That's what I would normally do, but there was no way I would let a car like that out onto the road. I'm actually low key whe it comes to service writing- no hard sell at all, but this was ridiculous.
BTW- she did indeed get a tow truck. What I always wondered is what kind of numb dolt do you have to be to drive a car witht eh wheel wobbling like that and not notice.

Unfortunately these days - even with a signed disclaimer - if you let her drive it and she had an accident she'd probably find a smart ass lawyer to string you up by the balls.

I followed a Holden ute driving through Launceston with the wheel barely remaining with the car. The driver had slowed to about 10-15km/h, but kept on driving. I figure he thought he had a flat tyre.

Only technical regarding the rules..........................Sometime in the early 1980's, at a San Fransisco Region/SCCA driver's ground school (for those trying for their competition license). Dave Arkin, our Chief Driving Instructor states, "You must list all the important medications that you take, on the back of your helmet." The only female student (name withheld to protect her from humiliation) asks, That means my birth control pills, right?" Needless to say, ground school class delayed until a couple hundred people stop laughing.....cheers!

Been in that position a few times (ahh the joys of owning workshops) and my answer is to push the car out onto the street, off my property and tell them they needed a Towie and hand them the Towies card and walk away.

You are in a no win situation, you realise that your an asshole for helping her don't you.

Well that was a big mistake! You've told a woman she was wrong, and now you will have to pay for it for several lifetimes. Probably the rest of us males as well!

More automotive oddities ....

Too much compression in your N/A engine to go turbo? Not a problem, just trim the tops of the pistons with an angle grinder. No need to even remove the pistons from the block.

Did the guy put it back together and run it?

Wow - and you get the de-coke and polish as well in the same operation!

Yeah thanks for that Bobqzzi, as if I wasn't paying enough already - I really needed your added chunk of bad karma!

Not to mention the add hp from the swirl combustion.

Well that certainly looks tricker than two head gaskets.

I had a very reputable chassis builder build a tube frame road racing car for me. I sent along a number of components to be installed as he went. When I stopped by to take a look I noticed the rotors were on backwards. He thought they scooped the air as did your mechanic friend. Thing is, he was an excellent chasis builder who had built a number of winning Cup cars... not crew chief, or complete car builder, but still

Has anyone ever tried running them "backward" and measuring the result?

It won't go fast enough in reverse to build up any heat!

As a matter of fact... easy things to test tend to get tested. Does not work as badly as one might expect. Some Porsche rotors tend to get installed backward as the gas ports and air vanes run in opposite directions, which is visually confusing, apparently. Of course most rotors are unidirectional - straight vaned or other configuration, bear paw, etc. A basic tendency of all rotors is to recirculate airflow at the inner radius. There are also some CFD studies of rotor airflow around; can't name the papers at the moment but googling should turn them up.

I'm sure it doesn't. A little benefit from scrolled vanes perhaps, otherwise I can't think why anyone would bother to do it more than once. It has occured to me that as the escape path of the 'cooling' air is slightly longer it might pick up a bit more heat.

This reminds me of a 'Quote of outstanding brilliance', when I thought I only had the one to offer - on showing a cutaway of the Porsche 917/10 to A, B chimed in with 'Yeah, look at those brakes, they're designed so that when the driver brakes really hard the middle bit is crushed, giving even better stopping power!' He meant it...

Indeed, if that. Brake cooling is an interesting subject, but since we have people here who will argue that day is night (literally, they go that far) there is no point trying to discuss it. After a while you learn which subjects (and members) tend to generate the most useless and tiresome arguments. Many "quotes of outstanding brilliance" can be found right here in this forum.

"everytime I take a corner while driving aggressively on the track, I'm really afraid the tire is just going to roll right off the rim!" - 20+ year old son of a multi millionaire

"wow look at that, kimi just braked so aggressively and all that smoke came pouring out of his brakes!" - middle aged lamborghini driver while watching an F1 race on live TV

That used to happen a few decades or more ago I guess.

This was many years ago, but a friend of mine came to me:

"I put new plugs in and it misses badly"

"Did you gap the plugs"

"They need gapping?

One plug, and I had NEVER seen that before, or since, had ZERO gap.

Tatoo a w on each of your wifes butt cheeks and when she bends ovor it will say WOW.Flip her on her back and lift her legs and it says MOM.

I seem to remember listening to Radio Le Mans one year and I believe it was Johnny Herbert who said that "THESE 24 HOUR RACES SEEM TO GO ON ALL DAY".

Another great quote in the early eighties. I was at the Brands Hatch racing school in a school formula Ford. On my first flying lap and braking for Paddock Hill bend the car tried to swap ends. I brought the car in as there was certainly a problem with the brakes. Tony Lanfranchi came up to the car and asked why I had brought the car in I complained that it felt like there was no brakes. His reply was "THEY WERE ALRIGHT THIS MORNING SO THEY SHOULD BE OK NOW. After checking to see what the problem was all of the brake fluid had come out of the front brake resevoir leaving me with the equivalent of a hand brake turn going into to paddock Hill bend.

I thought the spelling was "Toni" for a female.

I'm glad you pointed that out, he said in a really deep voice...

Maybe it is, but I think this Lanfranchi was definitely male.

Richard

Do you know what a Boeing 747 does? It goes straight over your head

"It/they were ok this morning/yesterday" is what all females say about anything that has a problem.

My personal favorite is probably when you come out in the morning to go to work and you have a flat tyre, the first words they utter "oh it was ok yesterday when I drove it" - yeah, thanks for that valuable input Darling.....

This tony was male, quite famous as it happens. However his comment could quite have easily been female. I have a feeling I could be in severe trouble for saying that.

(5)High Anti-erosion
*The stainless steel portion of STAR CONNETCTING BI-METAL is cold forged without heat
treatment.Its mental structure has no such problems caused by welding and heat treatment.
*There is an option which the carbon steel portion of STAR CONNETCTING BI-METAL could be departed after screwed in.It eliminates the contamination of rust.
*Existing bi-metal self-drilling screws in the market have 15% of mortality,where as STAR
CONNETCTING BI-METAL has as low as 1%

A little OT, I suppose, but it's nice to know that no stainless steel was upset in the manufacture of these components...

copyright Kellog Auto Archives et al. No permission, but I recommend the record. (Well, to Ry Cooder fans, anyway...)

I imagine this is a neat joke, but...it would work, and I just wondered if it was general practice, at a time, in a place...

Not off topic at all. I'm glad to know that cold forging takes place without heat.

Do you know, I didn't see that! What am I like? Obviously I have a slight metal problem...

Actually the whole piece is odd.

Yes, it does work (but not always!) and yes, it was a common practice. Ford flathead V8s were notorious for the cylinder heads seizing in place. Every shop had its own tricks and techniques... homebrew penetrating fluids, special pullers, etc.

Another technique: hydraulic. Lock the crank so it can't turn and pump heavy grease into the cylinders through the spark plug holes.

Another technique: gravity. Suspend the car a few inches off the ground by the cylinder head, check in the AM.

Thank you! Very interesting...

I think it was the Triumph TR8 engine that had some head studs at an angle (other than perpendicular to the gasket face). These studs had to be screwed out of the block before the head could be removed. Of course when they corroded in, you had quite a situation on your hands.

I know of one workshop who specialised in separating them. Made a special jig for mounting the engine so they could band-saw through the head gasket.

The Buick/Rover V8? seems a bit unlikely. In any engine I can remember looking at the head studs are embedded between the cylinders, so of necessity they are parallel to the bore of the cylinders. I could believe that manifold mounting studs might be at funny angles for clearance to the body, I suppose.

Maybe it was the Stag V8 - can't remember.

No he means a Triumph Stag and it's bloody awful V8 - worked on one once - once.

Worked on a Mini once too - once.

Then there was an Austin 1800 - once.

Gee I like English cars - not.





Similar but not for studded engines, just remove all the headbolts and then hit the starter, usually popped the head up 1/2" if the gasket was stuck.

TR7 four and Stag V8 both used that two-plane head fastener arrangment. But the Saab 99, based on the same architecture, did not. However, all three engines had that screwy jackshaft acessory drive. Not Ricardo's finest hour.

Repeating myself, but did you miss this, Cheapy?

Was the topic on red crosses? China has Imageshack blocked and for sometime now.

Ah well, the image was from a Ry Cooder CD titled 'I, FLATHEAD'. It is a cartoonish drawing of a cylinder head, head-nuts slackened, gases squirting from between head and block. The caption is '(1) Loosen all head nuts or cap screws about 3/8 - inch. (2) Start engine to loosen cylinder head.'

I suppose we can thank PII for that.

Man, I can't believe what this Professional Journo/Roadtester for Car and Driver says in this video about the Atom...

"the Atom corners with an initially unsettling amount of steady state oversteer - but the transition from that point into a slide and then into a spin are now much more progressive!


Well thank goodness, I personally hate unprogressive spins


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqabNfwnEhM

Car and Driver ain't what they used to be.

[quote name='cheapracer' date='Sep 14 2009, 15:45' post='3860407']


"the Atom corners with an initially unsettling amount of steady state oversteer -
[/b]

Who wants steady state oversteer when you could have it fluctuating wildly between mild and uncontrollable? No fun there...

"If your wife wants to learn to drive, don't stand in her way." - Sam Levenson

"A careful driver is one who honks his horn when he goes through a red light." - Henry Morgan

re the spinning thing, in the eighties I spent a few years at Lotus, where spinning cars was something to be avoided, as the Lotii tended to snap very quickly.

It was very nice to get here and drive fat taxicabs with similar amounts of power(Esprit NA, 1200kg+, 140 hp, EA falcon,1400kg,140 hp+) , and frankly not much heavier, and discover that a ponderous yaw response is your friend, and that tailout cornering is something I could exploit, not avoid. Of course it helped that I had assigned test cars instead of the one and only prototype to drive, oh and hundreds of miles of back country roads.