Re: G5 fans

Andy Hewitt <wildrover.andy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[snip]

It is confusing, it's more common to use Bar now, in automotive terms
anyway.

Why, I wonder? psi is a lot more convenient than bar for tyre pressures
if you ask me; and if you want to be proper about it, use pascals.

Yes, I've seen that used too. Trouble is, nobody still wants to stick to
a standard, and we still have to deal with a variety of ways to measure
things.

<puzzled> But people do want to stick with standards - the ones that
they're used to. Bar, psi, Pa - all standard. It's just that bars are
inconvenient for tyre pressures, as are Pa. psi is the most convenient
unit for `human sized pressures' - similarly with most imperial units.

I agree, but you ask a manufacturer what pressure to set tyres at, and
they'll invariably use different systems.

I would expect a manufacturer to supply the figures in bar, psi, and Pa.
It's not exactly any significant work to do so these days - it's not
like you need to do any more than set up an automatic conversion from
whatever you type in to the other two.

The job's easy enough using 1980s software like TeX.

The question is: how come bars get used now?

It has for a long time, well, at least the last 15 years anyway, before
that it was generally psi.

Yeah, but why the change?

[snip]

What didn't make sense was hearing that IC designers used to think in
`thousands of an inch' on the surface (US: `mil' - which caused no end
of confusion when talking to thou-wielding Brits), but used metric
measurements when dealing with the depth into the bulk of the silicon.

That was in the 1980s. I'd guess that they've gone completely metric
these days with that sort of thing.

We would hope so. Mind you, I think they're down to counting in
molecules for processors now!

Atoms, mostly, I thought. But yeah: that scale is not suitable for
imperial units if you ask me. Metric's the only sane set of units,
until you get down to the scales where electron-volts are the sensible
units of energy and it's convenient to scale your units so that the
speed of light is one.

[snip]

If you really want to see crap electricals you don't need to look
any further than the Italian motors - we often used to push new
cars off the transporter and have to fix them before handing them
to the victi.... customer.

Oh yes, but if you're buying Italian, you ought to know that it'll be
badly made and will need to go back to the shop for frequent repairs and
adjustements for the first several months at least.

Hmm, not many of the customers I spoke to were aware of that

Italian bike buyers, I'm told, mostly do know. Or at least the ones who
have come back for a second round of punishment...

'Enthusiastic' buyers certainly do, but Alfa Romeo went through a bit of
a resurgance in the late 90's, and most buyers were very unsuspecting.

Ah.

What I want to know is how come everyone else in Europe seems to have
got the hang of decent quality management except for Italian motor
manufacturers?

- typical
of salesmen though, of course they're not going to say 'yes sir, it will
break down, a lot, and bits will fall off it, just keep the AA number
handy won't you...'.

There's no subtle way of hinting at that, is there?

Not really, apparently TVR salesmen do use that pitch.

ROFL.

[..]
The common one with Fiat/Alfas was to find the pins in a multiblock had
been pushed out while assembling. They connected just enough to work for
a few weeks, and of course contact was remade when a meter probe was
used on them, so no fault was ever found while testing.

<howls with laughter> I shouldn't, but I never met that one so it never
bit me so I can sit back and laugh, can't I?

It just left us shaking our heads at how crap something could be made.
IME, Fiat products are the pinnacle of how bad manufacturing can get.

I've met worse - but I take your point.

If you want another laugh. They recalled some of the Alfas with 16v
engines about four years back, an engine they'd been building for about
ten years or so by then....

... for some reason they didn't drill the head bolt threads deep enough,
so they hit the stops before tightening the head down fully. The fix
(regardless of mileage) was to remove them, one at a time, and fit
shorter bolts.

Oh god. Maybe I'll just stick with Hondas.

[snip]

Since synthetic oil has been used more in normal servicing, I have
noticed that it gets burned off much more easily than mineral oils.

Yeah, but when it's (say) a 0W-50 oil in a 10W-40 application, do you
wonder? Especially given that the people who use that oil look, so it
seems to me, like the sort of people who will give their engines a hard
time.

Oh indeed, although the oil suppliers often pressure the dealers into
using different spec oils. Usually in an effort to sell more expensive
oil.

Oh yes. I use 10W-40 semi-synthetic. I get salesmen asking me what
it's for and suggesting that I should buy something else. I give them a
look and explain that I'm going to use what Honda tells me to use
because Honda knows more about it than *you* do, sonny. And you'll not
find me trusting a synthetic oil. My other half did a PhD in looking at
lubricating seals and found out a lot of very interesting things...

Of course there's lots of punters that'll believe the benefits that it's
supposed to have, and not be aware of any caveats.

Speaking of which: I met a Lambourghini the other day. Orange, it was
(what model? Buggered if I know - it was wide and orange and modern and
really ugly but what the *** it's a Lambo). Trundling up the A41 in
bursts of rapid acceleration and I do mean rapid - he was wanting to
open it up a bit, I think. Seemed like he was taking it out for the
first time after the post-winter service, maybe.

Turns out that when he was in front, I could keep up with him no
worries; but when he was behind, I couldn't seem to out-accelerate him
at all. Lambo v.s SV650 and I wish I'd had my VFR - I /suspect/ I might
have left him behind a bit on that one, at least at the speeds one would
dare use on an in-town A road, even if it is a trunk road with dual
carriageway bits on it.

Oh please don't, I really miss having a race with cars on the bike -
it's particularly satisfying when you cruise past a silly Astra which
has had the RipSpeed treatment.

Oh yes - the SV650 doesn't have the warp speed setting that the VFR has,
but it'll blow away all normal cars without any bother at all. And I do
like showing up the prats in their Burberry baseball caps and noisy
exhausts and one of those thumping stereos that ought to be legal
grounds for shooting the car owner. Okay, so it makes me look a bit of
a prat too, but some things have to be done.

(and for the non-bikers out there: people like me and Andy don't do that
sort of thing if it's dangerous - only when there's clear dry tarmac
ahead of adequate straightness and so on)

The SV650 has the Suzuki silencer, so it does the job of leaving them
standing lovely and quietly with no fuss or bother, which is nice. Some
of the big bikes I hear these days sound like sewing machines when
ridden moderately in town - quite astonishing.

The VFR has 1987 legal silencers and it's a bit more of a shabby old
beast; but the few times I've let it off the leash for in-town
overtaking, it's been a bit like the Millennium Falcon going past
lightspeed in Star Wars. Now I understand how come they could cut it on
the race track when new...

The last time I did that, it was some idiot in an MG badged Idon'tknow
who accelerated to stop me overtaking every time I moved up to slide
past in the usual way - not faster than I could accelerate, but in such
a way that meant I couldn't overtake safely.

So I fell back and stopped trying until the road ahead was straight and
clear for far enough with no side turnings and *LOTS* of width, then
engaged warp drive and demonstrated that no MG can match a 750cc Honda
for acceleration. And then told myself `Don't do that again'. It was
fun, though.

Most
cars will have used all the oil on the dipstick before the annual
service is due. It's quite likely that those cars had actually had the
oil replaced a number of times, albeit not in one go.

No, the oil wasn't changed: unless you drain the sump, you're leaving
the dirt in there and it's the dirt that's the big problem.

It is, but a good oil will carry it around to the filter.

Which doesn't take out all the dirt. The thing is that apparently, with
an LPG powered engine, you don't get dirty oil. What I was told is that
it seems that most of the muck is combustion products, which aren't
dirty when you're running on LPG. The oil getting acid from LPG
combustion products is a problem I've heard about - dunno where things
stand on that or any of this for sure, though.

And I'll bet they
changed the filter.

They said not.

Hmm, 100k on one filter. I have to be a little sceptical, but I wouldn't
deny it's possible. It's just that I've seen the damage caused buy just
extending intervals by small amounts.

The point in this case is that it was a very high quality oil and a very
clean running engine.

[snip]

Indeed, some things can easily be left longer - modern spark plugs for
one (can manage upwards of 30k miles, or double that for Platinums),

Some NDs have a spec life of over 100,000 miles.

Quite possibly now.

I grabbed their technical literature.

[snip]

Rowland.

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