon fibre to transcend from use in the space industry to racing.



#5 paulhooft

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Posted 30 December 2012 - 20:43



The 1923 out of this world Voisin, is one of my favourites..



Louis Chevrolet qualified an under powered Cornelian with monocoque construction at Indy in 1915, it was followed by the 1923 Voisin monocoque racer, also under powered I believe which achieved little by way of success.

Tom Killeen took out a patent on the monocoque design in 1952 after designing the Killeen K1 ten years before the Lotus 25 was built. A good idea on it's own though is worth nowt without all the other more conventional ingredients in place which is where the Lotus 25 came good.

Not sure how long it took carbon fibre to transcend from use in the space industry to racing.



#6 arttidesco

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Posted 30 December 2012 - 20:50

The 1923 out of this world Voisin, is one of my favourites..


It certainly has a 1920's Area 51 look about it :up:

#7 David McKinney

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Posted 30 December 2012 - 22:30

OK, so forget Post 2

We'll just drag it all up again

#8 KWSN - DSM

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Posted 30 December 2012 - 23:02

OK, so forget Post 2

We'll just drag it all up again


Wonderful attitude and way to include new posters on the forum, which of the threads on the 19 pages coming up under search should we dig in to? Instead of overbearing knowbetter than thou, try answering the question asked, or say nothing.

I can not find a thread dedicated to the question, and are interested in the views and opinions of posters with a better attitude would be appreciated.

:cool:




#9 scheivlak

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Posted 30 December 2012 - 23:14

Whatever - this is a decent thread: http://forums.autosp...mp;hl=monocoque

and these are two others:

http://forums.autosp...showtopic=72176

http://forums.autosp...showtopic=42287

#10 kayemod

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Posted 30 December 2012 - 23:16

Wonderful attitude and way to include new posters on the forum, which of the threads on the 19 pages coming up under search should we dig in to? Instead of overbearing knowbetter than thou, try answering the question asked, or say nothing.

I can not find a thread dedicated to the question, and are interested in the views and opinions of posters with a better attitude would be appreciated.

:cool:


The only thing you left off that was, "With all due respect..."


#11 KWSN - DSM

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Posted 30 December 2012 - 23:59

The only thing you left off that was, "With all due respect..."


I have just learned in another thread what that really mean, you cans search for that.

:cool:

#12 KWSN - DSM

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Posted 31 December 2012 - 00:05

Whatever - this is a decent thread: http://forums.autosp...mp;hl=monocoque

and these are two others:

http://forums.autosp...showtopic=72176

http://forums.autosp...showtopic=42287


Thanks but that is really an illustration of why the questions are being asked again and again, how do you expect anyone to dig the answers out of those threads? The question raised was "Why did it take as long as it did", I am sure that there are many interesting pieces of information in the quoted threads, but the more and more prevalent attitude that if something have ever been discussed here then no new threads can be opened dealing with this or parts of the question is making the forum into a closed Old Boys network, with stringent approval standards which is not what the forum should be about.

:cool:

#13 RonPohl

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Posted 31 December 2012 - 00:17

Back to the question......I am wondering if the advent of the rubberized fuel tank (not sure when that came into use in the aircraft industry)had something to do with going to the monocoque. It was getting pretty difficult to package the fuel tank around all the tubes. Happy New Year to all.

#14 scheivlak

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Posted 31 December 2012 - 00:26

Thanks but that is really an illustration of why the questions are being asked again and again, how do you expect anyone to dig the answers out of those threads? The question raised was "Why did it take as long as it did", I am sure that there are many interesting pieces of information in the quoted threads, but the more and more prevalent attitude that if something have ever been discussed here then no new threads can be opened dealing with this or parts of the question is making the forum into a closed Old Boys network, with stringent approval standards which is not what the forum should be about.

:cool:

Well, I just wanted to help you by giving a few links......
If you see that as "making the forum into an Old Boys network" - OK... I won't do that again :wave:

#15 Tim Murray

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Posted 31 December 2012 - 08:52

I do find it annoying when people like Scheivlak go to the trouble of tracking down and posting links to earlier threads that are relevant to the current thread, only to suffer rudeness and abuse. No-one is suggesting that, because there are existing threads covering the same ground, no new thread on the subject should be started. On the contrary, those of us who regularly dig out and post links to earlier threads do so to complement the new thread and make use of the incredible information resource that we have here on TNF.

I do very much hope that Scheivlak and others will continue to refer people to earlier threads to help with new questions. If we choose not to do this we'll be wasting a wonderful resource.

Edited by Tim Murray, 31 December 2012 - 08:54.


#16 275 GTB-4

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Posted 31 December 2012 - 08:55

I do find it annoying when people like Scheivlak go to the trouble of tracking down and posting links to earlier threads that are relevant to the current thread, only to suffer rudeness and abuse. No-one is suggesting that, because there are existing threads covering the same ground, no new thread on the subject should be started. On the contrary, those of us who regularly dig out and post links to earlier threads do so to complement the new thread and make use of the incredible information resource that we have here on TNF.

I do very much hope that Scheivlak and others will continue to refer people to earlier threads to help with new questions. If we choose not to do this we'll be wasting a wonderful resource.


Well said Tim...and here is hoping that people can actually find old threads and information! :)

#17 Allan Lupton

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Posted 31 December 2012 - 09:13

Back to the question......I am wondering if the advent of the rubberized fuel tank (not sure when that came into use in the aircraft industry)had something to do with going to the monocoque. It was getting pretty difficult to package the fuel tank around all the tubes. Happy New Year to all.

If there is any relevance it might be worth pointing out that by 1949 we in aeroplane design had started using "wet wings" where the wing structure itself was the fuel tank. The rubber bag tank was still used in difficult places (and old designs) but not for long thereafter.
I can't, say off the cuff, when bag tanks were introduced but it would have been pre-war.


#18 KWSN - DSM

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Posted 31 December 2012 - 12:43

Well, I just wanted to help you by giving a few links......
If you see that as "making the forum into an Old Boys network" - OK... I won't do that again :wave:


Sorry was not meant as a dig at you, I will go through the threads you posted. I just do not understand that the Pavlovian Dog response when anyone dare ask a question is to suggest the poster to use the search button, personally that most times does not really help me and I find those posts rude.

Not the ones where actual links were posted.

:cool:


#19 KWSN - DSM

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Posted 31 December 2012 - 12:44

I do find it annoying when people like Scheivlak go to the trouble of tracking down and posting links to earlier threads that are relevant to the current thread, only to suffer rudeness and abuse. No-one is suggesting that, because there are existing threads covering the same ground, no new thread on the subject should be started. On the contrary, those of us who regularly dig out and post links to earlier threads do so to complement the new thread and make use of the incredible information resource that we have here on TNF.

I do very much hope that Scheivlak and others will continue to refer people to earlier threads to help with new questions. If we choose not to do this we'll be wasting a wonderful resource.


The post I reacted to very mush suggested that this thread should not have been opened.

:cool:


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#20 275 GTB-4

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Posted 31 December 2012 - 15:30

The post I reacted to very mush suggested that this thread should not have been opened.

:cool:


There's much grinding in the mush!

#21 kayemod

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Posted 31 December 2012 - 15:50

The post I reacted to very mush suggested that this thread should not have been opened.

:cool:


And I can understand why, up to a point at least. Newcomers get criticised for not using the search function, to discover if topics have been covered before, but I can't be the only one who finds the search function pretty unsatisfactory, and I think that dates from the forum re-build of a few years ago. I can quite understand if the whole thing, which we're very lucky to have of course, needed bringing up to date in some ways, but it's a fact that some aspects are not as good as they used to be, the search function is a good example of this. Before the re-hash, if I put something like a book title or a car designation into search, it used to come up with thread suggestions. If I clicked on any of these threads, every occurrence of what I'd typed into search came up highlighted, but now that's no longer the case, in some cases a few instances are highlighted, but quite often, none of them are, and this makes searching very difficult indeed, especially for newcomers. I'm not excusing the few irritating newcomers who start a new topic on a well-travelled subject, and it's an unfortunate fact that some new members just can't be bothered to check first, but some of us who've been here some time find past threads and posts unneccessarily hard to track down. Surely it would be possible to improve the search facility so that at least every instance of typed-in word and phrases were highlighted once again?


#22 David McKinney

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Posted 31 December 2012 - 18:38

I did a quick search before posting my "rude" comment, and found several topics which would have either made a new thread unnecessary, or led to more specific wording to elicit new information

#23 KWSN - DSM

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Posted 31 December 2012 - 20:10

And I can understand why, up to a point at least. Newcomers get criticised for not using the search function, to discover if topics have been covered before, but I can't be the only one who finds the search function pretty unsatisfactory, and I think that dates from the forum re-build of a few years ago. I can quite understand if the whole thing, which we're very lucky to have of course, needed bringing up to date in some ways, but it's a fact that some aspects are not as good as they used to be, the search function is a good example of this. Before the re-hash, if I put something like a book title or a car designation into search, it used to come up with thread suggestions. If I clicked on any of these threads, every occurrence of what I'd typed into search came up highlighted, but now that's no longer the case, in some cases a few instances are highlighted, but quite often, none of them are, and this makes searching very difficult indeed, especially for newcomers. I'm not excusing the few irritating newcomers who start a new topic on a well-travelled subject, and it's an unfortunate fact that some new members just can't be bothered to check first, but some of us who've been here some time find past threads and posts unneccessarily hard to track down. Surely it would be possible to improve the search facility so that at least every instance of typed-in word and phrases were highlighted once again?


I may just not be smart enough, since I find the search function close to unusable, I do try to find the information I need through it and I do not really start threads left, right and center. I can understand that having multiple threads dealing with the same subject can be somewhat of a bother, and there is nothing wrong in replying to a question by posting a link to the thread already existing.

What I do have an issue with is the multiple replies in multiple threads across the forum "We have done this before, use search". Which as far as I am concerned is displaying the middle finger and nothing else, as I wrote above I will ready through the suggested threads, and expect that I as usual will learn a lot from them.

Seems I have ruined this thread, which I apologize for to the thread opener.

:cool:


#24 Cirrus

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Posted 01 January 2013 - 09:48

Kayemod - try selecting "More Search Options", then "Show Results as Posts" when you do a search. That seems to highlight the relelvant words for me.

#25 kayemod

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Posted 01 January 2013 - 10:33

Kayemod - try selecting "More Search Options", then "Show Results as Posts" when you do a search. That seems to highlight the relelvant words for me.


Thanks, I'll make that my New Year resolution, but the length that threads can grow to will always make a proper search difficult.


#26 David McKinney

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Posted 01 January 2013 - 12:20

Thanks Alan (and KM)

I've been doing that so often I forgot the difficulties presented by doing a simple search for, eg, "monocoque"

#27 layabout

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Posted 01 January 2013 - 16:18

Back to the question......I am wondering if the advent of the rubberized fuel tank (not sure when that came into use in the aircraft industry)had something to do with going to the monocoque. It was getting pretty difficult to package the fuel tank around all the tubes. Happy New Year to all.



The rubber bladder (bag tank) was developed in Britain by Fire Proof Tanks (later renamed FPT), a company which grew out of Airspeed Aircraft Ltd (in which the novelist Nevil Shute (Norway) was a shareholder/director/designer .

Initially the Air Ministry rejected the use of the rubber bladders (N I H) but soon had to admit their mistake and have them fitted to military aircraft.

One of the first racing cars to use them was the D-type Jaguar. BRM also used them on the first rear-engined cars. Eventually they became standard on most cars, and certainly on monocoques. Early Matra cars, and the M2A McLaren, used the ' sealer ' method in the monocoques. Unfortunately they couldn't always be relied upon to seal totally. Nor do they in aircraft. If you ever attended a military airshow you have to have noticed the 40 gallon drum under the end of each wing of a Lightning fighter to catch all the fuel that was leaking out! Today the rubber bladder is very much stronger than the ones of 70 years ago, and is mandated in almost all forms of racing and fires have (almost) become a thing of the past .

Edited by layabout, 01 January 2013 - 17:36.


#28 Nigel Beresford

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Posted 01 January 2013 - 16:43

Thanks - very interesting. I was under the impression the M2 used bag tanks, but the '66 Autocourse tells me it was a combination of bag tanks and sealed compartments. I do recall John Thompson telling me recently that he had the job of welding up an early McLaren tub at the track back-in-the-day, and he was assured that the fuel compartment had been thoroughly washed out. Of course, he was practically blown out of the truck...

FWIW McLaren's tanks were made by Marston Excelsior... at least by the time the Seventies came around.

Edited by Nigel Beresford, 01 January 2013 - 17:00.


#29 layabout

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Posted 01 January 2013 - 17:35

Thanks - very interesting. I was under the impression the M2 used bag tanks, but the '66 Autocourse tells me it was a combination of bag tanks and sealed compartments. I do recall John Thompson telling me recently that he had the job of welding up an early McLaren tub at the track back-in-the-day, and he was assured that the fuel compartment had been thoroughly washed out. Of course, he was practically blown out of the truck...

FWIW McLaren's tanks were made by Marston Excelsior... at least by the time the Seventies came around.


The M2A used sealed compartments , but the M2B used FPT Industries bags---the green ones. Later most people changed to Marston Excelsior, at that time a subsidiary of IMI. McLaren's made the switch part way through 1970. Marston was subsequently purchased by FPT Industries .

#30 Nigel Beresford

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Posted 01 January 2013 - 20:34

Ah yes, the "IMI" bit rings a bell now.

Do you happen to know if there is a link with the present day, Wolverhampton-based Marston company we used as a source of radiator cores for Penske Cars in the early noughties?


#31 Tony Matthews

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Posted 01 January 2013 - 20:51

Thank you, "layabout", once again the horse's mouth is the most interesting.

#32 Lee Nicolle

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Posted 01 January 2013 - 22:11

I may just not be smart enough, since I find the search function close to unusable, I do try to find the information I need through it and I do not really start threads left, right and center. I can understand that having multiple threads dealing with the same subject can be somewhat of a bother, and there is nothing wrong in replying to a question by posting a link to the thread already existing.

What I do have an issue with is the multiple replies in multiple threads across the forum "We have done this before, use search". Which as far as I am concerned is displaying the middle finger and nothing else, as I wrote above I will ready through the suggested threads, and expect that I as usual will learn a lot from them.

Seems I have ruined this thread, which I apologize for to the thread opener.

:cool:

I am not smart enough either, I often cannot find threads I know are here. And I have been here for quite a while now.
Admin, please make the search more user friendly for us technophobes.

#33 layabout

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Posted 02 January 2013 - 00:51

Ah yes, the "IMI" bit rings a bell now.

Do you happen to know if there is a link with the present day, Wolverhampton-based Marston company we used as a source of radiator cores for Penske Cars in the early noughties?


The Marston Excelsior group, as part of IMI, also made radiator cores. They were in a number of areas of metal fabrication. There was a slight separation of the constituent
parts. Radiators and fuel tanks were different divisions, all at Wolverhampton. Maybe the radiator group is still in Wolverhampton. They had a brochure which showed their cooler
cores being used on the Lockheed Tristar ( L1011 ) presumably due to Rolls Royce. Behr and Docking must have taken a lot of Marstons radiator business.

I saw a note on Gordon Kirby's site that C&R in America "buys its radiator cores in bulk from Marston Motorsport Cooling in Wolverhampton, England. Marston supplies radiators to most of the top F1, sportscar and rally teams, including Ferrari, McLaren and Audi. C&R also works with an Australian company, PWR, in producing water and oil coolers for NASCAR."

I hope that helps.

#34 Andrew Fellowes

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Posted 02 January 2013 - 01:11

for which PWR have done very nicely, they are just up the road from me and very reasonable in reproducing old radiators. Lovely new factory and great people to deal with.

Advert finished.

#35 DogEarred

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Posted 02 January 2013 - 08:32

for which PWR have done very nicely, they are just up the road from me and very reasonable in reproducing old radiators. Lovely new factory and great people to deal with.

Advert finished.


Advert continued - They also supplied for the (no longer current) F2 cars & at least one F1 organisation. Sentiments echoed.

#36 Nigel Beresford

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Posted 02 January 2013 - 09:23

Thanks 'Layabout' for the background on Marston.

The big players in supplying cores themselves also include Secan and Calsonic. The latter are a particular favourite of Honda. At Penske we had an exclusive arrangement with Modine, from Racine WI. Very reliable and well engineered cores.

Marston were also always extremely good to deal with.

Another advert over.

All the best

Nigel

Edited by Nigel Beresford, 02 January 2013 - 09:26.


#37 layabout

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Posted 02 January 2013 - 17:24

Thanks 'Layabout' for the background on Marston.

The big players in supplying cores themselves also include Secan and Calsonic. The latter are a particular favourite of Honda. At Penske we had an exclusive arrangement with Modine, from Racine WI. Very reliable and well engineered cores.

Marston were also always extremely good to deal with.

Another advert over.

All the best

Nigel


I don't mean to take this discussion in an unintended direction, but re: the McLaren M2B, I think people would be interested to know that they were built under the direction of Nigel Beresford's (see previous post) father, Don Beresford.

Beautiful little cars.


#38 doc knutsen

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Posted 03 January 2013 - 23:10

The rubber bladder (bag tank) was developed in Britain by Fire Proof Tanks (later renamed FPT), a company which grew out of Airspeed Aircraft Ltd (in which the novelist Nevil Shute (Norway) was a shareholder/director/designer .

Initially the Air Ministry rejected the use of the rubber bladders (N I H) but soon had to admit their mistake and have them fitted to military aircraft.

One of the first racing cars to use them was the D-type Jaguar. BRM also used them on the first rear-engined cars. Eventually they became standard on most cars, and certainly on monocoques. Early Matra cars, and the M2A McLaren, used the ' sealer ' method in the monocoques. Unfortunately they couldn't always be relied upon to seal totally. Nor do they in aircraft. If you ever attended a military airshow you have to have noticed the 40 gallon drum under the end of each wing of a Lightning fighter to catch all the fuel that was leaking out! Today the rubber bladder is very much stronger than the ones of 70 years ago, and is mandated in almost all forms of racing and fires have (almost) become a thing of the past .



Small addedum, it was the 1953 "lightweight" C-type Jaguar that featured a bag tank first among the Browns Lane racers of the Fifties.

#39 simonlewisbooks

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Posted 04 January 2013 - 00:09

I am not smart enough either, I often cannot find threads I know are here. And I have been here for quite a while now.
Admin, please make the search more user friendly for us technophobes.

Me too Lee, I've been on here for years and started several duplicated thread topics having failed to find, notice or remember them from first time round - which is often a case of some years.
Slap wrist, naughty boy, fair cop. :blush:

However - It has to be said there are not enough hours in the day to take in all the information TNF now has to offer us - even using fairly narrow search parameters.
In some ways it reminds of WB in MOTOR SPORT. He would comment , in say 1981 , "Of course we fully covered this subject in 1947" and elaborate on the matter no further. It seemed to suggest a rather high-handed attitude to educating anyone younger than himself - certainly anyone who didn't possess an entire run of the magazine and, more to the point, had read and inwardly digested all of it.
I'm not suggesting that attitude of any TNF'r but "we have been here before" followed by a relevant link is always going to be the most helpful way round the problem.



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#40 eldougo

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Posted 04 January 2013 - 06:52

Its the way TNFer.... NAME the TOPIC Title.
Without any reference to the subject that they want to talk about that makes it HARD to find.... SEARCH.



#41 Garagiste

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Posted 04 January 2013 - 18:44

As the thread has been totally derailed already, and without wishing to cause offence to anybody - I can't help but be reminded of this:
http://sniffpetrol.c...prickfromforum/

#42 john winfield

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Posted 04 January 2013 - 20:33

As the thread has been totally derailed already, and without wishing to cause offence to anybody - I can't help but be reminded of this:
http://sniffpetrol.c...prickfromforum/


:up: