replicant

Assuming the water has not actually frozen and you are concerned that it might... and at best popped the frost plugs out of the block, split the hose or cracked the block... the obvious solution is to run the engine at idle and warm the coolant so it never gets to freezing point. Acceleration of the heating can be completed by blocking off the grille with a piece of cardboard. If you do so, ensure that the heater is off until the engine begins to warm, the heater acts as another radiator (something that is useful to know if your engine begins to overheat in hot conditions). When the engine reaches normal operating temperature (making sure that the exhaust is not blocked by a snow drift) let it idle for a ten minutes and then turn it off (ensuring that the grille is blocked off - you don't want that snow settling in it or the wind cooling the radiator prematurely). Ensure then that the engine is in gear after you turn it off (if a manual) or in park in an auto. Preferably, you don't want the handbrake on unless you are on a slope as you can actually freeze the mechanism on. Repeating this process every hour or so will ensure that the engine coolant never actually cools - before starting the engine turn on the ignition but don't start and look at the coolant temp gauge - otherwise methylated spirits would be a good option. Fully flushing the system at the first opportunity is recommended. I have seen folk pour vodka into a radiator in desperation, but given that the cooling system holds maybe 11 litres and vodka is only about 40% w/v - a whole 750 ml bottle would only give a concentration of 2.7% which is probably not enough to make much difference. To be honest, the temperature at most southern hemisphere ski fields doesn't really get cold enough to crack a block - but possibly balloon a hose though. In Canada when I used to race on skis, we used to plug the rental car into a 110v outlet at the carpark as we had a block warmer - even with glycol, at forty degrees below (which is the same temperature for farenheit and centigrade - the only place on the whole scale that the temperature is the same) you have real worries about the cold... it was the only place where I didn't take my full face race helmet off at the end of a run from being too warm (even with all the vents on the helmet closed)... The other part of the equation is at these polar ambient temperatures, battery performance is severely compromised. Apparently, the cold conditions make the reactions in a lead-acid battery very slow so some cars have a circuit to keep the battery warm and/or trickle charging at rest. Which is a lot better than a trucker mate who worked in Whitehorse, Alaska - it was so cold there (fifty below or worse), that they used to light a fire under the block for an hour before they fired up the rig... then left it to idle for an hour to warm enough to run.

Feeding isn't the problem... it's being active enough to burn it off. When you build a car to a minimum weight for an endurance race there's nothing worse than having the car being an extra 20 odd kilos too heavy because someone ate all the pies. Some goes for the karts we used to run, rather bolt 15kg of lead to the chassis to make a weight limit than have the driver carrying it. As for weight reduction, taking out all the unnecessary weight in a car makes a tangible difference and it benefits handling and braking. There's also a tangible difference in your weekly fuel bill from walking to the shops or not using the a/c... although I'm still doing my sums on whether it's cheaper to taking the toll on the M2 rather than sitting in traffic... still it's a few hours extra a week of free time instead of sitting on my ass looking at the rear bar of the car in front.

In a naturally aspirated car, the tune of the Ford ECU is such that it will be optimised to run on 95 octane and cope with 91 octane. In trials, the reason for double blind trials (where the recipient is not aware of whether they are receiving the actual product vs a placebo) is that there is a observable part of the sample that may notice an improvement with a placebo. This is because they believe that they are receiving something different and change their behaviour. Lots of folk I know have told me that their fuel economy has improved from using 98 octane - but there are a lot of factors such as the type of motoring, the way you accelerate and brake, traffic conditions, ambient temperature, tyre pressure, even the make of tyre can all make a difference. I've even had folks swear that a particular brand's 98 is actually better when the fuel they have purchased is actually 95 - in NZ you can only buy 98 in selected cities and only from BP or Mobil. Where they lying? Nope. They probably did notice something different but it may not have been the fuel... In a turbo charged car, because of the relative compression due to the forced induction... the higher the octane the better generally as it prevents pinging/knocking or at worse detonation. Detonation is not good... melted forged JE pistons from the race car make interesting paperweights but aren't good for much else. Interestingly, saw those elemental tin in line fuel conditioners around again too. They didn't work the last time round... can't see how they can now. There are easier ways to save fuel and increase acceleration... weight saving being a relatively simple way to do so as well as decreasing rolling resistance by ensuring tyre pressures are correct (and increasing life of your tyres)... I did get a few earfuls from one of the drivers that an easy way to save a bit more weight out of the car was for him to lose 20 kgs or so... he didn't like that much. Guess not everyone can be 75kgs

The torque split is similar to a few other AWD vehicles that started off as rear wheel drive chassis. Incidentally, the DSC system effectively acts as a system to distribute torque in certain conditions by braking the wheel that has the least traction. If the wheel is braked individually, the torque is still present and is redistributed to the other wheels. The Territory doesn't have any limited slip differentials either - the diffs are all open. If the DSC system didn't work the thing would simply spin one of the wheels on soft sand and sink...

Was she on her P Plates?

At the end of the day... an accident involving one vehicle is primarily because of driver error. Blaming cruise/traction control is a cop out. DSC may have helped... but if you go into a corner 30kph too fast then DSC can't defy the laws of physics - too much momentum and you are going to be off in the mulga. The best traction control system is mounted on the end of your right leg and is connected to a powerful cognitive processor. It's your right foot if your brain engaged...

I use cruise control all the time in the wet - did so with the last three Fords I drove which incidentally all had DSC/ESP = the last two were autos (including a BF XR6T with the ZF box). This was never an issue. At the end of the day, cruise on regardless of whether TC/DSC is on or off and regardless of whether it is wet, dry, hailing, sleeting, sunshine, dirt, tarmac, bulldust... it comes down to: DRIVER IS IN CONTROL OF VEHICLE If you aren't you shouldn't be behind the wheel. As a capable driver, you can disengage cruise with your right thumb on the steering wheel... before you apply either the accelerator or the brake. If you are going into a corner too fast, you can either disengage the cruise, brake or trail throttle with a gear change into a corner. An alert and capable driver should be able to assess the driving conditions and determine what is a sensible speed to drive. If there is enough water to aquaplane at 105kph then whoever is driving should be able to figure that one out and slow down... Blaming the cruise and t/c is like suing a TV company for being obese - you choose to drive at a speed and well if you want to play chicken and absolve all responsibility for judging your own speed get a mobility scooter.

The engine for the V6 VE is an upgrade of Global Engine from the VZ with a small increase in kws. Apparently, it offsets that additional weight of the equipment so performance changes for the V6 models are nominal (all the performance gains are in the V8 models or those with the new tranny's).... Which is a phat lot of good if you happen to be the rep driving the Omega somewhere at the back of Bourke with the carryover 4 speed auto, no std airconditioning and a spacesaver spare (but apparently there's room for a full size spare as an option!)... The SS/Calais interiors may look horn but if you end up driving the SV6/SV8 you'll be in the same interior as the Exec/Omega with some nice fabric seats if the VZ was anything to go by... like the single CD player and the Simpson Autowasher HVAC controls (hopefully they are better this time!)

Is that it? With all the hype that I heard about this Audi-sque looking car I was kinda looking forward to seeing how a clean-sheet looked like minus all of the disguising. Well I guess you can call the look evolutionary... Ford did make a near fatal mistake with the EL to AU transition by making the car too different from its predecessor... but the VE looks like a rehash of similar themes. The rear bootlid looks really short which is going to make putting stuff into the boot difficult (try putting a large box into the back of an Accord Euro to get an idea of how a really big boot becomes next to useless if you can't load it). Spacesaver spares, no airconditioning standard on the Omega - carry over drivetrains and trannys for the world V6 models and a six speed to handle the torque of the new V8. No word on weight and exactly what the rear end actually is either... Think I need to get the Expensive Daewoo bloke over here with a demo in a couple of months and do some back to back testing.

Even since Jac Nasser slowed development on the AU, Ford and Expensive Daewoo have ended up being out of sequence with their launches - to be honest, it's a good thing! Historically, the arrived with a leaf sprung rear end and a carbie (it wasn't until XE that the watts linkage/coil rear end arrived), EA26 arrived with a three speeder harking back to XA or earlier, the wheezy 3.2 and 3.9 throttle body injection unless you took the MPEFI option + no V8 engineered in... we won't even mention the mess that the AU was... Expensive Daewoo have now taken the lead with the introduction of new models... which is not necessarily a good thing. The Adventra was rolled out as a Territory spoiler but what it did was show how badly a wagon/peoplemover/AWD could be if it was executed on a legacy platform without sufficient desig/development and showed how good the Territory was when it was launched. After AU, Geoff Polites made sure that the BF and SX Territory did not self destruct although some niggling quality issues remain - it's a lesson Ford learnt the hard way. The VE has had to up the game as the current VZ is an aging platform with some early adoption engines but not drivetrains. Expensive Daewoo have had to up the game to match the very successful BA/BF series which apples with apples is a quieter, better car against VZ. Predictions - the crystal ball says... Engines - expect incremental changes maybe about 10-15kw upgrade at most across the range (unless there is a forced induction motor to rival the XR6T) but expect this to make little difference to performance... after additional weight in the chassis (and equipment) makes it's mark... also expect higher final drive gearing to reduce fuel consumption making a mark too. Chassis: The semitrailing rear end dates back to Opel days and will be consigned to the dust bin - expect to see a true multi-link like the Falcon. The big change will be the extra weight of this in the rear end plus strengthening of the monocoque for power/refinement/handling/safety adding more weight as well as the extra equipment. Transmission: GM Powertrain have the 6LE80 somewhere in the catalog which is a 6 speed capable of handling, if required up to 800Nm. Expect to see this in the high end/performance variants. The SV6 or equivalent will continue with the 5 speeder and this will probably go across the range - I can't see the fleet specials getting the premium 6 speeder. Extras: DSC/ESP goes across the board - which is a good thing in a rear wheel drive car with more than adequate power - it will probably save some lives... although I am really wondering how much cost and weight is going in here against the constant issue of fuel economy and reduced market size for the big sixes. Diversity means more options but lots of cost and complexity at manufacture... Expensive Daewoo will try and leap forward here but don't expect Ford to wait too long to match... The SS with all the fruit is going to cost a bomb and go further upmarket but will hang around just around the luxury tax mark....

"...WRC cars also don't have 3/4 turn from lock to lock and their pilots seem to spend a good bit of time twirling the helm. They don't have any problem with paddle shifts - guess it comes back to driver ability eh? " Okay I might concede that may be so, in terms of driver ability... but the WRC have varying shifts... some have a circular paddle behind the steering wheel which looks like it may be actuated by pressing or pulling up depending on whether it's an up or down change... and some have a dash mounted paddle like a sequential lever... On the other hand, I'd prefer to heel and toe a manual box or double declutch - blipping the throttle on the downchanges in a manual dog box in an open wheeler but seeing I don't have any driver ability, that would be irrelevant...

"What if your halfway through a hard right or hard left...." dunno... which is why I don't really like paddle shifts - the SV6s I leased for the Expensive Daewoo leaning folk here have the steering wheel mounted gear controls and the consensus is that they are a complete waste of time. You play around with them for about 5 minutes but as a Falcodore hasn't got 3/4 of a turn lock to lock like an F1 car it's a pain in the proverbials to use once you are anything off straight ahead - otherwise you are back to use the D4321 gate... the folk who chose the BF XR6s like the sequential function more but most think the new ZF box is good enough left in D or S possibly if you are in a hurry... I like using the sequential mode in the T but given the ludicrous amounts of torque available it may as well be a three speeder as it seems to happily go anytime you press the go pedal... Although I'm going to go test a Golf with the DSG next week...

Thanks for the advice... I'm going to see if I can use a few contacts to get some pricing better than RRP before I go from here. I used a Tomtom a couple of days ago, which was quite good but it had trouble after coming out of a carpark and got really confused... suffice to say it decided that instead of heading up the road for 3 kms to my destination... it chose a route of 62.3kms... which also vindicates my theory of validation... which is despite the fact that the instruments are telling you everything is okay but it don't feel right then maybe it's time to stop The last track day, I had one of the brakes grab going over the hill at Pukekohe race day in an 'enhanced' XR6T which meant that the left wall was a tad closer to my passenger than was originally intended... nothing wrong with the lights or gauges though...

Silly questions from an ex Terri driver... If the tank goes where the spare tyre used to, does this change the departure angle (I'd rather clunk the spare than the propane tank)... If the spare is in the rear compartment does this mean you have to do this on the 5 seater version only, if not where do you fit the other person in?

Yes you are correct, the UK is a RHD country but the 28 GTs were all LHD simply because they made no RHD's. There are a few genuine GT40s around - all of which if genuine are collector's pieces esp if the drivetrain matches the chassis number. PS I agree with Turbotom - converting a collector's item like a new GT into RHD is akin to buying a Aston Martin DB9 and getting someone in Blacktown to cut a hole in it to put one of those nasty glass sunroofs... or dropping it and putting some chromies on it - some folk might like it that way but I prefer my Single Malt Scotch, unalderated with such things like mixers, ice or even springwater... Besides which if you want a track car there are faster, cheaper (and cheaper to repair) alternatives that a genuine GT... like a good replica or even a specialised track car.

In defence of Ford, the GT was built mainly to sell into Europe and the US. Only 28 cars (all LHD) were allocated to the UK which were snapped up (probably as collectors items) and apart from the one owned by Ford Australia - I know of two in NZ. Ford probably lost money on every one of the cars built (esp after all of the post sales fixes) but why would Ford want to spend the cost of ADR'ing a car that it would sell less than 50 of in RHD (that's just dumb) worldwide as a one-off... Lambo and Ferrari can but you are paying a lot more cash for some Italian workmanship (with all the pride and misery that comes hand in hand with that)... The Bugatti Veyron is only being built in LHD too and VW make a lot of RHD cars but seeing as they are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars on each one - why would you incur more by making another version? As for the Supercharged 5.4 litre V8 - it's out of the F150 Lightning and bears more than a passing resemblance to the Boss 260/290 engine (ala XR8 and GT)... the trouble is chassis and transmissions. The ZF box is only rated to 600Nm (and even the F6 is closing on that number) and I don't imagine the Tremec would be able to handle a supercharged V8's torque either - and despite the BA/BF rear being a lot stiffer than the AU, you'd really have to wonder if it is up to handling 700+Nm of torque. The other thing about 700+Nm of torque is that in the real world where the hell do you use it... pointing and squirting my T is loads of fun but I would be lucky to be able to give it wide open throttle twice a week and only for about 6 seconds max at a time. The only place where I got to floor it for 25 seconds was down the back straight of the Pukekohe raceway which is the only place I could actually ask the car what it was really capable of... before I started running out of road... at 220 you are covering about 60 metres a second and the hairpin is a first gear corner. It's definitely quick - but I seemed to have more fun when it took about 8 seconds to get to a 100... rather than just under 6 as I can never give it full potential as Mr Plod seems to have a permanent laser signature on it...

Test results: http://www.ltsa.govt.nz/vehicles/ancap/for...ory-ts-2006.pdf Not quite a five star - those moderate high chest results although the side impact test is a default 16 due to the seating height in the Territory.

Decided that with the change in job that it would be very handy to have GPS in car navigation instead of spending time reading maps etc and work out alternatives on the move... I don't have the map reading skills of Jason Bourne of the Bourne Identity so I'm thinking a GPS navigation system would be really handy getting around on the East Coast. Anyone have any recommendations apart from the fact a lot don't know that the M7 exists and that it costs about 300 bucks to get a new map... or to learn to read a map but you want to take orders, read a map, talk on the phone, drive and think...

Lies, damn lies, statistics and dyno sheets... Dyno sheets are often used for comparison purposes but there are too many independent variables (things that can change results) such as barometric pressure, altitude, ambient temperature, fuel, tune etc that make any comparison between two different cars on two different dynos on two different days impossible to draw conclusions from... In the case of these two dyno runs, they appear to be split by an hour so the comparison between the two tunes shows that one tune is superior. Unfortunately, unless the dyno was calibrated reasonably recently and taking into account things like those independent variables it's hard to compare this against another dyno unless you have a control. No slight just the way these things work... I've always been very sceptical about dynos... I find it hard to believe that you use up so many kilowatts in the drivetrain... if I had say a 30% drive line loss on a powerful car using up about 1/3 of its power (eg 1/3 of say 240 kw) then I'm at a loss to know where 80kW disappears to... because that's a lot of heat energy to lose somewhere - you could heat about half dozen hot tubs with that amount of friction. (Or makes me wonder why car makers spend so much time making the cars aerodynamic and nothing on reducing all of this frictional loss!) The real world thing that makes dyno readings (whether engine or on a rolling road), something I take with a grain of salt is that neither actually replicate driving down a road. On an engine dyno you rarely have the entire exhaust and accessory drives and on a rolling road you don't have the effect of aero effect from either RAM or from weird airflow (such as vorticies) that you don't get on a rolling road. Always believed that you should get 0-100 km/h, 50-100, 80-120 and 65-110 splits or something similar in a variety of gears to look at how the cars flexibility and torque manifests itself in the real world.

My first car was a 1972 Red Expensive Daewoo Torana 2850S which I acquired when I was 15 off a widow (in those days you could go get a full licence in NZ the day after your 15th birthday). My mates nicknamed it 'The Beast' mainly because we were in the fourth form at school and because with bias ply tires (the ones BEFORE crossplies) you could have it absolutely sideways in the wet... It got me thru the rest of high school and uni (but I did get some radials along the way)... My next car was a one owner XF Falcon S Pak with a T Bar auto (instead of the column shift) and the 4.1 EFI 121kw engine - it had an extended range fuel tank and I wish it had come with a LSD but it didn't... It stayed in the garage for about 8 months until I sold it for a profit. The next car was a 1991 KF Ford Laser TX3i which I got new. I had lots of fun in that car... unlike the wheezy six pots, it had a beautiful 106kw 16 valve DOHC motor which used to be happiest between 4000 and 6500 rpm which I loved it be in... 4000 rpm in 5th was roughly 140 klicks. After it reached 90,000kms I sold it to a nice retired couple who still have it today and apparently it hasn't missed a beat despite the CAI, the K&N filter, yoko directionals (although they replaced them with some Nanyangs and the headers... I then got one of the last Mark 6 Escorts XR3s from the factory in Germany which had trouble getting out of its one way with only 85kw from the Zetec E motor. But it had a beautiful chassis and once it got up to speed it was a fun thing to throw around a twisty road especially on some trick Yoko directionals... It lunched the first set of factory rotors and I replaced them with some slotted Bradi rotors from Germany and some 1144 Mintex pads bonded up.... it was the first car with ABS, airbags and airconditioning. Next came the Mondeo ST 2.5 with the Duratec 32 valve V6 - I think this is the Mk3 model which didn't come to Australia (and neither did the Escort!)... Liked that car, it had ESP, cruise and climate - 5 speed manual and great for touring... Then it was company car time... I had a Territory AWD and now I have a XR6T...

Hold the remote to your head... no seriously... If you take the key fob remote to your car and use it to lock your car, keep walking back until testing until it no longer works as it out of range... hold it to the temple of your head and it will unlock the car... but you have to be looking at the car... very weird... but true. Apparently, your skull works like an aerial or a directional dish. Spooky!

Well it may not have been aesthetically appealing but the VL car was designed in the MIRA wind tunnel in the UK, under the first Group A regulations at the time and was the first production sedan based car with wind tunnel tested aero aids... You had to use a production body shell and provided you sold enough of the homologation specials you could get away with some fairly outrageous aero aids... Remember that despite the fact it had to have enough ground clearance to get into a driveway to your local servo, it also had to have enough aero effect to keep the cars on the road... And should I mention the Brock HDT Director (that really was something truly 'orrible)... the HDT cars had their kits made in clay at the workshop and were not truly wind tunnel tested (even the Group C cars)... Ford got into trouble with the RS500 because they couldn't fit enough tyre under the wheelarches and so modified them which handed Brock his 9th Bathurst victory as the Sierras were DQ'ed for a technical infringement. Going back a bit further, when the Falcon XE debuted at Bathurst - CAMS had to rewrite the rules overnight as the rear wing developed for the XE cars made them unstable along the high speeds down Conrod and CAMS acted to make the Ford Teams return to the spoiler design. The rules relating to the Group A body modifications largely survive under the WRC rules which is why the WRC Subaru looks awfully like the road car... Incidentally, the original design for the VL body kit allowed for a sail panel where the extra window was in the VL model but this was disallowed as the FIA scrutineers were not happy... it apparently changed the look of the car! If you think this is bad, you should see the Mercedes 190 Cosworth Evolution... it had a roof extension in body colour that went halfway down the rear glass... apparently it smoothed the airflow onto the foil on the rear wing. With the wing at the boot lid and the roof extension you had no rear visibility... but who cares if you are leading and if you are race driver who cares if you need to parallel park (pity the folk who bought them as road cars)!!

Well Dazza It might depend on how you did the modifications... it would be certainly cheaper than buying a Veyron. Incidentally, apparently VW are absolutely hosing money on every single Veyron they sell like hundreds of thousands of dollars (mainly in R&D as well as the exotic materials)... apparently it's to show that they alone have technical superiority over every one else... it's still cheaper than most F1 programme annual budgets so who's looking stupid now, Toyota? You can build the world's fastest car and have generations pining for it... or you can spend a fortune and get nowhere past mid field after several seasons... ask Ford (do you remember the Jaguar F1 Team course you don't), Alfa Romeo F1 Team, Lotus F1, Toyota are still only midfield, Honda have spent megabucks on what was BAR, BMW have spent a lot and aren't world champions, Peugeot spent money developing an F1 engine for McLaren and then got fired cos it was too slow... Renault have been champions before but hardly anyone remembers Alain Prost but everyone knows the Lambo Countach...

Another option if you have the real estate is a supercharger AND turbocharger setup. This allows for the low engine speed boost, courtesy of the supercharger and it disengages when the turbocharger kicks in (with a fair bit of overlap). Superchargers use a lot of engine power to compress the intake flow at high speed whereas a turbocharger uses the otherwise wasted exhaust gas pressure to power the impeller... I've seen this is a few modded Series 1 MR2s and in a race truck setup (although I haven't seen the particular truck for a while). The other advantage with a supercharger is that it is possible to run a two speed supercharger... come to think of it there's a two speed supercharger on the Merlin engine out of the Spitfire/Hurricane/P51D Mustang. The other thing is that there are two kinds of supercharger the Lysholm-type screw supercharger... which uses two screws and the other is a Rootes style which uses is a single centrifugal turbine. The Rootes version is very similar in design to a single impeller turbocharger but uses the crankshaft to power it rather than the exhaust - but interestingly has low boost issues at low engine speeds... which the lysholm does not...

Part of the brake shudder issue relates to pad knock off... this is an expansion of an earlier post elsewhere... Pad 'knock off' (as opposed to knock off pads which are the bamboo fibre things you buy at less than reputable outlets that are truly horrible and cheap'n'nasty) occurs because as the rotor wears, the pads have further to travel to have effect. When the driver take your foot off the brake, the normal spinning (radial) motion and the longitudinal twist (as the caliper is usually only attached on one side to the hub/carrier you get a twisting action - which also manifests itself in the hub and bearings too) are reduced and the caliper moves back to its normal position relative to the rotor. Think of the twisting force if you tried to stop a grab a bicycle tyre by closing your hand on it and it will give you an idea of what I mean. But because of the twisting movement, pads don't normally wear evenly and wear at an angle. That means the rotor will push the pad back on the piston (or pot) further into the brake caliper. This means that you end up pushing further to get the rotor to brake each time (progressively worsens) and then you use more fluid and hence the brake pedal travels further. This tends to be worse with larger rotors and calipers because the brake forces are heightened and all of this unsprung weight tends to pitch/yaw when you drive on real roads with bumps in them (and there's even more load with big wheels on the hub and its bearings). A byproduct of this is all that squealing (and eventually vibration) due to the uneven wear - the pad wears at one edge more than the other... and the rotors tend to wear unevenly (think of a warped record) as when you actuate the brake it tends to hit one smaller spot (a bit like flat spotting a tire) which gets progressively worse. Think of it on a bicycle brake when the pad starts to look like a wedge rather than the rectangular block it started out as... There are products that allow for some disc float - often these come from motorsport applications (eg AP do strap drive discs) or disc bobbins... From memory, that's part of the reason why most race cars don't have power assisted brakes so the driver is aware of the additional travel and also the forces involved in the braking system are much more progressive... The BF is different from the BA and predecessors for the XR6T and the V8's as the caliper and the rotors are different sized but the top hat is fairly similar... in any case the same twisting motion occurs... hard braking exacerbates the problem so it tends to manifest itself in the performance versions rather than a cab as the braking forces are much more powerful due to additional speed and the need to scrub it off faster by braking.